PC arrest and Skinsaw murders (minor spoilers) help

[Mightymconeshot]

So my players got utterly and completely derailed yesterday. When they first reached Magnimar despite my protests that they probably shouldn't split up, they did anyway. A few went to do personal things, another was temporarily travelling alone because of the haunted house, and the last was trying to keep things on track. Anyway, the one who tried to continue with the mission went to Foxglove home alone where he was invited in and attacked. He fled with barely any hit points but managed to escape the 2 stalkers since they did not want to pursue him into the street. They contacted the Lord Ironbriar as to this "tough" person poking around and he posted a few guard patrols in the area in case they tried to go in again. A couple hours later my PCs regrouped finally, healed up, and went to file a report with the guards. After being told it would be investigated in due importance, they went back immediately to investigate a second time. Basically, the stalkers now aware that these people are more than they seem, and should be dealt with carefully. The PCs tried interrogate Iesha, but failed to get anywhere. After insulting her, she asked them to leave and they complete refused. She ran up the stairs screaming for the guards and they still didn't take the hint about the guards. After debating in the entrance room a small patrol runs up and asks them to drop their weapons which they refused and instead tried to argue/diplomacy their way out (which failed completely). After a furious fight with the guards, they kill several before being taken down, they now sit in jail. One of the PCs escaped but is almost completely unable to hide due to their race. It happened in the middle of the day in the middle of the street and several different guards and civilians can identify them easily.

So here is where I am stuck. How do I run a manhunt? What would be the appropriate gold reward for turning someone in with multiple murder/attempted murder counts? Ironbriar really wants to capture them all.

Secondly how do I run a trial? I don't want to condemn them all to death but this is not the first time something similar has happened. It has never escalated this bad, but I want to drive home the point that their actions have consequences. What could be a serve punishment beside all right guys, time for everyone to roll up a new character? Ironbriar is a good choice for running the trial, but being corrupted would basically execute them outright. So I will probably have another Justicar run it, and I will make one up for that. But what should do with the trial, a series of diplomacy, bluff checks vs the mind of the judge?

So advice? Help? Laughter?

[Latrecis]

Oh my.

You're in trouble. If you want to assign proper consequences, execution is the answer. And I don't think the Justice has to be corrupt for that to be the outcome. They killed city guards who were rightfully engaged in their lawful duty. What would happen if you did that to police in your town?

I'm afraid I do not have a good bedside manner so as I diagnose your problems and offer solutions some of the feedback needs to be directed to you. You manufactured this problem, not your players. And you had some help - the AP (as written) contributed plenty.

Until now, at every turn, the "authorities" have been ineffectual and consistently deferred to the pc's (I'm assuming you've played through Books 1 and 2) leaving your pc's with the clear message that if something was going to be done, they would have to do it. (I can detail just how "inauthentically" the mayor and sheriff of Sandpoint behave if needed.) Further whenever the players made declarations to the authorities, they were probably believed without question, weren't they? So is it really surprising that the players react poorly when the city guards don't listen to claims Ieasha is a faceless stalker/doppleganger/fake? Or any other justification they may have provided for their behavior?

You didn't help matters by straying from the AP. The faceless stalkers are supposed to use their disguises to lure the pc's inside to fight and kill them, not try to bluff their way through an impersonation with guards, etc. You forced the pc's into a confrontation with the guards playing it as you did. Of course your players reacted stupidly - they should have simply acquiesced and had word sent to/from Sandpoint that Aldern and Iesha were dead. But if you have players who don't take well to diplomatic solutions (and it seems like you do) and then put them in a position where diplomacy is the only choice, the outcome will always be trouble.

What should you do? You have three choices:
1. Kill 'em. They're lawless murderers, who killed innocent guards over an attempt to break into property that doesn't belong to them. Harsh indeed but if you're foolish enough to draw weapons on the city guards...
2. Put them in the Hells to await trial and encourage them to try to escape because if they don't, see #1. This requires more work by you - there is some info about the Hells in the Magnimar sourcebook but I don't know if anyone has module-like details on encounters, maps, etc. If they do escape, it's going to be a challenge to work the AP as written. They can try to finish Book 2 while wanted fugitives and may be able to pull it off. But the Mayor sure isn't hiring them to tackle the challenge of Book 3 and they shouldn't be welcome in Sandpoint either. Sandpoint is something of a vassal town to Magnimar and the Mayor and Sheriff can't harbor or aid wanted criminals. If they get that far, perhaps Shalelu recruits them to visit the Black Arrows and seek redemption there. Still will be a challenge to interact with Sandpoint in Books 4&5. Alternatively they could be sentenced to join the Black Arrows now but then you have to work some convoluted logic to let them finish the work in Magnimar before they leave. Or they could escape and flee Varisia altogether (leaving the AP behind) - again this is more work for you.
3. Retcon. It was all a horrible dream ;) You could sit down with your players and talk through what happened, what they should think should happen next and if it seems right, reverse time to when the guards first confronted them. You should probably have the conversation with them regardless of which path you take.

[Mightymconeshot]

They never got to the part of finding out if the authorities believed them. They resisted being arrested which escalated into the guards attacking them. It would of gone much differently if they had gone with the guards and probably would of ended up with a minor punishment for trespassing if that. The guards never got to check the validity of what they claimed because the PCs attacked and killed some of them.

I don't feel like I strayed from the AP intentionally. It says the 2 faceless stalkers that are imitating Iesha and Aldren bide their time while they size up the PCs. Having failed to kill one of the PCs when he went alone, they realized that 5 of them are probably too much for them. Ironbriar trying to cover it up put additional patrols in the area hoping for some sort of fight. Who is going to believe criminals, much less people who killed city guard if they start throwing accusations around? So the logical situation in his mind was to put them in a situation where they destroy their own situation. I wasn't trying to force them to bluff through the city guard. I expected them to attack the stalkers immediately upon seeing "Iesha and Aldren" because one of the PCs had already seen them shape shift. They also passed several Sense Motive checks and a detect magic notice that "Iesha" were lying repeatedly and that there was active magic coming from her. If the guards had shown up during the fight with the faceless stalkers they would of sided with the PCs until the end of the fight and than probably questioned them.

Thanks for the advice. I was hoping to avoid running a jail break scenario or execute them but it seems like they don't have many options.

[slayer_of_gellcor]

I agree that there's got to be a sense of consequence to the behavior. You would be within your right to execute them, but when I've been in that situation, there were groups where following through on that (justified or no) would not only end the gaming group, but several friendships.

Another suggestion:
Have them to wait in the Hells and inform them that they're going to be executed. Justice Ironbriar comes down to inform them they have a visitor. Down comes Xanesha, disguised as a beautiful noble-woman. She offers to get them out of their predicament, as well, if they prove useful, that they will be lavished with riches beyond their comprehension. If they agree, she'll give them charms that change their appearance and they'll be smuggled out of the cells. She'll give them the name of a guardsmen who's abused his position, accepting bribes in both gold and flesh from those he's charged to arrest. (Giving them the illusion of revenge) She wants them to bring him to her alive. If they do, they get 1,000gp, and another name. If they fail, they see her anger and get a sense that she's more than she seems. Keep this going, rewarding them way more than they should for their level. Eventually, (around 4 names or so) she'll give them name of the mayor. If they succeed and she'll offer them 5,000gp. Each time they accept the money, give them a greed point. If they've done all five jobs, they're ready to be harvested themselves. She invites them to the Shadow tower, where Justice Ironbriar is waiting outside with cultists. The rest should fall out from there.

If they refuse right out, you can always kill them. If any of them have a noble background, they may be able to attempt a trial by combat. I imagine in Magnimar that would be one of those things that so few people enact it, that they simply forgot that it was never off the books - which happens. You could always add in some other quest in place of a direct trial. Good luck!

[JohnHawkins]

If you want to give them a chance , you could when they are brought before the Justice/Mayor for their trial be the occasion that the Assassins try and kill said important person and harvest their soul, it is a bit of an implausible coincidence but gives them the chance to prove their good intentions and escape with only a massive fine or similar.
On the other hand characters who go around killing honest servants of law and order , deserve to be treated as villains and face the problems and opportunities this gives.
Again incovering evidence of Ironbriars corruption and the plot to murder the Mayor could get things back on track instead of the nice reward for stopping the plot to kill the mayor they get a pardon and the undying hatred of the city guard, and a 20% surcharge on anything they buy from Magnimar to represent their unpopularity there

[Latrecis]

Another idea: Ironbriar doesn't know what the pc's actually know. Aldern may have given them all kinds of dangerous information, including information about his identity. Letting them testify in open court is dangerous to him so he hires a Red Mantis assassin and leverages the faceless stalkers to sneak the assassin into the Hells to have them killed. I assume the pc's have had their weapons and armor and such stripped, so this might be a tough fight. If the pc's squawk, you can tell them you could have had them summarily executed instead and then use this as an opportunity to tell them to never do this again. If the pc's are triumphant, they can use the confusion to escape or "See, we told you there were shapechangers! We thought the guards were dopplegangers trying to kill us!" It's a bit contrived but at this point most solutions will have elements of "meta-game mechanic to not have the players suffer the rightful consequences of their actions."

I do like Slayer's suggestion about Xanesha recruiting them, though it takes the campaign to a very dark place. Of course the pc's killed city guards - it might already be in a dark place.

[Mightymconeshot]

Thanks, I like the idea of the attempted assassination of another justice. I got a little planning to do but that gives me a great idea to go about. Thanks for all the input guys and gals.

[ajp1011]

Just ran into this same issue in my campaign. The PC's went to the sawmill during the ceremony, interrupted the ceremony and then decided to run the hell away... Ironbriar having seen them started quietly searching for them... long story short they (my PC's) thinking Ironbriar could be using the guards as his agents attacked one on the street (stupid I know...) anyway one of my PC's got arrested and imprisoned in the Hells.

They were starting to go down a very suicidal direction so rather then allow my whole party to wipe itself... I decided to play off the fact that some of the cultists might be starting to expect Ironbriar is not quite himself and had one of the cultists bust my PC out... hoping that this 'outsider' could maybe figure out what was up with their leader.

It all worked out nicely and the little push there got my PC's back on the rails. Additionally I've now got an option for a nice recurring NPC/villain in the turncoat cultist.

[Allyx]

I have a similar problem with my group, I probably GM'ed the Walking Scarecrows chapter very wrong, but what I did was screenshot the farmlands map from the pdf, open the image in paint and removed the info detailing what is at each of the locations then printed it for the players. Then drew the paths onto a flip map for the players to follow.

The PC's systematically tackled each group of scarecrows outside the farm buildings first, mostly unmasking the ghouls before attacking them, most of the Ghouls failed the DC 15 strength checks to break free when the PC's approached, only 2 ghouls actually managed an attack on the PC's both missed badly.

Of the two still living but infected children only one was unmasked first, upon the discovery that the child was sick and close to death, and given the fact the party Cleric hadn't memorised Remove Disease that day, the Sorcerer decided the most humane course of action was the cast Burning Hands on her and move on, the second child didn't even see daylight before similarly being engulfed in flames.

They returned to Sandpoint to report the area was clensed and since they had already done the Misgivings chapter first (they passed the Knowledge Local check when Grayst Sevilla mentioned the Misgivings), they moved on to Magnamar.

I'm planning for the city guards and perhaps the Order of the Nail to pay the PC's a visit and demand they appear in court in front of the Justices to give testimonies in the case against Alden Foxglove for the murders in Sandpoint, and have the hearing adjourn for one week in the light of new evidence (Sheriff Hemlock would have had someone in Sandpoint cast Speak with Dead on the Child and she could describe the Sorcerer as the killer, it's 2 days travel to Magnamar from Sandpoint, and the spell requires a week before being cast again).

Any ideas on how I should proceed?