'Echoes Of A Distant Manor' - Actual Play Session Event

Lomar as a campaign destination hit a bit of a snag when the player's PC's turned back into Tegel Manor. But this isn't so much a problem as the problem itself presents the solution.




Last night's Tegel Manor game went weirder then normal, the house continued its journey after the players took a wrong turn and completely muffed up my plans or did they? The adventure in Tegel Manor has taken on a life of its own. Its gone from being an adventure taking direct inspiration from  classic 'The Adams Family'  television show  & Disney's original Haunted Mansion ride to something darker. They've ended up fighting turf wars through the house with giant rats & their were rat masters.


Dealing with degenerate serpent men in the tea room & having running fights with high weirdness in the solarium. Then the action returned into the dungeon below the house. Hmm I'm reminded of another classic Eighties film of mine?!

So Tegel Manor has different factions of ghosts & Lovecraftian nightmares fighting over the treasures & resources of the place. Dimensional doors last night were opening & closing, all of the while the PC's were dealing with trying to play around with the changing conditions. This isn't the first time the players have put a stick into the spoke of my campaigns. Sometimes when this happens it best to go with it & expand on the fly as needed.

So how does this effect the overall feel, placement, etc of the overall campaign? Well it really doesn't at all. The facts are that this arch actually plays into the timeline of the campaign by making Tegel Manor 'The House on The Borderland' of my campaign. That is to say that William Hope Hodgeson's 'House on The Borderland' adds in that element of perfect Hodgeson mayhem & weirdness that the campaign has taken on.


Ace Books, 1962, cover by Ed Emshwiller, the cover at depicts events of the story.

"The world was held in a savage gloom—cold and intolerable. Outside, all was quiet—quiet! From the dark room behind me, came the occasional, soft thud^[10] of falling matter—fragments of rotting stone. So time passed, and night grasped the world, wrapping it in wrappings of impenetrable blackness.
There was no night-sky, as we know it. Even the few straggling stars had vanished, conclusively. I might have been in a shuttered room, without a light; for all that I could see. Only, in the impalpableness of gloom, opposite, burnt that vast, encircling hair of dull fire. Beyond this, there was no ray in all the vastitude of night that surrounded me; save that, far in the North, that soft, mistlike glow still shone.
Silently, years moved on. What period of time passed, I shall never know. It seemed to me, waiting there, that eternities came and went, stealthily; and still I watched. I could see only the glow of the sun's edge, at times; for now, it had commenced to come and go—lighting up a while, and again becoming extinguished.
All at once, during one of these periods of life, a sudden flame cut across the night—a quick glare that lit up the dead earth, shortly; giving me a glimpse of its flat lonesomeness. The light appeared to come from the sun—shooting out from somewhere near its center, diagonally. A moment, I gazed, startled. Then the leaping flame sank, and the gloom fell again. But now it was not so dark; and the sun was belted by a thin line of vivid, white light. I stared, intently. Had a volcano broken out on the sun? Yet, I negatived the thought, as soon as formed. I felt that the light had been far too intensely white, and large, for such a cause."

On the whole the haunted house aspect has taken on a much darker tone but this plays quite heavily on the Weird Tales angles of Astonishing Swordsmen & Sorcerers of Hyperborea's second edition. More as the factions & destinations of Tegel Manor develop.