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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: FishStampede on December 11, 2012, 02:32:24 AM

Title: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: FishStampede on December 11, 2012, 02:32:24 AM

My players just got themselves arrested, literally holding the smoking gun. It's worse than they know. Spoiler block to come just in case a player gets curious, none later in the thread.

(click to show/hide)

Things were slow so I decided to play Raymond Chandler and send in a hitter. Due to complicated reasons not really worth discussing, the villains figured out where they were and they sent in a hulking mutant to wreck their world. It was a nasty, brutal fight. The two players in there were badly injured, and the mutant was shot, stabbed, and burned to death. So they were sitting on top of a twisted burning corpse, the bakery was on fire, and the police were damn near next door.

It's worse than they thought, because the mutant was originally a low-ranking cop who disappeared a few days before and had a Shonokin in his place. There's probably still enough identifying features to make it clear the burned corpse was originally that cop, and there may be enough damage to cover up the other oddities. And the Shonokin would likely have put things like his badge on the mutant's person to ruin their day even more.

Current plan is for them to get interrogated hard, then released on bail, until the fact that it was a cop comes back. Then they will get arrested again at the absolute worst possible moment. I'm looking for suggestions, though.

So, what now? How badly should this bite them in the rear?

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: blackstaff67 on December 11, 2012, 01:30:46 PM

Depends on whether or not dental records and the like support the cop-killer theory.  I am ignorant about whether or not the mutant in question can perfectly mimic the cop's features and the like; ditto for means of attack (Fangs? Acid?); double ditto for bone structure and such.  Wonder if autopsy will look into stomach contents and find regular human food..or food that used to be a human.  Blood samples will be interesting to boot.

Might be the players get off the hook...this time.  Again, it depends on how backlogged your local M.E. is and how professional s/he will be.  The better ones usually get grabbed up by cities, but will have a longer list of people to examine.  That said, if badge is there, then it will go to top of list for autopsies.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: Haru on December 11, 2012, 01:43:50 PM

First off, that sounds like a bucket full of compels for your players.

I would have them arrested, and (if they accept the bucket full of compels) let them go to trial and lay everything out and almost have them found guilty, and then Lara Raith enters the court room to talk to the judge, and five minutes later, you're free to go. Well... free to go with Lara Raith, who has some excellent ideas on how to pay her back.

Doesn't have to be Lara, of course, that's just an example. A high shide putting her whammy on the court, a creature like Glau lawyering you out, someone like Marcone buying you out, those are all great options for furthering the campaign.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: nick012000 on December 11, 2012, 03:55:53 PM

What's a shonokin? Is it something non-canonical that you've homebrewed?

If the cops seriously think they've killed a cop, though, they PCs are going to have hell to pay. Cops do not like it when people kill cops, and they will stop at nothing to bring them to justice. You can expect any underworld contacts the PCs have to desert them as well, since they'd be well aware of that. Noone wants to deal with a cop-killer, lest some of that heat fall on them as well.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: Quantus on December 11, 2012, 04:31:21 PM

on one end of the spectrum they can get some heat but ultimately get off when the mutation more definitively obscures identity, or even humanity, like Blackstaff said.  Or maybe they werent the first thing the mutant attacked so there is plausible evidence to paint him as the bad-guy and them as defending themselves from a drugged up crazy man with a badge (at which point the cops will likely want to wrap it up as quickly and quietly to avoid scandal). 

From there its all about how much heat you want to throw at them.  Any old cop would elicit a massive manhunt and cry for justice, while a well liked cop-hero might get more of a "they were shot and killed resisting arrest" response from all his buddies.  At worst case there could be a full-scale manhunt for them forcing them to go underground and flee the town or even the country for a while (or escape to the NN is always an option if they have the right contacts) from a posse of vengefully dedicated Cops who are not above abusing their power a little in the name of "justice"

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: FishStampede on December 11, 2012, 05:05:17 PM

Quote from: nick012000 on December 11, 2012, 03:55:53 PM

What's a shonokin? Is it something non-canonical that you've homebrewed?

More or less. They're loosely based on the works of a local pulp author and Lovecraft successor named Manly Wade Wellman. The Shonokin are a race of near-immortals who were here before the American Indians (who they call Invaders) arrived. Due to lacking any surviving females, a war with the Invaders (which was really pretty damn awesome and rivals Bob's description of the Fomor War), and gradual attrition over the millennia, they've been reduced to less than a hundred individuals in loose cells around the country. They have a random grab-bag of powers including a poor man's shapeshifting (doesn't hide a couple key tells) and sponsored magic of their own. The mutants are a byproduct of their experiments in creating more Shonokin to restore their species, put to use as shock troops. They look like a hulking, misshapen human covered in large cancerous growths, and fight with fists or claws plus superhuman strength and resilience. There's more where the cop came from, but they mostly have been kidnapping homeless bums for that purpose, the cop was just someone they needed out of the way to insert an agent into a situation.

Current complications: one of my players has been instructed by the King of Autumn to kill all of the Shonokin in the city before the end of All Hallow's (in about a week, and I swear I started this plot before CD in October), or she will die. There's also a looming threat of the rage-eating local White Court sparking a riot of deranged berserkers if they don't get one of their own back (the Shonokin have her).

So I was thinking that a week is good time to figure out via dental records or identifying tattoos that this misshapen pile of extra crispy tumors is actually the rookie cop who went missing a few days back. Which means that the PCs may be able to make bail in the immediate future after sufficient justification as self-defense. The police will continue their investigation, and the fact that there's every chance the decedent was a cop will come to light at the worst possible time: Halloween Night. The PCs will either get arrested or go on the lam, just as the clock is ticking to zero for our poor autumn knight. And the riot will probably start around that time too.

For getting them out of jail or getting the cops off their back, there are dark powers willing to help, of course. The dark powers are always willing to help.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: Quantus on December 11, 2012, 06:21:55 PM

Well, depending on how unscrupulous they are, they could arrange for the riots to get started a little early, which would effectively distract the cops from anything else.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: thorr-kan on December 11, 2012, 11:07:54 PM

Quote from: FishStampede on December 11, 2012, 05:05:17 PM

More or less. They're loosely based on the works of a local pulp author and Lovecraft successor named Manly Wade Wellman.

Which of his works are they from?  I've got the Silver John stories, and I loved those.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: FishStampede on December 12, 2012, 12:12:08 AM

Well, to be fair I haven't read the stories they're from, just synopses (it's on my to-do list!). My version are quite different from the ones he wrote about, I just kinda took some ideas and ran with them. Silver John met them in the novel After Dark, but several of Wellman's other characters met them in "The Shonokin," "Shonokin Town," and "The Dead Man's Hand."

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: thorr-kan on December 13, 2012, 05:58:27 PM

Quote from: FishStampede on December 12, 2012, 12:12:08 AM

Silver John met them in the novel After Dark

That explains it; I've not read any of the Silver John novels, just the short stories collected online by Baen Books in _Mountain Magic_ and in the printed Paizo collection _Who Fears The Devil?_.

You know, John would be a perfect NPC for a Feet Wet game.  He could serve the same role as Micheal Carpenter w/o the Sword o' DOOM.

Title: Re: [Asheville] Well, my players are hosed.
Post by: fantazero on December 13, 2012, 07:00:08 PM

Send them to Super Jail