RUNEvember Session 11: Dread Manse

RUNEvember Session 11: Dread Manse

November 26, 2022
rune, runevember

Session 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10

This time, I approached the Dread Manse!

Its owner was a well-respected lord, until one day he was never seen again in daylight. Rumors of horrifying vampirism persisted, which were soon confirmed as fact. His newfound dark magic was powerful enough to shade his mansion from the sun and he has not been seen in decades. Rumor has it that he hunts when night is darkest.

You arrive at this accursed place at twilight, when it appears. You have been called to this place by the faint presence of a Rune, though strange and obscured by his illusory magics. Dispel the illusion once and for all, and claim the Rune if it exists.

Overview and Realm Mechanics

This one's my pamphlet realm! It fits on a page, front and back, and you can knock it out in like 15 minutes.

Its clock is just a countdown until True Night: if you take 8 actions before the clock fully expires, the "rune lord" gets way harder. (You can always tick the clock once to heal 2 Health too.)

On death, everything resets. I couldn't really think of anything more interesting and I don't like terribly punishing penalties anyway.

Design Notes

My inspiration for this was that I wanted to make kind of a Castlevania-esque thing for a pamphlet realm. So I started with the vampire at the top, then went from there. 5 points sounded right, so that's where I ended up: the boss room and 4 other points.

Because of the confines of a pamphlet (and the way it's constructed with the trifold), I wanted to make sure that encounters each had one kind of enemy, and that there would be at most two kinds of enemies. So the way it's set up is that you have to fight one of each kind of enemy at point 1 and 3: skeleton guards (I just re-used my Swordsman statblock from the original Cragcliff) and gargoyles (high-move enemies with block). For points 2 and 4, there are harder optional encounters with both, so if your build works better for one or the other, then you can pursue them if you'd like. For your trouble, each of those optional encounters gates a realm item you might want for the vampire fight, as well as provides a little bit of local color: one is a monster hunter's remains, another is a well-hidden holy symbol in a profaned chapel. Not exactly ground-breaking aesthetically, of course. The big trick is that you have no healing other than spending an action to do it. There are 4 FIGHTs and 2 SEARCHes, so that puts you at 6/8 on the clock if you gathered everything, meaning you have a budget of 2 Harm if you want to encounter the boss at max Health and not be at True Night.

When you fight the vampire, based on which items you got and whether or not it's True Night, a few things change:

  • The Hunter's Potion turns his Drain (all of his moves have Drain) into Harm. (Potions that make your blood toxic are cool and I love seeing them every time they pop up.)
  • The Sanctified Symbol makes him unable to enter to Same with you, making it way easier to step back from attacks. (He can still attack at Same if you enter his range though. The vampire trope of not being able to enter somewhere uninvited is honestly underused.)
  • If it reaches True Night, he regens 1 Health/round and rolls 2d6 on his turn, taking the highest Harm in range.

So you have to really think about your priorities. I chose to grab both and risk entering at 4/5 Health and it absolutely could have gone another way otherwise.

For your trouble, you get a consumable that lets you use an extra Rune during one fight.

  • Weapons:
    • Gleamwood's Maul (Abrus Island)
    • Lance of Light (Castle Blanchard)
    • Radiant Heater (Cragcliff Reformatory)
  • Gear:
    • Graven Shackles (The Cracks Betwixt)
    • Raynard's Resistance (Abrus Island)
  • Runes:
    • E: Tide Run (Coral Rock)
    • E: Osteomancer's Rune (World's Grave)
    • E: Rune of Control (Castle Blanchard)
    • Fate's Foe
    • Silvertongue Rune (Cragcliff Reformatory)
    • Devouring Rune (Bulwark Hollow)
    • Obran Express Medal (Obran Express)
    • Obsidian Arm (Obsidian Brink)
    • Fate's Hunter (Great Serpent Tree replacement)
    • Grinea's Stasis (Abrus Island)
    • False Rune (Dread Manse)

Next time, Giernan, the Scorched City!

(Read the original on cohost here!)