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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Majoru Oakheart" data-source="post: 6610849" data-attributes="member: 5143">Isn't this the essence of virtually ALL mystery stories though?Take for example: A murdered body is found.  Who did it?  The knife has a symbol that incriminates one person.  But that person has no motive.  Someone else really doesn't like the victim and has reason to see them dead.  But they couldn't have done it, they were spotted across the house at the same time the murder took place.  The clues don't seem to add up.Then, one of the people involved messes up and changes part of their story.  They said they were looking out the window but somehow they also saw someone else run out of the room on the opposite direction.  Obviously, he is lying.  Now that we know someone is lying, we know it is probably them.But until that slip up happens, there's no real way to solve the mystery.  There is just not enough information.  The author of the story decides on just the right moment to reveal that last critical piece of information to let the reader or the watcher figure out the mystery.  Then, the reader/watcher gets to put 2 and 2 together, come up with the answer and feel good about themselves because they solved the mystery just before someone in the story also solves it.But the mystery IS unsolvable until the author decides to allow you to solve it.  I see this as precisely the same thing.  You get the final piece of information to figure out that she is a succubus at just the right dramatic timing.This is a spoiler for the rest of this adventure but it's pretty old and designed for the playtest, so I'm willing to risk it.  The adventure is Scourge of the Sword Coast.So, the adventure in question sends you off to deal with the goblins not entirely just to give you levels.  It's because the fact that there is a succubus there is only the tip of the iceberg.  The goblins have attacked the village because they are working for Red Wizards in the mountains nearby.  The succubus works for them as well.  They want to get a hold of an artifact that was located in Daggerford.  The Duke of Daggerford appears to have lost it.  It was actually stolen by the succubus.  She wants to sew chaos inside the city so that no one in the city will come looking for their base in the mountains.  The Duke blames Sir Isteval for the theft because a friend of his was asking about the artifact.  Sir Isteval is a powerful Paladin and likely a threat to their operation and now he is scouring the countryside looking for the missing artifact.The Red Wizards are working with a demon that has no body so he is just a disembodied spirit.  The Red Wizards said they could give him form again if he helped them.  So he has been possessing Orcs and Goblins and convincing entire tribes to attack nearby villages in order to cause more problems so that the Red Wizards have time to finish the portal they are creating.So, the PCs are asked to go investigate the nearby village for a number of reasons:  To clue them in that something bigger is going on than just one murder, to have a chance to figure out that the goblins are working with the Red Wizards, to distract them from mindlessly searching for clues that can't be found within Daggerford, and also to give them some needed experience to be able to take on the larger challenges of the succubus and the more powerful creatures in the Red Wizard base in the mountains when they have to fight them eventually.</blockquote>

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