How do I build an investigative adventure?

[pennywit]

At my next session, my players are starting some new secondary characters (3rd level) to take use for things that are beneath the main characters' notice. (I figure, once you hit 26 hexes, it no longer makes sense for the kingdom's rulers to be mapping territory and doing side quests).

As the first adventure, I'd like to fuse three events, but I'm not sure how to do it, and I appeal to the group for advice.

1) We haven't had the werewolf event;
2) We haven't had the Gyronna cultists event; and,
3) The Dancing Lady, driven from her place of power by the kingdom's rulers, is now (semi-unbeknownst to my players) working at a dance hall in the capital.

These things are OK in isolation, but I'd like to pull all of them together as sort of murder mystery of sorts for the new level 3 characters to pursue, perhaps over multiple sessions... but I have no idea how to do this. Any ideas?

[T.A.U.]

Have the events take place in a small village of your players' kingdom, not in the capital city, if such thing is possible.

1) Have the adventurers being recruited by some NPC, a minor noble?, for a quest, but when they arrive in place they found that this person is now imprisoned by the local authorities because there are clues that he/she is responsible for the murder.

2) Have the cultists kidnap some NPC (the same noble who still not have payed them? Or maybe her heir?) to make their personal interest in founding the missing one.

[redcelt32]

Okay I would suggest starting with either an NPC the party knows well or someone involved in the growth of their kingdom (like the tavern keep or captain of the guards) and have them murdered.

1- Decide who did it among the 3 NPC encounters, and it might not even be any of them. In fact the story would be better if it the murderer was something simple like a argument among rivals in town. Then the party could discover all these supernatural threads among a mundane one.

2- Map out the regular activities of each NPC encounter after the murder and how they might react to it (if at all).
3- Map out what clues or evidence the party could find about each of these NPC encounters from their activities.
4- Mash up all the activities in chronological order and write up where each clue is found or when they party might find it if its a timeline thing.
5- Add players and stir pot :)

Clues might be wolf fur, wolf print near dead sheep, holy symbol of gyronna on a broken chain, a hidden cache of midwives garb for when the cultists are in their townsfolk guises, a discarded red silk glove near a pool of dried blood, a severed hand with a lipstick print on the wrist, etc. If you have a 4th party killer, add some clues in for him. Rumors could also be used, clues don't have to be physical of course. :)

The most fun will be watching your party try to make sense of the jumble of clues and encounters. They might start thinking its an evil version of Little Red Riding Hood :)

[pennywit]

Thanks, Redcelt. I'm also thinking about throwing in some missing teeth. The kingdom has had some problems in that area recently, enough that my players have declared eternal war against tooth fairies.

I brainstormed a little more, and I think I have some events I can mix up to make a strange little investigative adventure.

A) Kobold raiders (perhaps renegades, perhaps not) are stealing moon radishes from the Kingdom.

B) A few tooth fairies (refugees from the bloodbath at the Forgotten Keep) are trying to rebuild their numbers by stealing teeth.

C) Kundal, now more aware of his werewolfishness, tries to be out of town during his bad times of the month.

D) The cultists of Gyronna are kidnapping folk to use in their unholy rituals.

E) The Dancing Lady (a mythic opponent in my campaign) is getting hungry.

Somewhere in all this, (just because it's fun), I think there needs to be a kobold werewolf.

More later.

[Philip Knowsley]

Kobold Werewolf!
Niiiiiice!

[pennywit]

This morning, I statted up an afflicted kobold werewolf rogue 4, and his mate, a kobold sorceress. I have this picture of a group of kobolds sneaking into the kingdom to steal moon radishes, then they encountered the wolfed-out Kundal on the night of the full moon. They barely got away from the fight alive (most other kobolds in their band died), but they hole up in an abandoned barn because the mate is close to laying eggs.

I can see them living in this big barn. They can't leave because their kids recently hatched. The mate is completely fearful -- she is afraid her husband is going to kill their kids when he goes wolf. Meanwhile, the hubby's lycanthropy hasn't just made him a werewolf. He's also gone full-on paranoid, and he's planted traps all over the barn ....

Oh, this is going to be fun.