An absentee “lord” maintains furnished chambers, a garrison’s worth of supplies, a Logos warp circle, and a caged unkillable creature in a ruin above Halwa. The party kicked the hornet’s nest and ran.
The Question
Who is the lord of Kraus’s Folly, what is the warp circle for, and what is he doing to the people he catches?
Answered (S5) — Madeline’s Testimony
The creature in the dungeon is Madeline Foussard, a knight-confessor of the Order of the Phoenix, restored to her right mind by Sister Alasia and now talking. From her:
- The lord exists and she has fought him. Tall, sandy blond hair, likely Averoigne, and the best warrior she has ever seen — she was overwhelmed and captured. Still unnamed.
- Why she was there: she was hunting Constanza Bethlen, a fugitive she had tried for witchcraft in Averoigne, and traced a rumour of her to the Folly.
- He held her about six years — by her count; the GM dates the capture to ~Spring 1732, so nearer seven — and performed a ritual on her — framed as a test of faith — that drained her blood and fed her new blood. She now hungers only for blood, is faster and stronger, is hurt by fire but barely by lightning or steel, regenerates, and struggles to control herself. She wants to die and cannot.
- The message she wanted delivered: that Constanza Bethlen has some relationship to the man who captured her. Its nature is unknown — that it exists is the point.
- Madeline is loose in Halwa killing gang leaders (the worst-reputation ones, across multiple clans) and intends to keep hunting Constanza. Contact runs through Sister Alasia.
So: the “creature” was a prisoner and an experiment, not a guard dog — and the black-haired noblewoman’s comb in the lord’s chamber now has a candidate owner.
What We Know (S4)
The lord
- Never seen — not even by his own servant Lindse, who has kept his rooms for several months.
- Bought Lindse from a western village family; she arrived hooded and can’t explain the journey’s end — consistent with transport via the warp circle.
- His chambers are furnished in Morschatti or Averoign style. Wardrobe suggests a quite tall man; a noble lady’s accouterments were also present — average-to-petite, with a comb holding strands of black hair.
- Provisioning: long-term food and everyday supplies for a garrison — far more than the one-or-two people Ari thinks are being cooked for.
The circle
- Behind the harder of the locked doors: a magic circle — strong, neither evil nor good, Warp sphere, Logos magic, runes in Celestial. A scholar’s teleportation apparatus, not a hedge-wizard’s.
The creature
- In a hidden dungeon below a storeroom: an emaciated creature with wisps of blonde hair, muttering what Ari identified as a prayer to the Maker (possibly in Langue de Terre).
- Haroun’s detection through the door: moderate evil — yet they “‘think’ they believe in the Maker.”
- Initially seemed to want to die; the party reluctantly agreed to smite her — over Haroun’s preference to withdraw and report to the Eastern Church, and Gnaeus’s preference to leave a note for the lord — but she healed too quickly to kill. Then she stopped trying to die, moved fast, and started beating down doors to reach them. The party barely escaped with Lindse. (Hence the session title: Haroun conspicuously not saying “I told you so.“)
- A wisp of smoke was visible over the Folly from the ship — before the party ever went up.
The Circle Has a Name for It, and a Candidate Builder (S6)
Ismad: the teleportation circle is a huge deal, and almost certainly a manifestation of Ritual Magic — which comes in two flavors, Divine and Logos, and has no sorcerous version. See Magic and Casting Traditions. The party already knew the circle was Logos, Warp sphere, strong, and runed in Celestial (S4); it now has a category for it.
A name, and only a name: Amalricht von-Haup — court magician and tutor to House Bethlen until their massacre in 1720, then in the service of Matthias Melnich, Constanza Bethlen’s guardian. Reported dead ~1736.
This is speculation, and thinner than it first looked
Uncle and Ismad only speculate that von-Haup might have been capable of a warp-circle ritual. Nothing confirms it. (GM) Nothing places him at the Folly; nothing establishes he ever built a circle. He is who two intelligence men named when asked who could even do such a thing. The builder of that circle remains completely unknown.
Theory: The Folly is downstream of the Melnich household — unsupported
The shape: von-Haup taught the Bethlens, survived their extermination, and went to work for the prince who secretly held the surviving Bethlen. If he built the circle, the Folly connects to Constanza’s captors rather than to a stranger who happened to catch her, and the swordsman is Melnich’s instrument or his successor’s. But the “if” is doing all the work and it has nothing under it — Uncle and Ismad were speculating, and the GM says nothing confirms von-Haup could perform such a ritual at all. Recorded because the shape is worth remembering if a real link ever turns up. Not a lead.
Speculation: the theology, not the swordsmanship
The lord is a fighter — “the best warrior she has ever seen.” But the operation at the Folly is scholarly: a Celestial-runed Logos ritual circle, and a blood ritual framed as a test of faith. Someone taught it that. Note that Benedicto Malipiero — now known to be the Most Holy’s condemned younger brother — had mastered both the divine and the logos arts, which is precisely the pair Ritual Magic comes in, and was convicted of dealing with the infernal around 1710. He was officially executed — and Uncle and Ismad doubt it (GM). Nothing links him to the Folly. It is worth writing down that nothing rules him out either.
Theories
Theory: A western noble's covert eastern foothold
Morschatti/Averoign furnishings, a western servant, garrison provisioning, and a teleport circle: someone is staging a private operation across the Circle Sea — positioned above Halwa, the city nearest sanctum #1. The scale of supplies suggests they plan to bring more people through.
RESOLVED (S5): "The creature is a corrupted Blessed"
Close. She is a Phoenix knight-confessor subjected to a blood ritual over six years of captivity — prisoner and experiment. The prayer, the moderate evil, the regeneration and the death-wish all belong to Madeline Foussard, not to a monster. See her page.
Theory: The lord is making things, and Madeline was one attempt
Blood drained, blood given, six years of it, on a captive who arrived by accident. That is not a punishment, it is a procedure. A garrison’s worth of provisions and a teleport circle capable of moving people blind suggests he intends to run it more than once — and Madeline is the version that got out. What is he doing it for?
KILLED (GM): "The lord inherited the Owl's work"
The dates now run the other way. He captured Madeline at the Folly in Spring 1732; the Owl expedition Mamud guided to the Sanctum of Sethariel was Summer 1733, and the Owl/Eagle fight in Halwa was Fall 1734. He was in place, provisioned, and taking prisoners fifteen months before the Owl ever reached the sanctum. He did not inherit their work — if anything, he was waiting for them.
Theory: He was there for the sanctum first — revised
A tall Averoigne swordsman with a Celestial-runed Logos warp circle, garrison provisioning, and a cell, sitting above the free city nearest sanctum #1, before anyone else in this story had reached it. The Order of the Owl found the northern Averoigne sanctum in Spring 1731; he was operating outside Halwa by Spring 1732. Whoever he is, he was ahead of the Owl by a year — which raises the question of whether he learned it from Averoigne, in the year the kingdom changed hands. See The Fall of the Order of the Owl.
Next Steps
-
Report the creature to the Eastern Church— overtaken by events; she reported herself, via Sister Alasia -
Report to Achmed / Uncle— Haroun wrote up the Folly and Achmed forwarded it to Uncle (S5); debriefed in person to Ismad (S6). Uncle’s Men have informed the Eagle Knights about Madeline, who have declined so far to send anyone - Trace Amalricht von-Haup — how he died, where, when he last built anything, and whether there are other circles
- Ask Ismad who in Hazad can actually analyze a ritual circle, now that it has a name
- Gnaeus’s plan is still live: leave a note for the lord and attempt contact — now knowing he is an Averoigne swordsman who experiments on captured inquisitors
- Ask Madeline everything she saw inside the Folly — she lived there seven years; the party toured it for an afternoon
- Ask her what the Folly looked like in Spring 1732 — how established it already was, and whether the warp circle was there when she arrived
- Show Lindse a description of Constanza and of the tall blond man; she may have seen either from the tower window
- Find out what the lord wants with Constanza Bethlen — and whether she is a captive there
- Nobody has established whether the party’s raid was noticed. The circle means he can arrive at any moment, and he now has an empty cell and a missing servant