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  1. - Top - End - #1
    Pixie in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    TX
    Gender
    Female

    Default Homebrew Campaign-Saltmarsh-need a little help filling out a few locations

    Homebrew campaign, Saltmarsh. The city is pretty well fleshed out but some of the locations need work. I have a bad habit of coming up with too many ideas and get stuck on which ones to use or can’t come up with creatures to fill the location out. The only locations that are giving me a lot of trouble is The Play House and San Marcus Theater.


    The Play House

    Sitting at the far end of Saltmarsh is the hulking ruined form of a long abandoned mansion. The two story stone building may have been proud and impressive but eighty years of neglect have left it with peeling paint, sagging shutters that resemble tired eye lids. Where boards have fallen away the blank surfaces of windows stare out, grey with mud and dust. Resent thunder storms have left the wretchedly overgrown grounds steeped in stagnant pools of water.

    The rusted pitted iron gates are secured by a several thick equally rusted chains and locks as if to keep something in. A badly worn wooden sign hands from rusting chains above the gate, the words The Playhouse. Daily Puppet Shows can barely be made out.


    Back ground

    The Play House was originally called the Stillwalk Manor, owned by Andrea Stillwalk. Very little information is know of the original owners since a spring flash flood destroyed the original Hall of Records.
    The mansion had been sitting empty for nearly a decade before it was purchased by Howard Lumley, the toy maker and master puppeteer who had moved to Saltmarsh from the small town of Pidgin in hopes of finding a better life for himself.

    He was a quiet man, keeping mostly to himself, entertaining the children of Saltmarsh for nearly a decade with his marvelous clockwork toys and the amazing almost life dolls of fine china and puppet shows. He turned most the first floor of the sprawling mansion into a massive play house, filling it with all manner of clockwork driven circus animals and clowns much to the delight of the children.

    As the story goes, four children vanished while coming back from the Playhouse. Frantic parents and the local law searched every were including the marsh lands in case the children had accidentally wondered off the path. Ned Radic, the local sheriff at the time, blamed the marsh lands for the disappearances and rounded up a small group of volunteers to search the surrounding marsh at first light.

    No trace of the missing children were ever found.

    Convinced that the hermit toy maker Lumley was to blame, the townspeople laid siege to the Playhouse. What happened that night still remains unclear and no one in Saltmarsh is willing to talk about the events that left he once magnificent mansion in ruins. Its speculated that they did not find the missing children and accidentally killed Howard Lumley then covered up the crime after laying waste to the interior of the Playhouse.

    Even after eighty years, the towns people shun and dread the place. Soon the Playhouse started to vanish from peoples memory, except in the odd whispered rumor when a child vanishes.

    The mansion is a forbidden place to all the children of Saltmarsh.

    Tales of the mansion’s boogy man, the clockwork golem Giuseppe, built by Lumley before his death, are persistent and often spoken of in hushed whispers. At night, odd lights can be seen moving through the windows followed by the chilling sound of children’s laughter






    Some of the ideas that I have so far, I keep wanting to use too many of them and it would only create a log jam and lead to frustrated players. And a frustrated DM.

    _ Lumley is still labors at his workbench in the depths of bleary madness. No sense in letting a little thing like death stop you

    - The children really did wonder off the path and were lost in the marshes and Lumley was falsely accused of their disappearances by a wealthy merchant that wanted the marvels of the Play House for himself.

    - Lumley, in his quest to create the perfect doll, killed the children and used them to make one. He considers Giuseppe to be a failure.

    - Howard wasn’t accidentally killed, he was murdered by the mob and his death quietly covered up by all those involved, now the adult children of the mob must deal with the consequences

    -Strange Dolls and toys are been showing up on the doorsteps of those who had been responsible for Lumley’s death. Is Lumley’s’ golem servant behind this or is some one else behind it, using the rumors and legends to scare people away from the mansion.

    As for populating the mansion, aside the remaining clockwork creatures and some really creepy clockwork dolls I’m not sure what else to throw in. Traps would probably consist of things like the massive music box that dominates the foyer.

    Other traps could be simple ones, dropping chandlers, burst steam pipes, or ones laid by the very unfriendly denizens of the mansion.

  2. - Top - End - #2
    Pixie in the Playground
     
    ElfRangerGuy

    Join Date
    Jun 2010

    wink Re: Homebrew Campaign-Saltmarsh-need a little help filling out a few locations

    Heh I didn't know it was you when I started reading this post.

    Maybe giuseppe used clockwork in order to bring Lumley back (Ala ropert kronen form hellboy, though hopefully with lips and eyelids. ) and/or been roaming the marsh looking for the bodies of the children in order to prove the innocence of his creator.

  3. - Top - End - #3
    Pixie in the Playground
    Join Date
    Jul 2010
    Location
    TX
    Gender
    Female

    Default Re: Homebrew Campaign-Saltmarsh-need a little help filling out a few locations

    Pretty sure no one else on this board has a twisted sick mind like mine.

    I like the idea of brining Lumley back as what would amount to another clockwork golem but different. With the lip and eyelids, highly preferred. This isn't Ravenloft so the horror factor isn't high.

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