Inspiration for a thief mission

I’m looking for some inspiration for a plot I’ve been running in the background for some time now, and it’s now to really start.
In the second session of my campaign my players rescued a group of mice, which was hiding from a young skunk between Mapleharbor and Sandmason. The group was the Mayer of Buchflow and three of his mice heading for Sandmason, whit a lot of money, to buy different glass objects back to Buchflow.
The patrol gets rid of the skunk and gets the group safe to Sandmason.

After the 6th session (a in-game week later) a second in command, Abb, from Oakgrove tells them about this horrible thing that happened in Buchflow:
“Last fall the Mayers adviser never came back from a trip to the woods, and a quite new mouse in town took his place. His name was Birk. Many liked him, and some said he was related to the Mayers, somehow or something. During the winter the Mayer became very ill, and Birk had to take the role as Mayer. Birk ordered that none could see the Mayer, so others wouldn’t be infected.
At the first day of proper spring Birk took all the coins and valued stones from the treasure trove, and left whit his three friends! He took everything! They have no value to buy food or anything!” Abb holds his breath and look around to mark the point. “And on top of this some wild mice are stealing from their food reserve!
After Birk left, Buchflows mice found the old Mayer poisoned in his camper. He was still alive, but the healers of Buchflow could do nothing to help him.” Abb looks down for a moment, and looks then strait at the leader. “You must find his traitor! Buchflow has nothing before it gets their values back, and you never know what such a horrible mouse will do to other parts of the territories.”

The hunt has now started, and the patrol track Birk to Port Sumac, where he has settled.

I have a lot of ideas to why he did it, but I’m not all satisfied with the result yet, so I would like a second point of view. E.g. is to help someone else, is he just selfish, where the money actually his from the beginning (or does he just think so), or, or, or?

Just for the record: We are playing next time the 12th of May, where they stay to face him.
Thank you all for a lot of great inspiring missions-posts! :smiley:
And sorry for any misspelling!

Maybe he doesn’t even care about the money. Maybe he just dumps the treasure in a cave or something. The thrill for him is impersonating government officials and taking over towns. The money, once he has it, is meaningless.

Then my players have to get out of him where the money are (I’m thinking a good conflict), to discover that he has buried them in the woods on the other side of the scent border. His goal in the conflict could be to convince them that he has done nothing wrong and/or not to tell them where the money are.
I think he could be a fun character to put in play. Thank you! :slight_smile:

Exactly! And you can play it up like all this money and treasure has been stolen. Everyone thinks he’s a robber baron out make himself rich. Maybe there are rumors that he has a secret fortress full of the stolen goods where he lives.

But in reality, he’s crazy. He keeps the stuff in a cave on the other side of the scent border. A cave guarded by…?

-L

I really like it! I imagine him whit a lot of small ticks which just make him a bit off, without anyone can tell exactly why. And when he is getting pressured he suddenly change the subject at random.

It could be cool if he has already started to try to rob Port Sumac, but it fail when the guard shows up. In the conflict they get some hints and then to rumors start to flow. Someone saw someone go in to the forest and it could be Birk whit the loot, and someone say that one from xx, a cousin to xxx’s husbands ect. ect., once found this awesome treasure on the other side of the scent border. However he couldn’t take it home himself because of the MONSTER guarding it.

‘When’ the patrol heads toward the scent boarder, the mice in Port Sumac tries to stop them, because it’s spring and there is a lot of hungry wolves out there. And they can tell a lot of horrible stories.

The monster could be a badger or a wolverine, but that would just be mean :wink:
I could also be ravens. They are often near the wolves, and they like shines. Maybe Birk at the Raven have an arrangement (I got a quite good lore mouse on the team). The same could accentually goes for a raccoon.

Sounds like you have a lot of possibilities to play with. Definitely try to set up the challenge so it touches on a lot of Beliefs and Instincts and it’ll be just fine!

You are right. Thank you so much for your help! I really needed a push in some direction.
I think my players will have great fun whit the output of this. :smiley: