Wilderness Encounter

The Haunted Mansion

The PCs come across a neatly kept house in a small clearing out in the wilderness. Looking through a window will show an apparently lived in place but no sign of any people. The door is unlocked and perhaps a bit ajar. When the PCs enter the house, it will seem almost as though the family should be coming into the main room for supper, but of course, all is quiet. It will soon be recognized that things are somewhat out of place. A few things are tipped over and things hanging on the wall may have fallen or be askew, almost as if the entire house had received a bump. There is a trap door to a secret cellar/workshop that has fallen closed and will likely not be seen unless a search is conducted. Then the fun really begins.

Out in the middle of nowhere, two Melderyni magi and their daughter were studying some arcane artifacts. The father was trying to divine an amulet but did not realize that it imprisoned a very powerful ethereal spirit. Once released, it immediately possessed him (he being somewhat tired by the divination), fed on his spirit, and went looking for more.

Pretending to be the father, he summoned his daughter down into the cellar and destroyed her spirit as well. The mother, coming down after dishing out the evening meal, was not prepared for the attack but nonetheless defended herself well. They battled for a short while but the mother was unable to defeat the being unaided. Instead, she gave the last of her life energy to hold the spirit (and indeed, the whole house) in a "suspended" state. She stands in an aggressive pose but had just started to slump when the spell kicked in.

The spirit had started to leave the man's body in order to more successfully attack the woman. The appearance would be like that of a snake shedding its skin. Because of this, however, it is also more vulnerable. The amulet, created to imprison such a creature, will pulse faintly from its place on a table. If in contact with the skin of the entity or man when the suspension is lifted, the spirit will again be drawn into it, though it may have time to make a few attacks against the party at the GM's discretion. Some notes scribbled on some paper on the desk indicate options and what did not work:

Activate by:
- command
- contact with entity
- psychic (crossed out)

Release by:
- command
- touch (crossed out)
- psychic (crossed out)

There is what appears to be a single phrase (the release phrase) written around the outside of the amulet. The PCs will not be able to read it.

The daughter's body will be warm to the touch, just as though it were alive, but one look into the eyes will reveal that no spirit lives there any longer.

The mother's hand is extended and what appears to be a fragile glass ball dropping from it. The image of a house appears suspended within it. Breaking that ball will break the "suspension" spell. If the amulet has not somehow been placed in contact with the man or the entity when the ball is shattered, the spirit will likely consume them all, one by one unless they run and hide or managed to touch the amulet to the entity (not an easy feat).

The food is delicious, hot, and filling. However, it will immediately turn to dust when the spell is broken or if taken from the house. Also, because of the house's peculiar state of being, it won't be possible to find their way back to it again.

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Here's a short summary of how my players handled this...

What you did notice, however, was some sort of light barely visible in the forest below. Threading through the woods in the general direction, you eventually came to a small clearing with a neat little family house in the center. Everything appeared in order at first glance but nobody seemed to be home despite obvious evidence that someone had been just recently preparing to sit down for dinner.

Some exploration revealed that something was definitely wrong and camping outside overnight showed no changes in the morning light. The candles burning on the table had not diminished in the slightest and the warm food recently taken from the stove was still warm. Karl and Herim eventually gave in to the good smells and ate a hearty meal. Afterwards, Karl did some searching and found a trap door down to a basement workplace.

Things got decidedly terrifying from there. The appearance of some sort of gruesome entity emerging from the body of a man, shedding the skin almost like a snake, made everybody believe that there couldn't be a worse sight anywhere. There was a girl (daughter?) to one side slumped lightly against the stone wall and a woman (wife?) with a crystal sphere dropping from one hand but suspended in mid-air. Closer examination of the girl showed an apparently healthy exterior but eyes so "dead" that you felt the skin was nothing more than an empty shell. On the desk was a book in an unrecognized script about various (magical?) items, an amulet with a some engraved runes and a single "phrase" of script around the outside, and a note with some "activate" and "release" comments. The sphere appears to have a miniature version of the house and clearing suspended within it.

Various actions were taken, many involving transporting various items away from the house. The body of the woman was dragged out past the clearing where she rapidly decomposed. Other items taken into the woods seemed to lose their state of suspension-in-time. Eventually, the amulet itself was touched against the body of the entity and, though it did make physical contact, nothing changed. Wearing the amulet and touching the entity while speaking various words also had no effect.

After much discussion, it was decided that the remaining possible actions (or sequence of actions) involving the amulet and sphere were too dangerous to risk and so the group left the house and prepared to continue back to Geda.

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Brian (Internet Hârnica: http://www.backgroundexposure.com/harn/)
Differences are good. If two people agree, one of them is redundant.

Haunted Mansion could be tweaked to Murder Mystery Most Foul using a silver dinar (in the possession of the etheral when he was killed before he was robbed (unless it is a very distinct or foreign coin it will almost be impossible to catch as the coin is passed along from person to person without spell casting)) or a dagger (weapon that originally killed the ethereal) possessed by the etheral in almost any locale. Binding the etheral to a more common or mundane item makes it harder to identify the etheral than something like a unique jewelled heraldric bastard sword or signet ring.

The etheral can be a complete psychotic enjoying his quasi-immortality killing at random or ritually (perhaps growing in power) or fixiated on a certain type of individual or determined to destroy all the surviving living members of the clan that murdered him (twist can include some of his own clan members because of marraige and children).

The etheral may only be able to be activive during the 3 days of the full moon (Maybe he was killed by a lycanthrope) which would make it pretty involved solving roleplaying several months of investigations (This can be a nice option with a spell casting group as the coin goes dormant and either doesn't detect or detects unclearly depending on the P Harn).

Lots of ways for the PCs to become involved depending on the spin.

The person possessed is completely unaware of what happened even if witnessed by dozens remains assured of their innocence and very frightened and confused (Manor lord or his squire, maybe the local peonian priest......).

I'm not to good at writing a scenario, or at least making my notes intelligible to any one but me so here's an Idea that some one else more eloquent than me can use.


With apologies To Akira Kurasawa

A strong bandit gang has ben raiding villages. One of the villagers overhears one of the bandits saying that they will return when the wheat has ben harvested. Normally the lord would do something but He is old and infirm and has no sons, what few yeomen that still live are old or cowards or both.The villagers speak to the lord of the village, He is old and weak but his mind is still strong. 'Hire Warriors.'
'With what Lord, We have no silver, nothing but what little food the bandits leave us to eat.'
'Find hungry warriors.'

For the rest of the story see 'The seven samurai' or 'The magnificent seven.'

For the easy and boring version play the warriors. For a twist have the PC's play the villagers.

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"No one is trying to kill you Yossarian!"
"Then why do they shoot at me when I'm dropping bombs on them?"

The PC's are riding in some deep dark forest along a well marked but perhaps not all well traveled road. A body is spotted along the edge of the road. It is still warm and the blood from its severed arm has not fully coagulated. The arm was cleanly severed, not ripped off. Death was apparently from exsanguination. The body is a male in its 30's, nondescript urban clothes, a few coins, a short dagger sheath but no dagger. The position of the body indicates the man was running toward the party when he fell.

The road turns the left a short distance ahead. Around the bend is a large, fully barded, war horse, partially blocking the road. It snorts and looks at them warily, it's eyes not at all friendly. A thin rein is draped, not tied, over a branch. It will not take kindly to strangers approaching too close.

On the other side a large lance is buried in an oak tree, the weight of another man's body with the lance through it, causing the lance to dip slightly towards the ground. The blood from that wound also barely coagulated on the ground below.

Just ahead sitting on a log beside the road is a knight in full armor, a massive man with a powerful physique. His helm is off resting beside him, his hands busy cleaning a long two handed sword, that is either glowing in the dark of the forest or has caught a rare bit of sunlight that does occasionally slip through the leaves and light up the forest floor.

He turns to the party and stands up, gazes at the party for a moment before slowly sheathing his sword. "Is the other one dead?" he asks the party, as he bends over and casually picks up the severed arm by its fingers.

When this came up from a random encounter table (party meets a knight on the road) I had a flash of an idea and adlibbed the above to make it a bit more interesting. How it plays out at this point will depend entirely on what the party does, of course.

The knight is Fartineous Windbreaker, an extremely powerful Laranian knight, cursed with an extremely foul temper. He comes from a long line of cursed men, the history of which he either does not know or will not discuss. He is somewhat sorry for the two deaths and intends to retrieve the bodies and bury them. If asked what the two victims had done, he will reply, sadly, that they had laughed when he told them his name. (In my game I told the players that if they asked him his name and if the players laughed, that I would assume their characters were laughing.) His rage has been sated by the recent killings and remorse has set in. He is a real loner, taciturn, and standoffish. Yet he misses the warmth of human interaction. So he will stay with the party for a few days.

In my game he went with them for a few days, actually was very helpful in a nasty encounter <hint, hint> and eventually parted company at a fork in the road. They were glad to be rid of him.

Lawrence

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Let us go then, you and I...

Encounter the ghost of Prince Brant at or near Baseta.

I did this one in a module titled the Royal treasure of Narnia which is much too long to post here but will make it available if anyone is interested.

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The venerable James
Web Site: http://www.jswatson.info
Seeking Harn Players in Madison, Wisconsin