Magnimar law question...


Rise of the Runelords


I've read the Magnimar sourcebook and see that it is a city that makes due with few laws but I have a question regarding PC accountability...
I am really playing up the political intrigue in Magnimar. The players have come into contact with Ironbriar. Ironbriar is to preside over the trial of Orick and Lyrie (Tsuto escaped...more intrigue that the players will find out about later.)
Anyway, Ironbriar wants the players dead before they can investigate any further. He knows he has to have complete deniability, so he hires out a small party of Night Scale assassins to take the PCs out. The assassins attacked while the PCs were shopping in the Lowcleft district.
The PCs survived the assassination attempt and we ended the night with the PCs standing over the dead bodies.
What, if any, should the fallout be? The players killed a few people on crowded streets in broad daylight. Sure it can be argued that it is self defense, but does that matter? Should the PCs spend some time in jail? Is there a way i can send them further down the political intrigue rabbit hole?
Ideas are always appreciated. Thanks!


My reading of the Magnimar sourcebook suggests violence is not rare in the City of Monuments. It's not chaos in the streets but violence is common enough in everyday affairs that being violent is not an automatic trigger for prison. However it should be for investigation.

The key points are going to be the same as in our own world: who started it? Are their witnesses who can back the pc's version? Were any innocents harmed or collateral property damage? If yes to either, even if not done directly by the pc's, local authority hostility and prison risk goes up.

Any competent Magnimar government official is going to recognize the Night Scales among the dead. And that means one of two things: the pc's have powerful (rich) enemies or they've run afoul of the Scarzni. Have you started Skinsaw yet? I'm guessing No based on the trial for Orik and Lyrie. That doesn't leave a lot of ambiguity - the only reason someone would want the pc's dead would be for the same reason they are in town: the trial. (Unless the pc's have managed to offend the Scarzni even those in Sandpoint in the past.)

Hope you're ready for the Pandora's box you opened because the players are going to start investigating the Night Scales - kicking in doors, scumming taverns, searching for clues as to who hired them. And they're going to be convinced there is a large conspiracy maybe even in the government to kill them and save Orik and Lyrie (for who knows what reason.) Any resistance to their investigations will now be seen as convincing evidence of said conspiracy.

That may sound all well and good to you but remember the connection between Book 2 and Book 3 is the pc's being hired by the government of Magnimar. If the players have unresolved trust issues, that may be harder - they'll assume the job is part of a plan to get rid of them, etc.


They've finished Skinsaw. They are already suspicious of Ironbriar based on a meeting they had with him. They are set to investigate the sawmill but this interrupted that plan.
And I'm not necessarily using the connection between book 2 and 3. I actually dislike this campaign's connective tissue between books. I've been rewriting a lot of it.

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