To Catch a Thief
Hello everyone, and welcome back to yet another exciting week of Grave Plots, where we bring you new adventure tips and plot ideas each and every week. This week I would like to discuss some cool urban adventures, perfect for when you need to fill some downtime in the ancient and magical metropolises that fill your fantasy setting. Below is the first installment of a three part series covering adventures in cities. Today we will talk about a fun little cat-and-mouse type of adventure I like to call “To Catch a Thief.” And be sure to stay tuned next week for city politics.
To Catch a Thief
While the PCs are staying in at an inn in a large city, they overhear a group of prominent merchants discussing the recent robberies of their various establishments. They complain loudly that the guards have been largely useless and they would give great rewards to any who would help them. Once the PCs get the hint and talk to the merchants, they explain that all their establishments have been hit by a very skilled thief, and the guards have been able to do nothing. You should include details that make the break-ins unique; for instance, the merchants’ magical wards and traps proved not only to be in perfect working order but to have failed to stop the thief, or perhaps only very specific and not particularly valuable items were stolen. At any rate, the merchants hire the PCs to catch the thief and get their goods back, offering to richly reward them. They offer to show the PCs the crime scenes and suggest the PCs try the town guard to see whatever information they have managed to acquire.
The PCs should be able to discover some clue about the thief from examining the crime scenes. For example, if the thief was stealing objects necessary to perform an arcane ritual, characters with Knowledge (arcana) should be able to divine the next item needed to perform the ritual, and the merchants can provide knowledge about where that item might be sold; or, maybe a character with Knowledge (history) could discover that all the items have some kind of historical significance and could guess at the next item to be stolen; or perhaps PCs with underworld connections could discover some tale of a thief with eclectic tastes matching the profile of the thief in question. However you do it, the PCs should be able to discover enough information about the thief to figure out his next move, and then confront him.
Now you need to decide what the thief is like: perhaps he’s an old wizard looking for a new challenge, and when the PCs catch up to him he offers to return all the stolen goods, give up thievery and go into the security business (after all, he’s learned a lot about infiltrating buildings). He may offer the PC’s a neat little reward for not turning him in. Or instead the thief might be the head of a new guild who, upon being confronted, smiles at the PCs before throwing a handful of dust of disappearance and slipping into the night. Maybe the thief is secretly a god of trickery in disguise, startled and pleased that mortals could track him down.
The next stage of development for this adventure is a job offer: the wizard, a few weeks later, asks the PCs for help with a problem; the master thief delivers the PC’ a message asking for a meeting; the god manifests his divine magnificence on the spot and makes the PCs an offer they probably won’t refuse. All the former thieves have the same problem: a thief known as the wraith, who has been terrorizing the city for some time now. They all have different reasons for wanting him, of course. The wizard’s security business is failing because of him, the master thief is upset he’s moving in on his territory, the deity is upset he’s not been paying him proper service, and the PCs are the only ones canny enough to stop him. This is where the real fun begins. The PCs are now on the trail of an unbelievably gifted thief, who has been stealing rare art pieces from wealthy and extremely well protected nobles, and no one has any idea how he’s doing it. Now you set up a little mystery with a string of elusive clues, and the PCs eventually come to meet the wraith and apprehend that person. Just who is the wraith? Well, that’s a good question, and one you have to answer for yourself. The wraith should be someone with a great deal of ambition, skill, and no established presence (at least as the wraith), so no one but the wraith himself should know who he is. Good candidates for your wraith include a gang of thieves who move rapidly form city to city then disappear, a skilled adventurer who’s convinced the cities nobility to let him help them run an insurance scam, and a local princess seeking thrills.
Until next time, let me wish you all the best with your gaming endeavors.