Husband Replaced!
Pinned to The tavern cork board
A worn and dark parchment pleads in scrappy handwriting:
Help! A stranger has replaced my husband!
Since his return from the last hunt, he has not been the man I married. All of the other hunters insist nothing happened in their last outing and the guards cannot do anything because Rupert has not done anything to me yet.
If anybody can find out what has happened and bring my husband back to me, I can offer some family gems worth at least 500 gold as a reward.
For more information, I can be found working at the Fortune’s Flavour Apothecary from sunrise to sunset during the week. [Signed Alexia Bhalim]
Ways to approach
There are three primary ways to handle this depending on the level of complexity you’d like to bring into your game. First up is a simple doppelganger exchange, where Rupert truly has been replaced by a shapeshifter. This one is simple enough that it can easily be woven into other plots you may have running concurrently by tying in the shapeshifter’s motives and end objective with another plot.
If you’d like to keep it self-contained yet still ramp up the difficulty, then introduce a larger plot where all of the hunters have been replaced. Why the hunters? For one they add to the city/town’s defense, but they also supply food to the area, which they could selectively infuse with sedatives to slowly take over the area with other shapeshifters.
Finally, we have Alexia, a shapechanger herself who has reason to believe her husband suspects something is not right and is getting ahead. Her goals are the same as the one above, only this time it’s the spouses and partners of the hunters that are tampering with the food supply. Why risk going out on a dangerous hunt when somebody else can do that for you?
Possible Repercussions
If you would like to introduce repercussions for your adventurers not taking on this quest, the most logical outcome is the slow and eventual takeover of this town or city. What they would want for this is up to you - It could simply be a hub where they can flourish without looking over their shoulders, or it could lead to something more sinister.
