Godefroy

[The Pickled Punk]

And the House itself should be treated as a character in its own right; it has its own goals, which may not mesh with Godefroy's.

I've said before that I don't like the idea of the House being truly sentient, because it overlaps with the House of Lament too much. However, I know others don't mind it.

I prefer to see it as a "bad place" (Overlook Hotel) rather than a "genius loci" (The Haunting) - probably empathic, but not intelligent.

Hmm, maybe not a "character" in the sense of being a full fledged NPC, but it definitely seems like something was wrong with the house long before Godefroy took up residence. What about if a DM keeps the Players guessing if the weird occurrences at the House are the result of a ghost, some other spiritual malady, or are just freak occurrences? For example, a door inside the House might bang open and shut in a timed fashion, almost like Morse Code, but when the PCs come to investigate, there is an open window and a storm has blown in from the Sea of Sorrows. Or the lamps in the house turn on and off, again in a pattern. The PCs have no idea what causes it, it creates tension, but there's nothing indicating what is doing it.

[Ryan Naylor]

Here's a question. Frankie's marriage was arranged through his association with Nathan Timothy, who happily provided one of his granddaughters (through William and Evelyn) in order to extend some influence into Mordent. I'm running a side plot which has been going for some time centered around the Timothy family, since Nathan Timothy has the capacity to spread his influence across many different domains. My question is, how do you think Godefroy feels towards the Timothys? Old name, to be sure, but just uppity commoners nevertheless. To my mind, it's a foregone conclusion that Godefroy would resent any attempt at a foreign monster trying to gain a foothold in his backyard.

I agree. Old name but flea infested uppity commoners encroaching on *my* territory. Father was in trade and the son is a savage. How dare they?

[Ryan Naylor]

And the House itself should be treated as a character in its own right; it has its own goals, which may not mesh with Godefroy's.

I've said before that I don't like the idea of the House being truly sentient, because it overlaps with the House of Lament too much. However, I know others don't mind it.

I prefer to see it as a "bad place" (Overlook Hotel) rather than a "genius loci" (The Haunting) - probably empathic, but not intelligent.

Hmm, maybe not a "character" in the sense of being a full fledged NPC, but it definitely seems like something was wrong with the house long before Godefroy took up residence. What about if a DM keeps the Players guessing if the weird occurrences at the House are the result of a ghost, some other spiritual malady, or are just freak occurrences? For example, a door inside the House might bang open and shut in a timed fashion, almost like Morse Code, but when the PCs come to investigate, there is an open window and a storm has blown in from the Sea of Sorrows. Or the lamps in the house turn on and off, again in a pattern. The PCs have no idea what causes it, it creates tension, but there's nothing indicating what is doing it.

This I approve of.

[The Pickled Punk]

The story on has him receiving letters, not writing them. However, he is able to touch everything in Gryphon Manor when he wants to (perhaps it's so impregnated with ethereal resonance it seeps into the real world) so perhaps he can pick up a pen. Or he can dictate a letter to a servant, who can interact with the physical world. Or perhaps he possesses someone and write a letter from there. And this his ghosts drop it off at the stagecoach or deliver it.

It does add a whole new layer to the idea of a dead letter box though doesn't it?

One possible way to use this, is that Godefroy is essentially running a Core wide information gathering network. Some of his correspondents (like Jacqueline Renier or Dominc D'honaire) can use Godefroy to send coded messages to agents of theirs in other Domains (especially in Falkovnia); in exchange they give him juicy gossip to spread about, apprise him of "heroes" who might be headed for Mordent to exorcise the House on Gryphon Hill, and treat him like a nobleman, inflating his ego. I've already placed an "unofficial ambassador" of Richemulot in Mordentshire, hinting to some of my players that Jacqueline is interested in Mordent. This gives me an added reason for this young wererat to remain in town: she's there to flatter Godefroy, so he'll continue to aid Richemulot. Now I'm probably going to add a few Obedient in town to serve the same function. This adds even more intrigue during the day to Mordentshire, which I've already made unnerving for the PCs at night!

I heartily approve of this idea.

Thanks for the suggestions! I remember browsing through a copy of that anthology, but don't remember reading the Godefroy story. I am definitely going to implement this idea in my campaign. In addition to D'Honaire (writing through Guignol) and Jacqueline Renier (who would write to Godefroy in a way that flatters his ego, making him overlook her deficiencies as a woman who is of less refined blood), he'd definitely be in contact with Prince Othmar, Lady Kazandra and some of the other Kargat members. He might be unwittingly corresponding with The Living Brain, who is using one of his mind slaves as an intermediary. He would also correspond with less notorious individuals in various domains, perhaps placing codes in the letters for others to find.

As for the letter from his late wife, what if Godefroy finds the same letter sitting on his desk each afternoon, not realizing that someone is returning it to its envelope and resealing each day? What if he forgets about the letter each morning after being tormented all night? That way his curse of being tormented by his wife and daughter does not let up, even interrupting his grand machinations with other residents of the Core?

[Gonzoron of the FoS]

The story may mention an individual or two, but I don't have the book in front of me.

Nobody we've heard of before or since. He receives 3 letters in the story, one from a wizard named Schupert, another from Narvisek Grellar, a man with a penchant for vivisection, and a third from his dead wife, Estelle, which causes him to go into a panic.

Hmm... I'm beginning to suspect that these "letters" are somehow part of the Dark Powers toying with him...

Well, everything that happens to him is part of the Dark Powers toying with him. That doesn't mean they aren't real letters from real people. Schupert and Narvisek are just underdeveloped characters, not necessarily tricks of the Dark Powers. (We don't know every evil wizard and vivisectionist out there.)

[The Giamarga]

Try this from DeepShadow (starts on the fifth or sixth post). I was very impressed.

Seconded. Godefroy's history and present is a great thread. But check out the whole thread. Lots of good stuff there...

Also wether you like the idea of the house on Gryphon Hill or not check out the Phatasmagoria on Gryphon Hill. It has lots of discussion on Godefroy's personality and curse.

[Joël of the FoS]

Try this from DeepShadow (starts on the fifth or sixth post). I was very impressed.

Seconded. Godefroy's history and present is a great thread. But check out the whole thread. Lots of good stuff there...

Thriced.

I used that in one of my game, and it really was a blast.

Joël

[Rogold Gildenman]

He was born to trouble as the sparks fly upwards, a third son bred from an ageing aristocrat and a younger widow who had remarried beneath herself, born during the brief interregnum after one elder brother was chopped to death and before the other coughed himself into the grave.

He was born into a family noble, but remote from any centre of power and more storied than splendid - a modest family whose fortunes had sunk so low that unkind rumours regarding his paternity sprang up as gossip instead of insinuating themselves into the public consciousness through whispers, rumours giving too much credit to the old tradition that any old man pushing forty from the other side could NEVER father a living bairn, so this latest seedling of the family must perforce have been planted by some other (a gypsy, some said at the time - the very herald of hell others said later).

Wilfred Godefroy, lord from a young age, cared nothing for these rumours but never forgot them; in a way the rest of his life might just as well have been lived for the single-minded purpose of disproving them - had it been what fell out might have been more comprehensible, though neither excusable nor forgivable.

He came into his modest estate having only just come of age, his demanding and devoted and unloveable father having survived Wilfred's lady mother just long enough to pass on to his son a small but solid fortune and undying ambition - for a time it seemed that the young Lord Godefroy might even live up to his father's high expectations, darkly handsome and tempestuously passionate, a great rider and a greater master of whispers, marrying into the slightly less modest family of Weathermay after a series of minor accidents winnowed the already rather unlikely chances of his proposal being refused the hand of that houses' daughter Estelle down to nothing (after a series of minor, painful accidents but only one death).

Her dowry was the unfinished house on Gryphon Hill, little more than modest foundations and a hint of some accursed happenings, but more precious than the keystone's weight in gold to Wilfred Godefroy for it's association with his hero Renier and it's placement - from the home he would build, he might look Lord Weathermay square in the eye and never be obliged to look up to the father-in-law who had so reluctantly embraced his daughter's choice.

So the House on Gryphon Hill was built up along with it's masters power in the world, growing into a monument to his aspirations as he grew to be a shark in the local fish-pond; at their mutual peak Gryphon Hill seemed less a mansion and more a fantasy in architecture to rank with Lord Godefroy's political dream to claim first a coronet and then a crown.

But already there was a shadow on the house and on the future of it's mistress as well as it's master; his pretensions visibly sapped his modest treasury - his short-sighted deviousness rotted away his chances of advancement and his power base, invisible to all save Lord Wilfred - the weakling brother-in-law whose demise had been intended to provide the next step towards the highest power in the realm for Lord Godefroy lived long enough to breed a quiver of heirs.

Lady Estelle bore nothing but dead babies; Lord Wilfred mourned in public and raged in private - families had withered away to nothing without heirs before his day and he himself had done his best to quietly winnow out future rivals, none knew better than he how vulnerable a noble lineage was if it failed to breed a new generation of scions.

Decades passed, the fortunes of Gryphon Hill waned and the reputation of it's master grew stale; then, beyond all hope, a child! a living child! a child born to a doubting father and a shiver of unkind whispers! a daughter, whose death in childbirth might bring a noble line to an end without hope of salvation - he'd seen it happen - a daughter who looked little like her father, if she looked anything like anyone but her doting mother at all.

Darkness was already deep-rooted in Lord Wilfred's soul, bitterness had crept in, now anger followed hard on the heels of doubt and any hope of a happy family setting down roots on Gryphon Hill perished in the face of all the odds against it.

Lady Estelle loved her daughter and tried to keep loving her husband, the daughter whose name her father seldom deigned to remember learned from her beloved mother and loathed her bedevilled father, Lord Wilfred resented both and did his best to neglect them entirely while he set about breeding a horse-herd fit to recoup the fortunes he had frittered away on a series of short-term enthusiasms that had overthrown sound long-term plans like weeds in a wheat-field; his wife begged him to reconsider his ambitions, begged him to stick with his best plans, begged the husband some part of her still loved to recognise how his womenfolk needed him.

In the end all that resulted was a house where a storm was brewing; in the end all that was produced was a stallion fit to sire a mighty lineage that would win the attention of kings, that would last a thousand years and recoup the cost of Pegasus himself on behalf of his master, that might in the end be his greatest legacy; the last delight of Lord Wilfred's declining years was to ride that horse over the moors, day and night he loved to ride that horse until he nearly ruined the beast before it was ever proven in the sight of all, to the profit and salvation of Gryphon Hill, despite the desperate intercession of Lady Godefroy

In the end his wife stopped begging and ASKED him to stop; too late for him to take her sudden outburst of opinion seriously as anything but an insult, too late for him to reply with anything but a violent outburst of the passion that had once drawn Lady Godefroy to her Lord, that thundercloud which had once thrown off passionate sparks and would now rain down ruin wherever the lightning struck.

First she was stricken to the ground, then the valiant daughter who sought to rescue her mother, her fathers shame and now nothing less than his betrayer; a single stroke split her skull and the child's sire finished off her mother as that good woman made a last futile attempt to protect her offspring from a man she could only just remember having loved once.

All because of a loose horseshoe.

Their murderer killed the stallion soon after, the pride of his heart and the last chance of regenerating his lost fortunes now nothing more than a scapegoat to cover up his crime, fear of the Weathermay Family and their command of the local law mingling to overcome all sense.

In the year that was to come this last failure haunted him only a little less than the shades of his wife and daughter. He was made to understand, he was made to feel ashamed, he was driven to repent of his monstrous Sin for a time, but he was NEVER moved to redeem himself, not then and not even in the long years that followed his own suicide.

He knew he had never done the right thing but would NEVER admit to being wrong.

Not when he woke up after the last night of his life became the first day of what came after.

Not in all the years between that day and the night The Creature came to request his assistance.

Not on the night when the Mists and those Heroes came to Mordentshire nor ever after their respective work was done.

Not even on the night when Lord Godefroy was offered a last chance to save his soul and leave his daughter to the new, better life she had come into (at the cost of a soul that had been cast from the body it had called home through cruel chance and desperate experiment); for on that night Lord Wilfred made his final decision, had sealed his fate and forever tied the fortunes of Mordent to the Land of Mists - offered the chance to repent of his folly, the master of Gryphon Hill simply repeated it.

thus was Mordent doomed to Dread and Wilfred Godefroy cursed to be it's lord.

[Rogold Gildenman]

I was inspired (in part by this very thread and even more so others that I have read on this forum) to create the above in an effort to do what Master HuManBing had with The Mercenary King* and explain to some small degree why the villain in question thinks the way he does and put his wickedness in it's proper context (I do not want to JUSTIFY his behaviour, which is rather impossible unless one is either as Mad or as Self-centred as The Master of Gryphon Hill himself, but I do want to show the way his mind works).

*If I can avoid referring to him as Kingfuhrer I WILL.

With that in mind I worked out some background details, which became much easier when I began to mentally conflate Lord Godefroy with his late Majesty Henry VIII of England; the two are far from identical (I see Lord Godefroy as what Henry Tudor the Younger might have become had he been condemned to obscurity), but I felt it not unjustified to draw parallels between them.

For the record my mental image of Lord Godefroy became even more defined when I imagined him as Heathcliff from Wuthering Heights or some other suitable disgrace to the Bronte sisters who had grown so old that his physical charms can no longer cast a veil over his truly deplorable character (although I'm not sure those elements come across as strongly as the Henrican homage).

As a final note - to 'Show My Work' such as it is - I like to imagine Lord Godefroy as being just a bit horse-obsesed in life due to his connection with the Griffin as a heraldic symbol (a supernatural King of All Beasts set above such humdrum Earthly creatures as The Lion or that avian pretender the Eagle, but one noted to have an appetite for horses by the Ancients).

[The Giamarga]

A great story there. I can now see why Ryan made him a cad fighter for Pathfinder. (With your backstory a few more ranks should be shifted the ride skill though)

[Rogold Gildenman]

Thank you for your kind remark T. Glamarga!

I must confess here and now to being a complete ignoramus when it comes to stats - the best I can do is compare them to draw inferences about the character in the approved pseudo-Holmesian manner (albeit this being Ravenloft, perhaps crypto-Alanik fashion-del-Rey might be more appropriate?) , but I will say that one could excuse relatively low ranks in Ride by suggesting that while Lord Godefroy prided himself on his equestrian skills, his pride in those skills was greater than the skills themselves (or at least that this was increasingly the case as he aged).

I would like to imagine that the fact he is completely unable to ride nowadays (he spooks horses even more than he spooks people, which distresses him more than he will ever admit because he actually LOVES horses and rather more than he ever loved any Human - except perhaps his late wife, before their marriage soured).

I will close by saying that any build which describes Lord Godefroy as a CAD has my fulsome approval, because he really is an overage bounder at base, insufferable at best and intolerable at worst (or perhaps simply intolerant), although I'd describe him as more 'RAKEHELL' than simple rake.

[The Giamarga]

What rules system do you use/are you familiar with ?

[Zilfer]

This may be slightly unrelated but I've always wondered just how you say Godefroy's name....

is it

"God Free?"

"God De Free"

"God froy?"

"Goad froy"

"God de froy?"

Confusion ensues.

[Ryan Naylor]

I pronounce it "Goad-fri". Like Godfrey, with a different vowel in the first syllable.

[Zilfer]

see that's what I started thinking it was supposed to be said but i always said it 'god free'