[Eberron] The House That Hate Built
tl;dr - Could you suggest ideas for NPCs or rooms in a haunted house that could impress the themes of "madness" or "hatred" upon my players?
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So, I'm going to be working on my first ever 5e adventure (I'm assuming it won't jump start a campaign, but there's always the chance with my players.) It's set in Eberron, and I might be bringing in a bit too much 3.5 design methodology with me, so I wanted to bounce a few things off of some people here. Basically, the adventure is a haunted house story, with the premise that the house is located in a manifest zone to Xoriat (the plane of madness) and the house's position in the manifest zone happens to make it coexist with a similarly shaped building in the plane that was made out of pure hatred (based on a suggested line in Keith Baker's blog.)
The original idea of "what effect does it have on the players to be in this building for a prolonged amount of time" ran into some weird issues, namely that I don't want to suddenly tell the players what they should feel or think or how they should act even with constant exposure from some nebulous presence of hatred that they don't really understand yet. So I'm trying to come up with good examples of how the location itself and the various people/creatures within it can shore up that feeling.
Basic premise is that this location is near the edge of the Mournland, in a mostly war-torn and destroyed building, and while a bard from Cannith is there with a Lyre of Building to handle most of the quick construction, the PCs and other military, adventure, or logistics professionals are moving through the remains of old buildings to quickly do preparatory clean up, or to kill off monsters who might've moved in over time. The fact that the building assigned to the PCs and some other people is on a manifest zone to Xoriat is completely unknown.
A few ideas I have already:
-One of the contacts that the PCs are told to meet is identified pretty much only by name. Over the course of the journey through the house, the PCs meet several NPCs with nigh-identical backstories who all claim to have that name, and who, after a while, meet the PCs after having met other iterations of themselves. They become increasingly hostile toward the idea of these other thems and begin working to the detriment of their own mission while trying to avoid the possibility that they might not actually exist. (Tempting to name them after one of the players, but that might be a step too far.) [Self hatred]
-A massive cave connected to the basement that opens into an empty "space" filled with just mist, navigable by a giantic bridge with no discernible end. Players wandering too far onto the bridge might start catching glimpses of a "giant" figure standing off the bridge and watching them, or a bedraggled and mad person from House Orien or Cannith claiming that he needs to kill his other passengers on "the shadow bridge" so that the giant doesn't kill him first. Spoiler: Bridge's Backstory
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Basically, this was a House Orien attempt to make a "bridge to anywhere" by harnessing the properties of the shadow land, but the bridge project interfered with the mansion owner's own experiments with realities (attempting to create an "artificial and stable" manifest zone to Irian or The Heavens or something like that) and the interference between the two projects may well be what caused both of them to actually be linked to Xoriat and, naturally, abandoned.
-A hedge-maze filled with angry topiary beasts and elementals who all swear fealty to "the liege trapped within the maze" or something. The maze is actually a phsical representation of the maze-like trap within a khyber shard in one of the mansion's various elemental-powered devices, specifically a device that was made with an abducted and hostile (and powerful) elemental rather than the standard "power of purity" elemental binding that just makes a deal for a willingly bound creature. [Hatred of oppressors]
-A magic mouth that audibly repeats something whenever players pass a certain place or go a certain way, initially annoying the players, but then it gets heard while the players are three or four rooms away from it, but when it's checked no one is there. [Admittedly this is more of a "haunted house" thing than a "madness" or "hatred" thing, but I like it.]
-And then I have unhelpful notes that say things like "living oozes with mutagenic or ambulatory properties" and "bleeding book(case)s."
-I also found a weird note suggesting that one of the Eberron novels has a Karrnathi group of soldiers called The Outguard who want to harness Xoriat's capabilities (generally while making use of symbiotes). I can see them wanting to reclaim some of the mansion's owner's property under the guise of charitably helping out, but possibly also tying their involvement to the feud between the three different Cannith houses since one branch is in Karrnath and since the reconstruction is being handled by a Cannith bard from a potentially different branch. [Hatred from rivalry/bitter feud/etc.]
Those are some of the things I've got. Any other ideas?
Re: [Eberron] The House That Hate Built
Tip 1: use the Madness rules in the DMG. Have room have auras that contact with them can trigger low-DC madness save.
Tip 2: use symbionts and Xoriat-themed creatures. Dolghasts and dolgaunts, angry and insane.
Tip 3: A room that is a door to another universe. You enter the dark room and the door slams behind you. There is no roof nor walls. In the far distance you can see stars and galaxies and the universe, maybe even the Ring of Siberys or another plane. A distant galaxy moves... and then you realize it's an *eye*, at which point a wave of hatred beats at your mind... insert GTFO scrambling.
Tip 4: Make one of the rooms a living memory of the schism of the House of the Mark of Shadow into Phiarlann and Thuranni. Other memories: the lost dwarf clan; the destruction of the House of Vol; the elven emancipation; the start of the Last War; you can even decide what you want the cause of the Day of Mourning to be, and showcase that. Your players can assume new characters, representing the various NPCs, and act out the schism, destruction, or whatever. Note that any player worth their salt will try to disrupt and prevent the tragedy, so you will want to account for that: let them? Make whatever they try be *real* and have an effect but unable to prevent the actual disaster?
Re: [Eberron] The House That Hate Built
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Mjolnirbear
Tip 1: use the Madness rules in the DMG. Have room have auras that contact with them can trigger low-DC madness save.
Ah! I'd not realized the DMG had those yet, thanks. I've only just started really going through it, I'm not the usual 5e GM. And yes, symbionts and Xoriat-things will be used (the boss, in particular, will be a tangled morass of vines and tentacles with numerous eyes and teeth). I think I'll definitely make use of the door to the other universe. :-)
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Tip 4: Make one of the rooms a living memory of the schism of the House of the Mark of Shadow into Phiarlann and Thuranni. Other memories: the lost dwarf clan; the destruction of the House of Vol; the elven emancipation; the start of the Last War; you can even decide what you want the cause of the Day of Mourning to be, and showcase that. Your players can assume new characters, representing the various NPCs, and act out the schism, destruction, or whatever. Note that any player worth their salt will try to disrupt and prevent the tragedy, so you will want to account for that: let them? Make whatever they try be *real* and have an effect but unable to prevent the actual disaster?
I definitely like having some of the rooms trigger living memories of hatred-charged moments in history. I don't think I want to give an answer to the Day of Mourning (or at least, not a real one) but the Shadow Schism, the destruction of Vol, and other events like that would be great options. Thanks!
