Ideas for Village Murder Investigation

[Mark]

There might have been a couple found drown near the shipyard supply shop and no one thought too much about it, as far as being a murder, until a third one occurs. Finding another person drown but in a place where drowning would be impossible, like at the butcher shop, could tip people off that there is much more going on here. Describing them as if they were "floaters" with the bloating and distorted features should make it plenty gruesome enough without the usual trope of having everything bloody. I'd imagine that if the PCs are walking down the street when they hear about the murder at the butcher shop and they rush over expecting a huge bloody mess only to be greeted by a drowning victim that ought to stun them somewhat. The cemetary might present as an interesting killing field with it perhaps being half under water though only a few inches. Of course it will be muddy and there will be no way to anticipate where open graves might be, and undead should not have any trouble since they do not need to breathe. You could use the stables location for some other type of encounter, a red herring between the butcher shop and the cemetary. If they go back to the shipyard to investigate the scene of the original muder, after it has been reclassified as a possible murder due to what has happened at the butcher shop, there could be some clues to be had there as well as some other sort of battle, perhaps something protecting a magical watercraft that is being constructed for the BBEG. It might even be a good place to bring the whole thing back full circle.

 

[fba827]

if you do the stumbling upon the body technique....

encounter 1: the PCs cross through an ally and see a group carrying a body.
The people: random people who found the body and want to take it to cut apart and sell the body parts (perhaps to a wizard, etc for experiments). They of course want to fight to keep the body and the PCs will probably think the victim was killed by these people. By the end of the encoutner the PCs find out that the carriers had nothing to do with the murder itself, and now the PCs have a corpse and an open mystery.

encounter 2: doing some completely unrelated task (clearing out rats at the ship yard or graveyard ) they end up chasing rats back to their nest and find them in a crate with another corpse that has been gnawed as the rats have been feeding off of it. Now they have two corpses and no leads

encounter 3: noncombat situation of asking around town to see if there is a common link between the two victims. over the course of doing so, they may hear that a body was *just* found shoved in a hay stack at the stables.

encounter 4: noncombat situation searching the crime scene and eventually finding some clue that might link this victim to at least one other. part of this situation might also include some persuasiveness to let the law enforcement let the PCs look/help.

encounter 5: attacked in an ally or so by some summoned-water creature - the murder has heard that the PCs are following leads thus they were targeted for murder themselves

encounter 6: the sheriff (or whatever) is being attacked by (summoned creatures/undead/etc) when the PCs come to talk to him/her about the attempt on their lives.

encounter 7: the common links between the victims (which could be as simple as a time and place like midnight they usually walk path A in the forest) leads the PCs to some place where there is another victim being attacked ... and the goal is to save that person


and so on ...


(just thoughts off the top of my head. don't know how well it would work with what you had in mind or how predictable your players are, etc).