I am running a play by e-mail prologue to TINH which takes place on a ship headed for Sasserine. Aboard the ship are the four PC’s plus three NPC’s, one of which is Lavinia. I did it to give the PC’s a chance to introduce themselves to each other and for me to introduce some NPC’s, mainly Lavinia. The first part of the prologue consisted of a late night conversation between the PC’s and the NPC’s, which coincidentally is happening on the same night as the Vandberoren’s boat is burning. The PC’s get to Sasserine two weeks before Lavinia invites them to dinner and gives them the job offer. The second part of the prologue gives the PC’s a chance to explore Sasserine, learn the stuff from the Player’s Guide, etc….
I had two of my PC’s overhear a couple of dockworkers talking about the tragedy which befell Verik and Larissa Vanderboren. One of my players, being naturally suspicious as all players are, suspects that there was more to the fire than just an accident. He is going to do a little investigating, because his character took a liking to Lavinia.
Of course I don’t want the characters to discover Vanthus’ involvement at this early stage in the adventure but at the same time I want to reward him if he roleplays the investigation well and gets a good Gather Info check result. Here is what I plan on allowing him to learn at this point: (remember we haven’t even started the adventure proper, yet)
1. The crew loaded a lot of cargo crates onto the boat the day of the fire, but there wasn’t anything suspicious about this as Verik planned on taking the boat out the next day.
2. The crew didn’t know who asked them to load the crates, but assumed it was Verik. (In reality it was Vanthus, of course.) Only the officer in charge of the loading knew that it was Vanthus.
3. The officer in charge has already signed on with another ship and left Sasserine, and isn’t due back for another month. (Vanthus helped find him work on another ship immediately to get him out of town. Then he paid another member of the crew to kill the officer as soon as they reached port in another city.
4. Once the ship started burning, it went up very quickly.
So the character could learn that the ship burned quickly and cargo was loaded the day of the fire, presumably by Verik. No one can confirm that Verik ordered this, though.
Anyone have suggestions about anything else the players could learn at this point? I am reluctant to give too much away at this point, because my players are smart enough to put pieces together very quickly and deduce who did it and I don’t want to give anything away too early.
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You could throw a red herring. Perhaps making Soller Vark look to be some how invovleved might be advantageous, since they'll need to go after him for Lavinia anyways. (Heck, it even gives him more reason to try and take the Blue Nixie from the PCs POV.)
Maybe a dock worker would remmember seeing a guy, describing Vark, so that when they encounter him, they recognize him and won't want to kill him so as to ask questions of him...A good GM would even give them a chance to save him from the Rhogadessa beastie.
Of course, he was actually there to collect a bribe, and had nothing to do with the Alchem-Fire. Perhaps he had contact with a unknown Dwarf (Penkus) and thus able to describe Vanthus' side-kick without giving names.
Hope that helps.
I really like the idea of Vark being there as a red herring. I think I will use that! Thanks, Floyd.