Hello fellow DM.
I had my group of PC actually involving in Mordent (we play howls in the night).
The bard of the group know about the house on gryphon hill and plan to have a look one of those days despite the dire warnings of the locals.
I think i will let them go but i want they will regret this.
They are about 7th level.
Any suggestions of what can happen there, i plan to use Godefroy and other ghosts of course, and i want something very spectacular cause this is Gryphon hill, yes, GRYPHON HILL!! HOW U DARE TO ENTER GRYPHON HILL?!!!!!
Something like when they step inside, the big doors closed behind and mists rise all around the house, a mist very special full of the spirits of the deceased or something like that (the use of VRG to the mist can be helpfull).
Any advices welcome.
Thanks.
It's funny that, whenever a wizened old man utters ominous warnings about,well, anything, the PCs instantly want to go there. I think this plays a large part in why PCs have the average life expectancy of a suicidal lemming.
Anyway, I'm sure you know that the floor plans for the House can be found in I10: The House on Gryphon Hill, which is available for free on the Wizards website. Of course, Godefroy didn't haunt it at the time, so it won't help you there.
The House will be packed with ghosts, and I mean that literally. A PC with Ghostsight or similar powers won't be able to see for spectral figures. Most of them are pitiful creatures, drained of nearly all Charisma by Godefroy, pathetically reaching out for the PCs as they pass them (possibly with lethal results, depending on the ghosts' powers - draining and corrupting touches can be nasty). Those with more personality left may try to possess a PC and use their body to escape their enslavement, and they won't be likely to leave if they succeed.
Some are more malevolent. Either because they're entirely subservient to Godefroy, or because they were just plain nasty in life and consider their incorporeal existence a good way to continue their old lifestyle.
Godefroy himself is extremely dangerous. If I recall correctly, you run your game some time in the past, so he won't be quite as powerful as he is in the current setting, but he's still more than a match for 7th level PCs. You could have him preoccupied - perhaps the ghosts of his wife and child are tormenting him when the PCs arrive, or perhaps their intervention save the PCs from a particularly nasty situation. He might also be busy researching ways to rid himself of the ghosts.
He might suspect that the PCs are agents of Lord Weathermay, and so he won't obliterate them before he gets information - they'll probably be rather worried when he tells them that if they die in the House they'll stay there forever. It depends on how much of a recurring villain you want to make him. If you get them involved in this plot, expect them to want to destroy him sooner or later. If you establish him as a force of nature, or perhaps simply use the House without ever showing Godefroy, they might be more likely to leave him alone.
All that we see or seem
Is but a dream within a dream
Thanks Malus.
I will just use the house like a 'trek into the horror' style so they won't be involved in some plot with Godefroy and Weathermay.
I definitively use the force of nature style u described.
Gryphon Hill is part of Mordent after all.
A new player join the party last saturday and he's a mordentish palladin of Ezra, i used the excellent story in VRG to the mists in which some childs disapeared in Halloway house (they simply disseapeared to be seen years later in a fog near the house), this story was the background story for this PC who was investigating this case in his past palladin's adventure, so he knows the power of thoses houses in Mordent, and he knows Gryphon Hill is far more powerfull and host far more horrors than any others nobles houses.
Maybe i will use the maps of The mordent cartographic's or those of the original story.
Anyway Mordent is a great domain for us DM, many ghost stories and that fog all around, i definitively like it.
Alternately, of course, you could say that they go there, look around, and find ... nothing. No ghosts. No traps. No indications of a supernatural presence whatsoever, even with Ghostsight.
Then, after they get bored and leave the premisies in disgust, a ghostly snicker resounds in the 'empty' halls....
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Rotipher:Great idea! the calm before the storm option.
They can eventually stole some items but their ghostly owner won't let them go out with it.
Or maybe they find nothing in the manor and when they leave they see a fog full of apparitions standing on the ground of the manor, can be creepy too!
I will definitively teach them a lesson in ever thniking they could enter Gryphon Hill after all the warnings the high level NPC will tell them (the bastion of Ezra church, some Lantern lighters and the W twins), maybe this will result in some massive aging fot their caracters (10 or 20 years, i loved the 2nd edition power of the cause "cause aging") .
Wait and See.
In searching in my old ad&d stuff i found the original house on gryphon hill adventure, it's really an antiquity, one of my friend give it to me when i told him i'll run ravenloft adventure.
Never played it yet but this will be useful.
It is said in Gaz3 that the story of the apparatus and Stradh appears after the death of Godefroy.
Didn't the manor haunted when they sold it to Stradh?
So if my players enter GH they will found vestiges of Stradh alchemist furnitures and not those of the Godefroy?
I doubt if the DPs would have left any obvious clues to the events of 579 lying around the House, considering they went to all the trouble of wiping both Strahd's and Azalin's memories about what happened there. Either Godefroy would've gotten rid of anything that reminded him of the events in question (either the humiliation of having to obey the Creature Strahd, or the confusion of not knowing what happened if his memories were also erased), or the DPs made all of the Alchemist's old belongings go away, IMO.
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
One idea for a ghost related story that popped into my head recently.
Very roughly it involved the PCs being overrun (the special attack) and essentially trampled by ghosts. Knocked down and pinned helpless and then having their souls jarred loose from their bodies.
It would all happen suddenly and quickly and their bodies (still faintly breathing but devoid of conciousness) rolled down a hill or whatnot and left in a ditch.
Meanwhile, the souls find themselves wandering the etherial plane as spirits and likely desperate to find their way back.
This could range from permanently crippling to temporary and could come in a flash via an encounter, be foretold by a mirror (giving them a chance to flee), or could gradually accumulate hour by hour or even minute by minute (giving them a chance to flee before it is entirely too late).
This is not as fun as a storyline, but should underline in spades how dangerous the place is to a would be adventure's youth and even continued existence.
Another option (kind of "Dark Shadows"-ish, if you've ever heard of that gothic soap opera) would be to pull a phantom shift on the PCs, that puts them in the midst of some long-ago tragedy which took place there. This could be I10, or Godefroy's murder of his family, if you'd like to reveal some of the "canon" background of the House to your PCs. Or you could invent your own story centered on the Renier family's original flight from Gryphon Hill, and plop the PCs in the middle of it.
The PCs might be trapped in the phantom shift, a la "Castles Forlorn" with a different accent, or their own souls might be body-switched with those of NPCs from this earlier time period. Perhaps an occultist in the past has used powerful, experimental magic to draw the PCs' spirits there from the distant future?
"Who [u]cares[/u] what the Dark Powers are? They're [i]bastards![/i] That's all I need to know of them." -- Crow
Rotipher of the FoS wrote:The PCs might be trapped in the phantom shift, a la "Castles Forlorn" with a different accent, or their own souls might be body-switched with those of NPCs from this earlier time period.
Ooooo, I like that body-swapping idea. Stick them in some weak and easily killed NPCs with no equipment and watch them squirm.
That phantasmagoria thing should do the trick, can be a nice idea to reveal some aspect of the past of this house (not too much either, i dont' want to replay the whole 'house on Gryphon hill' story).
The aging effect sound great too, i love it, maybe they will cross a hugue dusty mirror and see their aged reflection.
I will roll a few dices to make it more believable
Oh yes! they will suffer!
Ya, that is a problem with typical players. A lot of it relates to how normally when they hear about yonder place of terror that no body goes into, it's almost an invitation for them to go dungeon looting.
As for the Phantasmagoria thing, when I used it IMC my PCs FLIPPED out. If you let them think that one ghost is 'the most powerful' in the house, have them fight it and nearly lose, only for another more powerful ghost to come crawling down the stairs and tear the first ghost to shreds, the players get the idea that they are in WAY over their heads. And it doesn't even have to be Godefroy in particular; I see no reason why there wouldn't be other competitions going on in the House on Griffon Hill (albeit, probably not as impressive as the one between Godefroy and the true master of the mansion).
Great ideas in these threads. I'll collect them for the adventure hooks.
Joël
"A full set of (game) rules is so massively complicated that the only time they were all bound together in a single volume, they underwent gravitational collapse and became a black hole" (Adams)
