The House of Raushof Gollenbacher

The Plot

A noble requests the party to investigate a spook house he rents in a town. They are to locate, identify, and banish the source of the odd sounds, sights, smells, or whatever. For this, they will be paid handsomely, since the noble likes the apartment's location as a perfect "incognito" kind of place.

The house with the apartment lies in a middle-class part of the town, the buildings are not very crowded, but old. The building is registered in the name of one Raushof Gollenbacher, but any attempt to find out who this person is, will fail; nobody knows. The proprietor is an old gnome called Muschfyths, who don't like people.

Muschfyths -is- Raushof. Raushof was a name he used when he bought the house years ago. He got fake ID papers from a human forger he knew at the time - the forger later died in a traffic "accident" (these things happen, you know...).

If the party checks for the names of previous renters of the building, the list will mysteriously have been destroyed in a recent fire, and Muschfyths will have a bad memory. If the investigators insist on sleeping in the apartment at night, nothing will happen - the "ghost" will only be present on nights the investigators are off the premises.

If the rental contract is checked, any lawyer type person will see, under close scrutiny, that it contains a clause denying the renter any rights of having his/her money back, and a demand of three months advance rent.

The house is FULL of secret doors. These doors lead into other rooms. Depending on the basis of the effects:

1. There is indeed a ghost, or spectre, that creates the sounds, and this ghost has been enslaved by Muschfyths, and kept on a magical jar when not needed. The other rooms of the house will contain chains of meta-steel (steel able to exist in both the ethereal and material planes), jars of iron sulphate (substitute Stinking Cloud, any AD&D'ers out there) and related "spooky"/scary things. These are applied by the ghost when trying to scare the occupants. The ghost can be banished if:
   1. Muschfyths is killed. This will free the ghost/spectre from its obligations to him.
   2. The jar is broken. The ghost no longer has a prison in this world. If Muschfyths is still alive, the ghost is still enslaved, but can not be "turned off" until Muschfyths can find another suitable prison.
   3. The ghost can be banished by a cleric of a God of The Dead or a God of Healing (in Warhammer terms, Morr or Shallya). If Muschfyths is still alive, the chance of banishing is lowered.
2. The sounds etc. are produced by mechanical devices built by Muschfyths. These devices will rely on technical knowledge far beyond the understanding of any non-gnome player, and even to gnomes, they appear strange. Treat the machinery as "traps", and feel free to include steam engines, "perpetuum mobile"s etc. to your heart's content. The characters will perceive the devices as magic unless they can detect they are not. (You might even want to make some of the devices magic...)

The devices are placed in the rooms surrounding the apartment. Muschfyths is the only person that knows how the things work. It's VERY dangerous to try and operate the devices without proper training - and if the party finds the devices, Muschfyths will have disappeared...perhaps.

Villains

Data on Muschfyths:

   Race:  Gnome
   Age:  Above middle age (for gnomes, very old for humans)
   Physical:  Not very strong, somewhat agile
   Mental:  Very bright, VERY talented in either technical areas or magic
relating to beings of a spectral nature (depending on the "source", see
above)
   Psyche: Greedy, selfish, paranoid coward.  Can be considered being of
an evil alignment.
   Abilities: Depending on the "source" (see above):
      1) Identify Ethereal Undead, Ritual: Enslave Etereal Undead,
Ritual: Imprison Ethereal Undead.
      2) (TL stands for Technology Level) Ritual: Make/Unmake Strange
Device (TL +1), Operate Device (TL +1), Identify Device (TL +0).
      Also: Weapon Use: Knives and Daggers, Hiding: Urban, Culture:
Gnome.