The Perfect Crime

[Tuerny]

If you are in my campaign (Morpheus) please do not read this thread. Thank you.

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For the first adventure for my new Ral-Auth (tm) Campaign I am going to have the PCs, who all belong to a noble house, to be meeting with their entire extended family for a great party in a manor house outside of the player's home city of Seleresor.

While the PCs are out on a social hunt the manor is going to be attacked by a large mercenary company who will succeed in wiping out pretty much the entire House but in the proccess be destroyed themselves. The PCs will be able to avoid this due to their hunt. Thus thrusting them into leadership positions in their House and preparing them for the campaign to follow.

The individual behind this dastardly deed, at least on a local level, is an eryines rogue who leads the local chapter of the Six Barrels Cosnortium.

My query is this, how do you suggest I ensure that the eryines can avoid detection by some of the magic that the House's allies might be able to call upon to learn her identity.

I already figured that it would be wise to have her polymorphed and to own an amulet of proof against detection and location, but is there anything else that could aid this? Assume that the largest resource the House will be able to tap is 5th level spells/powers.

 

[drnuncheon]

If you are in my campaign (Morpheus) please do not read this thread. Thank you.

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For the first adventure for my new Ral-Auth (tm) Campaign I am going to have the PCs, who all belong to a noble house, to be meeting with their entire extended family for a great party in a manor house outside of the player's home city of Seleresor.

While the PCs are out on a social hunt the manor is going to be attacked by a large mercenary company who will succeed in wiping out pretty much the entire House but in the proccess be destroyed themselves. The PCs will be able to avoid this due to their hunt. Thus thrusting them into leadership positions in their House and preparing them for the campaign to follow.

The individual behind this dastardly deed, at least on a local level, is an eryines rogue who leads the local chapter of the Six Barrels Cosnortium.

My query is this, how do you suggest I ensure that the eryines can avoid detection by some of the magic that the House's allies might be able to call upon to learn her identity.

I already figured that it would be wise to have her polymorphed and to own an amulet of proof against detection and location, but is there anything else that could aid this? Assume that the largest resource the House will be able to tap is 5th level spells/powers.

Sometimes the best methods are completely mundane. Have her work through a cut-out. She didn't hire the mercenaries, this other fellow did. Even if they do find him, he doesn't know anything about the person who hired him. For added fun, have her polymorph into the form of a rival, so when enterprising PCs find the cut-out, he sends them on the wrong track.

If you think about it, most of the questions that people would ask of a divination would be "who sent these people to attack us" - to which the answer is, of course, the cut-out.

Dealing with specific divinations:

Commune and Contact Other Plane are easy - they're yes/no questions anyway, so the investigators would have to have a level of initial knowledge to ask the right questions - which they don't.

Divination is much trickier - hard to mess with the gods. I think you just need to hope on this one.

Speak with Dead could gice results if they talk to one of the dead mercenaries. The best way to protect from this is to make sure they don't know anything! That's what the cut-out described above is for.

Most of the other spells require you to know something about the target (locate creature, scrying, etc.) I don't think that you can specify 'whoever is behind this plot' as the target of a scrying spell. If you have something from the person who hired the mercenaries it might count as a connection - but that'd be the cut-out anyway.

Needless to say, the cut-out should be a) unaffiliated with the devil's organization, and b) expendable!

Hope these help.

J

 

[madriel]

Re: Divination

Remember, the gods aren't required to answer. A DM can rule that the Divination only contacts a servant of the deity, who may or may not know the info the PCs need. It may not know which possible future will come true. Make divination results obscure or ambiguous.

 

[Darklone]

Hmmm

Remember, many gods rely on divination and it could be possible in your world that an amulet against location and detection would be enough ...

Kill the cut-out. And think about how you make sure that not many mercenaries survive. Why should they take the job?

Proposal: The mercs kill the nobles and return to the guy who pays them. There summoned monsters kill the whole assembly in a nicely prepared ambush. Just lure everyone in a warehouse with rum and other stuff and unleash a cloudkill or something similar. The cut-out opens the chest with the gold coins and triggers a trap he didn't know was there. If they speak later with him: The erinye was disguised as someone else as she hired him.

Just make sure there IS a way for your players to find out who did it at all

 

[Tuerny]

Thanks for all the advice everyone.
I think that this will go off much better now, though I have decided to make this the second story arc for my campaign rather than the first.....