Hello everyone. I'm running the Glass Assassin. The is the third adventure my group has run in DH, and my only experience being a GM.

The players, Jericus and Finn, broke into Gregory Ayson's room. While they don't know that he's is the Archmagos of the cult they're after, they know he is suspicious. Ayson sent men to shadow them accordingly. After the players interviewed Emily Mu's assistant, the men following them decided to murder him before he could tell the players more about the cult. The players doubled back and caught the men in the act, killing one and capturing the other.

At this point the cult members are in panic mode. Jericus is an Arbites who just learned interrogation, so he was pretty eager to use it. He asked the Guard Commander for facilities to use, and Klinkerman suggested seeing the governor for help. They had also been told by Klinkerman the Ayson was not to be trusted.

When they went to see the governor, Ayson (who is also the governor's personal aide) wouldn't let them see him. They also caught him in a lie regarding how many time he had met with the deceased would-be assassin Emily Mu. Ayson does offer them the use of an interrogation facility, and an assistant. At this point Jericus's player is thrilledHe's thinking about the +10 bonus for an assisted action, and the +30 for the assistant's excruciator kit. Finn suggests that maybe it isn't such a good idea to let people they don't know in on the interrogation. Jericus reluctantly sees the wisdom in this, and declines the assistance. He is still offered the use of the excruciator kit, which is in actuality a poison kit, to murder the prisoner before he can talk. Jericus accepts this.

Oh, they also let Ayson talk to the prisoner before the interrogation. What Ayson said was seemingly innocuous, but enough to let them man know that if he talked his family died.

The interrogation does not go well. The prisoner dies without giving up any useful information, seemingly at Jericus' inexperianced hands. Ayson offers the acolytes any help he can, and give them a communicator to get in touch with him should they need anything else. The communicator will also keep tabs on them, so he doesn't even have to have them followed any more.

At this point the players feel stumped, and with good reason. They've pretty much totally dismissed the plot against the governor's life. The think that the governor's son is a fop, and aren't interested in him. They think that Ayson is suspicious, but has nothing to do with what they're investigating. This is kind of true, since they''ve decided to put all their effort into investigating the inquisitor they've been assigned to help. To be fair the inquisitor is using forbidden alien technology , and is just pretty suspicious in his own right.

At this point I'm thinking that if they can't put it together soon, the govenor dies and they fail. This wouldn't result in a TPK and I can work with this story wise.

Any advise would be greatly appreciated, thank you

I haven't read the adventure in question so I can't give any direct advice on the matter, but for general advice:

Let them fail but get away alive; in the process drop them a few insights into the things they missed. Sometimes PCs fail and it isn't the GMs job to hand them a victory on a silver platter.

On the other hand, go over the scenario in your head and see if there is anything you made too difficult, or too obscure, and see if there is a way you can rectify that. Is there another opportunity to get them interested in the son? Perhaps there is a traitor in the conspiracy's midst and they send word to the PCs to meet them ... but the players show up too late and the man is dead, or someone else is there and claims not to know what the characters are talking about; if they follow up on it, they get drug back into the assassination plot. Have the first assassination attempt fail, but in a way that seems to implicate the PCs; (in fact the attempt was meant to fail and put suspicion on the only people the assassins hadn't accounted for) and now it is up to the players to either meekly let themselves be taken into custody or flee and try to discover the true culprits. (if they do meekly surrender, the assassination goes off without another hitch and after a thorough investigation which reveals the characters had nothing to do with it, they are allowed to leave ... or they are forced to break out and flee the executioners in the new Governor's employ - depending on how the plot works)

You can't hold the PCs hands and walk them through the adventure, but make sure you're giving them the opportunity to get back into the game and not punishing them for missing one clue or lead. At the end of the day, however, this is the GrimDark future and sometimes the badguys get away with it.

Thank you for the reply. I was able to steer them a little better and they also changed tactics a little. They wound up gathering enough evidence to have the key villains arrested before the scripted climactic showdown. Almost everyone was very happy with how this turned out.

The only exception was the fast-talking Scum player, and face of the party. He didn't really understand at the time that arresting the head antagonists would and the adventure, and the game was so investigation heavy that he didn't get a chance to do as much. He is a really good player though so I'm looking to run an adventure that will more heavily feature his character.