Hi there,
yesterday I had to come up with a little side-trek to fit in between Foxglove's Town House and the Cult-Hideout, because one of the players wasn't there. So the task was to bring a little quest where one of the characters was disabled. Maybe one of you can still use it.
(I apologice for the following wall of text)
Side-Quest: The Revenge of The phantom-like, body-snatching Thing of the Opera
The Idea was, that one surving Faceless Stalker wants revenge for the murder of his family by the PCs. So he goes rogue and uses his abilities to frame the PCs for the Skinsaw Murders, knowing that the Death Penalty awaits the Murderes.
What the Stalker will do:
1: He steals a magical Device (or something similar) from Ironbriar, which allows him to put the PCs under a charm. (I know, this is the railroady part of it, but a clever GM will come up with something fitting.)
2: The Stalker disguises himself as a fitting "date" for one of the characters (in our case this was Foxglove) and goes with her to the park, which lies directly on top of the cliff. The other Characters are just commanded to sit around in a side alley after the Stalker takes a weapon from one of them (best some signature one).
3: In a quiet moment the stalker lets the kidnapped character hide in the bushes and takes her guise himself. In this form he waits for a proper victim, drinks a potion of mirror image (see below why), slays the victim with the weapon of one of the PCs and carves an (imitated) sihedron-rune on the victim.
4: Then he places the kidnapped character (still under spell, yeah) right next to the body and climbs down the cliff to the city. From there he places the gory weapon on the other waiting characters to connect them to the murder.
5: The Spell ends when one of the characters get's wakened by the guards, either telling them not to loiter around or arresting her for murder and putting her on stasis/petrify her/etc.
HOOK: The Characters have a 2-Hour amnesia. One of them is missing. They have a bloody weapon on their bodies. Go from there.
What the PCs can find out:
- Rumors are spreading fast of a new murder, even Ironbriar is concerned: The victim was the owner of the Seven's Sawmill! Thus Ironbriar even supports the investigators after they can "convince" him of the Chapechanger-Idea. He himself fears the Faceless Stalker he has lost control of. He would like to instrumentalise the PC to catch the stalker - this does not mean that afterwards he would not have them executed nontheless.
- Investigations bring up the following: There are two witnesses, one (a friendly flower-selling-girl) saw the PC enter the Park with Foxglove, who was behaving as he would not know the witness. Of the murder she saw that there suddenly where a whole group of people at the scene (the mirror-images), but she was too far away to see anything more. The other (the gnome-gardner) saw the two again at the crime scene, but as he looked a moment later, Foxglove was gone and the Stalker as "PC" was talking to the victim.
- In the Camp of "The Gallowed" the Mob-Boss actually noticed the escaping murderer climbing down the cliff, but as he just killed a man who gave the Gang some Trouble he is actually friendly towards the framed PCs and will try to convinve them to work for him.
- If the PCs get to see the corpse they will see that carved the sihedron-rune is amateurish done and not like the one they have seen before. The spell "Speak with the Dead" will bring up the following: The Victim met with the accused PCs, but as he was murders, all the other PC where there, too (bad luck that two lictors of the hell-knights are watching the questioning...)!
- The Reason for this is the following: As the Faceless Stalkers can change in different disquises but are no real individuals themself they can indeed create mirror images that look differnt from them - in this case one Faceless Stalker can impersonate the whole PCs Party! They can learn this from the curator of the museum or some other academic when they show him the empty vial they found in the park.
The Showdown
The Stalker is the last of his kind and hides at the half flooded remains of an old opera-house in the seedy part of the city, where he used to exercice cruel plots of infiltration and intrigue out of the old plays he and his family found there. Now that they all are dead this turns to some kind of "Phantom of the Opera"-Setting. He will surrender before dying and try to sell his knowledge about Ironbriar and the Brotherhood for his freedom.
He struck bargain with two formerly inactive Gargoyls on the rooftop, which can serve as an encounter to spice things up, for example bursting through the windows of the inn when the characters sleep. If they can defeat them they can learn on which building they have been seen before so they can track down the real killer.
When you are really lucky, at some point towards the end of the side-trek a player will come up with the good old "The Thing"-Question: What if the chapechanger is one of us? At our table this turned out to be a most intense situation: The PCs have "rented" a prison cell and locked themself in, casting a zone of truth and beginng to ask each other questions only the real characters could know - with weapons drawn. It was great, the players came up with all kinds of anecdotes of their adventures in Sandpoint - and as one player actually could not remember the right answer, it turned out that she had REALLY played the chapechanger and her original character lay unconcious outside!
Best minigame ever to let the players reflect on the plot so far.
I hope those who read all this may use it and have as much fun as I had!
