[Pip Boy]

Originally Posted by Meister

You are going to include hints that there might be a need to ask further questions, right?

Cause if you're operating under the assumption that they do thorough background checks on everyone they meet as a matter of course, and they don't and the little girl ends up dead (and they care beyond getting paid), then they will start and you can never run something straightforward again without your players questioning absolutely everything.

The NPC who gives this quest, Jerod, tells the PCs that the orcs have a person among their number who uses Dark Speech. He encourages the players to avoid allowing any of the orcs the chance to speak, or to use a silence spell or something. Wary PCs will be suspicious of this advice. The Orcs, who aren't kidnappers at all but are sheltering the girl from a necromancer, will attempt to explain to the player characters that the girl wanted to go with them because there was something in town that she feared. The girl herself is under a Curse that makes it impossible for her to speak. The players can find an alternative means of communicating with her or they can remove the curse magically.

If the players take the girl back to Jerod, she is reported missing 2 days later. The guard attempt to arrest the player characters after Jerod spoke up as a witness, saying that the players killed the girl. The players can resist arrest or break out of jail in the night. If they don't, then they go to a trial where Jerod speaks as a witness against them. If any of the player characters was separate from the group when the arrest happened, they are free to aid in breaking out the other players or searching for evidence that Jerod is evil. A search of Jerod's basement reveals a variety of spell components, books on creating undead, and one zombified little girl. This evidence absolves the players if used in the trial.