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Rules • Themes • Bestiary • Religion • Races • Guilds • Families • Arlinac City • Maps • Adventures • Stories |
Lord Milt and Lady Wona were wealthy members of the Field family who apparently did their best to avoid family politics and responsibilities. They were admired for their large and attractive manor: one of the finest in the city. Most weekend evenings the couple would host an event in their home's ballroom or theatre, or in the walled garden behind the manor. Lord Milt enjoyed sparring and often spent his afternoons volunteering to teach young Field family boys and girls in the manor's archery and sparring room. Lady Wona was a talented musician who played many instruments expertly.
For two weeks no one has seen Lord Milt and Lady Wona, nor their daughter Golta. A worried friend, while in a bird's shape, flew over the house and saw an alarming sight: the windows have been shattered outward and the roof is partly burnt. Was there a laboratory accident? Had an assassin been hired to attack the family?
The PC has been hired to investigate the manor, rescue anyone who needs rescuing, and report back to the Field family.
This adventure uses the Wealthy Manor map.
This adventure, as always, has the possibility of earning three experience points.
Five people were in the manor when something went wrong. All are now dead.
Lord Milt and Lady Wona were gracious Therions. Their daughter, Golta, has begun winning the hearts of many young men, matured from a young and rebellious child into a sophisticated young adult.
Their servant, Liza, also a Therion, was treated well. She was fond of her master and mistress, and especially fond of Golta.
The family had a guest visiting when all became trapped inside the manor. Piipfrazza was a famous Bergtroll harpist and an old acquaintance of Lady Wona. She had just arrived at Arlinac City to visit the city for a month. She planned on staying with Lady Wona so they could enjoying music together in the evenings.
The adventure's problem is caused by an ornate battle-axe that has been augmented by Bergtroll musing to serve as the hidden guardian of an entrance chamber leading to an underground Bergtroll castle. Visitors would be unable to leave the entrance chamber until an official from the castle deactivated the armor. Those who tried would be attacked by a mysterious force not visibly linked to the battle-axe that was merely one of the entrance chamber's decorations.
The battle-axe was created generations ago. The command words to cause it to start or stop guarding have been lost. The enchantment does not understand above ground buildings: it treats the entire building as one "entrance chamber", understanding its role as attacking anything leaving the building.
Since the command words are no longer known, the only way to shut down the battle-axe is to remove its wooden shaft from the axe head. Once sharp detective skills have discovered this solution doing so is not difficult: the battle-axe defends itself poorly.
Someone wanted to kill Lord Milt and devised a successful plan. This someone did not mind that the plan would also probably kill Milt's family and anyone else in the manor.
The plan involved introducing a cursed item into the manor. A conspirator disguised as a traveling merchant whose cart broke down asked another (and well-known) traveling merchant to complete the delivery of an unassembled ornate battle-axe ("a theatrical prop") to Lord Milt. The second merchant tied a business card into the item, which still hangs from the axe handle. Thus investigation may reveal that Lord Milt has an enemy but not who the enemy is.
The pieces of the cursed battle-axe were delivered to Lord Milt's manor and placed in the backstage room of the manor's theatre. Several days later, while cleaning, the household servant, Liza, found it and thought assembled it would look nicer and be easier to clean around. A short time later Lady Wona and her house guest, Piipfrazza, returned to the manor. Lord Milt arrived home for dinner. No one attempted to leave the manor until the next morning.
After breakfast, Lord Milt attempts to leave the manor by the front doors. As he reaches for the left door's handle, he loses his index fingertip as something slices in front of him. He shouts in surprise, briefly searches for an invisible intruder, then goes to the kitchen to bandage his finger and drink a healing potion.
Lord Milt warns his family and guest that some enemy has dangerously enchanted the front door. He fetches a bow and quiver from the archery and sparring room, takes cover in the foyer around the corner (near the door to the guard room), and shoots an arrow at the left front door. To his surprise, the arrow is cut in two exactly as it touches the door, and his right arm is cut, causing him to drop bow.
Lord Milt bandages his arm in the kitchen, then goes downstairs to his Machinery laboratory to fetch his largest robot. He brings the robot to the foyer and adjusts its gears and springs so it should walk forward through both front doors. He turns it on. The robot is also destroyed as it touches the doors, cleaved as if by a tremendous axe blow.
As Lord Milt retires to the lounge with something to drink, his wife decides she has had enough of his brute force methods to deal with a cursed door. She goes upstairs to the master bedroom window that faces the street, planning to open it and shout to someone to get help. However, her hand is also attacked as she reaches for the window. She screams and run down the hallway to her husband, who helps bandage and heal her.
Suspecting every exit is affected by the curse, Lord Milt sets up an small arbalast from his machinery laboratory in the upstairs hallway, facing the window above the dining hall. He uses a spring-powered timer to fire it. Sure enough, the bolt is cut in two as it touches the window. Lord Milt is not hurt: the curse apparently does not connect the arbalast with its builder.
The rest of the day is spent in unsuccessful brainstorming about how to get a plea for help out to the street.
Piipfrazza wakes up wondering if the curse is caused by Bergtroll musing. She volunteers to enter a trance of musing herself, focusing on a looking glass as she attempts to identify the cause of the curse. Her musing is minimally successful: she ages several months, and the looking glass only shows unhelpful images of the Bergtroll who designed the enchantment and the room in which he mused. These images, through style of clothing and room decoration, show the enchanted item is very old. But the captives remain ignorant of what item holds the enchantment.
The manor is thoroughly searched, but nothing suspicious is found.
Lord Milt wonders if the curse is guarding the back doors or the garden walls. Using the arbalast, he confirms that that the back doors are guarded.
The manor still has plenty of food, but tension and worries increase. The kitchen's wood pile is halway depleted. Everyone begrudgingly agrees to eat cold meals, and to save the last wood for an unexpected need.
Lord Milt uses both alchemy and machinery to build several potent bombs, which he places in the south wall of the theatre's backstage room. Using a timer he detonates the bombs, which succeed in blowing a large hole in the wall. However, the arbalast test shows that the hole is also guarded by the curse. In large letters he paints a request for help on the wall opposite the hole: perhaps someone will pass through the alley and read the plea.
Golta is suffering the most emotionally. She catches a fly, and spends most of the day alone in her room, secretly in a fly's form and practicing flying. She is impressed by how fast she can go, and decides to try flying out the ballroom chimney flue. (The ballroom, masterbedroom, and kitchen each have their own flue in the large chimney.) Surely whatever invisible thing is attacking will find no room to maneuver in the flue, and even if it nips her back feet she can quickly get to a healer. But the worst happens: the enchantment cleaves her fly form in two, killing her instantly. She returns to her natural form as she falls; her own body is much too large for the flue and is stuck.
At dinner the others wonder where Golta is, and search the house without finding her. They hope she has found some way out of the manor to get help.
Lady Wona is drawn to the ballroom chimney because of a strange smell and discovers blood and her daughter's body. She and her husband withdraw to the master bedroom in grief.
Liza had not seen the finger wounds of Lord Milt or Layd Wona, but now saw how Golta had been cleaved in two as if by a heavy and sharp blade. Counting back five days, she realizes the battle-axe she assembled might be the cause. But she decides to keep her insight secret. She is crushed by guilt, feeling she is responsible for Golta's death. She also fears what her master and mistress might do to her if they know she is responsible: after all, everyone is already frantic from being trapped. Liza begins to go mad with guilt and panic.
Liza, feverish with madness, hangs herself in her sitting room. She leaves behind a veiled confession:
I put the pieces together, and what did I see?
I put the pieces together! The blame lies with me!
I can escape my guilt, though I cannot escape the facts.
A hangman's noose for an executioner's axe.
Lord Milt discovers her and the confession. He carries it to his study, where he puzzles over it without success.
Lady Wona realizes that smoke rising out of the chimney is made to swirl around a bit by the curse but still rises from the manor. She tries burning various things in the kitchen fireplace, hoping strangely colored smoke will attract attention.
Before going to sleep that night Lord Milt writes in his diary (in his study) for the final time. The diary passages relevant to this mystery are:
Piipfrazza goes slightly crazy. She decides that she has had enough suffering along side Milt and Wona. After all, she barely knows them; perhaps they deserve what is happening to them? She decides the easiest way to get help is simply to set the upstairs storage room on fire. But Lady must also have thought of this while fussing with the kitchen fireplace: she must be overly determined to not damage the manor. Piipfrazza needs to escape! If Milt and Wona refuse to burn part of the manor, she must incapacitate them.
Piipfrazza wakes early and eats a hurried meal in the kitchen. Before her host and hostess awake, Piipfrazza uses musing to cause her harp to play a enchanted melody. The song draws Lord Milt and Lady Wona to the music room and puts them to sleep. Piipfrazza sits them up in two of the room's armchairs, knowing they will sleep until she returns to tell the harp to stop playing.
As she walks to the upstairs storage room, to prepare it for arson, she realizes that the manor must have valuables. It would be a shame to needlessly endanger those in the fire!
Piipfrazza searches the master bedroom and handles the jewelry kep there (which is not extensive, since Lady Wona shares the general Therion aversion to amassing jewelry). Then Piipfrazza recognizes her greed as unreasonable; surely she will be rescued before the fire spreads to the west side of the house. Furthermore, Milt and Wona will not be killed: she should not steal from them. Her job is merely to move valuables at risk to safer rooms.
She considers the east side of the manor that is most at risk if the fire spreads a lot before a bystander with Transmutery comes to her aid, and realizes Lord Milt must have books in his basement mahcinery laboratory. Exploring that laboratory, she realizes that the room lacks what would be needed to create the bombs Lord Milt used five days ago. There must be a secret room in the basement for alchemy! Indeed the is, and she finds its entrance. But Lord Milt does very important and secret alchemy research for the Field family, and the room is trapped. Piipfrazza is killed by a trap.
All the manor's lit lamps run out of oil and go dark. Lord Milt and Lady Wona starve while in enchanted sleep.
This adventure has neither a linear plot not a natural sequence of events. But it does have two phases. First the PC freely explores a dark and creepy manor. Then the PC attempts to leave and discovers he or she is trapped. Eventually the second phase ends when the PC finds enough clues to learn how to deactivate the enchantment that affects the manor's exits.
The GM has two important roles: to help maintain an eerie ambience during the exploration, and to sidetrack the player if he or she attempts to leave the manor too early. The latter can be done by having the PC hear noises: a door left ajar creaks or bangs as blown by wind coming in through the broken windows, a rat runs across a floor, a bird flies in through a broken window, etc.
Note that Lord Milt and Lady Wona have written a will (kept at the main Field family manor), so the PC is legally prohibited from looting their home.
The only danger to the PC is exiting the manor with speed, which will result in a fatal response from the enchanted battle-axe. A cautiously exploring PC might lose fingertips, but healing potions can cure that painful yet minor injury (if the PC has none, the GM should place some in the kitchen and archery/sparring room).
Because Therions value performing arts more than pieces of art, the manor is richly decorated with waist-high wood paneling and luxurious rugs but has minimal paintings, sculptures, etc. The family did enjoy animal training and breeding, but kept its pets at a building used by the Field family to house the pets of its wealthy.
1. Foyer The foyer is elegant without being cluttered. A few small tables stand against the walls, holding vases of fresh flowers that have not been changed or watered in many days. Near the left front door is an arrow that has been clipped in half. Also just inside the double doors is a large robot, sliced in half as if by some kind of guillotine. A trail of blood (Lord Milt's) trickles from the front doors to the kitchen. There is also some blood (Lord Milt's) by the guard room door. The glass panes of the back double doors are broken, the glass has fallen outward. By the back doors is a small arbalast bolt, clipped in half like the arrow.
2. Guard Room This room is nearly empty. The family has not employed a household guard for many years. Four empty coat racks line western wall, and several empty cages for animals are against the eastern wall. If guests bring pets that need a cage, or too many coats for the coat closet's hooks, then Lord Milt uses this room to help extend his hospitality.
3. Coot Closet This walk-in closet has many hooks on the walls. IT is where the family and guests hang coats, umbrellas, and other outerwear. When Golta was a toddler she mispronounced the word "coat" and called it the "coot closet". The humorous new name stuck. The family continued to invent recurring jokes about the spooky "old coots" who live in their coat closet.
4. Lounge This room is a sitting room where the family entertains guests who visit alone or small numbers. It has a nicely stocked liquor cabinet. The comfortable chairs and couches have tasteful yet modest fabrics. All the seats have a small end table within reach, topped by a coaster or two upon a pretty doily. One end table holds an empty glass that smells of wine (the drink Lord Milt abandoned when his wife was injured, which he later drank, but no one bothered to take the glass to the kitchen for washing.)
5. Large Storage The manor has a large front yard, on which the family often held parties. This room is full of folding wooden chairs and tables, tarps and poles to set up pavilions, pottery barebcues with metal grills, segments of low fence that can be assembled to form an impromptu kennel for obedient pets, and other items used when hosting an outdoor party.
6. Secret Room This room contains most of the traps that protect the secret basement alchemy laboratory. The room has not been entered in very long time, for Lord Milt has not had to reset the traps for years and rarely inspects them. Two more odd arbalasts are here: one is ready to fire its bolt through a hole in the floor, the other is empty (its bolt killed Piipfrazza). Three other traps will release sleeping gas into the room below. A small shelf hung on the eastern wall contains two backup vials of sleeping gas.
7. Ballroom This room is dominated by a very smooth floor artfully constructed of inlaid wood. Stiffly upholstered chouches decorate walls, providing repose for tired dancers. Next to the fireplace is a young girl's body (Golta) covered with a sheet. The body has been cleaved in half and then squeezed with great pressure: most bones are broken. Blood had at one point pooled in and around the fireplace, but has been mostly mopped up. (The grieving parents took Golta's body from the fireplace, but knew they could not even go to the back yard to bury it. Lord Milt arranged it as tastefully as he could and had Liza mop up the blood, because caring for the body as much as they could made his wife feel very slightly better.)
8 and 9. Restrooms These restrooms, built to accomodate a small crowd of guests, are unusually large and have doors that can be latched from inside. They have no windows but small vents allow air to flow up through the roof. Since the restroom doors do not close snugly, the restrooms remain slightly drafty when unoccupied as air flows in from the house and out the vents.
10. Kitchen The southwest corner is a twenty foot deep walk-in pantry. The oven's large door is closed. Next to the oven is a place for piling wood with only two forearm-thick logs. A careful search of the trash and the pantry will show that for nearly a week very little cooking was done: the household was instead eating fresh and dried fruit, crackers and cheese, etc. Furthermore, the final meal eaten was a breakfast for only one person, which unlike every other meal was not cleaned up. The kitchen pantry can be a help to the GM: if the PC makes a reasonable request the pantry might include any random item the PC needs (a healing potion, flint and steel to light a fire, chocolate to attract rats into the house, flour to sprinle in the halls make sure no one else is moving around, foods that produce colored smoke when burned, etc.)
11. Dining Hall The dining hall is sparsely decorated. The furnture includes two table and chair sets (each comfortably seating a dozen people) and an empty buffet table along the east wall.
12. Servant's Downstairs Room The orginial purpose of this room has been forgotten. Milt and Wona gave it to Liza as a secondary room. Liza furnished it as a sitting room to use when she invites her own friends for tea. Liza's body is here. Lord Milt removed the rope from the lamp on the ceiling and covered the body, but did not untie the noose or otherwise care for the corpse.
13. Theatre The theatre is empty.
14. Stage The stage is also empty. An especially cruel GM could have some of the trap doors in the stage open, posing a hazard to a PC exploring in the dark.
15. Backstage A large hole in the south wall opens onto the winding alley behind the manor. The hole was clearly caused by an explosion in this room: the wall's bricks flew outward and the floor has scorch marks. At the base of the hole in the wall are an arbalast bolt cut in half and two dead rats whose bodies are also sliced in two: someone looking carefully will notice all pieces are inside of the room. A message painted on the norht wall, intended to be visible from the alley, reads "A curse has trapped us in this building. Please get help!" The enchanted battle-axe is also in this room, propped against a wall near the southeast corner. Its blade grows hot if anyone tries to disassemble it, soon causing 1 FP damage per turn.
16. Back Doors These glass-paned double doors open to a walled garden. As mentioned in the foyer description, a cut arbalast bolt lies on the floor before them, inside the foyer. On the second day of captivity, Lord Milt moved the pieces parallel to the doorway as a reminder to not touch the doors.
17. Golta's Bedroom Searching this room reveals a dead fly in a box and notes about Golta's plan to escape the house through the ballroom chimney flue.
18. Guest Bedroom Piipfrazza was staying in this room. She made no written notes about her plans to incapacitate Lord Milt and Lady Wona.
19. Music Room This room has comfortable armchairs and many musical instruments. A large harp dominates the northeast corner of the room. The bodies of Lord Milt and Lady Wona are here: apparently they died while sitting near each other in two of the armchairs. Only someone with medical knowledge can determine they starved to death, for their enchanted sleep hid most of the physical signs of their deterioration. Piipfrazza's harp sits on a low table near the entrance to the room; this table is directly in front of the doorway and thus seems out of place compared to the other furniture, blocking the natural ways to walk through this room. A search will reveal indentations on the carpet showing where the table normall stood in the southwest corner of the room.
20. Library Many books have been removed from the shelves and stacked on the tables. These books deal with curses, Unseemly magic, or creating and destroying items created by Bergtroll musing.
21. Upstairs Hallway A trail of blood (Lady Wona's) leads from the master bedroom to the northern stairs. The front window is broken. An arbalast bolt, cut in half, is on the floor in front of that window.
22. Study Lord Milt's diary is in a locked drawer in his desk. They key is hidden under his inkwell, also on the desk. Sitting on top of Lord Milt's desk is Liza's confession-poem, in a feverish and uneducated handwriting that is clearly a different author than the diary.
23. Master Bedroom There is a trail of blood (Lady Wona's) leading from the north window to the door. Lady Wona did not succeed in opening or breaking the window before being cut and fleeing downstairs. The bed is unmade since Lord Milt and Lady Wona were drawn from it by the enchanted harp music.
24 and 25. Restrooms These restrooms are directly above the other restrooms and vent similarly. Since they are only used by the family and houseguests they are decorated much more nicely than the downstairs restrooms. The north restroom has a mirror and razor that Lord Milt uses to shave.
26. Roof The roof above the Dining Hall is the only roof onto which a window opens.
27. Secret Room This room is empty, or nearly so. A merciless GM can include a red herring item here. For example, perhaps Lord Milt is storing in this room a sword with an ugly scabbard that has been in his family for generations yet his wife insists is too ugly to put on display.
28. Upstairs Storage This room is mostly a linen closet. It also contains two ornate gates (think of baby gates) that fit in the stairways. Lord Milt puts them up when guests are in the house for an evening event in the ballroom or theatre.
29. Archery and Sparring Room This room is mostly empty. Three racks of sparring weapons are on the east wall. A rack of both weak and normal-strength bows is on the north wall. On the south wall hang three metal sheets covered with blankets, in front of which sit three archery targets stuffed with straw. In the center of the room sits Lord Milt's most recent attempt at a robotic sparring partner, which he found unsatisfactory (it moves too fast and its hands have a weak grip: the weapons it holds tend to go flying across the room).
30. Basement Hallway This hallway has no lamp sconces. Only Lord Milt went into the basement, and he brought a lamp with him. In the center of the hallway sits the small arbalast that Lord Milt brought to different rooms to test how the curse worked, with two more bolts on the floor beside it.
31. Cells This dungeon was never used by Lord Milt. Some of the cells are obviously designed to also be usable as animal cages.
32. Alchemy Laboratory In this room Lord Milt did secret alchemy research for the Field family. The nature of this research does not matter: a generous GM should adapt it so Lord Milt's notes provide the PC with a helpful new alchemy recipe to use or sell. Even the information that Lord Milt knew alchemy might be valuable to the right peope...
33. Closet This closet is almost empty. Lord Milt installed a trap: a lever is mounted on the east wall, and pulling the lever causes three arbalast bolts to shoot from that wall.
34. Machinery Laboratory Most of Lord Milt's machinery experiments involved attempts at creating a robotic sparring partner. None were very successful.