Destroying a man, if you were my players... Options

[Aristotle]

So I may have a regular group again, which means I finally get some real tabletop 4th Edition play time. I'm developing a campaign now. I like to weave two or three larger story arcs that play out over the course of a campaign, to give the illusion of depth. Then I let character backgrounds supply me with recurring story arcs that I pull to the front now and then to keep folks on their toes. One that I'm considering involves destroying a man.

A powerful underworld boss calls on the runners to avenge his dead daughter. He wants it to be slow. The man that killed her has no clue who she was. She was just a girl in a club. There won't be any moral guilt trip from the GM here. This wasn't this guy's first victim. He's evil, and deserves what's coming to him. Here is what I've decided about the mark thus far:

He's the CEO and president of a very wealthy local corp, on the verge of becoming much larger. Larger corps have their eyes on this one, and the competition from comparable corps is hot and heavy. I don't know what he produces yet. The campaign is set in Baltimore, MD.

He has a wife and two very young children. I'll likely paint the family as innocents that should not be harmed.

This should not be a quick hit. The underworld boss wants this man to lose everything he cares about, one way or the other. He wants the man broken over time... and then maybe he'll kill him.

The runners aren't getting any financing. This run will be 'an offer they can't refuse'. A request for a favor from a very powerful figure in the shadows. They'll definitely get rewarded in the end, but they are expected to come up with their own methods and financing. I'm hoping this will lengthen the story arc, as they take other runs to finance this one or to do legwork for this one.


So... if you were my players, what questions would you ask? What sort of runs/actions would you plan? How would you go about destroying a man?

I'm hoping to get some idea as to what my players will throw at me, or what I might suggest, so I can be prepared once things start flowing.

[coolgrafix]

How do you "destroy the man" and not harm his family?

[Aristotle]

[Buster]

A powerful underworld crime boss wants you to destroy a man for killing his daughter but doesn't want you to kill him or his family?

I call no way.

[eidolon]

Why is that, exactly? Have you never seen The Godfather? The family is off limits in Family business.

Aris, I would think that destroying him in his family's eyes would be a good start. Stuff like hacking his accounts and putting in receipts for bunraku time, other "unexplained" bills. Maybe saddle him up with some less-than-virtuous debt to go along with it.

[Moon-Hawk]

[DireRadiant]

Destroy his business, or take it away, then destroy the man. Is there a rival in this mans corp they can get to attempt to take over the company? Can they get rival corps to screw up the mega takeover deal?

[darthmord]

Besides, it's believable that someone may not want innocent bystanders harmed just because the jerk happens to live with them.

If someone did that to *my* daughters... I'd make sure they knew they were being destroyed and could do nothing to stop it. I'd take their family away from them, their success, their happiness, society itself would turn on them. I'd want to make the idiot suffer.

By that same token, the family of the idiot did nothing wrong except to be his family. My beef isn't with them unless they interject themselves into the problem.

==========

Yes, you can use that as some of the mindset of the guy who wants the idiot offed slowly.

[Aristotle]

The man will be killed, although the runners are more likely to witness that then do it themselves. It's too early to tell. If they want it badly enough, I'll certainly put my players behind the trigger.

As for the family? A lot of mafia fiction gives wives and children a pass, so long as they themselves haven't betrayed the organization. The don, in my opinion, is trying to put himself on moral high ground by not taking the children of the man who took his. If that is just too inplausable, I can tank the family. I expected that portion of his life to be "destroyed" early on anyway, while legwork is done on the man's one true love: his corporation.

I'm hoping the corp thing plays out interestingly. Physical and matrix runs to dig up dirt. Messing with accounts. Hijacking deliveries. I don't know what my players will come up with, hence this thread.

<edit> Moon-Hawk makes a good argument. I'll consider it. I've just come off as beating my players with the morality stick a little hard in the past (see my posts in the dirty GM tricks thread from a few months ago for samples) and was looking to free them up from it a bit.</edit>

[Adarael]

[Kerberos]

[Fortune]

[Kerberos]

[fistandantilus4....]

You're sick old man.

I'm ith eidolon, in that ostrocizing the family first seems the way to go. Create the rift, then nurture a long time divide, and help the wife get remarried to a young gym instructor. Don't make it the central part of the campaign, but something they're working on as a side line to other jobs. Especially if they aren't getting paid. Remove them from the picture in a way that's painful to the mark and keep cutting away at him.

[Moon-Hawk]

[Kerberos]

[Kerberos]

[kzt]

The thing for the GM, if not the players, to keep in mind is that anyone with that much money and resources can and will (eventually the corp security will if he doesn't) bring in people with real skills. Forensic mages, People to throw up 8+ point wards, hackers to take apart data trails and look for bugs, PSD to keep people away from him, the family, his office, and the house, etc. All of whom are the best money can buy and many more than the typical group of players.

If they don't peel off the resources early they won't get to do it later.

[Fortune]

[Aristotle]

[nezumi]

If the corp is in Balmer, there's a good chance it'll be involved with import/export or biomedical, I'm thinking. FDC was expanded in part so it could keep all those federal contractors in around the same place, and I'm not aware of any serious number of contractors up here right now anyway. In general, weapons contractors like to be farther from the city. Lower costs, less complaints from neighbors. Currently Baltimore is one of the biggest ports in the US and the biggest employer is Johns Hopkins (also does a lot of work in chemical engineering, if I recall, but not as much as those two other industries). Both of those tie in nicely with organized crime, and organized crime would DEFINITELY big a big player in the area (again, port city, great position for smuggling, very close to a lot of political big wigs).

How would I destroy the man? First generate (or find) evidence that would lead to a painful (and expensive) divorce. Prove that he's cheating, that he threatened the kid, something like that. That hits several birds with one shotgun; it takes away his family painfully, takes a bite out of his cash, and keeps the family out of the way for later stuff.

Once his family life is ruined, you clearly take away his other nice stuff. Your goal is to end with his most critical psychological handholds (generally the dog). If you kill his dog THEN work on making him lose his job, he won't form the psychological connection to his work, so losing his job won't hurt as much. On the other hand, if you make him lose his job THEN kill his dog, during that time between the two events he'll likely turn to the dog more for emotional support and having the dog die will hurt more.

The exception is the family, because if you start pulling out other stuff and he becomes more needy, his family is likely to feel more obligated to support him, and then you'll need to kill them to take them out of the picture. That is worth noting, as you pull out supports, make sure the last ones there you don't mind killing, since they're less likely to come out gently.

So what you want to get from the Johnson is firstly a psychological profile, secondly a statement of assets, thirdly a social network diagram. You want to prioritize his connections by those of most value to him, most damaging, and those he may turn to as other things disappear (plus security stuff, of course. They can't make him lose his job without knowing more about his job. Can't burn down his house without knowing the local security.)

Unfortunately, this job, to be done right, will require either a very lenient GM, or a lot of unusual tools and social networking.

[Aristotle]

[hyzmarca]

A Free Man for a Free Man, A Slave for a Slave, a Woman or a Woman, and a Child for a Child. Justice should always be proportional.

Although, to be perfectly reasonable, the mafia boss should just charge the corp manager a sum of money equal to that which is necessary to replace the dead daughter.




But, since we're destroying him here, I have two suggestions that are quick and nasty.

First is a favorite of one of my more sadistic characters, but it can cost a great deal of money. Pluck out his eyes, cut out his tongue and his teeth, remove his lower jaw completely, puncture his ear drums, cauterize his sinuses, and cut off all of his skin off from head to toe and amputate his arms and his legs. Then, take him to an extraterritorial hospital. Explain to the doctors with a wink, a nod, and an absurdly large bribe, that he's your brother and due to his religious convictions he does not want any sort of medical treatment other than the bare minimum required to keep him alive, nor does he want any pain killers of any sort, and he doesn't want to use any sort of magical or DNI communications to confirm these wishes, preferring that you handle all of his medical decisions.
And thus he lives, for as long as a member of his metatype can live, with no sensation other than excruciating physical pain and no communications with the outside world.

Or. Take him to a bodysculpter and have him turned into an exact replica of the woman whom he killed. Use Genetech to alter his DNA such that he is unidentifiable. Hit him (now her) in the head with a blunt object (or use psychotropic IC) until she develops total amnesia. Take her to the mafia boss and have the mafia boss treat her as if she were his daughter with amnesia. Give the victim no idea that anything is wrong. Treat her with complete kindness and love, untill she grows to love her apparent family. In the meantime, replace him with a bioscultped genetically altered persona-fixed actor with all of the target's memories on the P-fix chip and all of his personality traits except for his murderous proclivities. Bonus points if the genetically modified p-fixed replacement is also a flesh-form spirit.
Then start with a mysterious faux assassination attempt and leave a complex trail of clues for her to determine her real identity. Once she learns the truth about her past and regains her memory along with the understanding that another person is living her former life while she wears the face of the woman whom she killed and there is no way that she can ever go back, give her a choice between continuing to live as the woman whom she killed when she was a man or taking a bullet in the back of the head. Or, better, don't give him the choice at all and P-fix him so that he'll know the truth but be unable to ever act on it, for all outward appearances believing himself to be the mafia bosses' daughter while being internally tortured by the knowledge that his real life was stolen from him.

[Aristotle]

I... wow... *no words*

[darthmord]

Yes, there are some sick and twisted people in this world.

Aren't you glad that many of us play here on Dumpshock?

:grinbig: