Death at Bargain Prices
The summoned gryphon is destroyed, the puppy dog with the big teeth runs away, and the demonic sorceror is defeated. After ensuring he cannot cast spells, a bit of interrogation reveals who hired him to kill the councillor. Success! We now have the two people responsible for the death of the councillor in our custody with verbal confessions from both about who hired them. Now the real battle begins, and moral and legal discussions start up amongst us on what we should do with this information.
We could hand everyone in to the authorities to take the moral high ground. We could blackmail those responsible to get money or power from them in some way. Or we could take some stance between the two. We then realise that those responsible already have power and could feasibly use it against us should we decide or threaten to reveal their involvement in the murder plot, which leads to more discussion about what we should do.
After much wrangling and occasionally heated discussion, with everyone wanting to do The Right Thing but where The Right Thing is different depending on your viewpoint, we reach a concensus to approach those ultimately responsible for the murder and gauge from their response our best option. They essentially said, 'You've got us bang to rights, how embarrassing, what do you want in order for us to keep this information private between us?'
'...'
Crap, we'd spent so much time deliberating over what we ought to be doing that we hadn't spent any time on what sort of bargain we could make. 'Um, a pony?', was perhaps the best we could offer at the time, which made us look rather less professional and scheming than our plan made us out to be. A couple of blustered deals were offered from our side, and agreed to, before we made our presentation to the council about the murder, protecting the two wrong-doers who we had decided were acting for the greater good but in a misguided way.