Wraithcotte
“The Silver Ring is known to me. I have seen one, once. Like a tiny circle of pure moonlight.
“I thank you for slaying my foe. Still, this trinket you seek is a coveted thing.
“But what do I want with trinkets?
“All I want is a final cloak of thin white linen. Ha ha ha.
“Go you now to the Landmine Forest. Within those woods lies what is left of the line of Wraithcotte. Seek your Silver Ring there.”
The words of Othelmedir the Necromancer fade in time with the sinking sun, running away like echoes in the mind. An uneasy, tuneful humming fills the empty space. Wide tree trunks cast chronic shadows at the fringe of a dense wood. Between the trunks, Landmine Forest waits darkly. The broken road scatters to loose stone before the wall of trunks. Your thoughts turn inward.
Take a deep breath. You have marched many days, through deeper darks than this. Will you turn back? Now, when the ring your master desires lies somewhere in these woods? You are ready. Examine your equipment.
Bitter Steel Blade: This scuffed but sharp weapon smells like oil polish and wet earth. It will kill living things, and some that are un-dead.
Firebug Lantern: Buzzes softly, and sheds more light than a candle. It isn’t much, but it may repel the giant slugs.
Necromancy will not work in the Landmine Forest; the poison within the landmines makes the dead sleep. If Othelmedir’s Summoned Golem survived your encounter with Old Twothroats, it perishes once you enter the forest.
Night sets thick like syrup between the trunks. As you follow the soft yellow glow of your lantern through the woods, you hear a tender, heartfelt voice.
You come out in a clearing beside a forest gorge. Sitting on a boulder at the brink is a skeleton. It wears a blue plague mask with an orange beak, and taps its quill upon a blank parchment.
The Late Poet:
“What is a mirror to a star? A frozen lake, a farther star? This bourgeoisie, he has no star. Ho hee, hee ho, ho hee!
“Have you come to deride a poor bard?
“They kicked me off the estate.
“Strike me down, plunge thy sword into this breast!”
You may stab the skeleton through its ribs, at the spot where its heart would be. If you do, it clasps its hands over its chest, stumbles backward, and plummets down the gorge. You see its white bones scatter upon the rocks before they disappear. If you search the knapsack it leaves behind, you find a poison landmine.
You come across your first spoor of giant slug. The low grass of the forest floor glistens like dew in a whale-wide trail. Only a moment later, a heavy, wet sliding noise catches your attention. You cannot tell from where the sound originates..
Your torchbug lamp catches the silhouette of a hollow stump. Thinking quickly, you climb over the crumbling wood and drop inside.
There is one thin crack in the tree-stump wood. Through it, you watch a shining, black, humongous shape slither over the space where you stood before. It stops and raises its antennae.
The slug slides on: Squelch. Squelch. Squelch.
As night ascends, the moon shines full over the canopy. The forest floor is a calico of shadow and silver. You wander up the steep slope of a long hill. The air seems fresher as you near the top.
At the summit, you find a broken signpost. The sign, a board half-buried in the grass, reads “Vigyázz!” - ‘Caution!’ in Deadspeech.
The trees are sparse here, and you can look over the surrounding forest. You spot a distant mass jutting out of the leaf sea. It is too conical and turreted to be a mountain or a tree. It is the old Wraithcotte Estate; many miles distant by the estimation of your eye.
There are few safe places for the un-dead within Landmine Forest.
After walking for several hours and narrowly avoiding the notice of another giant slug, you arrive at a mutation in the undergrowth. Three fig trees have woven together to form a writhing wall of roots. A dark tunnel plunges through the wall at the trees’ epicenter.
You lean down and step toward the tunnel, holding your torchbug lantern ahead to see what lies inside.
The Song-Singing Fungus:
This bright red mushroom is sacred to the distended hermits; a holy order of monks devoted to Gallbladder, one of the seven God-necromancers. If you sing a few lines from any song, this long-frilled mushroom will sing the rest. Its clear, resonant voice fills you with peace.
The entrance to the root-cave is too small for the giant slugs to slide into. You have not slept since the previous dawn, and sleep beside the red mushroom sounds wonderful.
Little do the easy sleeping ground, and heart that’s ill at ease, concur.
Though the fungus’s song seemed sweet at first, you soon find yourself sinking into wakeless dreams. You realize that several days have passed since you laid down by the mushroom. Crimson roots have grown over your chest, your legs, your neck, your sword arm; you are pinned to the forest floor.
The only way to escape the Song-Singing Fungus is to use your torchbug lantern. If you opened the lantern door at any point in your journey, the torchbugs have flown out by this time; the mushroom will slowly feed upon you, and your bones will sink into the soil of the forest.
If your lantern is still lit, you may yet survive. Use your last free limb to reach out, grab the handle, and hurl it at the red mushroom. The paper lantern will burst; the torchbugs will sting the red mushroom, killing it. Your root prison falls away. The torchbugs scatter like embers from a kicked fire, however, leaving you to venture on without light.
Wraithcotte Estate:
Gasping and sweating, you stifle your breath as you emerge from the woods into a clearing. The ruin of the Wraithcotte Estate sprawls ahead.
Stone outbuildings rise grey from the overgrown bluestem grass. The main manor seems as if it is made entirely of gabled windows and turrets. Despite its width, the manor has a tall, crooked, slightly swaying aspect; like a hunched old man, unsteady on his feet.
As you cross through the grass, you keep your breath held. Old-guard skeletons stand stock-still in their tabards beside the doors of the outbuilding. You know they will animate if disturbed. The tuneful humming of the woods is muted here. The air has lost its petrichor smell, replaced by the dying-aristocracy odor of churches and law houses.
As you sneak ahead, you see that all the manor windows are broken and boarded from the inside; each window bears a jagged skirting of colored, broken glass.
You stop a dozen paces from the recess of the main entry. You crouch.
Something is patrolling closer around the manor. It moves with a bell-ringing sound, and rends the air with its voice:
”…Who calls at midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who calls at midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who calls at midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who Calls At Midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who Calls At Midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“WHO CALLS AT MIDNIGHT?”
Ding. Ding.
“WHO CALLS AT MIDNIGHT?”
Ding. Ding.
“WHO CALLS AT MIDNIGHT?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who Calls At Midnight?”
Ding. Ding.
“Who calls at midnight?…”
Ding. Ding.
“Who calls at midnight?…”
Ding. Ding…
When the voice has passed, you hurry to the main entrance.
The Door with a Face:
As you step under the architrave, a thin red light illuminates the door. You see now that it is not pine or any other lumber, but a stretched face, stitched into stonework. It stares at you with blind eyes. Its lips mumble quietly; you have to put your ear an inch from the teeth to hear what it says.
The only way to pass The Door with a Face is to answer all four of its riddles. The answers are: 1 ‘A Bouquet’; 2 ‘Being Sad’; 3 ‘The Mouse Did It’; 4 ‘I Offer You My Sense of Smell’.
The door slides in with a gasp of old air. As you step inside, the rotting floorboards crack. Then break. You plunge into darkness.
Inside Wraithcotte:
The dust settles. You are surprised that you can see it on the hard stone beneath you.
The same soft red glow illuminates this deep hall. You realize that the glow is coming from your own body. The red mushroom from Landmine Forest has left glowing spores on the rust of your armor.
Your lungs feel weak and your muscles shake as you rise off the floor. Several of your ribs snapped when you landed. You grit your teeth and move into the rough stone hall.
The Sightless Pit:
---
Deep and unlit, the halls beneath the Wraithcotte Estate have uncounted floors, floor-below-floor, and there are more passages leading down than up.
Fleshless Upright Bones roam these corridors in scheduled circuits. You will need to memorize their movement patterns and sneak past them. Battle is not an option. The sound of fighting will draw the entire swarm - you will be overwhelmed.
‘My body is wracked with pain,’ you say? Will your suffering cease if you huddle like some brittle scared grandmother, or shed fits of tears? Your oath swears you to fetch the Silver Ring that is your master’s desire. Will you break your promise because of little needling pains? For the sake of a tumble? There are knights who have suffered worse - torture, their eyes poked with heated steel, their limbs wrenched and dislocated - and all the while held a smile. Keep those knights in your mind - and recall that courage empowers us to face the pain, not which is easiest, but which is the most severe.
The wine barrels which line the walls are all hollow and empty. Each barrel has the following icon on its surface:
At first the icon seems harmless. You soon realize, however, that if you stare at any icon for a long time, you feel the acrid taste of sour wine in your throat, and your head starts to swim. Thereafter, you keep your eyes averted.
The Hall of Sculptures:
As you start down this corridor of The Sightless Pit, its end remains elusive. The walls are drier brown in color, as if the hall had flooded once. After three hundred and thirty three steps, you come across three life-size stone sculptures.
Away-Facer: A male figure encased in smoke. The sculpture turns its head away from you, even as you try to meet its eye.
Frozen Body: Only this old man’s head is free, the rest of his body is encased in a block of ice.
The Woman with Backwards Eyes: She sees inside you.
At the end of The Hall of Sculptures you find a room with a well. A wrinkled, two-ton grandmother sits beside the well in an enormous rocking chair. She holds a fishing rod of proportional size over the opening of the well - at the end of the line is a basket the size of a bathtub.
Hither, Lady of the Well:
“Young man, help me.
“Something gleams at the bottom of this well, but I can’t catch it in my basket.
“I hope it’s the shell of a turtle, or a shiny toad.
“Those scallywags killed my animals…
“Will you climb in my basket, and fetch it for me?”
If you climb into the basket, the giant grandmother will lower you on her pole. At the bottom of the well you find the Reflective Ointment.
Reflective Ointment: a shiny, apple-shaped bottle, filled with an unguent that tastes and looks like metal.
Once you take the bottle and tug twice on the line, you will rise swiftly upward, the mossy stones of the well falling past. Instead of the well room, however, the line pulls the basket all the way to the first floor of the mansion, where you are immediately attacked.
The Bell Ringer:
A clawed foot kicks you from the basket. You spring up just in time to meet your foe; a thick skeleton with a bell for a hand, and a cone around its mouth. As it stomps toward you it cries: “Who calls at midnight?!”
In battle The Bell Ringer will repeatedly cry and ring his bell. If he is not slain by the 11th ring, you will fall asleep. The tolling bell rings in your dreams as The Bell Ringer crushes you with his clawed feet.
Keep as much space between yourself and the skeleton as possible, and avoid his kicking feet. Strike at his bell-ringing hand whenever he breathes in to speak.
If you sever his bell-hand, The Bell Ringer will be stunned. You can then dispatch him with ease.
With The Bell Ringer dead an eerie silence settles over Wraithcotte manor, silence unbroken even by rats. After pausing to catch your breath, you venture on.
Much like the pits, the mansion of the estate is vast and layered, floor-after-floor that seem to be made only of deep corners and dripping chandeliers. Attics surmount attics. Stairs lead to narrower stairs.
Feeling as if eyes follow you wherever you go, you begin exploring the mansion.
In one room you find a circle of twelve beds, their headboards facing away from the walls. The beds are arranged clockwise by their states of decay. The bed on your left as you enter looks freshly-made; to your right lies a contraption of rusted springs and termitewood, like one of The Red King’s confession racks.
Several hours later you enter a library. When you examine the books, you find that someone has painstakingly poured honey over every book. All the pages stick together. The text is all in a language you cannot read.
The mansion is a labyrinth; navigating will be difficult. You can try leaving chalk marks, but something erases them. The only way to track your progress is to leave a tooth (yours or someone else’s) at each explored passage. Whoever or whatever erases the chalk marking leaves the teeth alone.
As you explore, you may come across the following items:
Necromancer’s Shovel: While it can be used to dig earth, this shovel is also enchanted to crack through wood and marble coffins.
Bowl of Candied Acorns: Largely unspoiled.
Caged Whip-poor-will: How this bird has survived in the mansion, you do not know. If you release it from its cage, it flies away. A few days later it will find you again, drop an emerald in your lap, then leave forever.
The Chapel:
After hours in the silent halls, you enter a narrow passage ending in double doors. You push them open, and find yourself in a secluded chapel.
The floor is sticky as you step inside; you have to pull each foot off the cobbled stone with a sound like ripping cotton. A single, unboarded, stained-glass window lights the space. All the pews are broken and filled with slop, like swine troughs. In one trough, a tomato plant has sprouted and withered.
You hear footsteps approaching from behind.
Merilka Wraithcotte:
As she enters the chapel, Merilka Wraithcotte stands tall, pale, and narrow as an aspen tree. Her shining steel armor makes not a sound as she glides like a spectre toward you. Two rapiers smile in her hands.
Beautiful on the outside, but rotten on the inside, an abortion of mortality - such is Her Royal Emaciation, Merilka Wraithcotte. She is the last of her line, having slain the rest of her family. Her name means ‘Rose of the Sacred Barque’.
To defeat Merilka, you will need to apply the Reflective Ointment from The Sightless Pit. Doing so will curse you with mirror-like skin. This curse is permanent, and lasts after death, but it is preferable to dying now.
Merilka will try to skewer you with her two rapiers, which are thin as needles, and sharp enough to puncture steel. She usually attacks with a series of seven to nine jabs at your chest and legs, followed by a double-thrust at your eyeballs. While her arms are raised at the end of this double-thrust, you have a small window to strike her hip. If you miss your window, you will have to endure another round of her assault.
The first serious wound you inflict on Merilka will send her into hysterical weeping. She will go berserk. Now her rapiers stab twice as quickly as before. She is slowed by her injury, however, and you are able to keep a little space between you.
After a relentless flurry, she will need to rest and breathe. Use this as a chance to doff your helm and unbuckle your breastplate; they are useless against her attacks anyway. When she blinks away her tears and attacks again, your reflection will startle her; she beholds her own bloodshot, tearstained eyes in her death-pale face. This is your only opportunity; stab her through the heart with your Bitter Steel Blade.
Merilka Wraithcotte falls. Her rapiers disintegrate. With a last sob, she dies.
Now, on the chapel floor, a choice lies before you. Taking the Silver Ring from her finger, you may either place it into a pocket, or slip it over your own.
In the Time of Dying lies a Road of Graves.