Delarosa Manor: Rooms

1. Balcony (indoor, second floor)

A balcony surrounds the first floor hall, and the doors on each side lead to serviceable bedrooms. In the center, wide doors lead to a hallway.

Lamina 1: Human-like lights form along the railings.

Lamina 2+: Panels in the hall push in and slide down, revealing glass peepholes. Beyond the peepholes, dusty with age, people are moving, dancing, fighting, and dying.

2. Balcony (northwest, second floor)

Looks out over the garden.

Lamina 1: Child playing, a dog running.

3. Balcony (southwest, second floor)

Looks out to the road.

4. Balcony (outdoor, gallery, second floor)

Lamina 1: See people on the northwest outdoor balcony.

5. Bathroom

The outhouse is outside the house, attached to the kitchen addition.

Lamina 1: They’ll hear howling of creatures outside them after another minute or so.

Lamina 2+: And then the sewage erupts. The door is stuck. They’re going to drown!

6. Bay Room (ground floor)

Circular stairs.

7. Bay Room (first floor)

Circular stairs.

8. Bay Room (second floor)

Looks at the ocean. Thin, cobwebbed stairs, circling down.

The door to Louis’s room is secret from this side as well. It slides open.

9. Bedroom 1

There are two beds in this room. Mirrors and brushes on a vanity.

Beds and chairs rise. At night they hear the sounds of hammers and saws.

The bed is haunted. Whoever sleeps there feels only the presence of a woman next to him or her. She is never visible, but the air moves as if someone were there, and the bed sheets ripple and scrunch as if someone were lying on them.

10. Bedroom 2

A man hanged himself here to avoid becoming a sacrifice. He knows Steffan’s secret, but is trapped in this room. There are two beds in this room. Mirrors and brushes on a vanity.

11. Bedroom 3

Woman looking out over the ocean.

There is one bed in this room. Mirrors and brushes on a vanity.

Mary Delarosa slept here once she left the nursery.

There is a hidden door in the closet leading to Louis’s secret room.

Lamina 1: Crane feathers like snow.

12. Bedroom (attic)

This bedroom kept visiting Night Priests from public view. It also became Parnassa’s bedroom in the months before her death, and Laurel’s as well. There is one bed in this room. Brushes on a vanity (no mirror).

Hanging on the wall next to the brushes is the soup-spoon of health.

13. Buttery

Beer, wine. The beer is bad, but the wine is good. However, on lamina 1 or higher, the wine from here will bring visions and contact with ghosts.

14. Cemetery

Through some of the windows, and through the back door, there is a porch overlooking a jagged cemetery. The cemetery is walled, and mist flows like rivulets around the cypress and stone. A tall man with a lantern walks through the cemetery. He gazes at each tombstone, reads the name, and moves on. He is looking for his daughter, who was killed here; he was killed here, too. See the list of tombstones for the names and dates of deaths.

15. Chapel

A child sleeps in a creche in the middle of the room. It is a Christ-child. The child holds a golden basin in his hands.

A large wooden crucifix is on the southwest wall, a yard tall, [capturing light from the setting sun]. Two candles in sconces flank it.

A mural covers the northwest wall. Jesus in glory, on a cloud, with Elijah and Moses next to him and the twelve apostles, six to each side, at the edges of the cloud. The Holy Ghost is at Jesus’s feet as a dove; God stands behind his throne. Above, on either side, angels blow their trumpets. Below the cloud, on a marble square overlooking the ocean, people stand and worship heaven. In the background, a lighthouse seems to rhythmically reflect the light of your [torches/lantern/sorceror/prophet].

Stairs lead up.

Written above the mural:

“Truly I tell thee, none may enter the Kingdom of God unless they are born of water and the Spirit.”

The mural is Rafael’s Disputation of the Sacrament.

The door to the washroom is secret from this end as well, although the door to the library is not. A small crucifix in the east corner pulls down to unlatch the door to the washroom.

A secret door leads under the stairs to stairs that go down to Steffan’s Den.

There is a riddle here, on a panel below the Christ-child.

There is no hell without heaven;
There is no pain without balm.
Drink, and believe in the goodness of God.

Balancing the evil of the woke chapel, the creche can heal 10 points damage once per day and once per night. Water or wine must be placed in the basin, and then drunk by the person who needs healing. When it heals someone, anyone in the chapel drops to lamina zero.

Lighting the two candles anchors this room to lamina 0.

The corners of this room are special, and spiders crawl up and down them.

Lamina 1: The dove representing the Holy Ghost is a pearl. Jesus and the apostles have become half-fish, half-men creatures sitting on a clamshell while, below them, strange plants in various stages of undulation stand in the water. In the background is a large two-horned trident-like monument. Written above the mural is:

“The veil of truth is a never-ending tune. Above each veil another lies, in the harmonic reality of death.”

The “trident” is removable; it is the tuning fork of normality and emits a solid tone that identifies normality. It will match the left-most bell in room 36 when on lamina 1.

Lamina 2+: A webbed Christ-child, where real blood seeps in tiny rivulets down the wall. This is their first child, aborted post-birth, never allowed to breathe, sacrificed with his umbilical cord attached. Like a bloated spider-child at the center of a bloody umbilical cord web. The riddle is:

Always waking, always sleeping,
Never living, never dying,
Unnamed, unborn,
Resents breath covets grief.

The holy symbol of Hetae, on lamina two. Attached to the pearl.

If divine guidance is manifested in the chapel, the advice comes from the Christ-child. Anyone in the chapel is returned to lamina 0 if not there already.

16. Closet (servants/housekeeper)

Lamina 1: Clothing.

Lamina 2+: Clothing attacks.

17. Corpse Room

An ornate obsidian table in the center of the room. Traces of blood.

Lamina 1: The flywheel ring is on the table.

Lamina 2+: The corpses of women, pregnant women, and infants.

18. Dining Hall

An ancient oak table, scratched. Ornate chairs. High stained-glass windows. Crystal chandeliers. Candelabra on the table, and dishes in a side cabinet. Cherubs on walls.

Lamina 2+: This dining hall looks exactly like the dining hall in the entrance rooms—but it is set with steaming meats of strange animals.

19. Drawing Room

Harpsichord. Many chairs. Bookshelf with sheaves of music, some handwritten by Laurel Mountjoy.

A painting of the sea, and a masted ship.

Lamina 1: The ship is in a storm.

Lamina 2+: The ship and the sea are tilted.

The tuning fork of lamination is here, on the harpsichord, but only in lamina one or higher.

20. Dressing Room (first floor)

Bowler hat of peace? Robes. Hats. Masks.

21. Gallery (first floor)

Statues; paintings of family, still lives, and landscapes. A man overlooking mists on a rocky landscape, mountains in the distance.

Lamina 1: Paintings of the dead.

Lamina 2+: Night myths.

22. Gallery (west, second floor)

An empty water basin, with a hollow-headed cherub for pouring water through. During parties, this might hold fruit or ice.

Lamina 2+: Fruit. Ice. Partiers. Should anyone eat the fruit, something strange will happen, and stranger things at higher laminae. Roll d6; if the result is greater than the current lamina, nothing happens. Otherwise:

1. The character receives a flashback to a memory of one of the ghosts. Roll on the Ghosts table on page .

2. The character receives a vision of the future, in which the house is overtaken by the insect mesh of Hetae, in a spider-web-like cracking across their consciousness.

3. The character can see and hear ghosts for d6 hours—and the ghosts can see and hear them. They’ll be able to hold conversations depending on the ghost and it’s manner. This includes the party-goers, who know rumors about Steffan, Louis, and Lauren.

4. One of the ghosts takes over the character’s body for d6 minutes. Roll on the Ghosts table on page .

5. Black blood seeps from the character’s hands and feet for d6 rounds; a health roll is required each round; if successful, they lose one survival, otherwise, they gain one injury.

6. The character gains, temporarily, the Psychic Talent specialty and the Spiritual Art field.

A secret door slides for entrance into mother’s room.

23. Gallery (east, second floor)

Statues. Toys. Dousing bird. Cuckoo clock. All rundown, but might be started.

24. Garden (southeast, marsh)

Roses. A fountain. Statues of bronze, marble, and plaster.

Lamina 1: The garden is run down, but the plants are odd. And the sky, though dark, has a faint violet tinge to the edges.

Lamina 2+: A bright moon shines down; and then a second one rises slowly above a pointed roof. Meteors streak across the sky. Statues become animals, and so forth.

Lamina 3+: Hideous insects fly overhead.

25. Garden (northeast, ocean)

Maze, overrun and tangled. At the same time makes it harder to get through but easier to solve.

26. Garden (southwest, road)

Large, overgrown rosebushes.

27. Housekeeper’s Room

Bed. Dresser. Simple clothing.

28. Hall (First Floor)

The ballroom is columned; the balcony overlooks it. People at each end can whisper and hear each other, from the first floor northwest end to the east window.

Rooms: 29. Jail

Shutters, thick; iron bars. Necklace of endurance on lamina zero, hanging on the wall.

Lamina 1: People looking out. Carving knife of last sight.

Lamina 2+: Characters are locked in. The lock turns when any characters walk into the jail.

When characters randomly arrive here, such as via an encounter roll, the house will also lock the door on any lamina.

30. Jail Access

Manacles. Record book of inductions. Notes about family of captives. If their being missed would be noticed, killed elsewhere to look like accident or goblin attack.

31. Kitchen (southeast)

The kitchen still has one or two large pots in the fire; the great chopping block is stained pink with ancient blood.

Lamina 1: The remains of the dining room food’s preparation shows what it was made from.

32. Kitchen (northwest)

Can see through fireplace to adjacent kitchen. Pots. Utensils on wall. Recently used. (By the cook who makes their meals.)

33. Laurel’s Room

Mirror. Silver brushes. Gold-inlaid brooch. Silver memento locket. Steffan’s silhouette in ivory.

Laurel Mountjoy-Delarosa slept here until she went mad and was moved to the attic room.

Her diary is hidden here, in a secret drawer in the writing desk.

Lamina 1: Laurel in a nightgown.

Lamina 2+: Laurel after sacrifice.

34. Linens

Looks out over the garden and cemetery. Towels, napkins, sheets, duvets.

Lamina 1: ghostly cloth movements.

Lamina 2+: suffocation from cloth.

35. Library

A magic orb of light, first level of effect, indestructible object +2, on the table in the middle of the room. Chairs around it. Place a hand on the globe for ten seconds to turn on or off.

1. Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Charles Dodgson

2. Magical Auras and Their Identification, Measure

3. Phantasmal Realities, Charles Dodgson

4. Residual Auras of Human Writing, Lawrence Bisson

5. Wise Words About Magical Research, Charles Dodgson

6. History of the Pre-Christians

7. Biblical Remembrances of Bishop Andros

8. Survey of Possible Geographies of the Holy Roman Empire

9. Brewing Barley and Wheet

10. Herbal Lore of the Celts

11. Plant Cycle of the Chaotic Mist

12. Spices of the Phoenix: A Catalog

There is a secret door from the library to the chapel. A bookshelf opens into the library, as a door, on pressing a latch hidden in the corner of the shelf above and behind the books.

Lamina 1: Books for the ritual, hidden among the woke version of the real library.

1. Discussing Lesser Families

2. More When Doors Mow Spun Gifts

3. The Fit May Rule

4. Lord Thew’s Family Tales

Hetae’s leg, on a bookshelf.

Lamina 2+: As the lamina increases, the books become stranger.

1. History of the Cockroach Empire

2. The Languages of the Catwomen of the Star of Lucifer

3. Philosophy of the Insect Mesh

4. Rituals of the Insect Queen Hetae

36. Louis’s Room

A mirror; a writing table; a bed. A bell hangs from a hook on the right side of the mirror.

Serious clues should be here. But remember—Louis left. Or did he? In a longer-running game you might put him in as the tall man, or perhaps even Adam Farrier.

The mirror is a secret door to the bay room. The mirror slides right.

The closet also has a hidden door in the back, for getting into Bedroom 3.

The table has a dust spot on it where the coffer resides.

I take you where you never were,
And where you always be.
Bells toll rising, Bells toll falling,
The bells now toll for thee.

Lamina 1: In lamina 1+ there is a bell to the left of the mirror also. The bells fall in pitch as the lamina rises; the left bell is always higher-pitched and leads them down one lamina. When on lamina 1, the tuning fork of normality will match the higher-pitched tone of the left bell, as that bell causes the mirror to lead to normality.

The coffer of dirt and bones is on the writing table.

Walking through the mirror without sliding it, while a bell is pealing, enters the bay room at a lamina one lower (the higher-toned bell, on the left while looking in the mirror) or one higher than the current lamina (the lower-toned bell, on the right while looking in the mirror). The lower-toned bell will not go lower than the house’s maximum lamina; the mirror cannot be walked through at zero lamina or at maximum lamina.

Rooms: 37. Marsh

Lamina 1: You see a light in the distance, and the vague shape of a building.

At the far end of the cemetery is the swamp. The swamp itself is a dangerous place, but once the house awakens the swamp’s passages always lead back to the cemetery and Delarosa Manor. They can even, watching from the cemetery, see the lights of the manor across the swamp, when the fog over the swamp thins. The house can do this to give them hope and then dash that hope when they discover they’ve crossed the swamp only to end up back at the house.

The swamp is filled with the undead skeletons and ghosts of the women and newborns dumped in it by Steffan and his minions.

Also, giant cranes. There is a 40% plus 10% per lamina chance an encounter every thirty minutes. On 1-10, the encounter is with d4 giant cranes. On an 11+, use the marsh encounters table on page , increasing the weirdness of the encounter according to the current lamina.

38. Mother’s Room

Bed. Dresser. No mirrors. Brushes, ewer, basin.

A rust-red stain in a square on the ceiling. Could it be blood? There’s a trapdoor, but it’s stuck—unless they’re in the woke room.

The secret door to the gallery is secret on both sides, and can be moved by hand, sliding it open.

Parnassa Grace Delarosa was kept here after her husband’s death.

Lamina 2+: A skeleton in a four-poster bed. In the attic is a body, and maggots fall from the ceiling if the trapdoor is opened.

39. Nursery

Crib. Rocking horse.

Lamina 1:

Frost covers the windows, letting in a cold blue light, and icicles on the windows refract blue and violet in bands against the walls. The floor is glazed with a thin layer of ice. A cougar and an owl in frosted obsidian ceramic stare at each other across the room. A rocking horse begins to rock, slowly. You hear, faintly, a sing-song, a child.

Roll a children’s nursery rhyme.

A small room with a simple crib bed. The windows overlook the marsh. The floor requires an evasion roll to accurately walk across at a normal speed. Strange reflections in the frost do not follow the characters’ movements.

Lamina 2+: Inside, several puppy skeletons of various breeds and ages. Killed with blunt blow to chest on hard surface. Of which none exist in this room. Where were they killed? Why were they kept afterward?

Ruby Delarosa and Mary Delarosa were both raised here, and their ghosts will often appear here as young children. Violet, the dog, may also appear with Ruby.

Rooms: 40. Ocean

Cold. Fog. Whitecaps.

41. Pantry (kitchen)

The pantry is almost bare, and there are dead cockroaches. If he’s feeding the characters, Adam Farrier has put up some hams, dried vegetables, root vegetables, and fresh fruit and vegetables.

42. Pantry (servants/housekeeper)

Bare.

43. Parlor

A fireplace. Over it the portrait of a furious old man, his white hair a halo around his red face, a walking stick in his hand and a large dog at his side. A wide window looking out over the mist.

Crystal chandelier. Pipes. Ashtray stands. Sofa. Plush chairs—a little worse for wear.

A sea-green mantelpiece adorned with nymphs, scrolls, and Cupids in low relief.

Pictures that are crooked at first. The pictures will change to more sinister pictures, and they will be impossible to straighten. Busts of plaster.

An organ.

Lamina 1: A cloudy human shape wrapped in a shroud appears from the waist up, slowly as a cheshire cat, in front of the fire. Anthony Delarosa? He is buried beneath the stones of the fireplace. Of course the organ plays itself.

Lamina 2+:

Flies buzz in a cyclone before the fireplace. Big, thick flies that languidly evade you as you wave them away from your nose, your eyes, and your mouths. There’s a smell here, an acrid odor, sour, far away, and a carpet on the floor woven into concentric ovals, faded in the sunlight that shines momentarily through the window, then fades as the fog once again covers the sky.

And there is, of course, a damp spot under the carpet in front of the fireplace.

Anthony Delarosa haunts this room, because it is his painting and he is buried under the hearth.

44. Passage (ground floor)

Bare walls, brick. Slightly red in your light.

45. Portico (northwest)

Marble columns on marble stairs. The door is closed, but leans slightly to the right. Above the door words are carved in faded scrollwork on the wooden lintel.

If they look closer, it will seem more as if the house leans to the left. The words on the lintel are:

Above the house, inscribed among the flowing vines—or are they spider webs?—is:

Abandon hell, ye curious who enter here,
For you we have created a new heaven on a new earth, sleeping.

Christ with John, forever denied Jordan,
Before Jordan, Before Jericho, Before Eden.

Awaken!

46. Portico (southwest)

Marble columns on marble stairs.

Looks at road. Adam Farrier will meet them here if they knock.

Lamina 1: Carriages

47. Reception Room

Adam Farrier offers to take their coats (if they have any) and offers them drinks. He will also explain when meals will be served.

48. Servants’ Bedroom 1

Lots of crosses carved into corners and out-of-the-way places.

49. Servants’ Bedroom 2

When he lived here, Matty Briskit scratched deaths dates in the wood of one of the walls.

Parnassa Grace, 868 May God Protect.

Ruby, 877 May God Protect

Laurel, 881 May God Protect

Steffan, 911. Hell take him far from here.

Mary, 952. May God Protect

Matty Briskit left here in 952, with Mary’s death. May this house sleep forever.

50. Servants’ Waiting Room

Wooden chairs. Creaking noise.

51. Steffan’s Den

Steffan Delarosa sits, dead, in the center of a magic circle, still controlling the house from the basement. Dressed in robe and scarf, like a modern university professor.

The sitting room cannot be entered by its doors. On lamina 0, they are locked but pickable. Entering Steffan’s den on lamina 0 adds one to the woke count. On lamina 1, they are unlocked, but the doors always lead to a room other than Steffan’s room. Roll randomly for which room.

Steffan’s room can be entered (1) on a random room effect; (2) breaking or walking through the walls or ceiling; (3) through the secret stairs in the secret chapel or (4) normally, on lamina 2+.

Breaking the walls will attract d6 goldwing harriers per round during the destruction, and gives the house power as normal.

In Steffan’s pocket is the golden skeleton key that opens any door in this house.

Shillings in a treasure chest.

Stephen’s body can be destroyed fairly easily; it is dead, and his undead essence is in his corpse lamp, not his body. However, destroying the body automatically raises the current and maximum lamina by 1 and increases the woke count by 1.

You hear a maniacal laugh emanating from the walls and above you.

The laugh is heard throughout all lamina, even on lamina 0.

On a piece of paper on the desk, in Steffan’s hand:

The dead behold the son,
made manifest by the illusion of life.

The sage look beyond the pearl of truth,
the sagest desire the end of lies.

The Son bears the lamination of death;
the Insect Queen speaks it within the wombs;
forever in the place of sacrifice,
the veils of the Queen obscure even death.

I beheld the Queen of Insects, ever-spinning,
going by her paths within the laminate veils;
clothing the quarters of heaven with her silken veils.

Through the sacrifice of the never-son spins
the laminations of the mind.

52. Steffan’s Room

Bed. Dressing table. Mirror. Bronze brushes. Laurel’s silhouette in ivory. Steffan slept here, and easily moved between here, the chapel, and his ground-floor den.

There is a copy of the Hetae ritual behind the mirror.

Lamina 1: The balcony looks over a mass murder of families and children.

Lamina 2+: The balcony looks on other worlds, flaming worlds and dark worlds.

53. Staircase

A marble spiral staircase on each side leads up to the second floor bedrooms and down to the ground floor.

Lamina 1: Human-like forms moving up and down the stairs

54. Storage (kitchen)

Pots, pans, cooking utensils.

55. Storage (servants/housekeeper)

Brooms, mops, whisks, buckets and baskets.

56. Storage (ground floor)

Rugs, furniture, art, and statuary.

57. Theater

Curtain. Stage. Chairs. Stained glass windows.

Lamina 1: A stage, and a play performed by gaunt actors.

Lamina 2+: Spectral insect-head ushers.

58. Theater Dressing Room

Strange costumes, even on lamina 0.

59. Washroom (first floor)

The washtub has oxfeet and a bull’s head.

Lamina 1: The tub and basin are draped in ancient, dry spiderwebs. Water seeps into them, brown—and then a gloopy red—before stopping.

There is a secret door from the washroom to the chapel. The washtub’s prow twists to unlatch a panel in the wall.

60. Washroom (second floor)

The ivory sex figurine.

Lamina 1: Mary washing Steffan’s mother in the tub.

61. Workroom

Saws, hammers, planers. Worth quite a bit, actually.