I summon the awful power of my fellow DMs from across the board to serve my whims!!
Hey All: I am in the process of writing the next few adventures for my home campaign, and I really want to run a special, strong adventure for this particular leg of the campaign. I was hoping you guys my help me cook up a way to acheive this.
The scenario: Armies are converging on the capital. The PCs are in a distant city, and they learn an assassin is on the way to kill the King at the capital. They must pursue and catch the assassin before he gets to the King, and in their way are the armies of various foes.
The problem: I want to create a long chase scene, where the PCs, by virtue of their actions, can get closer or farther from the assassin at each encounter. I need a unique, new way to facilitate this chase, a method by which I can create tension but a sense that they have control over what will happen.
So tell me, you brave souls, how would you make this happen?
I would have the assassin be the main character in a team of assassins who are assisting by doing the more mundane actions of scouting and map out the palace or whatnot; infiltrating as guards; cooks, other help and perhaps some that are entertainers and those who can get information in the local underworld scene; trade scene whatnot as these things can be used by the assassin to set the king up to have to negotiate between the merchants guilds or the theives or whatnot during this time of inclement war; the team should be able to stir up enough attention on the sly to get the kings attention; some of these may be killed or captured to advance the story; maybe they all have a brand or something.
have you decided if the assassin is going to succeed or not or if not; is their going to be a second attempt; maybe the assassin sets up a patsy assassin to get caught if the pressure get to great; when the tension dies down; the real assassin strikes. Remember; the greatest tool of the assassin is secrecy and misdirection; the team should leave false trails to help them identify the kings intelligence and security teams; maybe thier families will be attacked or whatnot to make them; uhm....more pliable; what kind of resources does this Assassin have and what kind of backup; magic? who is giving him this task? Is he a patsy? Maybe everyone is watching the king which is a missdirection so someone can kill the army general and his staff...hmmm; twists upon twists is how I would play this.
One more thing; how well known is the assassin; how many high profile targets has he taken out; is it from some well known and feared brotherhood with far reaching powers and influence. You will need to decide this stuff also to work it into the campaign.
Pound into your players heads that anyone; anyone; anyone can be assassinated given enough time, proper resources and a strong will to get the job done; mabye have a few pc's wake up with a few dots on their forhead of the assassins simple to warn them off.
I have not decided on success yet. If he misses the King, he goes for a royal cousing next.
I wanted to leave it open for the PCs to make it happen.
you can also have the team capture one or more family member of one or more of the pc's to hold hostage; make things difficult for them; you know; the stuff you would expect the mob to do from those old time Chicago mobster movies.
For the chase, pull out an egg timer. Put a time limit on them to help create the feel of stress and pressure.
If the assasin is on to them and their meddling ways, have him scout them out as well. Maybe play off their weaknesses, set a few traps for them. I'm a big fan of false leads, and that would be easy if the assasin is leading a whole hit squad.
I agree with Valegrim- many twists and turns is always good, and I think the team of assassins is a good idea, too.
My personal vision of this scenario is one powerful, competent assassin backed up by pawns; capable pawns, but pawns none the less. Each has some piece of the overall picture or plan to complete the assassination. The party needs some source to direct them to these pawns, which they confront, get the information from (via speak with dead if necessary), and complete one more piece of the puzzle. Eventually, they know exactly where to be in order to stop the assassination.
Moving through the armies is another thing. The way I'd handle it is a backdrop to the rest of the adventure, or perhaps like "dungeon walls," to direct the party in the way they need to go. You can keep them from wandering too far by placing large enemy forces along the "boundaries" of the chase. To accentuate it, play up some of the descriptions of the recent battlefields they come accross, or maybe they even spy one from afar and have to take pains not to get caught up in it. A few "random" encounters with scouts and forerunners from either army can add to the sense of the impending conflict. Only one or two of each of these will be plenty to get the message across.
Now, on to the assassination plot proper. Are you sure the assassin is just after the king? I don't know the exact type of world you're running, but due to the lack of evidence to the contrary, I'm assuming it's fairly standard. Surely there is a high priest whose faith is allied with, if not servants of, the king. That means he could just be brought back from the dead.
Any good assassination of a high-profile personage in a D&D world actually needs to be a pair of assassinations- one on the target himself, and one on anyone with the resources to bring him back from the dead. Unless, of course, the nearest high priest happens to be on the other side of the invading army and is effectively cut off from the king (he would need to lack teleportation abilities, too). Or maybe it's just a stalling tactic; the king only needs to be dead for X amount of time to ensure the invader's victory, after which it won't matter if there's a high priest or not because the battle will be over and there will be a new power in charge.
Then you might spawn another adventure to covertly get a hold of the king's body and resurrect him, anyway.
Or, the body could simply be stolen, or destroyed, or powerful magic like trap the soul employed. Not quite as fun, but possibly more intelligent and practical on the assassins' part. I've said so before, and it bears repeating: I really like the tactic used in Funeral Procession (Dungeon #135), which is to use an oil of shrink item on a corpse, and then simply run off with it in the palm of your hand. Then there could be a quest to find the shrunken body of the king!
Now I wish I could play through a situation like this. Sounds fun!
The problem: I want to create a long chase scene, where the PCs, by virtue of their actions, can get closer or farther from the assassin at each encounter. I need a unique, new way to facilitate this chase, a method by which I can create tension but a sense that they have control over what will happen.So tell me, you brave souls, how would you make this happen?
Steal a side plot from The Good, The Bad and the Ugly. The heroes need to use a bridge to cross a river, but get caught by one army or another. The commander enscripts them to destroy the bridge, so that both armies may move on.
That is one that i'd definitely throw in.
I'd offer more suggestions, but it is hard without knowing what levels this should run through for your pcs. I'm assuming low to mid level, to make the chase an actual chase. At high level, you have many means to beat him to the capital.
-c
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The assassin's riding in a magic stagecoach that can disguise to make the coach and everyone involved with it look like members of whichever army. So HE can slide by EITHER ARMY'S checkpoints, but the pc's have to BS their way through.
It all has to end with the pc's on horseback chasing the stagecoach, and a swordfight on top of it at high-speed.
The assassin has an artifact like an arrow of slaying that, if he gets within a 250 foot straight shot of the king, animates and flies to strike the king down. So they can't let him get into the city.
That's all I got.
It all has to end with the pc's on horseback chasing the stagecoach, and a swordfight on top of it at high-speed.
On the side of a cliff, over a rushing river hundreds of feet below! Think of the fight scene with the gypsies at the end of the Dracula movie with Anthony Hopkins and Keanau (sp? don't care) Reeves.
The assassin has an artifact like an arrow of slaying that, if he gets within a 250 foot straight shot of the king, animates and flies to strike the king down. So they can't let him get into the city.
That's all I got.
I like.
Valegrim wrote: Remember; the greatest tool of the assassin is secrecy and misdirection; the team should leave false trails to help them identify the kings intelligence and security teams; maybe thier families will be attacked or whatnot to make them; uhm....more pliable; what kind of resources does this Assassin have and what kind of backup; magic? who is giving him this task? Is he a patsy? Maybe everyone is watching the king which is a missdirection so someone can kill the army general and his staff...hmmm; twists upon twists is how I would play this.
If you want to leave the ultimate success of the assasin in the hands of the party Valegrims point that I copied is a good plot.
Does the party know for sure that the King is the target, or (through an adventure), by finding some of the assasins cohorts is this revealed to them?
Does the assasin have a plan to get close to the king? Can you set it up somehow that the party can (through an adventure) uncover this plan?
Does the assasin have help from the inside? Disgruntled nobles? Can the party (through an adventure) reveal and foil these insiders, and by doing so, slow down the assasins plans?
You mentioned that you wanted the party to feel like their actions were getting them closer or farther away from the trail of the assasin, this could be a good way of accomplishing this.
For the record I LOVE the whole stagecoach/slaying arrow/rolling fight on the top like in Dracula idea. If you can pull that one off your players will be telling that story for YEARS. Just reading it I could see it playing out in my head.
Hope this helps! :-)
This sounds really cool. The only trouble I see is that once the PC's find out about the assassination then they are going to A: tell the king or his court somehow and set their guard up (this way if the Assassin succeeds you run the risk of crap like "They knew an assassin was after him why would they have let him eat that?") and B: The party (depending on their reputation) would be completely justified in asking for and likely receiving lots of help from the allied army.
Possible solutions/idea- The PC's are set up. They intercept one or more of the assassins lackeys were given the task of planting incriminating evidence (plans of treacherous assassination) on a high profile member of the opposing military like a general. The PCs demolish the assassins squad of pawns so that either a surviving lackey or the lead assassin himself watching from afar decide that the PCs are a greater threat than their first target and decide to frame the party instead. After the fight they also gain information about the real assassination attempt. So then the party is found with assassination orders and they are hunted as traitors, their credibility shot to pieces by damning evidence they are the only ones with the knowledge to stop the real murder.
This can climax a number of ways. If your party is well versed in espionage then the assassin uses them as trailblazers. The party uses their skills to get closer to the king (in order to protect him) and the assassin stays a half step behind, letting the PC's do the hard work. Then right when the PC's get into place the assassin alerts all the courts countermeasures to their location so the PC's have to fight off deadly allies while the assassin takes advantage of the distraction to accomplish his task.
Alternatively the PCs could follow clues by rounding up pieces of the killers posse and learning the exact moment and place the killing will occur. Framing them was just to provide a red herring for the kings assassin detection unit. Right when they have everything they need to stop the killing they are trapped by the kings forces and arrested and taken to a dungeon very near the site of the future murder. Only a timely jail break and daring rescue can save the kings life.
Good points, Sexi, but the problem of reaching the king and informing him can be countered in several ways. First, there's that whole army encampment around the capitol. As you pointed out, we don't know the party's level, but assuming they are relatively unknown to the kingdom's hierarchies, the defending army may not let them through (like Heathy pointed out), detaining them for too long of a time (which the party should expect and thus plan to simply circumvent the army), or perhaps indefinately, or maybe even attack them as spies or scouts of the enemy.
Or, the means to contact the king remotely might be difficult to come by, or once again, take too much time. Or the party may lack the key piece of evidence that would actually make contacting the king useful. They need to catch the final assassin to do that. Surely the king is always guarded against assassination to some extent. Without specific details, the party's warning may not be of any use.
Or, assuming again that the party is relatively unknown, the warning may be discounted. Perhaps the king's advisors feel it is just a ploy to force the king's hand in some way, or simply something to insubstantial to act on.
Finally, perhaps there is a mole in the king's court, who intercepts the messages and keeps the king in the dark.
Examining and developing plans/counterplans is so fun in D&D!
EDIT- Oh, and about the slaying arrow variant idea. How's this: a dart tipped with a tiny bit of a sphere of annihilation with a animating enchantment, like stated before, that activates when it gets within X feet of its target. Or maybe something that simulates the effects of a disintigration spell? Poisoned food isn't likely to work if there is any court wizard at all- I'm sure detect poison is prepared daily.
The party is close to the King, and they, for a long time, kept it on the downlow to keep them able to act on his behalf freely. Recently, they were revealed, and they faked their deaths to undertake a task. Those who know they are friends AND still alive are with the King.
On telling the King: I love magic, but I rarely allow spells and items that will let them magically solve a problem by itself.
Saern made a great point though: There will need to be a coordinated strike against the Heironeans who aid him as well, a thing I had not thought of.
I like alot of what I am hearing from you guys. Please keep it coming. I need all the good ideas, and for you to bring up any complications I will have to deal with.
I would suggest a large scale assassination. A team of highly skilled individuals operating with no knowledge of each other's actions or a single very powerful foe. They could be traveling to the city at the same time so that the PCs would have to track down multiple targets. At some strategic and highly public event (perhaps the deployment of the nations armies, when there would be many important people in one place)the assassins could strike simultaneously and take out the entire nations leadership, therfore crippling thier ability to resist invasion. The public assassination of so many important and prominent leaders would create a panic in the populous, making them that much easier to conquer. Perhaps one or more of the assassins could be a spellcaster. As for the chase you could have it be a covert chase through enemy lines on a cliff so that they were pursuing their foe, evading the opposing army and having to worry about the cliff all at the same time. or mabye include a lightning storm.
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The party is close to the King, and they, for a long time, kept it on the downlow to keep them able to act on his behalf freely. Recently, they were revealed, and they faked their deaths to undertake a task. Those who know they are friends AND still alive are with the King.
This brings up an interesting issue - do the assassins know that the PCs were tight with the king? If they do, they can have one of them pose as one of the PCs and use a sending spell or some such thing to magically contact the king and ask to meet him in a secluded location to inform him of a plot - the secrecy is "important to maintain their cover"... As long as the assassins do this before the PCs, any messages the PCs try to send will be discounted by the king as attempts at magical misinformation, thus solving the problem of magical communication tipping off the target, and they can do this without even knowing that the PCs were faking their own deaths.
When the PCs then finally get to the king's court, they discover that the king just left for a secret meeting. As they chase after him, they are ambushed by the lead assassin's henchmen. Initially, they'll be just mooks, but tey get tougher and tougher, culiminating with a showdown with the lead assassin himself and his chief cohorts, who have captured the king (they want him to sign some documents before they kill him). If you are feeling really mean, force the PCs to choose between saving the king (he's attached to some kind of machine or golem that must be disarmed or destroyed) or defeating the lead assassin, thus creating a recurring villain they'll be sure to really hate.
My handful of coppers... Good luck, and let us know what you ended up doing!