Obelisk House

Appearance:

The Obelisk house is a three-story tall brick house with stone elements in the facade including an ornate set of steps and arched doorway. It speaks of modest, tasteful, generational upper income. Terrasquestone is rife with these sort of homes, built together into rows and blocks. But as mentioned it is alone. There are no ruined houses or evidence of fallen-apart foundations. The house seems like a tombstone of architecture that was forced up from the ground like a ghoul hand.

Entrance/Guardian

None - the door hangs partially open, beckoning the unwary to enter.

But why??? Why would some go into this obviously creepy building of their own free will? I have two answers, weather and monsters.

A dark and stormy night would send people looking for shelter.

But monsters are where it gets interesting. What lurks outside of the Obelisk House?

Obelisk Wolf - traveling in packs, obelisk wolves were once mundane wolves but were corrupted by haint essence. The animals are not undead, but they look it. Their flesh is jet black, and they have lost a lot of visible detail and look like shadow monsters with hair growing on them. Their eyes are sunk into the skull and have been replaced by a pair of unblinking unmoving yellow pinpricks of light. The beasts will attack and kill single travelers and devour their corpses without hesitation. Larger groups are harried and flushed towards the Obelisk House, which the beasts will not enter.

Obelisk Horse - like the wolves, this was once a regular horse that was corrupted by haint essence. It now is an ultra-black near silhouette carved in the air. Its eyes burn as white stars in its black countenance. It is silent and likes to carry out ambush attacks against mounts and pack animals, and can drag a wounded mount away and begin the process of turning it into an Obelisk beast. If there are no mounts to harry, the beast will attack the largest foe with body slams, kicks, and a hideous bite where its head opens like a dinosaur's jaw. Like the wolves, it will push people to flee from it towards the house.

Obelisk Ghoul - These were once humans or humanoids who were overcome and deliberately filled with haint essence until they became the shadow ghouls bound to the house. Their skin is jet black, their eyes turned to burning points of light. They behave in a manner similar to the undead, but they retain their intelligence and some of their skills. Obelisk Ghouls can be parlayed with, given either high charisma, holy symbols, and turning effects, or binding magics. They are deeply insane, minds broken, and spirit fragmented and welded back together with haint corruption. They will act as everything else has, trying to drive victims into the house and then not pursuing them. If so bound and spoken with, they have no idea what happened to them, and alternate between confronted confusion, and slavering madness to rob, violate, and eat the speaker.

RP/Puzzle

The first floor of the Obelisk House looks like a very normal home, long abandoned and succumbing to the elements slowly. There can be evidence of other traveling groups that took shelter inside the building, mostly the sort of gear that is set down and aside when people feel comfortable and let their guard down. There are plenty of options to barricade the door and furniture that can be shoved against the lower level windows.

Once the door is closed, the first floor becomes an escape room, and there are only two directions the party can go, up or down. Up is difficult, requiring one of the players to find a key that unlocks an unobtrusive door in the kitchen, what might seem like a locked pantry. This is the servants' entrance and grants access to the upper floor through a concealed stairway.

How did the regular residents get to the second floor? This is no regular stairway?

Trap/Setback I

What's upstairs? Four bedrooms, a washroom, and each room has a wardrobe and a four-post bed. If they sleep, the party is assaulted by Haint Guardians in their sleep. This is an attack of opportunity that is a sustained grapple with a length of rope around the neck. Those who die are swallowed down into the bed. This can be prevented from happening if the wardrobe is turned and the doors are pressed against the wall. Characters are attacked when they are alone.

Into the Darkness

Going down is easier, as there is an obvious trap door in the floor, and it looks like the last group found it and even left the key in the lock. All the easier for the players to go down. The basement contains the general clutter one would expect to find, including wine racks, dried food storage in a salt room, all with a really creepy vibe.

There is another door that opens onto a flight of stairs that spiral down. This drops down into another cellar, this one larger than the one above. A sense of menace pervades the space and everyone feels watched.

There is another door, but this one opens into a downward-sloping passage cut into the earth. This leads down into catacombs, complete with wall niches full of piled bones and rotting corpses. Anyone who was slain in an upper-floor bedroom can be found here, stuffed in an alcove in a reverential fashion. Haints can be encountered here and fought, though when defeated they turn into a bird sized wisp that flutters away down the passage. The haint cannot be slain slain, but can only be disrupted where it has to flee to reform its body.

At the back of the catacomb there is another door. It opens into a massive chamber that logically should not fit into the space it occupies. There is a whirling pool of darkness in the middle, a darkly glowing light emanating from the center of it. This is where the slain haints flee to, and where the heart of the Obelisk House is, this is the core of the Obelisk Dungeon. The core pool is defended by a pair of Elder Haints, one uses shadow versions of common evocation spells, shadow fireball, shadow lightning bolt, etc. The other is a martial, and uses a longsword with great proficiency.

Reward/Climax/Twist

If the two Elder Haints are defeated, the black tide in the pool calms, and the non-fluid seems to drain out of the room. The Core is exposed and at the mercy of the players. They can destroy it, which will cause the Obelisk House/dungeon to begin a shuddering slow collapse, which will require a harried rush to escape, going back the way the players came. This will grant them a large XP bonus, and a shadow dungeon core, a valuable loot drop for making magic items. (Treat as entry #25, Superior Dungeon Soul)

If the Core is parlayed, it can teach a variety of shadow magic spells and abilities. If parlayed, the core will open an access door that allows the players to take their accumulated loot and stumble out of the back door of the Obelisk House, which will then start to collapse in on itself and then vanish. Like a mushroom, the house is just the lure/fruiting body of the dungeon core, and after taking a beating and losing essence/mana to empower the players it has to retract and go into a restorative mode.

Future Encounters

If the players leave the Obelisk Core alive, they can encounter the House again in a different place. If they enter again, the core will recognize them and the access door to the lower levels will be concealed and the key hidden. It doesn't want them to come back inside it, but cannot completely close itself off.