Investigating a Crime Scene in The Festering Earth

Players, well-fed on crime dramas and mystery novels, will most likely gravitate to the crime scenes, intending to pick them apart for forensic evidence. They are destined for something of a shock. Crime scene investigation is pretty much unheard of in the Mortal Realm. The people here find murder so unsavory, and these murders so frightening, that they clean the crime scenes as soon as possible to erase all memory of the deed.

And they’re probably justified. First, the Mortal Realm has yet to develop anything like Sherlock Holmes or forensic science, and so a preserved crime scene has little purpose other than the macabre. Also, leaving a series of tainted homes around a city is just begging for an Ulcer to form. When the party asks to see the crime scene, local officials are likely to fall all over themselves, assuring the PCs that no evidence of the crimes still exists. Their city is clean.

Assuming the party demands to walk through the crime scenes (and the investigation is still ongoing), the characters will likely come on each with an escort from the city guard or one of the guild patrols, depending on who saw the place when it was fresh. Likely, they will see the second crime scene first, because the Captain of the Guard investigated it himself. That will give the guard the time to gather the relevant watch volunteers to take them to the other scenes.