Ok, so long story short, my group got into a skirmish with a spy we were tasked to kill, an old enemy that stole stuff from us in the past, and 5 unknown men. About mid way through, the spy and enemy escape, and with 3 of the 5 mobs dead on the ground, the final two surrender and identify themselves as traders that were defending themselves after one of our party jumped the gun and shot lighting at the old enemy. During the search for loot, the living two are tied up and guards are posted. As the two not pulling guard walk off to talk to someone, the other two determine they can't let the prisoners go and decide to execute them. Through a miscommunication between the two and the GM, they were not obscured by items in the area, they were told that they were in fact in the middle of an open area and a witness just saw them execute the two survivors. At this point it gets a little dark...darker... the witness is screaming his head off about what he just saw, and he saved against silence so there is no stopping the noise. One of the party picks him up and flies to the sheriff station as one of the "murderers" grabs the others "murderer's" animal companion and flies after them. Long story short, they made it into the sheriff station, however the trail party dropped the NPC seeking Cheetah out front and it ran inside as the player flew to safety after the drop. That is about where we ended for the day.
We have a LG Cleric, a N Magus, N Rogue, and after some alignment changes due to the actions above, a NE Bard, and NE Sorcerer.
Here is the question:
How does the group get over these actions. We are sure that we can overcome the charges by simply keeping the two party members away from town as there is nothing they need to do quest wise in there; however the group while laughing hysterically as players at how out of hand and unorthodox things got, some of the characters are wondering if they can stay with the group having two people that will kill bound prisoners.
This was the first really evil act and not really a established pattern. Kind of like they were caught up in the moment, and things went from bad to worse to Holy Cow in a matter of seconds. We determined that the Cleric is pretty much the only character that would take a moral hit on this, but could be easily remedied if he received a divine mission to try and redeem their souls and have them repent for their actions.
It really was an out of the blue moment for the group. The fight was particularly annoying with characters being blinded and beaten, so the anger just kind of carried over once they eventually won. I thought of the alignment shift for the Cleric, and we are mulling that over, but I think some penance may be in order for the characters to try and redeem themselves. If they are unwilling to change their path then yes I would say it is an unfix-able rift; however if they accept the punishment for their actions, it should work out.
The key factor will be working it out with the town's folk, but not a major issue. The city is a base of operations, but not the focus of where actions take place, and once done they will move on.
We are playing the Iron Gods Campaign,