Beware The Mirror Murderer
Pinned to The notice board
An aged, yellowed, and dirtied poster announces:
Beware The Mirror Murderer
Despite locked doors & armed inhabitants, people are being killed inside their own homes. The only common threads betwixt the scenes are broken mirrors nearby with blood on the glass edges.
Citizens are urged to cover their mirrors or better yet get rid of them entirely!
As the hunt continues, guards also seek the advice and aid of any specialists in the arcane arts, or those experienced in anything that may explain the attacks, and for help in apprehending the culprit.
Ways to approach
The style of this posting is intended to serve more as a news flier or an official warning. However, it’s purposely been given extra age and wear in its distressing so it might be used as an old record of events from years ago, as well as a fresh poster that has been well handled.
As always there are many ways to lay out a murder mystery quest - The first possibility could be that somebody is using mirrors as portals into people's homes, but the spell is so temperamental that it shatters the mirror once the spell is done. Another idea is that the mirrors are being shattered from a banshee-like wail and nobody's made the connection to any broken windows because those are normal for a break-in. And finally, people's souls are being siphoned out through the mirrors into a... mirror world... and the mirrors have been smashed to prevent the souls from returning to the body and a piece has actually been taken so that they can't just be reassembled.
However, for each of those, we must ask ourselves 'why?' That's the most interesting part of this hook; The motivation, the thing that drives our villain. Once you've figured that out, and what connects all of the victims, you've got a top-end murder mystery for your players!
Fun fact: The symbol at the bottom is supposed to read T.C.P. which in my head is the Town Crier Press - a group of town criers that decided instead of shouting their hearts out every day, they would install notice boards all around the area and put up notices. It's especially beneficial to them in the winter, although they do still have to maintain the boards and audit the posters.
