Casting Shadows

This litigious seed is being planted for Mutants and Masterminds, especially on the street level hero scale where the threat of capture by the police is a very real one.

My Saturday Seeds also reappear on Ancient Scroll on random Saturdays~

The seed

The seed involves all those difficult questions about vigilantes, being above the law, being tried in the court of public opinion, and being a hero until someone calls the mask itself into question.

Planting the seed

The seed can be planted most easily for a group or player still in the long process of establishing themselves in the heroic vigilante role. The streets are not entirely theirs just yet.

Alternately, this could be an encroachment on their patrol area, but this is a little harder to manage. The character(s) catch signs of the newcomer’s passage, and see the evidence of their work, but do not get to encounter them at any point.

The Details

The seed begins with hints, rumors, and circumstantial evidence that a new hero is in town and operating in the character(s) neighborhood. Weeks go by and the cops announce their interest in another vigilante in town they are refusing to call by any overly dramatic media-dubbed name. Several sessions might pass with this sort of thing, before the new vigilante in town shows up dead. Witnesses at the scene, two younger boys and their drug-addled mother, point the finger at the characters. In time more and more witnesses, most of suspect reliability, but some of a more trustworthy nature accuse the characters of suspicious involvement with the death of this particular person in a mask. 

Evidence at the scene is inconclusive. Witness accounts are only semi-reliable. Evidence in the apartment of the deceased, however, reveals that the vigilante was hunting the character(s) and building a case against them – a very convincing one.

Further investigation links the vigilante, a former legal clerk, to victims of the villains battled by the character(s). It appears the initial plan was to seek the character(s) out, but upon getting a glimpse of what they are really like, the plan changed.

What’s going on

In order to really work, the seed will need to drag up things which the characters have done which they should not be proud of. It should also connect them to vile things which they did not do, and these connections will grow through deliberate manipulation as the case wears on – for whatever villainous reason suits your campaign.

Will there be a court date in the future? An announcement in the press? A plea for understanding?

How will the character(s) get free of the taint of this? Will they prove innocence, or just make their lives harder?

Enjoy~