Wedding Assassination Ideas

[PancakeUniverse]

My players need to defend a senator during his wedding. The thing is that they need to be discreet about it, because the Senator had little to no bodyguards and promised safety as a show of faith to his people. The point is that the players have to prevent an assassination without alarming the wedding guests.

The wedding takes place in a large temple in the middle of the capital city. There is a group who wants to assassinate him, a cult of worshippers of Loviatar, the goddess of pain, that heavily emphasizes torture and painful death. Thus, I would assume their methods would involve painful deaths, such as fire, suffocation, etc. but I can't think of anything interesting.


Any ideas for an interesting method of assassination? The party is 4th level, so no Tarrasque-Kraken hybrids.

[VoxRationis]

Poison smuggled into the wedding feast among the gems of someone's hair net?

[Arcangel4774]

It coukd be through the wedding ring; it could stab and poison him. Or just be cursed to light him on fire. Either neutralize the curse/poison or replace wring.

Poisoned food is simple enough.

If they're taking the Jewish tradition of stepping on glass (forgive my ignorance on the tradition) it could be an elemental gem containing some sort of poison elemental.

Maybe the bride is under some mind control where she will kill him, but if he loves her he won't be able to defend himself and kill her himself.

[NecessaryWeevil]

Assassins usually try to strike hard and fast; a quick death is in conflict with their goals of torture and pain.

What if they try to kidnap him instead in order to kill him in a horrible drawn-out manner to intimidate people? The PCs are either trying to prevent the kidnapping or find and rescue him.

Or...I guess they could use a painful slow-acting poison. In which case, if they're successful, then the PCs need to find a cure.

[Malifice]

How mature are your players?

You could try euphoric poison gas, that makes everyone at the party subject to suggesion spells.

Then gradually have the whole thing descend into a debaucherous sadistic orgy, with the intent of having the victim (willingly and ecstatically) flogged to death in front of the (leering) crowd. Kinda fits Lovitars schtick.

Depends on the maturity of your players of course. If done right, it could be utterly terrifying. If done wrong, it could just spark a ton of immature sexual jokes.

Use with caution.

[MrStabby]

Replace the bride with a doppelganger.

Seeming might be pretty good - make the senator appear as some kind of monster. I imagine there might be some penalties to seeing through the effects if everyone is drunk.

The senator's cutlery includes a cursed blade that makes him attack those nearby and cant be put down - including his wife. The plan is to make him kill himself to stop his own rampage.

[DKing9114]

If you want to go with a more traditional assassination plot (ie single target), maybe use a set of cursed objects which all come together to have a horrifying effect. For example, his wedding ring causes unbearable, crippling agony (leaving him unable to defend himself), while his wife's ring drives her into a berserk state, making her kill him. Either the cult is using Nondetection and Sleight of Hand to replace the rings with their own versions just before the wedding (which would leave a cultist in place to try to prevent anyone from interfering with the hit), or the rings' magic only takes place at the altar, while the victims have consumed a particular potion, as they kiss (the last should probably be a condition regardless, to make the hit all the more effective and horrible). Splitting up the effects and specifying a series of triggers could help justify making identifying the curse more difficult, instead of having the entire plan shut down by a single PC wizard spamming detect magic and identify the day before the wedding.

Alternatively, the cult might decide that killing the Senator is great, but killing the Senator, his wife, his guests, and his constituents is even better. After all, even if they fail to kill him now, they will have shown that he cannot keep his people safe, despite his assurances, and casting doubt on his fitness to govern. Depending on how literally cutthroat politics in your campaign can get, this could mean all his fellow Senators smell blood in the water and finish him off themselves; otherwise this will be the first of several setbacks caused by the cult. Either way, he suffers and they win. In that case, I'd borrow a page from Hollywood and have the cultists infiltrate the wedding staff. When the time comes, they open up with disposable magic items, traps, and fire (bring in oil disguised in wine barrels, then breaking them open and lighting them on the signal). If the party cannot prevent the attack, their biggest challenge will be limiting civilian loss of life, as the cultists won't try to engage the party members and focus on inflicting maximum pain and chaos. In that case, a smaller group would then try to attack during the chaos.

I'd say it depends on how big you feel the cult is, how many resources and members it can spend on this effort, and how important it might be going forward.

[PancakeUniverse]

+Malifice I know a couple of players that could NOT handle that specific use of the gas, but I think I could make it so everyone thinks everything is a super fun party game. Such as throwing darts, pin the "tail" on the "donkey", cut the "cake", smash the "piñata". The cult members are unaffected due to gas masks/magic, and some have items that cast a minor form of "mass suggestion", and the gas amplifies the effect. The party needs to make the connection between the control item and the gas infused in the food.

+MrStabby Dopplegangers will be involved in an upcoming adventure involving the cult, so I don't want to give it away too early.

As for the other suggestions, I like the idea of staff infiltration, cursed objects, and kidnapping. The cult could be in the staff, slowly getting closer and closer until it is time to strike, maybe using poisons in the food to kill him or knock him unconscious.

[Malifice]

+Malifice I know a couple of players that could NOT handle that specific use of the gas, but I think I could make it so everyone thinks everything is a super fun party game. Such as throwing darts, pin the "tail" on the "donkey", cut the "cake", smash the "piñata". The cult members are unaffected due to gas masks/magic, and some have items that cast a minor form of "mass suggestion", and the gas amplifies the effect. The party needs to make the connection between the control item and the gas infused in the food.

+MrStabby Dopplegangers will be involved in an upcoming adventure involving the cult, so I don't want to give it away too early.

As for the other suggestions, I like the idea of staff infiltration, cursed objects, and kidnapping. The cult could be in the staff, slowly getting closer and closer until it is time to strike, maybe using poisons in the food to kill him or knock him unconscious.

Yeah that's exactly how I was thinking of playing it. Gradually stepping up getting darker and darker as you go.

Totes depends on your playing Ggroup though. Sounds like they might not be able to handle it

[M Placeholder]

Another idea - have the cultists open up a portal to Gehenna, and have them push the senator through it into the realm of Lovitar. Maybe the authorities have inflitrated the cult, and feed the team the information in order to prevent them from carrying out the deed.

If you want to have the cultists assassinate the senator at the wedding and really tie it in to Loviatar, then having one of the cultists cast an abjuration spell on one of their fellow members, then having that member grab the senator and drag him into a fire and burning the senator alive would be a fitting method of death. It could even tie in with the ritual the followers of Lovitar have of passing their bodyparts through flames every 12 days.