Suicide and murder...

[Sheogoroth]

I am in the process of constructing a murder mystery Pathfinder game in which at one point the players are confronted with a corpse and they must determine whether the cause of death was murder or suicide.

The deceased is the wife of a wealthy local.
Now, I am aware that one cannot be brought back if they do not wish, but there must be some kind of alchemical ingredient that prevents resurrection.
I'm open to suggestions, but I would prefer some kind of root or herb- we do allow 3.5 and 3rd party material.

Thanks!

[BWR]

I'm pretty sure that there is no such thing. Why should mundane substances affect the soul?
Why is this so important to your plot?
If it is really so important, why not just invent something yourself? Save everyone a lot of trouble.

[Nettlekid]

The Coin of Eternal Rest from the Arms and Equipment Guide prevents being Raised or Animated as long as it's in the mouth of the target. Perhaps it's been ground up and sprinkled in, or melted into a gold filling? There are also certain Death Effects that give like a 50% chance of the body being Raise-able, and otherwise attempts just fail. And of course, if a piece of Thinaun steel from Complete Warrior was touching her when she died (doesn't have to be stabbed in her, just like in her jewelry or something would do) then her soul is sucked into it upon death, and she can only be raised with it around. Perhaps she had a brooch unknowingly made of it, and it's now gone, along with her soul.

Something that might be helpful is, was it murder or suicide? Was it an assassin who wants to make it look like suicide? The Thinaun works well for that.

[DEFCON Clown]

In one of the Adventure Paths, Council of Thieves I think, there is an NPC assassin that inserts metal needles into the hearts and lungs of his victims. That way if they are revived the are immediately killed again. It took a fairly difficult Heal check to notice the evidence of their use.

For bonus fun this assassin also removed the jaw of his victims to prevent Speak with Dead from working.

[Sheogoroth]

The Coin of Eternal Rest from the Arms and Equipment Guide prevents being Raised or Animated as long as it's in the mouth of the target. Perhaps it's been ground up and sprinkled in, or melted into a gold filling?

That's perfect, thanks.

Essentially, my notion was to have a web of reasonably convoluted strings leading to the same source.
I used to play old school RPG's, one in particular, by the name of Exile 3 impacted me heavily.
The game took about 300 hours to complete and you collect smatterings of clues and then make an accusation. You can accuse wrong, at which point you attempt to assassinate a super-being that, while malignant in it's own way, might be innocent of the crime in question.

I liked the frustration of knowing that none of the suspects are innocent and forcing myself to be absolutely sure of having done my due diligence, while at the same time racing against the clock to prevent the next murder.
Having said that, I'm doing my best to never leave my players completely stumped.

Every crime scene has something very obviously linking it to of the three suspects, but I'm hoping my players will be able to tie the ends together and see the big picture. But even if they don't, they'll have a big bad and hopefully have some fun.

The first murdered victim is the wife of a local merchant who has been having an affair, found hung in the parlor. The scene has all the trappings of a suicide, but the husband suspects foul play. My intent was to allow the players to either follow the source of the purchased alchemical ingredient, investigate the secret lover, or investigate the complicity husband himself and go from there.

[Thanatosia]

The Epic Handbook includes an Assassin's guild called the Garrote, and it includes some details on a poison that they apply to their victems eyes to make them non-rezable. It's in the Union City section towards the back of the book.

[Zombimode]

I am in the process of constructing a murder mystery Pathfinder game in which at one point the players are confronted with a corpse and they must determine whether the cause of death was murder or suicide.

The deceased is the wife of a wealthy local.
Now, I am aware that one cannot be brought back if they do not wish, but there must be some kind of alchemical ingredient that prevents resurrection.
I'm open to suggestions, but I would prefer some kind of root or herb- we do allow 3.5 and 3rd party material.

Thanks!

Hm, weapons made from Thinaun will prevent resurrection of any kind of the last creature killed by it. In essence, the weapon will trap the soul of the last being killed by it but it can only trap one soul at the time. If a new soul is forced into the weapon, the old becomes free (and the creature can now be resurrected).
You can find the special material in Complete Warrior, p. 136.

[supermonkeyjoe]

maybe it's not her body, it's something that has been polymorphed into a perfect duplicate of her body. If you polymorph the victim of suicide then speak with dead would produce interesting results as it would technically be the original body answering the questions, if they cast raise dead they may get an entirely different person coming back, or the soul may refuse if they originally committed suicide. Bonus points if it might be a while before anyone thinks of casting dispel magic on the body only to realise it's a completely different cadaver! Where is the original noblewoman's body and is she possibly still alive?