In which The Prestige incite chaos, as usual
So, through some dastardly blackmailing and a none-more-goth mist-drenched midnight meeting in Ankhayat Park, The Prestige (my players’ crew of assassins and cleaners) managed to convince Milos Brogan, a jealous commander in the Imperial Military, to brutally murder industrialist Adric Strangford, who was being guarded by a squad under Brogan’s direct command (Strangford is an inner-circle member of the Hive, with whom our PCs are currently at war, so the Hive are pulling strings for extra protection).
Unfortunately, Brogan and his boys messed it up a bit, leading to a brutal slaughter out in the open, dubbed in the broadsheets as ‘The Turnbull Street Massacre’ (the result of some interesting fortune rolls). Some tabloid rags are also speculating that Brogan is the Brightstone Butcher, a serial killer The Prestige invented to cover their tracks. Now, there’s a huge investigation and court case going down in Duskwall, along with much ballyhoo and public outrage, not least because, as well as being a celebrated military man, Brogan is married to Lucella Rowan, the daughter of Elder Rowan, the patriarch of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh.
And all this because The Prestige accidentally came across evidence of infidelity on Lucella Rowan’s part and decided to use it to their advantage, pointing Brogan at whoever they wanted by lying to him about who Lucella’s lover actually was (Lucella’s actual lover was one Branon Farros, a minor noble in the employ of the Hive whom the PCs knocked off a few sessions beforehand). They’ve got heat coming their way big time, even though (and somewhat because) they tried for the hands-off approach.
Goddamn, I love this game.