Framing a PC for MURDER (Suggestions solicited)

[Gwaihir Scout]

Background:

I made each of my players take one of the campaign traits either from the RotR player's guide or from the APG, since they're Sandpoint-related. One of my players took the Outlander(Exile) trait, I suspect simply for the +2 initiative.

"For whatever reason, you were forced to flee your homeland. Chance or fate has brought you to town, and it's here that your money ran out, leaving you stranded in this small town. You are also being pursued by enemies from your homeland, and that has made you paranoid and quick to react to danger. You gain a +2 trait bonus on Initiative checks."

He then proceeded to present me with a very well-researched backstory that fit the trait. His PC is a female emberkin aasimar flame oracle who was raised at the Everlight Oasis. Unfortunately, her twin sister killed the priestess who raised them and pinned the blame on the PC, who had to run for her life and ended up in Sandpoint. The player has not nearly been cautious enough for someone who is being hunted by Kelish soldiers.

Short version: a player made the huge mistake of giving me an evil twin to work with. The PC is a female aasimar with purple eyes (but brown hair, not white, sadly), and the evil twin has already framed the PC for murder in the past. The scenario practically wrote itself at this point, and I had to take an evil laugh break.

Evil twin motivation:

The player gave me no reason for the evil twin's actions, so I have a blank slate here. I'm leaning towards envy. Being an oracle of flame (and aasimar to boot) at one of Sarenrae's major holy sites means the PC was paid a lot of attention. The twin grew furious over the special treatment, and framed the PC for murder to get rid of her.

So first order of business: what class to make the twin? Oracle's currently out for motivation reasons. I was thinking of making her a cleric of Ymeri, but emberkin get bonuses to INT and CHA, so this isn't playing to her strengths. Antipaladin might be interesting, but I'm not sure you can go to antipaladin without being a paladin first. Also not playing to her strengths. Fire wizard isn't really hardy enough to survive, but I was thinking of giving her a charmed goon, anyway. The party will be level 5, possibly 6 by the time they fight.

Now, my rough plan is for the party to have just finished investigating the first Skinsaw murder scene when a Kelish party rides up, looking for the sheriff. They heard the town had trouble with an aasimar recently, and another aasimar helped take care of her. They've come looking for their fugitive. One of the men is actually the evil twin in disguise, which the soldiers don't know. Hemlock's going to cover for the PC, since she's a hero. I need to work out the political situation some, because I want the soldiers to have some support from Magnimar, but not enough so that politics alone forces Hemlock to arrest the PC immediately.

After the party investigates the sanatorium, the twin will let herself be seen killing someone, attempting to link the PC to the other murder. At some point, she'll kill one of the soldiers, maybe replacing the captain. The party will figure things out or catch her at something, have a chase scene, and the confrontation.

My final question is how to work the disguise? A normal hat of disguise won't disguise an aasimar as a human, and a greater hat of disguise seems like a WBL breaker as loot at that level (costs 12K gp).

Any advice you can give would be appreciated.

[Movin]

A class that springs to mind for me is Witch.
If you've not read the fluff on the Witch class I would highly suggest you do as it fit quite well into the concept you seem to be moving towards. Jealousy and desire are often concepts bound up in the class and the Int/Cha bonus would dovetail nicely into a more socially fixated witch.

My suggestion would be a Witch with the Deception or Trickery domain. Trade the 2nd level spell out for Murderous command. A spell that my home games all have on the witch list due to the flavor of it meshing so nicely with the class.
Might work nicely going rogue for a few levels to jump onto the Arcane Trickster prestige class. Admittedly it doesn't do much for her spell casting wise but it gives her gobs and oodles of skill points to play with and lots of clever stealth focused stuff to tool around with.
Planting evidence associated with her crimes into her sisters backpack would likely make for some amusing times.
If you wanted to toss in a few ROTRL focused references Thassilonian magics have both the Envy and Lust "Schools" so having her patron be the runelord of that particular one might make for an interesting thing.
More so if you make the School you pick also be the one Mr. Foxglove manifests as, giving the party reason to wonder why this woman who looks very similar to their ally is wearing the symbol they are investigating.

As for the disguise, rock a high disguise modifier and dress up like the sister does. A twin sister purposefully attempting to dress up as her twin ought to be incredibly hard to detect without significant proof to the contrary.
The Silent spell metamagic would also help, letting her bust out nasty juju whenever she happens to be crouched behind something. Silent murderous command could make life suck very badly for your party if anyone in the group happens to have a crap will save.

Hmm.. as for the reason the Evil twin is evil, lemme give this a whirl.

Concept for how/why the murder occurred:

The oracle of fire in a land of fire filled with worshippers of fire obviously expect the sister of this bright and shining example of their gods gifts to be similar.
This not being the case one can only assume this poor pressured girl was a bit of a pariah. She was so tired of people wanting her to be something she couldn't no matter how furiously she tried, The burn marks on her forearms a permanent reminder that flames held no love for her. So in one of her cry sessions she is surprised to find a massive wasp had perched on a post near by. She was stunned to hear it speak as she locked eyes with it.
It knew of her pains, it knew of her desires and it sympathized. It was a messenger of its mistress, and she wanted to help her. This being would show her secrets, grant her power and the only cost was that she promise to use the gifts given to her.
With such an offer of power, all the little girl could think of was how jealous her sister would be when she revealed her power.

Now I would imagine that any cynics in the room would know what happened as this lonely child experimented with her powers over the human mind. It was a quiet night when she tried her powers on her mother, tired of the constant life being second best to her sister. She wanted mother to love her for being her, not smiling and hoping she would somehow molt into a perfect copy of her sister regardless of how close they looked physically.
The powers she possessed were still fledgling so her control over her mothers opinions and choices did not last long. The look of betrayal, of Fear in her mothers eyes as she looked at her daughter was just too much for the poor girl. Her sister came in from leading a temple ceremony to the scene and with a howl of spite coiled for years the lonely girl wished her mother would die. Unleashing the magics she had learned on her sister and instilling her order.

With a strange smile on her face the lonely girls sister took the meat cleaver from it place in the kitchen and drove it into their mothers head, killing the woman with a single stroke.
The lonely girl cast a spell of sleep on her sister just as she woke from the murderous trance. She then left the house to report, tears in her eyes, of how her sister had murdered her mother in cold blood.

With her sister escape the lonely girl took the powers she had been granted and turned them on the people of her village, slowly turning to greater and more well thought out acts of corruption and murder as she went.
It is now that she learns of an Aasimar oracle who has gained the admiration of a town and her well placed contacts allow her to manipulate the government into bringing troops there.

more stuff on the backstory concept.:

This would do a few things for the party.
1. While the backstory would likely not be expanded on it would give an option of forgiveness and other stuff like that depending on how the characters play together.
2. If the evil twin has been spending the time in between controlling people and in general evil stuff then she is likely a politician of middling skill or is at least in control of several such people.She could have easily made these people send out a search party and she brought herself along in some capacity.
3. Having the Kellish party be there on forged or forced documents would mean that while looking official to the barest of decorum they can be denied. Also if the party ends up murdering them all some swift maneuvering by Hemlock and the rest of the folks in Sandpoint would keep the party from being hung for murder of another country's diplomatic party. Though this would be one of those more long term things as the Kellish would be fighting with Mangimar over who had the rights to execute the PC's and such giving the party time to procure evidence. Proving that her sister was a witch would also invalidate much the Kellish have for hunting the oracle. Murdering a bunch of soldiers that were just doing a job could easily stir up a whole new set of slighted and angry people looking to murder your PC's. Might make a good sub-plot if they just bull their way through the PC's more social/stealth based event here.

[Gwaihir Scout]

I completely forgot about the witch. Thanks. I want the obsession over fire, though, so I'm looking at the Elements patron. Maybe Vengeance.

As for the disguise, I want the twin to look like a normal soldier at first. I'm thinking it wouldn't be too unusual to have an aasimar soldier, but it draws a little more attention than is ideal.

This party is very unlikely to simply kill the soldiers. And I plan for at least one of them to survive, so the PC's name can be cleared.

[Landon Winkler]

Disguise self would allow an aasimar to look like any outsider with around human height.

Even as another aasimar, "hair that shines like metal" or "jewel-tone eyes" are easy enough to slip into a description or cover up. If you're just worried about the rules, suli are outsiders and appear indistinguishable from humans.

My suggestion, though, would be to have the twin show up periodically, each time disguised as a different aasimar. Make them jumpy whenever they run into someone with lustrous skin or shining jewel-like eyes. Play up the twin's vanity and envy, appearing in beautiful and blessed forms.

The trick is just to describe the NPCs rather than flat-out say if they're aasimar or not. The guard with hair like spun gold might be an exceptional human, an aasimar, a suli, a sorcerer, or even a tiefling.

Cheers!
Kinak

[The black raven]

There is a Rogue archetype that allows you to spread VERY convincing rumors. It would explain why their people believed the twin rather than the PC.

With some good Rogue talents and Leadership, the evil twin can become the party's political nightmare for a long, long time.

[Gwaihir Scout]

Thanks for the disguise help. I hadn't heard of suli.

I really don't want to string this along too long. There's enough going on in this AP without worrying about shoehorning the twin in here and there, and not much of it is town-based.

I also really want to emphasize the obsession with fire as a way of outdoing the PC. I'm thinking it might even get to the point of the twin being deluded into thinking she's an avatar of Sarenrae.

Hmm...as much I like the witch idea, I think I should go with my first impulse. Even though it's not to her advantage, make her a Divine Scion of Ymeri, Fire and Destruction domains, specialized in Fire.

[robin]

You might also think sorcerer with bluff skill and elemental fire bloodline (the + 30' move speed would be great to run away and come back later )

[darkwarriorkarg]

Could also be
Inquisitor or Cleric of Nergal (same domains as Sarenrae)