Ice Titan |
A serial killer without a motive is like a villain without a plot. The motive tends to wrap around the adventure, you know? I don't know. It's like you came up and said 'The motive for the BBEG is avenging his father's death at a deacon's hands, but what's the adventure?'
For starters: A cleric of Pharasma who is being taunted by demonic possession into thinking that all children born after a certain date have been tainted. Need the girls to make more children-- Pharasma's circle of life in mind, you know-- but the boys are monstrous and have to go.
William Ronald |
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Well, you could perhaps have a minor noble of Taldor eliminating those who deems as undesirables but using a disguise. Think Jack the Ripper. Throw in some magic, and also imagine that the villain is trying to blame someone else to throw off the authorities and harm a rival. (Sometimes destroying a person and his reputation is worse than killing him.)
shadowmage75 |
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My suggestion is utilize the Taldor faction from Pathfinder Society as a basis. You could have a megalomaniac, like the sherlock holmes arch-nemesis. You could have the players come upon a room, or even a full house, with hundreds of yards of yarn running from one point to the next, all connecting like a branching web to political figures, family members, house servants, even vendors they visit regularly.
Whether you have him actually manipulating court politics or just some convoluted delusion that he's doing so, the serial killer's M.O. is always the same, and eventually the PC's can put together the flaws in his murders to track him down.
This will give you a chance to introduce golarion figureheads, your own npc's, and probably a few of the key elements of taldor, if you're not going to a larger scale intrigue.
William Ronald |
Great...i love the idea of someone doing the nasty things only to disgrace a political rival.
Oh, not surprising. Taldor is known for a lot of political intrigue, so I imagine some people would be desperate to take down a few enemies. What might be amusing is that there could be multiple suspects for the real killer, as there are enough feuding families to give the players a tough mystery to solve.
Set |
He believes that he's stealing their vitality. Perhaps even their virility.
He's a garden variety depressive, and the only time he feels truly alive is on the hunt, during the kill, and for a few days afterwards, when he's still 'charged' by the excitement and fear-of-being-caught of his last kill. This, in practical terms, 'treats' his depression. As the 'high' fades, he slumps back into a low-energy self-loathing sort of state, which he has deluded himself into thinking is a sign of his life-force being drained away somehow (perhaps he has a complicated personal mythology about a curse, or something), and that the only way he can keep himself from dying, is by killing these boys and 'absorbing their life-force.' (He's not absorbing anything. He just isn't depressed before, during and after a kill, because of all the fight-or-fight stuff going on. Eventually the depression comes back, and he feels like he's 'dying' again. Time to kill another young lad...)
Adult-ish stuff;
sunbeam |
One idea that pops into my head is to use an alchemist. Doesn't the Master Chymist have multiple personalities or something?
With a little handwaving you could have a perfectly normal, perhaps even good character whose dark side comes out when it wants or when it is convenient.
The regular character might not even have any idea he is changing, if the dark persona wants to keep it concealed.
Kind of like a lycanthrope, but with more reasoning abilities and not constrained by the moon or silver or the like.
Do the children have any theme linking them? Like they are all the children of nobles or maybe prostitutes? If there is no theme, maybe the alchemist's dark side is trying to acquire reagants for some sort of process where he takes control permanently.
I think I could come up with something twisted with a cleric too. That would be... well what clerics do if they are evil. Well some kinds of evil.
Vulpae |
as for Set, that sounds near freudian good work.
This being Talor, he may even be an aristocrat having to try and sire for his family name. Not to mention the varying degrees of Sexisim that is inherant in Taldorian culture if you read the entry. Women seeing Men as Playthings, Men bragging about their "conquest" of a woman. it's not total, but it might be somthing that playes into his mindset, and why he does not slay women.
Elfo |
So, until now:
A reward was offered, and they started to search for clues in the city. Not much o tracks as the last crime was six days ago. Some guardsman found the dead bodys of missing childs in a old tower in the outdoor, at north of Cassomir.
The player character know that some spellcasting was involved in the crimes, as the guards reported that some guard buddys where fulminated(?) by some kind of black magic when they saw a man attacking childrem at night.
With i have in mind, for now, is a sorceress or cleric working catching the alive young boys for a Taldan Noble.
I have some time to decide more about the killer...
Ah, about the boys, the majoroty of they are blond (Just like Guiles tale), not something sooo common in Taldan. (Maybe to many Ulfen Guard bastards?)
And sorry for my shamefull english.
Greg Wasson |
In one of the Jack Vance Demon Princes novels, the antagonist achieved immortality using an elaborate recipe.
From the bodies of living children, the hormagaunt must procure certain glands and organs, prepare extracts, from which a waxy nodule might ultimately be derived. This nodule implanted in the hormagaunt's pineal gland forfends age.
Greg