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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Radiating Gnome" data-source="post: 1763235" data-attributes="member: 150">Wow, that just made my day.  Thanks for the compliment . . .Here's a truly rotten idea.  The death is Staged.  Jax is stumped on this one.  He knows there there are several people on the train who wouldn't mind seeing him dead, and he has grave suspicions about many of them regarding the train heist, but he can prove nothing.  So he comes up with a cunning plan.  He is going to stage his own death, set up some clues that will lead to many of the factions on the train -- a confusing web of clues that will make your plays THINK of the Orient Express . . . . but the dead body isn't Jax at all, and he's skulking around invisibly trying to figure out who is really responsible. Given that the body is disguised as Jax, but isn't really Jax, any sort of raise dead magic will be mis-addressed and fail (after all, you can't raise Jax, he isn't dead!).  So then the real fun is watching the PCs try to deal with the three or four factions on the train that are trying to avoid being charged with the murder -- and other crimes by extension.  Jax's cohort and some guards are stomping around the train bellowing "what's all this then" every once in a while, makeing sure everyone knows that they are ALL under "official investigation".  The Clues . . . The Dagger is not a special twisty nasty evil thing, but it is of Hobgoblin manufacture.  The ambassador insists that the dagger is not his, and that it is being used to frame him.  The face of the body has makeup smudged on it -- suggesting a passionate session with a woman in makeup, but the colors don't match the Princess's -- they are Vanessa's.The Princess fell asleep -- remembers a porter bringing a decanter of brandy to her chambers, but that porter is not a member of the train's staff -- and he's nowhere to be found.  She passed out soon after her first drink of the brandy, and believes it was drugged.  (It was, Jax drugged it).  The body seems to have all of Jax's belongings, but observant PCs will notice that the eyes of the Investigative (I may have the name wrong, the dragonshard item that helps investigatives do their thing) are a fake (Jax needed his to continue his clandestine investigation -- and he couldn't afford a spare set of eyes for the body).  The body is also a bit older than it should be, but not by much (it's a mugging victim from Sharn that Jax requisitioned and kept in a portable hole until he was ready to use it).  Vanessa can report seeing the missing/fake porter that the princess reported in the passageway late at night -- but no one trusts her.  Speak with dead with the body will report that he was killed by a warforged (he was, but he's not Jax . . .).  Not a lot more detail there.  This will throw suspicion on Ash, who will claim to know nothing about it.  A scrap of paper in the body's hand will match a torn pamplet in Ash's compartment -- a pamplet  of the quasi-messianic ramblings of the Lord of Blades (planted by Jax after staging his own death).  And so on.  The idea is a paranoid, frustrating mess, all very event based -- each of the NPCs will have their own personal realization that they are being framed for the murder, and will go to certain lengths to try to eliminate that bit of framing evidence and find out who is framing them -- which will lead to ANOTHER set of clues -- clues Jax will leave behind to throw more suspicion on the various characters.  A porter's uniform in the PC's compartment.  A house orien passkey in the colonel's rooms.  etc.  It's a start, anyway. Now I've got to run, or I'd putter some more, but you get the idea.  One thing, though -- a lot may depend upon figuring out how Jax is getting around in the train.  He can be invisible, that's easy.  But that's also not perfect.  He may also have a passkey so he can enter any room.  Maybe that's good enough.  -rg</blockquote>

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