Haunted Manor Free 40×30 Multi-Level Battlemap & Adventure

The Haunting of Bellview Manor

While eating dinner at a tavern in a small town, two distressed parents burst in through the doors. Quickly scanning the room, they set eyes on you and approach. The woman explains in a hurried voice that her two teenage sons entered an abandoned manor known by the village to be haunted on a friend’s dare earlier in the day, and they haven’t come back. They’ll pay you to go get them, but you must leave soon lest something terrible happen!

They give you instructions for how to get there and urge you to hurry. Should you go, the manor is a short hike from the town on a nearby hill. As you get closer the road degrades visibly and becomes overgrown with tall weeds. When you finally lay eyes on the manor however, there are lights shining from the windows.

Knocking on the door, it’s opened by a friendly butler. Should you mention that you thought the mansion was abandoned, the butler’s face falls, and he explains sadly that they have had to cut many of the staff so the building has come into disrepair, but it is very much still in use. He gestures to the cobwebs in the rest of the entry room, saying that he can understand why some people might describe it as abandoned.

If you ask after the missing boys, he shakes his head, saying they haven’t had any visitors, but he’d be more than happy to help you check the grounds for them in case they are fooling around somewhere. But first, he invites you to come inside and dine with Lord Aldenbracht, as his Lord has just sat down for dinner and there is enough to share. It would be a shame to dine alone as they haven’t had company in a long time, due to the rather unfortunate state of the manor.

Should you agree, the butler leads you inside and through a large, dusty foyer. As you approach the dining room you hear loud noises, as if someone moaning in pleasure, paired with sounds of eating. Ushering you into the dining room, you see a long table laden with a feast, and at the end sits presumably Lord Aldenbracht; a morbidly obese man eating with the rush of one starving, gravy dribbling down his chin as he chomps through pork pies and roasts.

The butler introduces you, and the Lord simply acknowledges your presence with a nod, before gesturing at the food in an invitation to partake. Sitting at the table, should you try the food, it’s incredibly delicious; like nothing you’ve ever eaten before, and all other food pales in comparison. You feel compelled to eat far beyond fullness, to the point of pain, and even then you can’t seem to stop.

Mid-way through the meal, with Lord Aldenbracht eating a seemingly inhuman amount, the butler returns and whispers something in his ear. Both excuse themselves, Aldenbracht wiping his greasy chin with a linen before removing his considerable paunch. He has a sickly, rattling breath as he leaves the room.

Having finished your food and after waiting what seems like a long time, there is still no sign of the Lord or his butler. Feeling a little sick from all the decadent food, you begin exploring the mansion.

If you look in the kitchen, you find the remains of a human body lying on the butcher’s block. The body is scarred, like that of a warrior, and smells too old to have been the missing teenagers. Nearby are spices, some of which have already been rubbed into slices of meat taken from the torso. There is no sign of a cook, however.

Further in are abandoned servant sleeping quarters which look like they haven’t been used for a very long time. There is also a small storage room that smells strongly of different spices, and something repugnant like decay. Should you open any of the crates, hordes of rats will pour out, leaving behind small, empty vials and jars that appear to have once held herbs and spices, tonics, or essential oils, but dried up long ago.

There’s also a secret alchemical room. Inside it are mixing containers and powders, as well as notes detailing how to “pacify animals strong enough to fight back”, thus making them willing sacrifices. Should anyone try any of the powders, they all taste slightly different (peppermint and apple, another of cinnamon, honey and ginger, one tastes of liquorice and the last of savory spiced roast pork), but all are delicious and intoxicating, making the imbiber lightheaded, giggly for no reason, rather slow of wit and willing to agree to almost anything.

Exploring more around the kitchen, you find an office. There’s a ledger book detailing decadent food expenses, as well as an opened letter sent by a man looking for his missing brother, who disappeared on a business trip and was last rumored to have visited this manor. It asks if the Lord perhaps knows what happened to him? Did he grow ill, or move onwards? Which direction did he head? He must know the fate of his brother so that he can finally rest and say goodbye in his heart.

There is also a secret servant quarters, which are long abandoned, as well as a hidden room with shackles and a stretching-rack. The timber of the rack is bloodstained and scratched deeply, with a few human fingernails stuck deep in the wood.

Moving onwards and heading back through the foyer, you find a long-abandoned washroom. It has a steaming bathtub, full of warm blood.

Further down the corridor is a strange worshiping room with pews. At its head is a statue of a flayed man pinned to a cross, his face and body contorted in extreme ecstasy. Looking at it, you feel drawn in, and as if something is compelling you to drop to your knees and worship the terrible visage. It is hard to search the rest of the room due to the allure of the statue, but should you read any of the scrolls, you learn that His name is Syealoss, and that he yearns for flesh sacrifices. The scroll details how to prepare and celebrate the highest offering–a young innocent. You can’t forget the horror you learn, and feel something dark and unsettling shroud your soul as a result.

Opposite the small temple room is a gentleman’s room, with a map inside it. Should you look, it leads to a place labeled “Underground Ruins of Halbrak Village”, with a question mark next to it. Next to it is a letter from someone named Lord August, suggesting that great power can be claimed by the worthy, should they be bold enough to take it.

The next floor up is in equal disrepair, with abandoned cobweb-strewn bedrooms for nobles and servants alike, though the rooms with hearths all have crackling fires lit. The air rushing through the chimneys creates an eerie, howling sound throughout the manse.

One of the sumptuous bedrooms has a squeaky timber under the rug, and should you fold it back and lift up the loose timber, you find the remains of a human skull.

Should you visit the library, within you find The Crimson Cookbook. It details hundreds of decadent recipes, but they only include human flesh as the meat. If you read it to the end, afterwards, when you look at people, sometimes you’ll find yourself wondering what they would taste like if cooked as one of the recipes.

There is still no sign of the butler or Lord Aldenbracht. There is another storage room, which reeks strongly of death and decay. Should you open any of the crates or barrels, they are filled with dry, crusty blood soaked clothes and shoes, as well as some low-value personal affects, including toys.

Lastly, there is a room where eerie purple light filters below the door. Should you enter it, you see four inhuman skulls with glowing eyes in each corner of the room, a blood-splattered floor with a sinister sigil burned into it, as well as a table with seats and a shining orb on it.

Should you look into the orb, you’re suddenly transported in your mind to a dark void where a disembodied voice talks to you. You can’t remember exactly what was said, but when you return to yourself you find the orb cracked.

Afterwards, normal food doesn’t taste the same. It all tastes off somehow. And now, in its place, human flesh smells and looks delicious. When you sleep, you have vivid, tempting dreams of eating it.

Once the orb cracks the visage of the manor suddenly disappears and the manor takes it’s true form as ruins all around you, the eyes of the skulls are no longer glowing but the orb on the table remains cracked. You can hear loud banging and calling from a hidden room attached to the room you’re now in, where a roof has partially fallen in and collapsed. Should you clear some of the rubble, the two teen boys cry with relief and thank you, saying they were exploring the ruined manor on a dare when the ceiling collapsed, trapping them inside.

If you ask them about Lord Aldenbracht or the butler, or otherwise mention anything that happened to you, they give you odd looks and explain that Bellview Manor has been a ruin for over 100 years. It is said their ancestors rose up against the Lord for some reason, locking everyone inside and burning them alive.

There is a sarcophagus inside the room the boys were trapped in. Should you look inside, you find the remains of a creature that looks like it might once have been a woman, with long gray hair attached to the skull. However, all the limbs are slightly too long, the proportions aren’t quite right, and she doesn’t seem quite human. Her hands are clasped around some kind of amulet on a chain, and if you move them to see it, you find a small version of the flayed, ecstatic man.

Once you set eyes on the symbol, you feel drawn to take it, and hold it covetously close around your neck and under your shirt, where it will whisper to you…

GM’s Notes:

Only the first player to look at the orb is transported to the other place, and it happens so quickly that none of the other players should notice their mental absence. To everyone else, the orb should just seem to crack as soon as they walk into the room.

What’s really happening in this manor is that Lord Aldenbracht and his family, and servants, were involved in some sort of sinister, cannibalism cult roughly 100 years ago. While they started snatching travelers and poor locals discreetly, soon they grew brazen about it and eventually it grew so bad that the peasants devised a plan to rise up and kill the evil growing in the manor, as well as gain retribution for their loved ones.

As a result, the manor has in fact been in ruins for almost 100 years, and even though exactly what happened here has been long forgotten, the peasants still do not go there, for almost no-one comes back. The two boys only went there on a dare by a friend, and when they didn’t return, their terrified friend ran to confess to their parents what they did, which sent their parents off to get help at the tavern.

What your players experience is a haunting, an echo of the great evil that occurred here. It’s been lingering over this place, haunting it for the last century, but as time goes on the haunting has grown weaker. Sometimes the manse is as the players experienced it, sometimes it’s just ruins. The two boys were lucky to find it only as ruins. But, now that the orb has been broken, the haunting of the building has ended–but perhaps it has transferred something sinister onto the player who looked into it.

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