Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="enbee75" data-source="post: 7139138" data-attributes="member: 6882940">Thanks for all the incredibly helpful advice! I'm half considering throwing this away and going with a pre-written module (anyone know if there are any good murder mysteries for 1st level I could adapt?), but shall perservere for now!Answering a couple other questions...This thing grossed me out, so I decided I wanted to use it. It basically reproduces by using human bodies. A Roach implants it's eggs into a human. When the egg hatches, the baby roach consumes the internal organs of its host which takes 6-8 hours (overnight). It takes control and attaches its own feeding mechanisms to stop the host's body decaying. After a few weeks it learns to understand and speak common - though it has no memories of its host. It tries to blend in to human society as best it can. It then starts to grow its own eggs to infect another which takes 6 months to 2 years. Once it leaves its host human body, it cannot return to one and just spends the rest of its life protecting other thralls and eating garbage.I was basically thinking Invasion of the Body Snatchers, and imagined the PCs uncovering a bigger problem than anyone in the community knew they had, as these host humans screech after realising the PCs are onto them, point, screech as other giant roaches scuttle towards them.The motive of the NPC who is hiring the investigators (PCs) could be a personal relationship to someone killed. It could be that the leader of the community has refused any investigations (due to him in fact, being a roach thrall). The PCs job is to discover the truth of these deaths (maybe it's better there has been a few, with similar crime scenes (as roaches have torn out of them)The facts that a community (maybe I need to change the setting - it could instead be the staff in a hospital ward - something a little more enclosed and creepy) is acting very strangly - they've been taken over by these roaches and people are scared to confront them. A leader/someone in power is impeding or stopping any pursuit of the truthHadn't really considered this - I assume the problem will spread. Maybe an NPC the characters had met when investigating then ends up in a PC's bedroom at night, and attempts to lay its own eggs...In this scenario - the big bad could be the leader of the community. I think the Roach Thralls are generally reluctant to leave their hosts as they can never return, so it would make sense that he try to stay under wraps.I'm thinking it might be better to scrap the whole brother thing, and just have the PCs identify the victim and dig around for clues at the crime scene and with the family of the victim who reiterate some of the clues mentioned earlier (although with some of the modifications as has been suggested).I'll just need to now figure how the PCs can be led to figuring out that a lot of these people are infected - even right to the top.Could the twist be that the whole lot of them are roaches, and just brought in the heroes for 'fresh meat' as it were?! - (this may not be that logical!)Also a bunch of these things against a level 1 adventuring party could really hurt them unless I dwarf their stats a bit (they're CR2 in the 3.5e Sharn campaign book)Thanks for all your help!</blockquote>

Verification