The Party Decides Not to Confront Nick Yet

Once the party left the farm, they finally said the quiet part together. Something was wrong with Nick. Ash was the sharpest about it. The real Nick was not this happy. The real Nick would remember flame on. The real Nick would not casually hand away a spare Fireball like it meant nothing. Jonah agreed that Nick's constant reliance on what I.J. supposedly told him felt suspicious, as if every answer had been preloaded from someone else's script. The group could have turned around and forced the issue immediately. They did not. The missing dragonborn came first. The party decided to help them, gather evidence, and return later with better tools, including Zone of Truth. That was restraint, or at least the party's version of restraint: suspicion acknowledged, confrontation delayed, priority shifted toward the people currently missing from a dangerous farm system. Hugo continued shadowing them as a Castro hunter, another reminder that the Nick problem might not be only Nick. The party was not fooled. They just were not ready to spring the trap until they knew what kind of trap it was.