Ashington Manor
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This section contains canon info from officially published sources |
What remains of Ashington Manor is the burnout and rotting husk of what was once a stately manor for the Ashington family. An infamous landmark purported to be cursed and haunted in local folklore, only bandits and wild beasts will willingly dwell in its walls now. The manor's legend is well-founded, for every 17 years the Ashington Curse ensures that a mass murder will be echoed on the manor's grounds. Every iteration of the mass murder is preserved in a time shift that changes the features of the manor in a manner similar to Castle Tristenoira. Thus, Ashington Manor exists during the periods of its time shifts as a temporal distortion[1].
Ultimately, should the curse be allowed to come to full fruition, the manor will disappear entirely as it is engulfed by the Mists.
History
History Prior to the Ashington Curse
The portrait gallery of Ashington Manor depicted a transition from the kinder generations of old to the cruelty of the younger generations[2]. Elsewhere, in its library, four generations of Ashington Lords collected works of occult lore[3]. The final lord to do so, Herod Ashington, was the then current lord some eighty-five years ago. Although he was only a dabbler in black magic and not a true spellcaster, Lord Herod was particularly knowledgeable in Vistani magic thanks to his friendship with a couple of darklings[4].
A depraved and vile nobleman, Lord Herod held regular gatherings of debauchery and perversion with his fellow nobles at the manor. Sometimes unfortunate passersby were abducted as "guests" for the parties, and most of said guests lost their lives as "party favors"[4]. The Vistani girl, Rozaleen, was one such victim, kidnapped by Lord Herod's cronies Rostoff and Hanford[5].
Rozaleen's Murder and Curse[6]
Although Rozaleen's kidnappers had taken her for purposes of sexual exploitation, Lord Herod recognized her abilities as a seer and fortune teller and demanded a night's entertainment with the reading of the tarokka. Having received an earlier premonition of ill omen, Rozaleen was nonetheless forced to give the readings for Herod and his guests, all echoing surmounting doom. Doubting the truthfulness of the foreboding readings despite the anxiety of his guests, Lord Herod threatened Rozaleen with her life to provide entertaining fortune telling instead of frightening. Rozaleen warned Herod that none of them should leave the manor grounds should she not be able to. Infuriated, Herod began strangling Rozaleen in the middle of her tarokka reading. Before she died, Rozaleen transformed her warning into a curse. That night was eight and half decades ago.
On the following evening, Lord Herod and his fellows gathered again at the manor. The mood of his guests was notably less happy than they were before the previous night's end. Egged on by the evil bard Maekon, Lord Herod came to suspect his guests of harboring sympathies to the deceased Vistani girl. Consumed with rage over this perceived betrayal, Lord Herod slaughtered his guests down to the last man and woman, though his servants fled the scene. Lord Herod lost his life to the death gaze of Maekon, whom was secretly one of the Vehrteig. Unaffected by Rozaleen's curse thanks to her nature, Maekon took Rozaleen's tarokka deck and left. Said tarokka deck was a highly powerful magical item that granted Rozaleen's curse such power that the cycle of murder and betrayal would happen again, albeit with different individuals and under different circumstances, upon the manor grounds once every 17 years on the anniversary of Rozaleen's murder.
Word spread of a curse upon Ashington Manor made the locals shun it entirely for a number of years.
Subsequent Cycles[7]
Three years later, Byron Ashington-Welles came to Ashington Manor with the intent of reforming the Ashington family name. One of Hala's faithful, Ashington-Welles turned the manor into hospice in her name, the Blessed Hall of Ashington. For over a decade, Ashington-Welles and his associates serviced the needs of innumerable individuals, until the 17th anniversary of Rozaleen's death approached. Drawn by the subconscious influence of Rozaleen's tarokka deck, Maekon returned to the manor, where she found not her necessary sustenance of evil not among the dogooder hospice workers. Instead, she felt the dark nature of the hospice's guard leader, a cruel man named Gavel secretly guilty of raping and murdering one of Hala's faithful. Maekon incited Gavel to go on a killing spree, thereby ensuring the first iteration of the Ashington Manor curse.
Following this massacre, Ashington Manor's reputation as a damned location would be restored, though over the next few decades several foreigners would come to claim it only for the cycle to repeat itself. Jack Sallow, a would be reformed bandit turned innkeeper, operated the Jack and Queens inn, and Dr. Karl Ildgaard, a callous and exploitative alienist, operated the Ildgaard Asylum. Both of these murderers would see their demise as part of the cyclical outbursts of violence. In every case, Maekon was there to incite the massacres, uncaring that she was being influenced by the stolen tarokka deck so long as her own needs were fulfilled.
The breakout of violence during the Ildygard Asylum era saw the manor set ablaze and turned into a burnt husk, avoided by all save for bandits and wild beasts.
Current Conditions
In the latest and last cycle of the curse, a bandit leader named Dagger, has recently settled into the manor ruins and using it as a secret base of operations. Dagger kidnapped a giomorgo girl named Miko to force her parents into providing regular food and support for his bandits[8].
The building supernatural power of the curse has reached a zenith, to the point that space and time around the manor is coming apart at the seams. At the 85th anniversary of Rozaleen's death, Ashington Manor exists in a state of temporal flux as the mystical energies implode. The manor switches between the eras of its existence in phantom shifts akin to those of Castle Tristenoira. In the time shifts to other eras, the spirits of Lord Herod Ashington and his compatriots fuse with the guises of appropriate individuals from the other eras. Ultimately, should the curse not be broken, it will see the entire manor- and all individuals inhabiting it- be subsumed by the Mists[1].
