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If you need a magical opponet for your players, which would you choose ?

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Seras:
Hi guys,

I'm building an adventure with a magical major threat that want the players gone, because they know to much.

It's supposed to be challenging, character death is a real possibility, but manageble.

I'm currently torn between:

A: A group of infected. Maybe ghouls, but more likely a coven of Vampires with a strong master Vampire

B: A  Wasp bug hive.

C: A coven of possesion spirits, maybe even Shedim. Something similar to the Aleph society ( They claim to give people their magic back, but well...).

Which of these options have you uesed before and how did it work out for you ?

Thanks Seras

Spooky:
I personally would go with option c, because infiltration of the player team is a real possibility there. I have not used any of these myself, since my tables have a distinct preference for the tech side of life in the shadows.

Stainless Steel Devil Rat:
I presume you're talking about a one-off adventure for an existing campaign.

And continuing that presumption, I'm running with the premise that despite the magical big bad wanting the characters dead because they "know too much", because you're asking for ideas about codifying that big bad the players of course have no pre-existing inkling that the big bad is out there wanting them dead.

Bug spirits are great, but if you haven't already been foreshadowing/using them, they're hard to suddenly jam in and pretend they've always been there.

Vampires work great in this way. Not only are they sneaky like that, it's naturally easy to rationalize prior encounters/events as having secretly been linked to the coven even without the players/characters ever realizing it.  (remains to be explained, however, why the Vampires think the runners know so much when they don't)

If you want to go full bore Shadowrun cliche, make the big bad an honest to goodness dragon.  They work through pawns, and hell the Vampire Coven could in turn have themselves unknowingly been manipulated by the dragon, several steps above them on the organizational chart they didn't evn know they were on!

Seras:

--- Quote from: Stainless Steel Devil Rat on ---I presume you're talking about a one-off adventure for an existing campaign.

YES

And continuing that presumption, I'm running with the premise that despite the magical big bad wanting the characters dead because they "know too much", because you're asking for ideas about codifying that big bad the players of course have no pre-existing inkling that the big bad is out there wanting them dead.

They do some legwork about there Johnson, and find out ( by accident, tip) what Mr Johnson REALLY IS
They decide better safe than sorry and to tie up loose ends

Bug spirits are great, but if you haven't already been foreshadowing/using them, they're hard to suddenly jam in and pretend they've always been there.

Vampires work great in this way. Not only are they sneaky like that, it's naturally easy to rationalize prior encounters/events as having secretly been linked to the coven even without the players/characters ever realizing it.  (remains to be explained, however, why the Vampires think the runners know so much when they don't)

See Above
If you want to go full bore Shadowrun cliche, make the big bad an honest to goodness dragon.  They work through pawns, and hell the Vampire Coven could in turn have themselves unknowingly been manipulated by the dragon, several steps above them on the organizational chart they didn't evn know they were on!

I love dragons, but I would like to keep it as an escalation level for later plots....simply for the oh f##k factor of it. ^^

--- End quote ---

PiXeL01:
Depending on the work history of your group with entity working behind the scenes would work.
I had a mission where an ant hive was responsible for some secret ingredient in a recent canned food success story in the Barrens (highly addictive stuff naturally), so say if I wanted to use this hive again then maybe the group did a lot of industrial sabotage that got in the way of the hive and the queen now wants them gone.

Basically both vampires and bugs work this way. Just look  at the group’s run history and then weave a history. (You killed a special pawn, you excuse a blackmail campaign which were in allow the vampires to place a new spy or pawn in the organization and you’re to blame yadah yadah yadah)

Shedim I’ve never used as I don’t really see how they work

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