Trash

Do you know who: 1. just came to town, 2. is staying for at least a year, 3. seemingly has innate spellcasting, and 4. has actual experience taking care of and stewarding teenagers?

Picture it: First day of Senior Year, Gorgug Thistlespring walks through the halls, a rockstar drummer, pioneer of the Barbificer multiclass, and four time savior of the world. He's feeling great, this is gonna be a good year. Then he turns a corner and sees him.

Studying! Dance and Music! Martial students use the Seacasters' training grounds and equipment! Fabian hires a life guard because so many kids want to use his pool! Kids who don't have enough food at home know that they can go to the Manor and order whatever they want and Fabian won't even notice the charges!

That leads to at least a couple students being there every morning, and it'd be embarrassing if they saw him only drinking milk in the mornings- that for sure would ruin his popularity- so he hires a cook... and of course, the cook might as well make breakfast for anyone else that happens to be there. Word gets out that there's always free breakfast (and a bagged lunch, of course) at Seacaster Manor for anyone that stops by before school.

One day, the wizards all start complaining about how much money it costs to just be a student. A week later, Fabian approaches the wizard teacher and says he's trying to clear out one of his house's treasure rooms and he's hoping the school can take some of these raw materials off his hands? It amounts to almost an entire class-set of wizard materials.

Gorgug and Fig vent about how unfair Porter is being, and that Fig is the one with access to one-on-one tutoring with Porter, when Gorgug is the one with the 400% courseload and is actually struggling with Barbarian Studies. Fabian goes to Riz and asks him to offer the upperclassmen with good grades tutoring jobs. Riz comes back a couple hours later, somehow with a whole-ass schedule of tutors.

A few months have gone by and Fabian is talking to Fig about how the Owlbears are falling apart, and he's barely holding onto his "Captain" title, and he hasn't had the time to throw a wicked party in weeks, and his popularity must be slipping, but he can't even tell because he's so stressed out, and-

Is there a chance that Ivy's reaction to seeing Lucy at the party was initially genuine/do we think there's a possibility something killed Lucy and covered up her death and has been impersonating her to her adventuring party since but telling them to pretend she's missing as a way to move plans along?

Like this this fully unlikely and I if it's not true I'll be whatever about it, but I genuinely don't know if the rat grinders are heartless enough to kill off their friend and hide her body. Maybe they are. Maybe they're cruel and evil. But maybe they're just teens who are spiteful and trying to take down their perceived rivals.