[RPG] spell that allows you to divine what happened “here”

divinationdnd-5espells

My Queen walks into a room full of bodies. One survivor, a small noble she's never met before, tells her a story about what happened to the prisoners she expected to find here. Fortunately, she's a skilled Diviner. Is there a spell other than Speak with Dead she could use to figure out what happened in this room in the last, say, 10 minutes?

If not, the correct answer is obviously "no", but if you happen to be aware of a feature – for player characters or monsters – that does something comparable, please let me know.


In this case I'm the DM and the Queen is a DMPC. I am aware that I could easily make something up myself, so only answers on official, published content please.

Best Answer

Partial success can be had with spells

If you just want to find out what happened, you might be able to obtain that information through some 5th-level spells: commune or contact other plane. Both ask otherworldly entities and receive short answers (yes/no or one word, respectively). If you have suspicions, you might be able to confirm them ('Did this noble take part in killing any of these people?') and possibly even get a clear idea of what happened. With nothing to go on, these will be less useful.

Exact match

The 17th-level Knowledge Domain cleric feature Visions of the Past (PHB 60), particularly its Area Reading option, provides this exact ability; in fact, it is more powerful than what you need here. It says, in part:

As you meditate, you see visions of recent events in your immediate vicinity (a room, street, tunnel, clearing, or the like, up to a 50-foot cube), going back a number of days equal to your Wisdom score.