fixing plotholes, streamlining

npc/assassins.md

@@ -100,6 +100,12 @@ Sevra later gave Corren's signet to Orenn as proof the debt was finished. He mad
 - She'll share everything she knows about the cultists' activities, including safe house locations.
 - She owes the party a favour — one job, any target, with the codex in place.
 
+### Sevra in the Reckoning
+
+Xarrul's whispers aim Kael's grief at Rennt and Haddon until the nonlethal brawl becomes a real faction war. The compact prevents Xarrul itself from killing again before the Vacancy finishes, but it does not protect either faction from the other. Sevra can stop that default only if given an actionable threat: proof Xarrul killed Orenn, proof of Dace's betrayal, or proof of Thera's soul-work. Once convinced of Xarrul, she supports sealing or Ethereal destruction and helps Mags keep the cultists from rebinding it.
+
+If the party openly attacks Mags to help Xarrul, Sevra stands with Mags. If they instead produce a witnessed bargain that names everyone to be spared and Nessa to be returned, Sevra may enforce the room's neutrality and leave Mags politically isolated—but only after proof that Xarrul keeps exact promises. A frame can delay her, not fool her forever: Dace explains the faction rot but not Orenn's fiendish brand; Thera explains the missing soul but not the ethereal claw marks. A successful frame must account for both halves or arrange evidence Mags cannot test until after midnight.
+
 ### The Thing She Can't Name (DM — her arc)
 
 Sevra carries an unease she has never spoken aloud, because she has no framework for it and it feels like heresy: **Thera's kills are too clean.** Perfectly warned, perfectly sealed, and yet in the last two years the families of Thera's marks grieve *wrong* — priests who couldn't find the dead to bless them, resurrections paid for and failed, a widow who swore her husband "never crossed over." Sevra has filed each as coincidence because the alternative is unthinkable: that the guild's most honoured blade is doing something the codex has no clause against because the founders never imagined it.
@@ -165,7 +171,7 @@ Dace has been meeting an Order of Mending contact in the tavern's private room t
 The signs are on him now, hiding in plain sight behind his nerves:
 - He sleeps poorly and doesn't know why (reads as guilt).
 - At the candles, **his shadow falls a half-breath late** — DC 15 Perception if a PC watches him move near a flame.
-- True sight, *Veil Dust*, or a DC 15 Medicine/Arcana check up close reveals **a hairline seam of grey light at the base of his throat**, like a cracked glaze.
+- True sight or a DC 15 Medicine/Arcana check up close reveals **a hairline seam of grey light at the base of his throat**, like a cracked glaze.
 
 **Saving him** is possible before the mark ripens: consecration (holy water, *Consecrate*, a cleric or paladin's touch), *Remove Curse* / *Greater Restoration*, Thera's death, or — hardest — the genuine forgiveness of the grievance that named him, offered and *meant*.
 
@@ -173,7 +179,7 @@ The signs are on him now, hiding in plain sight behind his nerves:
 
 ### If Exposed
 
-Dace tries to talk his way out first (Deception +8). If that fails, he turns violent — he'll grab the nearest person as a hostage (likely Vetch or Bren) and demand safe passage. If that fails, he fights. He's dangerous but not suicidal — at half HP, he surrenders.
+Dace tries to talk his way out first (Deception +8). If that fails, he turns violent — he'll grab the nearest person as a hostage (likely Bren or an isolated PC) and demand safe passage. If that fails, he fights. He's dangerous but not suicidal — at half HP, he surrenders.
 
 Sevra's reaction to proof: cold fury. She won't kill him in the bar (the rules still matter to her, even now), but she will restrain him and promise that guild justice will follow. This is worse than a quick death and everyone knows it — **and it is, unknowingly, exactly what Thera wanted: Dace neutralised without a single question asked about *why* she wanted him gone.**
 
@@ -274,7 +280,7 @@ Thera carries at least one **soulcoin** — the physical proof the whole subplot
 > A coin the size of a crown, warm to the touch though it's touched nothing warm. It has a face stamped on neither side — just a worn blankness that your eye keeps trying to resolve into features and failing. Held to the ear in a quiet room, it *whispers*, in a voice folded very small. Held longer, you get the unbearable sense it is not whispering. It is *listening*.
 
 - **What it is:** a person, minted. Not destroyed — folded, cold, and (while the coin holds charge) *recoverable*.
-- **Detection:** Mags smells the necrotic residue instantly and goes grey; a cleric or paladin *feels* the trapped soul; *Veil Dust* or true sight shows it glowing wrong; DC 15 Arcana reads it as necrotic with a personal, fingerprint-like signature.
+- **Detection:** Mags smells the necrotic residue instantly and goes grey; a cleric or paladin *feels* the trapped soul; true sight shows it glowing wrong; DC 15 Arcana reads it as necrotic with a personal, fingerprint-like signature.
 - **Warmth dates the kill:** soulcoins cool over a season. A warm coin is a *recent* kill — and can be matched to a recent sealed contract on the guild's rolls, tying Thera to a specific death.
 
 ### Stat Block
@@ -317,7 +323,7 @@ Thera carries at least one **soulcoin** — the physical proof the whole subplot
 
 ### Soulcoin Surge (the escape / the foreshadow)
 
-The first time Thera is reduced to 0 HP, if she still carries a charged soulcoin, she does not die. With a whispered word the coin in her pocket **cracks and spends a life in place of hers**: she drops instead to 1 HP, becomes briefly half-real (misty, silent), and takes the Disengage and Dash actions as a free move, slipping toward the nearest exit or the thin point in the cellar. She leaves behind a **cracked, cooling coin** — the party's first physical proof of what she is, whether or not they ever catch her.
+The first time Thera is reduced to 0 HP, if she still carries a charged soulcoin, she does not die. With a whispered word the coin in her pocket **cracks and spends a life in place of hers**: she drops instead to 1 HP, becomes briefly half-real (misty, silent), and takes the Disengage and Dash actions as a free move, slipping toward the nearest exit or, if she knows the route, the tear in the Deep Cellar's Old Work. She leaves behind a **cracked, cooling coin** — the party's first physical proof of what she is, whether or not they ever catch her.
 
 *Use this to keep her from dying anticlimactically to a lucky crit, and to leave the players holding evidence even if she gets away. A blade of the rot is hard to kill for good — that's the point.*
 

npc/bren.md

@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ Skein feeds on Bren's mind — his memories, his personality, his will. Over the
 
 Before possession, Bren was a scholar—Haddon's finest planar-theory student. He was curious, gentle, and too trusting. Haddon brought promising students to the Nether Inn's small collection of salvaged summoner books; Bren sat at the Order's table years before Dalla, Rennt, or Essek joined, corrected Haddon's calculations politely in the margins, and was one of the few people Mags allowed behind the bar to make tea.
 
-Seven years ago Haddon sent him to observe another thin point. Officially it was routine fieldwork; in truth, Vyre had deliberately weakened the boundary and wanted live data. Skein attached itself to Bren there. The Order studied the possession instead of curing it, then classified the experiment as lost when Bren deteriorated and escaped. Haddon let it happen.
+Seven years ago Haddon sent him to observe the still-sealed tear in the Old Work beneath the Nether Inn. Officially it was routine fieldwork; in truth, Vyre wanted live data from this thin point. Skein attached itself to Bren there. The Order studied the possession instead of curing it, then classified the experiment as lost when Bren deteriorated and escaped. Haddon let it happen.
 
 Bren wandered for years. A few months ago Orenn recognized him outside the tavern—not by his ruined face, but because he was muttering one of Haddon's old cataloguing sequences. Orenn brought him inside and began quietly investigating what the Order had done. Haddon has recognized Bren on every subsequent visit and pretended not to. During lucid moments Bren calls him **Professor**.
 
@@ -110,7 +110,7 @@ He witnessed Orenn's murder from his corner. He saw something no one else could
 See [The Possession](../storylines/possession.md) for full details. Summary:
 
 1. **Identify the problem:** DC 14 Arcana while examining Bren detects something attached to him on another plane.
-2. **See Skein:** Requires Veil Dust, See Invisibility, or similar. In the Ethereal Plane, Skein is visible — a knotted spider-thing with tendrils in Bren's skull.
+2. **See Skein:** *See Invisibility* reveals it directly; Orenn's silver mirror provides the same sight within its reflection. In the Ethereal Plane, Skein is plainly visible — a knotted spider-thing with six tendrils in Bren's skull.
 3. **Weaken Skein:** Silvervein root, Protection from Evil and Good, or damaging Skein on the Ethereal Plane.
 4. **Remove Skein:** Requires direct action on the Ethereal Plane — either killing Skein or severing its tendrils from Bren. Killing Skein is permanent. Severing is temporary (it reattaches in 1d4 hours).
 5. **After removal:** Bren is free but damaged. His Wisdom doesn't fully recover (it rises to 10, not 16). He's lucid but fragile, confused, and will need months of care. He remembers everything — seven years of captivity in his own mind. He's grateful but broken.

npc/cultists.md

@@ -77,6 +77,10 @@ Haddon used to teach the same principle in different words: **the living weight
 
 Mags calls him **Professor** when she wants to hurt him, because that is what Bren calls him in lucid moments. She does not permit Haddon behind the bar, near Bren unsupervised, or into the cellar. Orenn was the only person who interrupted before she pushed harder. After the murder, Haddon may instinctively look toward Orenn's place when she confronts him and find it empty.
 
+Haddon knows the original summoners' containment extended below the upper cellar and can recognize a vessel-working or alarm moving in that direction. He has never seen the later cells, Vault, laboratory, Guest or Twinkle. Those belong to Orenn and Mags's private operation, built after the cleanup. When a Hollowing victim disappears, his warning is arcane inference—not proof that he knows what Mags kept below.
+
+Haddon's padded ritual case contains **one vial of Oil of Etherealness**, issued for observing or contacting Xarrul if the command binding failed at close range. This is a **reserve beyond the three field doses**. Applying it takes 10 minutes, so it is preparation rather than a reactive defense. Haddon hides the vial with the rest of the Order's involvement and surrenders it only as part of a credible plan to rebind or destroy Xarrul, after Essek turns him, or by force.
+
 ### What He Knows
 
 **Will share as "scholarly cooperation":**
@@ -89,7 +93,7 @@ Mags calls him **Professor** when she wants to hurt him, because that is what Br
 - That Xarrul was sent into the House archive to steal the Severance Nail and falsify the custodians' memories—not to assassinate Sevra.
 - That new commands have received no response since the House's Final Closure activated. The ritual still registers Xarrul and its stored energy, so Haddon insists the command binding is merely suffering "interference." He strongly suspects otherwise.
 - That The Opening is more than theory. That there's a timeline, a plan, and tonight was supposed to be a field test.
-- That the thin point in the cellar is on Mother Vyre's list of potential Opening sites.
+- That the thin point—the tear in the Deep Cellar's Old Work—is on Mother Vyre's list of potential Opening sites.
 - That Vyre's E–III experiment diverted Nessa into the Border Ethereal, and that the Order deliberately postponed a possible reintegration.
 - That Dalla is not merely a blood donor: she is the maternal conduit through which the Order drains Nessa's trapped vitality.
 
@@ -136,7 +140,7 @@ Dalla is the emotional core of the cultist group — but she is **loyal to the O
 - Single-minded about her child. Every conversation orbits back to Nessa.
 - Loyal to the Order and to Mother Vyre. She believes the summoning failure is a setback, not a sign that something is fundamentally wrong. Haddon tells her the binding can be fixed, and she believes him — she *needs* to believe him.
 - Will defend the Order against accusations. "You don't understand what we're trying to do. We're trying to *heal* the world."
-- The monthly blood sacrifice has left her physically weakened. She bruises easily, gets dizzy, and sometimes her hands shake (not unlike Vetch, for different reasons).
+- The monthly blood sacrifice has left her physically weakened. She bruises easily, gets dizzy, and sometimes her hands shake.
 - She will talk about Nessa with anyone who shows genuine interest, but she frames it within the Order's worldview: the separated planes are what's hurting her daughter, and The Opening is the cure.
 
 ### Dalla's Three States
@@ -168,7 +172,7 @@ Dalla learns that Vyre's experiment caused Nessa's condition and that reintegrat
 - When the Final Closure activated she felt a cord pull free inside her chest. Because some connection remains through Nessa's energy, Haddon convinced her the binding had merely settled at a distance. She does not know Xarrul is free.
 - That Mother Vyre has a "Phase Two" and Haddon is already planning the next summoning.
 - Where the cult's safehouse is (outside the tavern, but useful for after the session).
-- Everything she knows about the binding mechanics and blood schedule. She cannot derive the dual-plane kill herself, but her blood records let Essek or a PC arcanist trace the energy path back toward Nessa.
+- Everything she knows about the binding mechanics and blood schedule. She cannot derive Xarrul's Ethereal mortality herself, but her blood records let Essek or a PC arcanist trace the energy path back toward Nessa.
 
 ### The Rebinding (Cultist Solution)
 
@@ -176,7 +180,12 @@ Haddon's plan — and Dalla's hope while she's loyal — is to **recapture and r
 - Requires a complete set of binding components (the [Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory) contains one old summoner's coffer)
 - Requires Dalla's blood again (she'll give it without hesitation)
 - Requires the binding circle in the cellar (the summoners' circle could be repurposed — DC 16 Arcana to adapt it)
-- Haddon leads the ritual. Rennt assists.
+- Requires two readers to use the coffer's [Litany of the Averted Step](../prints/litanie-odvraceneho-kroku.md) while the party forces Xarrul into the circle
+- Haddon, Dalla and Rennt maintain three separate stations during the final three knots
+
+The litany is the capture tool. Two readers hold its shifting leaves and chant; Material Xarrul cannot willingly move closer to either reader, so separated readers can stand behind it and create a narrowing wedge toward the circle. A third character must still shove it, grapple it or forgo melee damage to drive it 5 feet at a time. The litany does not prevent Ethereal Jaunt. *Private Sanctum*, Veilhook Salt or another planar anchor is still necessary.
+
+Once the circle accepts Xarrul, Haddon maintains the true name, Dalla maintains the blood response and Rennt closes the command knots. Three active stations advance; two stall; one loses progress; none collapses the ritual. A broken station deals 2d6 psychic damage to each other active ritualist and can cascade. Xarrul cannot claw its way out of the adapted circle, so it bargains: it attacks Dalla with Nessa, Haddon with Bren and his abandoned maxim, and Rennt with Haddon's concealed certainty that control was already lost. PCs sustain the ritual socially and medically or take over a failing station. Full rules: [The Rebinding](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-b-the-rebinding).
 
 **If the rebinding succeeds:** Xarrul is bound again. The cult has its weapon back. Dalla's connection to the binding is restored — which means Nessa's condition might stabilize (stop getting worse) but won't improve. Her body remains suspended. Dalla tells herself this is progress. The cult continues toward Phase Two.
 
@@ -184,7 +193,7 @@ Haddon's plan — and Dalla's hope while she's loyal — is to **recapture and r
 
 ### The Competing Cures (Requires Truth)
 
-See [The Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md). The dual-plane kill — synchronized destruction in both the Material and Ethereal planes — releases the stolen vitality used to bind Xarrul. Since Dalla's blood was the conduit, the energy should snap back along the same path: to Dalla, and through her, to Nessa. Essek believes it will pull Nessa home. No one can guarantee the violent recoil will not damage her silver cord.
+See [The Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md). Destroying Xarrul in its native Ethereal Plane releases the stolen vitality used to bind it. Since Dalla's blood was the conduit, the energy should snap back along the same path: to Dalla, and through her, to Nessa. Material and Ethereal attackers are needed only to keep Xarrul from dodging the pursuit by shifting planes. Essek believes the recoil will pull Nessa home. No one can guarantee it will not damage her silver cord.
 
 Xarrul offers a second cure: once the all-plane lockdown ends and it can leave the inn, it knows where Nessa is caught and can unwind the scar directly. It promises to bring her home if the party helps it cross. Dalla favors this route after the notes surface—not because she mistakes Xarrul for good, but because it has demonstrated that it knows Nessa's binding and tells the truth.
 
@@ -249,9 +258,15 @@ Rennt is the most dangerous kind of extremist: one who's right about the problem
 
 A few rounds into the brawl, pressed by the assassins piling onto him, **Rennt casts *Thunderwave*** — a legitimate defensive knockback. It also snuffs every candle in the hall at once, and in that sudden dark [Xarrul](xarrul.md) kills Orenn behind the bar. Rennt has no idea he provided the cover; he'll deny the cult had anything to do with the murder, and he's *telling the truth* — which makes the cult look damning and be innocent. See **[Murder Mystery — Act 2](../storylines/murder-mystery.md#act-2--the-spark)**. If a PC later accuses him of blacking the room out on purpose, his baffled fury is genuine.
 
-### If the Dual-Plane Kill Is Proposed
+### If Ethereal Destruction Is Proposed
 
-Rennt is **violently opposed**. Destroying Xarrul would waste Dalla's sacrifice, erase Phase One's living proof, and betray Mother Vyre's work merely because a fiend offered a convenient truth. „Osm měsíců krvácela, a teď chcete výsledek spálit, protože vás ta zbraň vyděsila? Spoutejte ji. Dokončete, co jsme začali.” He will sabotage the dual-plane ritual or attack whoever moves to complete the kill. The fact that it would create a momentary planar tear does not tempt him; only Vyre has the right to perform the Opening, at the proper scale and under control.
+Rennt is **violently opposed**. Destroying Xarrul would waste Dalla's sacrifice, erase Phase One's living proof, and betray Mother Vyre's work merely because a fiend offered a convenient truth. „Osm měsíců krvácela, a teď chcete výsledek spálit, protože vás ta zbraň vyděsila? Spoutejte ji. Dokončete, co jsme začali.” He will attack the Ethereal hunter, ruin their means of crossing or sabotage whoever moves to complete the kill.
+
+### Cultists in the Endgame
+
+Xarrul's whispers are meant to turn the upstairs tension into faction war before midnight. Its compact with the Guest prevents Xarrul from killing anyone after Orenn until the exchange finishes, but does not protect cultists and assassins from one another. Haddon and Rennt try to rebind it; Essek favors permanent destruction; Dalla moves from rebinding to opposition once the conduit evidence is explained. If the party supplies tactical defenses without resolving that disagreement, the cult loyalists may attack the ritual or the people holding Xarrul, activating its self-defense exception.
+
+If changeling-bodied Xarrul enters the main hall after an unattended Vacancy, Haddon is the first to understand. The command binding is absent, the stolen vitality is moving in an alien body, and Orenn's brand matches Xarrul's signature. He says the crucial truth aloud: *„Není spoutaný. Nikdy od Archivu nebyl.”* Rennt's denial breaks a beat later. The surviving cultists turn on Xarrul, but Essek's sight and Rennt's magic cannot overcome Ethereal Jaunt: perception does not let an attack cross the planar boundary. Without ten minutes to apply their reserve oil or a coordinated salt ambush, they cannot keep it where their attacks can reach it.
 
 ---
 

npc/mags.md

@@ -30,6 +30,8 @@
 
 **Thrown Knife.** Ranged Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4+4) piercing damage. She carries 4.
 
+**Emergency reserve.** A flat metal vial beneath Mags's apron holds **one dose of Oil of Etherealness**. This is not part of the three field doses. She kept it on her for an extraction that never came and will surrender it only after accepting that the threat is Ethereal and that a specific person needs to cross. Applying it still takes 10 minutes, so neither Mags nor a looter can turn it into a reaction after Xarrul appears.
+
 ### Reactions
 
 **Parry.** Mags adds 3 to her AC against one melee attack that would hit her.
@@ -65,8 +67,8 @@ This is Mags's set-piece: the beat that ends the party and cages everyone. Run i
    - *It's universal:* even a non-divine PC stumbling through the rite fails for the same reason. Never let the player think they blew it — tell them OOC it wasn't them, even as Mags snarls something about *useless casters*. In-fiction she's cruel; out-of-fiction you wink.
    - *What it shows:* she carries a resurrection-grade diamond as *jewelry*. She came prepared for someone to die, the way a fixer always is — the first real crack in the "retired barkeep's wife" story, and a hint of the [fixer past](orenn.md#background) she and Orenn buried.
 
-**5. The lockdown.** She takes a fist-sized **ward-crystal** from the shelf above the bar and shatters it on the floor. Every exit slams under an **Arcane Lock until midnight** — front door, cellar trapdoor, shutters. No password lifts it. *She* can't lift it. She's locked in with them, and she did it on purpose. (See [the enchanted door & ward-crystal](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door).)
-   - *DM — the trap she can't see:* the ward-crystal is the old den's **ritual-lockdown stone**, and shattering it does far more than bolt the doors — it starves the last of the leftover containment below and clamps the veil into a crossing-channel. It is the one thing Xarrul still needed, and it engineered the murder precisely so Mags would break it. She thinks she's building a cage; she's finishing the fiend's door, and she has no idea. See [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door) and [Xarrul's plan](xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation). This seeds the late gut-punch: the lockdown she triggered to protect everyone is what lets Xarrul cross.
+**5. The lockdown.** She takes a fist-sized **ward-crystal** from the shelf above the bar and shatters it on the floor. Every exterior opening seals until midnight—front door, shutters and any route outside. The cellar trapdoor remains accessible to her own key. No password lifts the exterior shell. *She* cannot reopen it, and she locked herself in on purpose. (See [the enchanted door & ward-crystal](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door).)
+   - *DM — the trap she can't see:* the ward-crystal is the old den's **ritual-lockdown stone**, and shattering it does far more than bolt the doors. It withdraws power from the internal planar seals and throws that power around every exterior version of the house. It is the one thing Xarrul still needed, and it engineered the murder precisely so Mags would break it. She thinks she is only building a cage; she also opens its inner door. Xarrul crosses fully into the Material interior and regains Ethereal Jaunt, but remains trapped with everyone else until midnight. See [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door) and [Xarrul's plan](xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation).
 
 **6. The ultimatum.** Find her the killer by midnight, or every one of them is tomorrow's stew. No one in the room doubts she means it — that's what matters, whether or not it's literally true. Then she goes to Orenn's body and grieves, quietly, and does not stop working the problem for a second.
 
@@ -94,9 +96,9 @@ She is direct, blunt, and has no patience for lies. She can tell when someone is
 
 ## The Warden's Mark (DM)
 
-Mags carries a **dormant [Brand of Spite](xarrul.md#actions)** over her heart — the same hand-shaped mark that killed Orenn, only fainter and cold. Xarrul branded them both. It killed Orenn — the calmer one, who might not have reached for the panic button — and *kept Mags in reserve*, because it **needed her alive**: she is the one who seals the house (see [the lockdown](#act-2--the-reveal-dm)), and a living, grieving Mags holds the room in line while the fiend finishes its work. Two murdered keepers at once would have raised the alarm too soon. **She knows about the mark.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks, told no one — not even Orenn — and it is part of why she is so fatalistic. When she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she is a whole one of herself.
+Mags carries a dormant **Warden's Mark** over her heart — a ward-scar Xarrul left during an earlier Stored Incursion. It resembles the hand-shaped [Brand of Spite](xarrul.md#actions), but it is mechanically distinct and does not violate the combat Brand's one-target limit. Xarrul killed Orenn—the calmer keeper, who might not have reached for the panic button—and *kept Mags in reserve* because it **needed her alive** to seal the house and hold the room in line. The scar can incapacitate but not kill her, preserving Xarrul's compact with the Guest. **She knows about the mark.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks, told no one—not even Orenn—and it is part of why she is so fatalistic. When she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she is a whole one of herself.
 
-**Discovery (a mid-game presence beat):** the players can find the mark through [Orenn's silver mirror](orenn.md#items-on-his-person) (the distortion sits over her heart, like the thin point), a DC 14 Medicine or DC 15 Arcana check up close, or Bren reacting to it. It tells them, without a word, that Xarrul is already *inside* the house — inside *her*.
+**Discovery (a mid-game presence beat):** the players can find the mark with a DC 14 Medicine or DC 15 Arcana check up close, or by following Bren's reaction to it. It tells them, without a word, that Xarrul is already *inside* the house — inside *her*.
 
 ### The Compromised Statline (Finale)
 
@@ -105,11 +107,11 @@ Full-power Mags (AC 16, 65 HP, two attacks at +8) will either solo Xarrul or ste
 - **HP 39** (she has been bleeding vitality to the brand for weeks).
 - **Disadvantage on attack rolls** — she is fighting through a waking nightmare (Orenn's death; or the unlabeled child's shoe from the Vault).
 - At the start of each of her turns, **DC 15 Wisdom save or she loses her action**, frozen in the vision. *(This is the exact mechanism that killed [Orenn](orenn.md#how-he-died).)*
-- *Remove Curse*, *Greater Restoration*, or killing Xarrul ends it and restores her to full.
+- *Remove Curse*, *Greater Restoration*, or killing Xarrul ends the ward-scar and restores her to full.
 
 **Use it both ways:**
 - **Party opposes Xarrul:** the trigger is a crisis — their heaviest hitter drops out, and clearing her brand becomes a priority mid-fight.
-- **Party sides with Xarrul ([The Open Door](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul)):** the trigger is the alliance's first favor — Xarrul sidelines her *for* the party, and they watch it do to Mags exactly what it did to Orenn. The finale becomes a desperate **holding action** against a grief-broken, half-frozen Mags rather than a slugfest: winnable, tragic, and *the players'* to win, not hers.
+- **Party sides with Xarrul ([Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-deliberately-side-with-xarrul)):** the trigger can create a brief opening to isolate or restrain her. If Xarrul does this publicly, everyone sees the party accept the same attack that killed Orenn; the main hall turns against them. The successful alliance path is quiet neutralization, a convincing frame or enough political support to leave Mags isolated.
 
 If a table needs a bigger fight on the join path, add **Sevra** at Mags's side rather than inflating Mags's numbers.
 
@@ -134,6 +136,7 @@ If a table needs a bigger fight on the join path, add **Sevra** at Mags's side r
 - The summoners' binding circle in the cellar — she knows it *caged* the things they called, not how to work it
 - Her assessment of whether the fiend can be beaten ("Orenn and I could have taken it. Orenn and I. One of us isn't here anymore.") — bravado worn as certainty; she needs it to be true
 - The Oil of Etherealness in the bedroom
+- The reserve vial beneath her apron; she gives this one up only when the party has a concrete far-side role and the bedroom dose is lost, spent or inaccessible
 
 **Will never volunteer — but the players may find it themselves (and probably will, if they explore):**
 - The **[concealed door](../location/cellar.md#the-concealed-door)** in the cellar and everything behind it — the **[Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md)**: the Vault, the laboratory, the caged **[Guest](the-guest.md)**, the corpse in the second cell, and the failing rift. This is the couple's real, ongoing operation, and Mags assumes no one alive but her knows it exists. If the players surface any of it — the fortune, the prisoner, the trophies implicating patrons upstairs — she doesn't lie, but she goes very still, and what she says next is some of the rawest honesty in the module (see Relationships). In the direst circumstances she may *send* them down for the [Veilhook Salt](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal) or silvervein root, handing over the black key with the flat instruction: *"Take what you need. Don't touch the cages. And whatever you find down there — it doesn't change tonight."*
@@ -144,11 +147,17 @@ Mags is the emotional anchor and the gatekeeper. She controls access to the tave
 
 She will not fight alongside the players unless the fiend manifests in the Material Plane inside the tavern. Then all bets are off. The retirement ends and the fixer comes back — and a fixer's answer to a problem is to end it.
 
-**If the players side *with* the fiend:** she becomes the obstacle between them and its crossing — see [The Warden's Mark](#the-wardens-mark-dm) for how to run that fight so the *players*, not Mags, decide the night.
+**If the players side *with* the fiend:** she becomes the obstacle between them and its midnight embodiment and escape—see [The Warden's Mark](#the-wardens-mark-dm) for how to run that fight so the *players*, not Mags, decide the night.
 
-**If the [Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit) resolves:** Mags initiates the aftermath in either branch. If Xarrul takes the changeling body, she attacks Orenn's murderer before it can leave, even while the new spectral Host turns the Inn's wards against her. If the Guest destroys Xarrul and returns empowered, she refuses its demand for the Inn. She will confess the cage, pay restitution, or let it walk; she will not hand it another cage with everyone upstairs inside.
+**At midnight if nobody intervenes:** Mags is busy containing the faction war. Xarrul's compact prevents it from killing again before the exchange, but does not protect patrons from one another. Xarrul opens Cell One from below without using her keys, so she has no ordinary reason to inspect the secret level before the Vacancy. If the transfer was witnessed and changeling-bodied Xarrul enters the hall openly, cultist recognition—not Mags's cellar knowledge—reveals what happened. If it remained secret, Xarrul takes an innocuous face and attempts to leave among the released patrons.
 
-**If the players fail or choose not to confront the fiend:** Mags will hunt it herself after the session ends. She'll probably die. She doesn't care.
+When the exterior shell lapses, Mags still physically bars the front door until somebody has been made answerable for Orenn. Ordinary patrons may leave only after she accepts a culprit or the room overwhelms her authority. She never knowingly releases Xarrul; this is why an allied party must frame someone, isolate her or replace her authority rather than merely wait for midnight.
+
+**If someone disappears:** the disturbed lower ward and Twinkle's web make the black key go cold against Mags's hip. Haddon can tell that Xarrul is seeking a vessel, but Mags will not admit the Deep Cellar exists or allow the cultists into it. She takes the key and goes alone. Unless the party follows or stops her, Xarrul kills her before beginning the Hollowing.
+
+**If the [Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy) resolves:** if Xarrul takes the changeling body in front of her, Mags attacks Orenn's murderer. If the Guest returns empowered, it avoids that confrontation: it uses Orenn's voice to lure her to the cellar, ambushes her, puts her in Cell One and goes upstairs wearing her face. PCs can expose the false Mags by following, noticing the missing black key, testing a private memory or revealing a shapechanger.
+
+**If Xarrul is destroyed Ethereally:** Mags sees the Brand of Spite finally leave Orenn's body. If Xarrul is bound instead, she treats the surviving brand as proof that containment is not justice and watches whoever controls the chains.
 
 ## Relationships
 

npc/orenn.md

@@ -59,7 +59,7 @@ After closing the grievance, Sevra gave Corren's brass signet to Orenn as proof
 "Retired" was always a story Orenn told the world — and, on his gentler days, himself. The truth is buried behind a concealed door in the cellar, in the **[Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md)**: a hidden warren that is the couple's real workplace. They never stopped. They just moved the work downstairs and got quiet about it.
 
 - **The fortune.** Twenty years of expensive, discreet fixer work is stacked in the [Vault](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-vault-treasure-room) — well over 2,000 gp in coin, gems, and deeds. The modest life upstairs (their bedroom lockbox, 150 gp, two silver rings) is genuine and sentimental. The war-chest below is genuine and paranoid. Both are true. That contradiction *is* Orenn.
-- **The laboratory.** They still brew — the poisons and suppressants a fixer's trade runs on (the Guest's "trim dose" among them), working out of the den's leftover alembics and the anti-fiend odds and ends the summoners abandoned. The Veil Dust down there is the *previous owners'* research into working the thin point; Orenn and Mags kept it because it was valuable and occasionally useful on a job — not because they were watching anything. See the [Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory).
+- **The laboratory.** They still brew — the poisons and suppressants a fixer's trade runs on (the Guest's "trim dose" among them), working out of the den's leftover alembics and the anti-fiend odds and ends the summoners abandoned. Among those remnants is one precious dose of **Oil of Etherealness**, kept as emergency access to the far side rather than evidence that they understood or monitored the tear. See the [Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory).
 - **The Guest.** Their darkest ongoing secret: a **changeling** they captured eleven years ago and never released, held in a cell below and used as an off-book spy — most recently to infiltrate the **Order of Mending**. This is *how* Orenn was "investigating the cult." See **[the-guest.md](the-guest.md)**. Orenn told himself, and the Guest, that they'd let it go "eventually." Fifteen years of eventually. He died still meaning to.
 - **The Guest's predecessor** starved to death in the next cell when it stopped being useful ([Cell Two](../location/deep-cellar.md#cell-two--the-long-dead)). Orenn allowed that. The calm, courteous barkeep who treated every patron with respect was also a man who could keep a person in a cage for a decade and sleep — mostly — at night. The players may learn this. It should complicate how they grieve him.
 
@@ -69,7 +69,7 @@ Orenn was not a good man wearing a bad past. He was a genuinely kind man who had
 
 Xarrul killed Orenn with the full chain: **Brand of Spite** to mark him, **Visions of Spite** to freeze him in a hallucination of his own worst fear, then claws through a body that couldn't flinch. Against an unsuspecting, unresisting target with no allies to intervene, all three stages collapsed into seconds.
 
-The timing was the trick. Orenn had stepped down to storage for supplies just before the brawl broke — which is *why* it ran unchecked; with him gone there was no one to shut it down. He came back up to do exactly that, waded into the scrum, and caught a mundane knock (a bottle, a chair) that left him bruised and bleeding but very much alive. Then **Rennt's Thunderwave killed the candles** and the hall went black, and in that dark Xarrul jaunted partway into the Material Plane behind the bar, branded him, locked his mind, and struck — then retreated to the Ethereal before the lights came back. Total exposure: seconds. The expression on his face isn't surprise at death. It's the last frame of whatever Xarrul forced him to see.
+The timing was the trick. Orenn had stepped down to storage for supplies just before the brawl broke—which is *why* it ran unchecked; with him gone there was no one to shut it down. He came back up to do exactly that, waded into the scrum, and caught a mundane knock (a bottle, a chair) that left him bruised and bleeding but very much alive. Then **Rennt's Thunderwave killed the candles** and the hall went black. Xarrul spent the one Stored Incursion it had charged during the previous night: three Material rounds behind the bar to brand Orenn, lock his mind, and land the killing Multiattack before the charge dragged it back Ethereal as the lights returned. The expression on Orenn's face isn't surprise at death. It's the last frame of whatever Xarrul forced him to see.
 
 **He cannot be brought back.** Whatever the brand did, his soul is beyond reach — *Revivify*, *Raise Dead*, *Resurrection*, all of it finds nothing to hold. Mags burns a diamond proving it in [Act 2](../npc/mags.md#act-2--the-reveal-dm). This is permanent, and the module never softens it. (Leave the *reason* unspoken in play; it should feel wrong, not diagnosed.)
 
@@ -85,7 +85,7 @@ The timing was the trick. Orenn had stepped down to storage for supplies just be
 Orenn suspected something was wrong for weeks — but he was looking in the wrong direction, and he never once looked *down.* His whole career had trained him to think in people and factions, not in the thing sealed under his own floor, and the case on that was *closed.* What his surveillance actually turned up (all of it on the [case board](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-long-cut-central-corridor) in his old cellar ops-room) was a **district-wide** wrongness he read as an *underworld* problem:
 - People turning up dead or gone across the quarter in ways that didn't add up — some of it Thera's work, some of it he couldn't source at all
 - The Order of Mending meeting more often, more urgently — his strongest, realest lead, and the one that let him blame everything else on the cult
-- Patrons *changing* under his own roof — Bren's raving, Vetch chasing stronger dust — which he filed as recruits and addicts, not symptoms
+- Patrons and neighbours *changing* around his own roof — Bren's worsening ravings, repeated cold dreams, regulars who stopped returning — which he filed as recruits, marks and ordinary street attrition, not symptoms
 - A cold that had crept over the district these last weeks, dreams gone bad on the block, the corner's old unlucky name getting louder
 
 He didn't know about Xarrul, and he never connected any of it to the sealed rift beneath him. He thought the trouble was out in the city. He was preparing anyway — the holy water, silversheen, and warding chalk in the storage room were recent, nervous purchases, a fixer buying insurance against something not-human he could feel moving but couldn't name. The letter in Mags's apron was his contingency. He ran out of time, twenty feet above the answer.
@@ -96,4 +96,10 @@ He didn't know about Xarrul, and he never connected any of it to the sealed rift
 - A **plain black iron key**, heavier than the rest, that fits nothing upstairs. It opens the **[concealed door](../location/cellar.md#the-concealed-door)** to the Deep Cellar and the Arcane-locked [Vault](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-vault-treasure-room) below. Anyone who searches the body (DC 12 Investigation, or automatic if they loot him) finds it; recognizing what it opens is the mystery. The Guest, if reached, will happily point at it.
 - A **silver ring** (plain, matches one in the lockbox upstairs)
 - 12 gp, 8 sp in a belt pouch
-- A **small silver mirror** (not magical, but Orenn carried it out of habit — an old trick from somewhere in his career: hold up a mirror and a thing that shouldn't be there warps the reflection. He carried it for years and never quite expected to need it. DC 15 Perception while using the mirror in the cellar reveals faint distortions near the thin point.)
+- [**Orenn's silver mirror**](#orenns-silver-mirror), kept in his breast pocket
+
+### Orenn's Silver Mirror
+
+A small magic hand mirror in Orenn's breast pocket, found automatically by anyone who searches the body. While looking into it, a creature sees everything within the mirror's reflected field exactly as if under *See Invisibility*: invisible creatures and objects are visible, and creatures and objects on the Ethereal Plane appear ghostly and translucent.
+
+The effect is permanent, requires no charges or attunement, and functions only through the reflection. It has no properties beyond *See Invisibility*. The mirror does not make an Ethereal subject Material or allow attacks or other effects to cross the planar boundary.

npc/the-boarder.md

@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ Months over the bar have soaked them in the surface of everything without their
 
 - **Orenn had been off for weeks** — up at odd hours, buying strange supplies (Wick carried a crate of "salt and chalk and holy water" up the steps for him once), checking the cellar more than a wine cellar warrants.
 - **Night noises from below.** Scratching, a cold draft up the stairwell, Orenn descending at hours when no barrel needs tapping. He told Wick once, flatly: *"The room at the bottom of the stairs isn't yours. Don't go looking."* They obeyed. They always wondered.
-- **The patrons' ailments.** Wick has quietly treated half this room and noticed **Dalla's** tremor and the scars up her arms (they read as ritual bloodletting, not self-harm); **Vetch's** dependency and what he'll do for a dose; **Bren** getting *worse* in a way that isn't madness; and that one of the assassins (**Dace**) sleeps like a man with something eating him.
+- **The patrons' ailments.** Wick has quietly treated half this room and noticed **Dalla's** tremor and the scars up her arms (they read as ritual bloodletting, not self-harm); **Bren** getting *worse* in a way that isn't madness; and that one of the assassins (**Dace**) sleeps like a man with something eating him.
 - **Mags and Orenn were more than they let on.** Wick has seen the scars, the economy of movement, the "decorations" that are weapons. They never asked.
 
 ## What Wick Does NOT Know (guardrails — keep the mystery intact)

npc/the-guest.md

@@ -51,13 +51,13 @@ In its **worn form** (what the party first sees): whatever face serves. By defau
 
 ---
 
-## What It Wants — The Guest Becomes the Host
+## What It Wants — The Guest Takes the Inn
 
 The Guest does **not** chiefly want to leave the Nether Inn. It wants the Inn.
 
 Orenn is dead. Mags is compromised. The Guest knows every patron, debt, secret room, faction and unfinished job in the house. It wore the faces that gathered half of Orenn's intelligence and did the work for which the couple took credit. In its accounting, eleven years of captivity did not merely incur a debt of freedom. They made the tavern **back pay**.
 
-Its desired ending is to stand behind the bar when the lockdown opens, holding the black key, recognized as the new proprietor. Mags may serve beside it, leave, or take its old place in Cell One. That is her choice, as the Guest understands choice now.
+Its desired ending is to control the Inn without inviting every armed patron to vote on succession. If it returns from the Vacancy empowered, it plans to lure Mags below with Orenn's voice, imprison her in Cell One, take her shape and return upstairs as the keeper everyone already obeys. Recognition can come later, when opposition is weaker.
 
 This is not simple greed. The Guest has learned the cage's lesson perfectly and wrongly: a person is safe only while holding the key. It would rather become the jailer than risk becoming a prisoner again.
 
@@ -79,18 +79,30 @@ Eleven years and it hasn't escaped, because Orenn and Mags built the cage out of
 
 Xarrul has spent weeks working the tear near the Guest's cell. They have spoken through stone and across the veil: two captive assets comparing owners.
 
-The Guest gave Xarrul the last piece of local knowledge its murder required. It explained that **Orenn was the cautious keeper** and that Mags would reach for the emergency lockstone if he died. Xarrul recognized the stone as the summoners' cross-planar seal and understood what Mags did not: her grief would build its crossing vessel. Xarrul chose and killed Orenn. The Guest never touched him and never left its cell—an airtight alibi constructed entirely from truth.
+Their first trust was one unqualified promise from Xarrul: **"I will not kill you."** It still holds. A forced Hollowing would destroy the Guest's projected spirit and therefore break that promise, so Xarrul cannot simply take the changeling body by force. If it wants that body intact, it must obtain the Guest's willing Vacancy.
 
-In return, Xarrul offered a precise exchange. The Guest will willingly vacate its changeling body. Xarrul will use its knowledge of silver cords to anchor the Guest's projected spirit into the Inn's foundation wards, making it the literal **Host**: present in every wall, master of every lock, impossible to put inside a room because it has become the room. Xarrul takes the empty, mutable body and walks into the world. Xarrul has described the price without euphemism: the Host will never cross the Inn's threshold again.
+The Guest gave Xarrul the last piece of local knowledge its murder required. It explained that **Orenn was the cautious keeper** and that Mags would reach for the emergency lockstone if he died. Xarrul recognized what Mags did not: the emergency device would pull power out of the internal seals, throw that power around the exterior, and let the fiend cross fully into the resulting cage. Xarrul chose Orenn and spent its one Stored Incursion killing him. The Guest never touched him and never left its cell—an airtight alibi constructed entirely from truth.
 
-The Guest genuinely accepts that outcome. It also intends to do better.
+The Guest proposed a precise exchange. It will willingly vacate its changeling body at the tear in the Old Work—the breach the transfer requires. Xarrul will project the Guest's coherent spirit into the Astral Plane rather than destroy it, take the empty mutable body and walk into the world disguised. Xarrul described the price without euphemism: the Guest will be alive but bodiless, with no route back tonight.
 
-During the transfer, both spirits must briefly leave the body. Xarrul will be fully committed, unable to jaunt away, and vulnerable to the same tools that normally pin it across two planes. The Guest cannot defeat it alone and Xarrul knows that. The Guest's concealed weapon is the party: if they destroy Xarrul's exposed spirit, its embedded planar imprint collapses into the vacant changeling body. The Guest can reclaim both the body and part of Xarrul's power — the Inn in one hand, an Ethereal step in the other.
+The later compact's restraint is deliberately simple: **one death to close the house—Orenn—and Xarrul will kill no one else until the exchange is finished.** Xarrul retains the right to defend itself against someone knowingly trying to bind, banish, or destroy it. The promise constrains Xarrul's own hand and deliberate commands; it does not oblige the fiend to save patrons who choose to kill one another. The Guest wants an intact Inn and living outsiders it can recruit against Xarrul. It asks for nothing after the exchange because it expects only two outcomes: Xarrul dies during the exposed transfer and the Guest returns empowered, or Xarrul wins and sends it Astral, where the Inn is no longer its concern. Xarrul never breaks this promise. The moment the Guest is delivered Astral at the end of the Vacancy, the temporary restraint expires; the original promise not to kill the Guest does not.
 
-Xarrul sees the Guest's appetite and enters anyway. Without outside intervention, the fiend wins every time. What it does not know is which useful strangers the Guest has persuaded to become its hands.
+The Guest accepts the risk because it intends to do better.
 
+During the transfer, both spirits must briefly leave the body. Xarrul will be fully committed, unable to jaunt away, with its Ethereal essence exposed to attacks from either side. The Guest cannot defeat it alone and Xarrul knows that. The Guest's concealed weapon is the party: if they destroy Xarrul's exposed spirit, its embedded planar imprint collapses into the vacant changeling body. The Guest can reclaim both the body and part of Xarrul's power — the Inn in one hand, an Ethereal step in the other.
+
+Xarrul sees the Guest's appetite and enters anyway. Without outside intervention, the fiend wins every time. The Guest's advantage is not that Xarrul is stupid; it is that the Guest is better at recruiting strangers and understands what the right borrowed face can accomplish after the fight.
+
+> **Xarrul:** *„Nezabiji tě.”*
+>
+> **Host:** *„To není totéž jako nechat mě žít. Ale pro začátek to stačí.”*
+>
 > **Host:** *„Vezmi si mé tělo. Vstupu bránit nebudu.”*
 >
+> **Host:** *„Jedna smrt, aby se dům zavřel. Orenn. Nikoho dalšího nezabiješ, dokud naše výměna neskončí.”*
+>
+> **Xarrul:** *„Pokud se mě nepokusí spoutat, vyhnat či zničit. Souhlasím.”*
+>
 > **Xarrul:** *„Jakmile budu uvnitř, hodláš sklapnout čelisti.”*
 >
 > **Host:** *„Obě tvrzení mohou být pravdivá.”*
@@ -99,7 +111,7 @@ Xarrul sees the Guest's appetite and enters anyway. Without outside intervention
 >
 > **Host:** *„Pak se nemáš čeho bát.”*
 
-The full transfer encounter is **[The Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit)**.
+The full transfer encounter is **[The Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy)**.
 
 ---
 
@@ -145,6 +157,10 @@ Play the Guest as the **most reasonable person the party meets all night** — a
 **If accused of choosing Orenn:**
 - *„Xarrul se zeptal, kdo z nich rozbije kámen. Odpověděl jsem. Na slitování se neptal.”*
 
+**If the Executioner threatens to kill it:**
+- [calm, almost helpful] *„Zabij mě a jeho slib zemře se mnou. Pak jsi nejbližší použitelné tělo a on už tě smí zabít. Splň zakázku. Jen si nemysli, že se dožiješ odměny.”*
+- If challenged, it explains the exact compact. This is leverage, not a bluff: its killer is Xarrul's first choice for the Hollowing.
+
 **When it talks about Cell Two (the crack in the mask):**
 - [quietly, no charm at all] *„Deset let ryla do dveří ‚Byla jsem skutečná‘. Ke konci už nebyla. Já také nebudu. To dělá klec. Smrti se nebojím.”*
 
@@ -159,12 +175,12 @@ Meeting the Guest is a **genuine moral fork** with real mechanical outcomes. The
 
 | Choice | What happens |
 |---|---|
-| **Free it and follow its plan** | It supplies real cult intelligence and engineers [the Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit), the easiest opportunity to destroy Xarrul. The party discovers only at the transfer that killing the exposed fiend will pour part of its nature into the Guest. |
+| **Free it and follow its plan** | It supplies real cult intelligence and engineers [the Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy), the easiest opportunity to destroy Xarrul. The party discovers only at the transfer that killing the exposed fiend will pour part of its nature into the Guest. |
 | **Destroy Xarrul during the Vacancy** | The Guest reclaims its body with Ethereal Jaunt, Voice Thief and Shadow Cloak. It thanks the party, takes the black key and claims the Inn. Mags refuses. The easy boss fight produces a dangerous succession crisis. |
-| **Allow the exchange** | Xarrul takes the changeling body. The Guest becomes the spectral Host bound through the Inn's wards. Its first act as proprietor is to protect Xarrul's paid passage; Mags immediately moves to kill Orenn's murderer. |
-| **Try to bind or control it** | The Guest treats the attempt as proof that rescuers and jailers differ only in vocabulary. It may trigger the Vacancy early, expose the party's private goals, or bargain with Xarrul against them. If ordinary escape becomes possible, it takes a useful face and disappears only as a last resort; the Inn remains the prize. |
-| **Leave it caged** | It continues its compact with Xarrul. If the transfer can be attempted through the failing wards, it becomes violent and imperfect; otherwise the fifth rule's fire kills it. As the party leaves: *„Dveře se tu zavírají před každým stejně. Vzpomeňte si na to, až budete na řadě.”* |
-| **Kill it** | Xarrul loses its prepared vessel and abducts a replacement during the Reckoning. The Guest's intelligence dies with it. Mags recognizes the choice without condemning it: the party solved a dangerous prisoner exactly as she and Orenn once would have. |
+| **Allow the exchange** | Xarrul takes the changeling body and can leave disguised. The Guest is stranded alive but bodiless in the Astral Plane; recovering it requires a later planar rescue and a new vessel. |
+| **Try to bind or control it** | The Guest treats the attempt as proof that rescuers and jailers differ only in vocabulary. It may expose the party's private goals or bargain with Xarrul against them. The Vacancy itself cannot begin before the shell lapses at midnight. If ordinary escape becomes possible, it takes a useful face and disappears only as a last resort; the Inn remains the prize. |
+| **Leave it caged** | Before midnight Xarrul opens Cell One from the Ethereal side and leads it deeper to the tear in the Old Work. When the shell lapses, the Vacancy proceeds without the party unless somebody notices. |
+| **Kill it** | The exchange becomes impossible and the temporary restraint on Xarrul ends immediately. Xarrul loses its preferred vessel, but may now kill directly; it chooses the Guest's killer first for the [Hollowing](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-h-the-hollowing). The threat *"kill me and you die before this night is over"* is substantially true. |
 
 ### If the Guest Takes Xarrul's Imprint
 
@@ -176,6 +192,6 @@ Keep the Guest's normal stat block and add **Ethereal Jaunt**, **Shadow Cloak**
 
 - **Murder mystery / cult:** the Guest's infiltration intel corroborates the Order of Mending and can un-stick a party that hasn't cracked the cult. It did not strike Orenn, but it chose which keeper Xarrul should remove; its locked-cell alibi is the module's purest half-truth.
 - **Character secrets:** the Agent wants it rescued, the Executioner wants it dead, and the Mourner needs its testimony. During the Vacancy both projected spirits—and the empty body—become separate targets, bringing those goals directly into the finale.
-- **Mags:** she knows exactly what's down there and expects the players never to find it. The Guest's claim to the Inn forces her cruelty out of the cellar and into the ending: she must surrender the house, defend it, or face the cage she maintained.
+- **Mags:** she knows exactly what's down there and expects the players never to find it. An empowered Guest avoids a public claim: it lures her below with Orenn's voice, cages her, takes her shape and keeps the Inn through deception.
 - **Xarrul:** honest fiend and consummate liar enter a bargain both understand. Xarrul underestimates not the Guest's treachery, but its ability to recruit other hands.
 - **The rift:** the Guest's apparently useful warning points toward the anti-fiend tools needed to attack Xarrul's projected spirit. It is preparing the party for its own gambit.

npc/vetch.md

@@ -1,98 +0,0 @@
-# Vetch — The Addict
-
-*"You don't understand. It's not about the high. It's about seeing. Really seeing. There's a whole world right here, right on top of this one, and nobody knows. Nobody looks. I look. I look every time."*
-
----
-
-## Stat Block (Abbreviated)
-
-**Vetch** — Medium humanoid (human), chaotic neutral
-**AC** 10 | **HP** 14 (3d8) | **Speed** 30 ft.
-
-| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
-|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
-| 8 (-1) | 11 (+0) | 10 (+0) | 14 (+2) | 12 (+1) | 9 (-1) |
-
-**Skills** Arcana +4, Perception +3 (heightened when on Veil Dust — becomes +7)
-**Senses** passive Perception 11
-**Languages** Common, Halfling
-
-Vetch is not a combatant. He will hide, run, or freeze. In absolute desperation, he has a rusty knife (1d4 piercing, no proficiency bonus) he uses to cut food.
-
----
-
-## Appearance
-
-Skinny, early thirties, looks older. Hollowed cheeks, dark circles under bloodshot eyes, restless hands that never stop moving — picking at his forearms, drumming on surfaces, fidgeting with his clothes. His clothes were good once: a scholar's coat, now stained and fraying. His fingernails are bitten to the quick.
-
-His pupils are slightly too large even in normal light — a permanent side effect of chronic Veil Dust use. He occasionally stares at empty air for a beat too long, as if catching an afterimage of something that isn't there.
-
-## Read-Aloud: Meeting Vetch
-
-> *U schodů do sklepa sedí na stoličce hubený muž, který vypadá, jako by potřeboval tři věci: jídlo, spánek a něco, co se tu pravděpodobně nepodává. Bledý, s tmavými kruhy pod očima a rukama, které se nedokážou zastavit — škrábe se na předloktí, bubnuje prsty, tahá za cíp svého obnošeného kabátu, který kdysi mohl patřit někomu, kdo chodil na přednášky.*
->
-> *Když se na něj podíváte, trhne sebou. Pak se usměje — nervózně, prosebně, jako zatoulaný pes, který doufá, že nepřichází kopanec.*
-
-## Personality
-
-Vetch was a clerk at a minor arcane academy — not a mage, just a record-keeper who happened to catalogue documents about planar theory. He wasn't anyone. Then he tried Veil Dust at a party, saw the Ethereal Plane for the first time, and the mundane world was never enough again.
-
-He's been using for two years. He's burned through his savings, his job, his lodgings, and most of his self-respect. He's not malicious — he's just desperate and single-minded. The dust is the only thing that makes the world bearable, and he'll do almost anything to get it.
-
-**Key traits:**
-- Pathetic but not contemptible — there's still a person in there
-- Surprisingly knowledgeable about the Ethereal Plane from direct observation (more than most scholars)
-- Eager to please, especially if he thinks you might help him get a fix
-- Genuinely believes the Ethereal Plane is beautiful, not just a place to get high
-- When on the dust, he becomes calm, articulate, and focused — a glimpse of who he used to be
-
-## What He Knows
-
-**Will share for free (desperate for conversation):**
-- The assassins and cultists don't like each other. Water is wet.
-- Orenn was kind to everyone, even him. This fact upsets him more than the murder itself.
-- Orenn confiscated Vetch's last packet of Veil Dust two nights ago after finding him collapsed by the cellar stairs. He said he was locking it "below the barrels, where you can't follow it."
-
-**Will share if you agree to recover the Veil Dust from below:**
-- The Ethereal Plane is more active than usual tonight — he can feel it, like static before a storm. Even without the dust, his chronic use has given him a faint residual sensitivity (DC 15 Perception to notice — Vetch auto-succeeds).
-- Bren's "imaginary friend" is real. "I've seen it. On the dust. It's... it sits beside him like a — like a thing made of string. With legs. It's *in* his head." He's never told anyone because who would believe the addict?
-- He followed Orenn into the cellar later and found a cold draft behind the northern barrel racks. The stone there has a seam and fresh drag marks, but Vetch couldn't open it. If he shows the party the exact place, they find the [concealed door](../location/cellar.md#the-concealed-door) without a check; it is still Arcane Locked. "The air gets thin there. Like standing on a mountain, except it's a basement."
-
-**Will share during/after a shared trip:**
-- He's seen something else in the Ethereal Plane recently — something bigger and darker than Skein. "It moves like smoke but it has *intent*. And teeth. Definitely teeth." He didn't realize it was a fiend. He thought it was a particularly bad hallucination.
-- The thin point in the cellar is *wider* than it was a month ago. "The hole is getting bigger. Or something is pushing it open."
-- On his last trip (a week ago), he saw the fiend scratching at the foundation stones from the other side. He didn't know what it was doing. He was too terrified to stay.
-
-## The Trip
-
-If players take Veil Dust with Vetch, he's an experienced guide. See [Ethereal Trip](../storylines/ethereal-trip.md) for full mechanics.
-
-**Vetch as a trip companion:**
-- He's calm, almost serene. The jittery wreck becomes a quiet, focused observer.
-- He'll point out features of the Ethereal Plane — the way reality looks grey and washed out, how living creatures glow faintly, how sounds are muffled.
-- He'll notice things players might miss (he has advantage on Perception checks while on Veil Dust, and the DM can use him to direct attention).
-- If they encounter Xarrul or Skein in the Ethereal Plane, Vetch panics. He's seen scary things before but nothing like this.
-
-## Read-Aloud: Vetch on Veil Dust
-
-> *Změna je okamžitá a děsivá. Rozechvělý, nervózní muž se zastaví. Jeho ruce se přestanou třást. Oči, předtím rozběhané a neklidné, se zaostří s klidem, který jste u něj neviděli. Narovná se. Nadechne se pomalu, hluboce, jako by dýchal poprvé za celé roky.*
->
-> *"Tak," řekne tichým, klidným hlasem, který zní jako někdo úplně jiný. "Teď vidíte, co vidím já."*
-
-## What He Wants
-
-1. **Veil Dust.** Primarily, urgently, above all else.
-2. **To not be alone.** He wants someone to see what he sees and confirm he's not crazy.
-3. **Deep down:** To stop. He knows the dust is killing him. He doesn't say it, but if a player asks directly and sincerely, he'll admit it. "I know what it's doing to me. I just... the real world is so *flat*."
-
-## After the Session (If Players Help Him)
-
-- If players only give him dust: He trips, helps them, and goes back to being an addict. Nothing changes.
-- If players help him trip AND show him what's really happening (the fiend, the possession, the murder): The experience shocks him. For the first time, the Ethereal Plane isn't beautiful — it's terrifying. It might be the push he needs to quit.
-- If players refuse him dust entirely: He's useless as an ally but may try to steal Orenn's black key during the session's chaos and reach the hidden door himself, potentially causing a scene.
-
-## Relationships
-
-- **Bren:** Vetch avoids Bren. He knows what's attached to Bren and it scares him. There's also a horrible recognition — they're both prisoners of something.
-- **Orenn:** Was kind. Always gave Vetch water and bread, and finally confiscated his dust rather than watch him die on the stairs. Vetch is quietly gutted about the murder but can't process the grief separately from his fury and need.
-- **Mags:** Mags is indifferent to Vetch. She doesn't have the bandwidth to care about his addiction tonight.

npc/xarrul.md

@@ -6,15 +6,15 @@
 
 ## Overview
 
-Xarrul is an ancient, cunning fiend — not a brute, not a conqueror. A manipulator. A patient intelligence that has survived for centuries by being smarter than the things that summoned it. The Order of Mending bound it and sent it to infiltrate the House of Scales, rewrite the custodians' memories, and steal the Severance Nail from the inner archive. The archive's automatic Final Closure severed its command binding. Xarrul shifted into the Border Ethereal at the instant it should have been dismissed and caught itself there. The House thought it banished; most of the Order still thinks it controlled but unreachable. Xarrul is free, and only Essek has correctly understood that fact.
+Xarrul is an ancient, cunning fiend — not a brute, not a conqueror. A manipulator. A patient intelligence that has survived for centuries by being smarter than the things that summoned it. It is native to the Border Ethereal: the Order of Mending bound it across the veil and sent it to infiltrate the House of Scales, rewrite the custodians' memories, and steal the Severance Nail from the inner archive. The archive's automatic Final Closure severed its command binding. Xarrul slipped home into the Border Ethereal before the severance could drag its power away with the broken command. The House thought it banished and gone; most of the Order still thinks it controlled but unreachable. Xarrul is free, and only Essek has correctly understood that fact.
 
 For all those centuries, Xarrul has never once been *real*. It has been summoned, bound, sent on errands, and dismissed — a whisper behind the glass, a borrowed claw, watching mortal life the way you watch a fire through a window: close enough to feel nothing. It does not want power or conquest. It wants to stand on the *other side* of the glass — to stop being a thing that is called, and become a thing that lives here.
 
-The Nether Inn is its chance. The tavern sits on a natural thin point — a fault the building's old owners, a den of summoners, once tore half-open before Orenn and Mags cleaned them out and left the breach sealed. Xarrul chose this fault off the cult's map precisely because it was already worked thin, and because the deepest chamber is a hidden, forgotten place to labour undisturbed. For weeks it has been prying that old seal open from the Ethereal side — and speaking through the stone to the changeling caged nearby. A leaky, open house let its crossing dissipate, so it needed one thing more: the house sealed shut around it, into a closed vessel it could finish crossing inside. The Guest supplied the local certainty: kill cautious Orenn and grieving Mags would break the summoners' emergency lockstone. Xarrul chose the target, performed the killing and received exactly the door it needed. Everything since (the framing, the whispers, the faction blood) is not spite. It is *cover*: keep everyone too busy killing each other to notice what the lockdown really did, or to interfere before midnight.
+The Nether Inn is its chance. The tavern sits on a natural thin point — a fault the building's old owners, a den of summoners, once tore half-open before Orenn and Mags cleaned them out and left the breach sealed. Xarrul chose this fault off the cult's map precisely because it was already worked thin. For weeks it weakened the old seal from the Ethereal side, stored enough force for one brief Material incursion, and spoke through the stone to the changeling caged nearby. The Guest supplied the local certainty: kill cautious Orenn, and grieving Mags would break the summoners' emergency lockstone. Xarrul spent its stored incursion on the murder and received exactly the reaction it needed. The lockstone pulled the internal wards away from the tear and threw them around the exterior, letting Xarrul cross fully into the Material interior while trapping it—and everyone else—inside. Everything since is cover: keep dangerous hands away from the Guest and the Old Work until midnight opens the brief Vacancy window.
 
-It is intelligent, patient, and — beneath the amusement — genuinely monstrous. But it does not lie. In a house where everyone is hiding something, Xarrul tells the plain truth about what it is and what it wants. That is what makes it dangerous, and it is what makes *siding* with it possible (see [Scenario F: The Open Door](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul)).
+It is intelligent, patient, and — beneath the amusement — genuinely monstrous. But it does not lie. In a house where everyone is hiding something, Xarrul tells the plain truth about what it is and what it wants. That is what makes it dangerous, and it is what makes *siding* with it possible (see [Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-deliberately-side-with-xarrul)).
 
-It also knows what happened to **Nessa**. Dalla's blood did not merely hold Xarrul; it carried energy siphoned through her from the child's trapped projection. From inside that bond, Xarrul felt the direction of Nessa's silver cord and learned how Vyre's planar scar holds it. It could follow that path, unwind the scar, and guide Nessa home—but not while the Nether Inn is sealed across every plane. Nessa is elsewhere in the Border Ethereal, outside the lockdown. Xarrul must escape or complete its crossing first. This makes Dalla its strongest potential ally.
+It also knows what happened to **Nessa**. Dalla's blood did not merely hold Xarrul; it carried energy siphoned through her from the child's trapped projection. From inside that bond, Xarrul felt the direction of Nessa's silver cord and learned how Vyre's planar scar holds it. It could follow that path, unwind the scar, and guide Nessa home—but not while the Nether Inn is sealed across every plane. Nessa is elsewhere in the Border Ethereal, outside the lockdown. Xarrul must become embodied and escape first. This makes Dalla its strongest potential ally.
 
 ## Stat Block
 
@@ -36,7 +36,13 @@ It also knows what happened to **Nessa**. Dalla's blood did not merely hold Xarr
 
 ### Traits
 
-**Ethereal Jaunt.** As a bonus action, Xarrul shifts between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane. While ethereal, it can see and hear into the Material Plane (60 ft. range) but cannot affect or be affected by anything on the Material Plane. It appears as a faint, smoky distortion visible only to creatures with truesight, See Invisibility, or Veil Dust.
+**Ethereal Jaunt (After Lockdown Begins).** Once the ward-crystal has been shattered, Xarrul regains this trait for the rest of the night: as a bonus action, it shifts between the Material and Ethereal planes. While the lockdown holds, it can shift only between the two interiors of the Nether Inn and cannot cross the exterior shell on either plane. Even after the shell lapses, its old planar tether prevents an unembodied Xarrul from moving beyond the Inn's footprint; completing a vessel-working removes that restriction. While ethereal, it can see and hear into the Material Plane (60 ft. range) but cannot physically affect or be affected by anything there. Its telepathy and the projected whisper of Voice Thief are explicit exceptions. It is normally unseen from the Material Plane. *See Invisibility* reveals it as ghostly and translucent; Orenn's silver mirror provides that same sight within its reflection. Truesight reveals it normally, while the iron bell shows only a blurred outline. Before the lockdown, this trait is unavailable; use Stored Incursion instead.
+
+**Ethereal Restoration.** At the start of each of Xarrul's turns while it is on the Ethereal Plane, it regains 1d4 hit points. It cannot exceed its hit point maximum. Outside initiative, use the average of 25 hit points restored per minute unless the exact total matters.
+
+**Deathless Slip.** If Xarrul would die or be reduced to 0 hit points while on the Material Plane, it is reduced to 1 hit point instead and immediately shifts to the corresponding space on the Ethereal Plane, or the nearest unoccupied space there. This shift requires no action or reaction and occurs even if planar travel, teleportation, Ethereal Jaunt or Slip Between is prevented. No effect can suppress or interrupt it. This trait offers no protection on the Ethereal Plane: reducing Xarrul to 0 hit points there destroys it permanently.
+
+**Stored Incursion (Before Lockdown).** Work at the tear lets Xarrul store one brief Material manifestation. Replacing a spent charge requires a full night at the tear, and it can hold only one. When Xarrul releases the charge, it manifests on the Material Plane for three rounds, cannot use Ethereal Jaunt or Slip Between, and is dragged back to the Ethereal Plane at the end of the third round. It spent tonight's charge on Orenn: Brand, Visions, then the killing Multiattack. Before the lockdown its telepathy and projected whispers can cross the weakened veil, but attacks, brands, memory edits, and physical manipulation require this incursion.
 
 **Shadow Cloak.** In dim light or darkness, Xarrul has advantage on Stealth checks and can Hide as a bonus action.
 
@@ -58,7 +64,7 @@ It also knows what happened to **Nessa**. Dalla's blood did not merely hold Xarr
 - Only one creature can be branded at a time. Branding a new target removes the previous brand.
 - The brand lasts until removed by *Remove Curse*, *Greater Restoration*, or the death of Xarrul.
 
-*DM — the stealth brand (out of combat).* This is also how Xarrul marks a victim unseen, and it is meant to be **rolled and resolved in secret.** It picks a moment of cover — darkness, a brawl, a blackout, or reaching from the Ethereal Plane at someone isolated — and rolls to hit against the target's AC without announcing anything. **On a miss,** the ambush shows through for one second: the target glimpses the real thing — a cold hand closing over their chest, a shadow-claw, two points of amber light — and *knows* something reached for them. **On a hit,** say nothing at all. The 2d6 necrotic is real, but you do not narrate a brand or an attack; you fold it straight into a masking **Waking Dream** (below) and keep telling the story. The one thing it cannot disguise is the damage *type*: every covered "accident" in the house tonight leaves a cold, greyish, necrotic wound, and that invariant is the crack investigators pull on. *(In open combat, branding is loud and visible — the mark is meant to be seen, and the kill chain below takes over.)*
+*DM — the stealth brand (out of combat).* This is also how Xarrul marks a victim unseen, and it is meant to be **rolled and resolved in secret.** It picks a moment of cover — darkness, a brawl, a blackout, or an isolated victim beside whom it can briefly manifest — and rolls to hit against the target's AC without announcing anything. **On a miss,** the ambush shows through for one second: the target glimpses the real thing — a cold hand closing over their chest, a shadow-claw, two points of amber light — and *knows* something reached for them. **On a hit,** say nothing at all. The 2d6 necrotic is real, but you do not narrate a brand or an attack; you fold it straight into a masking **Waking Dream** (below) and keep telling the story. The one thing it cannot disguise is the damage *type*: every covered "accident" in the house tonight leaves a cold, greyish, necrotic wound, and that invariant is the crack investigators pull on. *(In open combat, branding is loud and visible — the mark is meant to be seen, and the kill chain below takes over.)*
 
 **Visions of Spite.** *Requires a branded target.* Xarrul forces a branded creature it can see within 30 feet to witness a spiteful vision — a hallucination tailored to the target's deepest fears and shames, channeled through the brand's connection. The target must succeed on a **DC 15 Wisdom saving throw** or take 7 (2d6) psychic damage and be **paralyzed** until the end of its next turn, frozen in the grip of the vision. On a success, the target takes half damage and shakes the vision off. The brand remains on the target regardless.
 
@@ -79,28 +85,28 @@ It also knows what happened to **Nessa**. Dalla's blood did not merely hold Xarr
 
 *Xarrul's round-to-round choice:* Visions costs an action (no Multiattack that round). So each round Xarrul decides — Visions to set up the paralyze, or Multiattack with advantage + extra d6 for consistent pressure. Against a high-WIS party, Xarrul grinds with Multiattack. Against a low-WIS branded target, the kill chain is terrifying.
 
-*This is how Orenn died. Xarrul branded him from the Ethereal Plane, forced a vision of spite into his mind — freezing him in place — then raked him with claws that struck a body incapable of flinching. Against an unsuspecting, unresisting barkeep with no allies to intervene, the full chain collapsed into seconds. In combat, with allies and agency, it's telegraphed and interruptible.*
+*This is how Orenn died. Xarrul spent its Stored Incursion behind him: Brand on the first round, Visions on the second, and the killing Multiattack on the third. As Mags relit the room, the charge collapsed and dragged Xarrul back to the Ethereal Plane. In combat, with allies and agency, the same chain is telegraphed and interruptible.*
 
 **Waking Dream.** *Requires a branded target Xarrul can see (line of sight — it has to be present, which is exactly what sets Bren off; see **The Two Jobs**, below).* Reaching through the brand, Xarrul rewrites the target's memory of the **last minute** — not what it perceives now, but what it *remembers* having just perceived. **No saving throw. No damage.** A save would tip the player off that reality is negotiable; this never does. For an NPC, just play them as though the false memory is true. For a PC, never announce it and never say "think back" — weave the false memory inline with your normal narration, as settled fact, and move on. The edit holds until hard evidence contradicts it or *Remove Curse* / *Greater Restoration* / Xarrul's death lifts it.
 
 - **Cover.** Cast the instant after a stealth Brand to rewrite the branding into a mundane accident — a spark from the fire caught a sleeve, a drink went down wrong, a stumble against a bench. The mark and the necrotic wound remain; the memory of earning them is gone.
-- **Misdirection.** Plant a false memory in a branded witness: they now sincerely *remember* seeing an innocent slip behind the bar, a threat that never happened, a clue that was never there. One branded person, turned into an honest false witness. It can reproduce any entry on the [Veil Dust hallucination table](../storylines/ethereal-trip.md#hallucination-table) as a "memory."
-- **Limits.** Only the branded creature's memory changes — one target at a time, so an *unbranded* witness to the real event contradicts the false one, and it cannot clean a crowded room. The necrotic wound is the seam. And it must be present to cast it.
+- **Misdirection.** Alter something that happened within the immediately preceding minute: whose voice delivered the last accusation, which hand reached toward a weapon, whether the target just saw Haddon pocket a page, or whether a PC's last sentence contained a threat. The target becomes an honest false witness to a fresh event.
+- **Limits.** It cannot reach farther back than sixty seconds, create a memory of the earlier blackout, revise an established alibi or insert a clue into a scene the target did not just witness. Only the branded creature's memory changes, so an unbranded witness contradicts the edit. The necrotic wound remains, and Xarrul must be present to cast it.
 
 *Two tells, always: the **Bren-spike** (a memory was just rewritten near us, right now) and the **necrotic wound + hand-mark** (this person was rewritten at some point tonight). Xarrul can fake everything except death's signature — and that is the crack that lets mortals catch it.*
 
-**Whisper of Ruin (Recharge 6).** Xarrul targets one creature within 30 feet that can hear it. The target must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute and compelled to take a specific action on its next turn (attack a specific ally, drop a weapon, flee toward a designated area). The target can repeat the save at the end of each turn. On a success, the creature is immune for 24 hours.
+**Whisper of Ruin (Recharge 6).** Xarrul targets one creature within 30 feet that can hear it. The target must make a DC 15 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened for 1 minute and compelled to take a specific action on its next turn (attack a specific ally, drop a weapon, flee toward a designated area).
 
 ### Reactions
 
 **Slip Between.** When Xarrul takes damage on the Material Plane, it can use its reaction to shift to the Ethereal Plane. It can't use Ethereal Jaunt again until the start of its next turn.
 
-### Lair Actions (In the Cellar, Near the Thin Point)
+### Lair Actions (Anywhere in the Nether Inn)
 
-If confronted near the thin point, Xarrul can use one lair action per round on initiative count 20:
-- **Veil Flicker:** The boundary between planes shudders. Each creature in the cellar must make a DC 13 Wisdom save or be disoriented — disadvantage on attack rolls until initiative 20 of the next round.
+Xarrul's physical lair and nest are at the tear in the Old Work. While the lockdown holds, however, the sealed planar interior carries its influence through the entire house, so it can use one lair action per round on initiative count 20 anywhere in the Nether Inn:
+- **Veil Flicker:** The boundary between planes shudders. Each creature in Xarrul's room or immediate encounter area must make a DC 13 Wisdom save or be disoriented — disadvantage on attack rolls until initiative 20 of the next round.
 - **Ethereal Pull:** One creature must make a DC 14 Charisma save or be partially shifted into the Ethereal Plane until the start of its next turn (it can see both planes but has disadvantage on all attacks and saves).
-- **Shadow Surge:** All light sources in the cellar dim to darkness for 1 round. Xarrul can Hide as part of this action.
+- **Shadow Surge:** All light sources in Xarrul's room or immediate encounter area dim to darkness for 1 round. Xarrul can Hide as part of this action.
 
 ---
 
@@ -112,7 +118,7 @@ Xarrul rarely manifests fully. When it does: a tall, lean humanoid shape made of
 ### Ethereal Plane
 More defined. A gaunt, angular figure with skin like charred paper, cracked with veins of dull orange light. Its face has features here — sharp, aristocratic, with a mouth that curves in a permanent half-smile. Its eyes are fully visible: burning amber, ancient, deeply intelligent. It wears the rags of something that might have been formal clothing centuries ago.
 
-## Read-Aloud: First Sighting (Ethereal Plane, via Veil Dust)
+## Read-Aloud: First Sighting (Ethereal Plane)
 
 > *Vidíte to. V šedém, rozmazaném světě éterické roviny — kde všechno vypadá jako vybledlá fotografie skutečnosti — stojí něco, co tam nepatří. Vysoká postava, vychrtlá, s kůží jako spálený papír popraskanou žilkami tlumeného oranžového světla. Má tvář — ostrou, aristokratickou, s ústy staženými do polovičního úsměvu, který nevyjadřuje radost. Vyjadřuje trpělivost.*
 >
@@ -131,26 +137,30 @@ Xarrul stays in the Ethereal Plane, watches, and stirs trouble. Its cover tools
 It does **not** deliberately agitate Skein to rattle Bren — that backfires (an agitated Skein is a distracted one that loosens its grip and lets Bren surface). It wants Skein calm and Bren silent; see **Skein — a Tool, Not an Ally**, below.
 
 ### When Confronted
-- **First priority:** Not getting trapped. It will use Slip Between and Ethereal Jaunt aggressively to avoid being pinned on one plane.
+- **Respect the compact:** Before the Vacancy finishes, use the lethal rotation only against someone knowingly trying to bind, banish, or destroy Xarrul. Against investigators or trespassers it frightens, paralyzes, misdirects, and withdraws rather than delivering a killing blow. Whisper of Ruin may compel a drop, retreat, shove, or nonlethal strike, not a disguised execution.
+- **First priority:** Never let enemies cover both planes cleanly. Against Material-only attackers it slips Ethereal, regenerates and returns elsewhere. Against Ethereal-only attackers it jaunts Material. If the party splits, it attacks the weaker side, disrupts readied actions and tries to force the oil-user or salt-carrier out of position.
 - **Second priority:** Turn the room against the players. Whisper of Ruin on the strongest melee character, Voice Thief to make allies distrust each other, telepathic taunts.
-- **Third priority:** Mark and pressure the biggest threat. Brand the most dangerous PC (casters who can affect it across planes, a Veil Dust user carrying Veilhook Salt), then loop: Visions of Spite to paralyze, Multiattack for crits, Visions again. Against a high-WIS party, skip Visions and grind with advantage Multiattacks. Against a low-WIS branded target, run the kill chain mercilessly. If they have Remove Curse, brand a different target each time it's cleansed to burn their spell slots.
-- **It will NOT fight to the death.** If reduced to half HP or lower and restrained on the Material Plane, it negotiates — it's ancient and has information, names, and secrets it can trade. See [Scenario D: Negotiation](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-d-negotiation) and — if the party has soured on the cult *and* the couple — [Scenario F: The Open Door](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul).
+- **Third priority:** Mark and pressure the biggest threat. Brand the most dangerous PC (a Material defender readying Veilhook Salt, an Ethereal oil-user, or someone restoring the binding), then loop: Visions of Spite to paralyze, Multiattack for crits, Visions again. Against a high-WIS party, skip Visions and grind with advantage Multiattacks. Against a low-WIS branded target, run the kill chain mercilessly. If they have Remove Curse, brand a different target each time it's cleansed to burn their spell slots.
+- **It will NOT fight to the death.** If reduced to half HP or lower and restrained on the Material Plane, it negotiates — it's ancient and has information, names, and secrets it can trade. See [Scenario D: Negotiation](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-d-conventional-negotiation) and — if the party has soured on the cult *and* the couple — [Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-deliberately-side-with-xarrul).
 
 ### Loosing the Rift-Scavengers
-Xarrul doesn't lair in the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md), but it has found the couple's failing containment down there — the **[Old Work](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-old-work)**, where the planar fault has torn into an actual rift — and it has learned to *use* the minor ethereal scavengers that gather at the tear. It herds them at intruders like hounds: shadows, an ethereal filcher, the occasional specter. This is how a party exploring the depths "meets Xarrul's creatures" without meeting Xarrul. If the party is down there and Xarrul is present on the ethereal side, it can spend a turn widening the tear to add another shadow per round — a cheap, deniable way to bleed a party it can't yet reach. It costs Xarrul nothing and teaches the players, viscerally, that the thing they're hunting can reach into places they thought were safe.
+Xarrul lairs at the couple's failing containment in the **[Old Work](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-old-work)**, where the planar fault is both thin point and actual tear. It has learned to *use* the minor ethereal scavengers that gather there, herding them at intruders like hounds: shadows, an ethereal filcher, the occasional specter. This is how a party exploring the depths can meet Xarrul's creatures before confronting Xarrul itself. Before the compact expires, creatures deliberately loosed by Xarrul harry, steal, separate, and herd but do not finish a helpless target unless the target has activated the self-defense exception. If Xarrul is present on the ethereal side, it can spend a turn widening the tear to add another shadow per round.
 
-### The Dual-Plane Kill
-See [The Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md). If players attempt the synchronized kill, Xarrul fights desperately on both planes. On the Ethereal Plane, it's more aggressive (this is its home ground). On the Material Plane, it tries to flee. Both halves must die within 1 round of each other for the cure to work.
+### Destroying Xarrul — The Planar Pincer
+
+See [The Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-c-ethereal-destruction). Xarrul has one body and one hit point pool shared across both planes. There are no separate forms to damage and no synchronized final blows. It can be permanently destroyed only by reducing it to 0 hit points while it is Ethereal.
+
+Attackers normally cover both planes because Xarrul can dodge a group confined to either one. Material pressure drives it Ethereal; Ethereal pressure drives it Material. Readied actions, voluntarily delaying or fixing allied initiative order, and any other sensible coordination are valid—the challenge is covering both exits, not winning an initiative puzzle. If reduced to 0 while Material, Deathless Slip places it Ethereal at 1 hit point; if reduced to 0 while already Ethereal, it dies regardless of how much damage it previously took on either plane.
 
 ## The Two Jobs — How Xarrul Works the Night
 
-Xarrul has two tasks that cannot be done from the same place, and it spends the night shuttling between them.
+The lockdown has already admitted Xarrul to the Material interior. It is not charging or completing a crossing below. Its two jobs are protecting the one vulnerable future event and preventing the people upstairs from coordinating against it.
 
-**Downstairs — tend the tear.** The crossing is *labour,* not a countdown. The old seal wants to close (the summoners' wards are cracked but not dead — Bren feels them "failing"), so Xarrul must periodically re-open and hold the seam: recharge it, realign it as it drifts, feed the bleed back into it. This is the actual goal-progress, done at the thin point in the cellar, away from Bren — **no tell fires down here.**
+**Downstairs — protect the exit.** The Old Work holds the only site where the Guest can willingly vacate its body and the only three rounds in which Xarrul must surrender Ethereal Jaunt. Anyone who reaches the Deep Cellar can expose the compact, free or kill the Guest, restore containment, collect the anti-fiend tools, or prepare an ambush at midnight. Xarrul checks the Guest and responds to intrusion; it has no progress action to perform there.
 
-**Upstairs — tend the cover.** Keeping the investigation from converging on the cellar before midnight. Its cover tools are short-range — Voice Thief and whispers reach 30 ft., telepathy 60 — so working the room means being *in* the room, within range of Bren. **This is where the tell fires.**
+**Upstairs — tend the cover.** Xarrul keeps the investigation from converging on the cellar before midnight. Its cover tools are short-range — Voice Thief and whispers reach 30 ft., telepathy 60 — so working the room means being *in* the room, within range of Bren. **This is where the tell fires.** The compact forbids Xarrul from killing again until the exchange is finished, except in direct defense against binding, banishment, or destruction, so it cultivates accusation, isolation, and delay rather than attacking the room outright. It does not have to save patrons from violence they choose themselves.
 
-It can't be in both places, so early in the night it is mostly downstairs (the brawl aftermath does its cover work for free) and surfaces only to nudge; late in the night it is dragged upstairs more and more. That shuttle is the engine for everything below.
+It shuttles because it must watch both its leverage below and its enemies above, not because the tear needs labour.
 
 ### The Brenometer — Bren as a Fiend-Detector
 
@@ -165,36 +175,40 @@ This makes presence a **metered, self-limiting risk.** Being near Bren cracks th
 Three drivers, all pointing the same way — this is the mechanism under **The Night's Clock** (below):
 
 1. **Cover decays.** Early, the brawl aftermath and faction distrust do its work for free. As the party pools clues and converges, that natural chaos runs down and it must re-inject confusion by hand — more trips up, more tells.
-2. **Exposure gets cheaper.** Early, being caught is fatal (the crossing isn't far enough along to survive interruption; it can still be cheaply rebound). Late, once the seam is wide, catching it no longer easily stops the crossing — so it dares to show itself. This is the mask coming off.
-3. **The tear needs more tending.** Late, the seam is wide and volatile — near-constant holding, not the occasional nudge.
+2. **Its secret gets harder to protect.** Early, nobody knows the cellar matters. Late, clues point downward and Xarrul must risk direct intervention to turn investigators back.
+3. **Midnight fixes the battlefield.** The closer the Vacancy window comes, the less time Xarrul has to recover from a freed Guest, restored ward, stolen tool, or prepared ambush.
 
-Net: it is stretched thin, present more often, and bolder — so the Brenometer fires hardest exactly as the crossing peaks. Its one witness gets loudest at the worst possible moment for it.
+Net: it is stretched thin, present more often, and bolder — so the Brenometer fires hardest as midnight approaches. Its one witness gets loudest at the worst possible moment for it.
 
 ### The Attention Lever (a handle for the players)
 
 Because its attention is finite and split, the party can tax it without understanding why:
 
-- Investigate **loudly and cooperatively** → they force it upstairs to firefight → the tear goes untended → the crossing **stalls** (at the cost of lighting the tell, revealing it, and provoking the scatter-kill — see the Kael row in **Who It Kills, Who It Spares**, below).
-- Go **quiet** → it tends the tear uninterrupted → the crossing **accelerates.**
+- Investigate **loudly and cooperatively** → force it upstairs to repair its cover, producing more Bren-spikes and more chances to catch it present.
+- Explore the cellar **quietly** → bypass its cover and threaten the Guest, tools, wards, and midnight site before Xarrul realizes where the real danger is.
 
-This inverts the usual creep-around instinct: the loud, chaotic table is, without knowing it, doing the thing that slows it down — and the careful, quiet one is handing it the night.
+Neither approach changes an invisible progress bar. They change what the party knows and how well prepared each side is when the shell lapses.
 
 ### In the Ethereal Plane — Proprietary, Not Territorial
 
-Xarrul is **not territorial.** The ethereal cellar is its *worksite,* not a lair it defends by instinct — it is a recent, purposeful operator sharing the plane with Skein, the scavengers, the binding circle it avoids, and the deep Ethereal beyond. Its response to anyone who reaches the Ethereal Plane is keyed to exactly one question: *does this threaten the crossing?*
+The tear is Xarrul's lair and intended transfer site, but Xarrul is **not territorial** about it. It is a recent, purposeful operator sharing the Ethereal Plane with Skein, the scavengers, and the deep Ethereal beyond. The upper binding circle is elsewhere and is simply a danger it avoids. Its response to anyone who reaches the Ethereal Plane is keyed to exactly one question: *does this threaten the compact or the midnight transfer?*
 
-- **An observer** (a Veil Dust tripper who simply *sees* it): it does **not** attack. Violence would confirm hostility and blow the ambiguity it cultivates. It watches, and it *talks* — Voice Thief, telepathy, truth mixed with misdirection. Contact is an opportunity, and a party that's talking to it isn't ringing the bell.
-- **A trespasser** (exploring, not yet touching the work): attrition, not commitment — the herded rift-scavengers (above), cold, dread, a manifested claw. It buys time and discourages; it will not commit to a fight that exposes it early.
-- **A threat** (moving to breach the seal, wake the iron bell or the foundation sigils, re-power containment, or hitting it with something that pins or hurts it across planes): now it is self-defense — immediate, lethal, and smart (Slip Between, Brand the most dangerous, Whisper of Ruin to divide them). The instant they stop threatening the crossing, it disengages.
+- **An observer** (someone who simply sees it without threatening the compact or transfer): it does **not** attack. Violence would confirm hostility and may breach its promise. It watches. If it independently chooses to use Voice Thief or telepathy, it mixes truth with misdirection; seeing it creates no communication channel by itself.
+- **A trespasser** (exploring, not yet touching the Guest, tools, or wards): attrition, not commitment — the herded rift-scavengers (above), cold, dread, a warning. It buys time and discourages without violating the compact.
+- **A threat** (moving to wake the iron bell or foundation sigils, re-power containment, lure it into the upper binding circle, enter the Ethereal Plane armed, or ready Veilhook Salt for its manifestation): now it is self-defense — immediate, lethal, and smart (Slip Between, Brand the most dangerous, Whisper of Ruin to divide them). The exterior shell cannot be punctured and is not a tactical target.
 
-It is proprietary about the *process,* not the *space.* Someone can stand in "its" ethereal cellar all night; it does not care until they touch the work — then the response is instant, and it is an accountant's decision, never instinct.
+**Against rebinding:** the first prepared knot and true-name Recall trigger the compact's self-defense exception. Before capture, Xarrul attacks whoever is reading the [Litany of the Averted Step](../prints/litanie-odvraceneho-kroku.md), carrying Veilhook Salt or maintaining the planar anchor. It uses Brand and Visions to make a reader lose the shifting text, Whisper of Ruin to make one drop or turn a leaf, and Shadow Surge to break perception. It moves sideways through any angle left open between the readers and never willingly approaches either active chant.
+
+Once the adapted circle accepts it, physical escape is no longer the scene. The salt-and-name matrix suppresses its movement and fresh hostile reach across the boundary; only an existing Brand still carries Visions of Spite or Waking Dream through. Xarrul turns to truthful bargaining. It tells Dalla what her blood is doing to Nessa, Haddon what became of Bren and the living weight, and Rennt that Haddon knew the command line was dead. Its goal is to make one station stop, let the psychic backlash break another, and persuade the last hand to open voluntarily.
+
+It is proprietary about the *secret,* not the *space.* Someone can stand beside its Ethereal nest at the Old Work; it acts when they threaten the Guest, containment, anti-fiend tools, or transfer site — an accountant's decision, never instinct.
 
 ### Skein — a Tool, Not an Ally
 
 Xarrul neither befriends nor hunts Skein by default; it **exploits** the parasite and holds it in contempt ("a lesser thing, feeding on scraps"). Its whole stance tracks one variable: *is Bren's mouth currently shut?*
 
-- **Default — coexistence.** Skein muzzles the only eyewitness to the murder *for free* (its Silence the Host keeps Bren incoherent, for its own reasons), and a party that finds Skein first may burn the clock on the possession subplot instead of the crossing. Xarrul does nothing for Skein and needs to do nothing — the parasite censors its witness at no cost.
-- **It protects the muzzle — deniably.** If the party is about to *kill* Skein in the Ethereal Plane, a freed Bren becomes a lucid, coherent eyewitness — an arcanist who studied this exact fault and can point them straight at the crossing. Xarrul won't overtly rescue vermin (too exposing), but it tips the scales: a scavenger into the fight, a Shadow Surge, a divisive whisper — enough to let Skein *flee* (its own ability) and keep Bren muddled.
+- **Default — coexistence.** Skein muzzles the only eyewitness to the murder *for free* (its Silence the Host keeps Bren incoherent, for its own reasons), and a party that finds Skein first may burn the clock on the possession subplot instead of Xarrul's midnight plan. Xarrul does nothing for Skein and needs to do nothing — the parasite censors its witness at no cost.
+- **It protects the muzzle — deniably.** If the party is about to *kill* Skein in the Ethereal Plane, a freed Bren becomes a lucid, coherent eyewitness—an arcanist who studied this exact fault and can point them straight at the Guest and the tear. Xarrul won't overtly rescue vermin (too exposing), but it tips the scales: a scavenger into the fight, a Shadow Surge, a divisive whisper—enough to let Skein *flee* and keep Bren muddled.
 - **Their interests align.** During a lucid window (severed tendrils, *Protection from Evil and Good*), Xarrul and Skein briefly want the same thing — Bren silent — and it may nudge Skein to reclaw its grip. Fiend and parasite, for a moment, on the same side against the free man.
 - **It kills Skein only if the parasite turns.** A cornered Skein trying to buy its life by informing the party about the bigger fiend becomes a liability and dies without a second thought. (Unlikely — it is too terrified and too small to try.)
 
@@ -204,15 +218,17 @@ Fighting Skein directly is beneath its dignity. They share a plane; only one of
 
 Xarrul is not mindless evil, and it is not merely *petty* evil either. It has one clear, cold want: **to become real** — to cross the veil permanently and walk the world as a resident, not a summoned tool. For centuries it has been called up, bound, made to run errands, and dismissed; it wants to stand on the far side of the glass. Everything it does tonight serves that single end.
 
-**Why it killed Orenn.** Not for revenge — or not *only*. Orenn's death does two things the crossing needs. First, it **triggers the lockdown**: a killing in the house is what makes Mags shatter the summoners' lockstone, and that seal is the closed vessel Xarrul must have to finish crossing (see [The Reckoning — The Clock](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#the-clock) and [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door)). The [Guest](the-guest.md#the-compact-in-the-walls--xarrul-and-the-guest) identified *Orenn* as the cautious keeper and Mags as the one who would follow emergency protocol in grief. Xarrul verified the judgment, chose Orenn and killed him. Second, it removes the **one watcher** whose surveillance was quietly circling the fiend (Orenn never knew it lived under his own floor, but he was getting close from the wrong direction). That it was also satisfying — the cultists tried to enslave it, the assassins broke its chains and gave it no respect — was a bonus, not the point.
+**Why it killed Orenn.** Not for revenge — or not *only*. Orenn's death does two things Xarrul needs. First, it **triggers the lockdown**: a killing in the house is what makes Mags shatter the summoners' lockstone. The emergency device pulls power away from the internal planar seals and spends it on an impenetrable exterior shell. That trade lets Xarrul cross fully into the Inn and regain Ethereal Jaunt inside the cage, while preventing it from leaving before midnight (see [The Reckoning — The Clock](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#the-clock) and [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door)). The [Guest](the-guest.md#the-compact-in-the-walls--xarrul-and-the-guest) identified *Orenn* as the cautious keeper and Mags as the one who would follow emergency protocol in grief. Xarrul verified the judgment, chose Orenn and spent its one Stored Incursion on him. Second, the murder removes the **one watcher** whose surveillance was quietly circling the fiend. Orenn is also the single agreed exception to the compact's moratorium on killing before the exchange is finished.
 
-**Why the chaos.** The framing, the whispers, the faction blood — none of it is spite. It is **cover**. Xarrul spent centuries being hunted by fixers like Orenn; it knows the only way to cross unnoticed is to keep everyone busy killing each other while it finishes its work in the sealed house. Every manipulation is operational:
+**Why the chaos.** The framing, whispers, and faction hostility are **cover—and the compact's central loophole.** Xarrul may not kill anyone after Orenn until the exchange finishes, but the assassins and cultists remain free to kill one another. It therefore spends the lockdown turning real grievances into faction war through stolen voices, true accusations, and fresh false memories. It never compels one exact fatal blow; it arranges the grievance and lets a mortal choose it. Every manipulation is operational:
 
 - The Brand leaves fiendish evidence → the cult gets blamed.
 - The murder happened during the assassins' brawl → the timing implicates *them*.
-- Both sides at each other's throats → no one stops to ask what the lockdown really did, or goes looking for the crossing before midnight. That is the *goal*, not a side effect.
+- Both sides at each other's throats → no one stops to ask what the lockdown really did, finds the Guest, or prepares the Old Work for midnight. That is the *goal*, not a side effect.
 
-**On the Opening.** Xarrul has no interest in Mother Vyre's grand design and is not part of her plan — but it is not a harmless loose thread either. Where the cult wants to dissolve *every* wall between planes for everyone, Xarrul wants one crack, just wide enough for itself. It is, functionally, the **enemy of the Opening** — and that is exactly the leverage it offers a party desperate enough to bargain (see [The Reckoning — Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul)).
+If the Guest dies before the exchange, the bargain becomes impossible and its temporary restraint ends immediately. Xarrul stops working through the loophole, kills directly, and selects the Guest's killer as its first Hollowing candidate. This is why the Guest can tell an Executioner, truthfully: *kill me and you release the thing that will come for you next.*
+
+**On the Opening.** Xarrul has no interest in Mother Vyre's grand design and is not part of her plan — but it is not a harmless loose thread either. Where the cult wants to dissolve *every* wall between planes for everyone, Xarrul wants one crack, just wide enough for itself. It is, functionally, the **enemy of the Opening** — and that is exactly the leverage it offers a party desperate enough to bargain (see [The Reckoning — Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-deliberately-side-with-xarrul)).
 
 **The honest voice in a house of liars.** This is the heart of the character. The Guest lies beautifully. The cult lies to itself. Orenn and Mags lied about being retired for fifteen years. Xarrul manipulates perception, steals voices, and withholds whatever does not serve it—but it makes no false factual statement and does not break a promise. Ask it a direct question and it answers truly, narrowly, because truth is more corrosive than invention. The distinction matters: it is deceptive in method, reliable in speech. Play it consistently and "join it" becomes a genuine temptation instead of an edgy footnote.
 
@@ -220,30 +236,34 @@ Xarrul is not mindless evil, and it is not merely *petty* evil either. It has on
 
 Xarrul and the Guest recognize themselves in one another: captive assets used for other people's errands. Their sympathy is real and irrelevant.
 
-Xarrul has offered to project the Guest from its changeling body and re-anchor its silver cord into the Inn's old ward lattice. The Guest becomes the spectral **Host**, master of every door and impossible to confine within the building it now inhabits; Xarrul receives the vacant body. Xarrul has stated the limitation plainly: the Host will never cross the Inn's threshold. The Guest has knowingly accepted.
+The Guest is the sharper social strategist. It understands immediately that the changeling body is not merely a vessel but a clean exit, and that taking the Inn requires replacing its keeper rather than announcing a claim. Xarrul understands the magical risk and the likelihood of betrayal; it accepts because, without outside hands, it still wins the transfer.
+
+The Guest supplied the essential exchange: at the tear in the Old Work, it will willingly vacate its changeling body, and Xarrul will project the displaced spirit into the Astral Plane rather than annihilate it. The breach is necessary to expose and redirect both spirits. Xarrul receives a mutable vessel able to walk out wearing any face. The Guest accepts because it intends to have outsiders destroy Xarrul during the exposed transfer and then reclaim the body with the fiend's planar imprint.
+
+Xarrul's first assurance was unconditional: **it will not kill the Guest.** A forced Hollowing would destroy the Guest's projected spirit, so that promise makes willing Vacancy the only route to the changeling body. Their later compact adds one plain restraint: **one death to close the house—Orenn—and Xarrul will kill no one else until the exchange is finished.** Xarrul may defend itself against someone knowingly attempting to bind, banish, or destroy it. Otherwise it will neither land nor deliberately command a killing blow, though it is not obliged to rescue patrons who choose violence themselves. The Guest wants living outsiders available for its trap and an Inn still worth taking. It asks for nothing after the exchange because either Xarrul dies during it and the Guest returns empowered, or Xarrul wins and the Guest departs for the Astral Plane. When the Guest is delivered Astral at the end of round 3, the temporary restraint ends; the original promise not to kill the Guest remains.
 
 Xarrul also knows the Guest would prefer to destroy it during the transfer, reclaim the body and retain its planar imprint. It enters anyway because the Guest cannot attack without forfeiting its bodily claim, ordinary mortals cannot touch the projected fiend, and Xarrul wins the contest of wills without outside interference. The deception Xarrul misses is not the Guest's appetite. It is the party the Guest has armed and positioned around the bargain.
 
-If the exchange begins, run **[The Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit)**. Xarrul cannot withdraw after placing its essential anchor in the body; it defends itself with accurate disclosures about the Guest and lets the players decide which danger deserves the vessel.
+If the exchange begins, run **[The Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy)**. Xarrul cannot withdraw after placing its essential anchor in the body. If it wins, the Guest remains coherent but bodiless in the Astral Plane; recovering it requires a future planar rescue and a new vessel.
 
 ## The Night's Clock — Presence & Escalation
 
 The old shape of this module was a whodunit: *what killed Orenn?* → "a fiend" → fight it. The reframed shape keeps the fiend's identity as an *early, cheap* answer and makes the real investigation **moral**: *is this thing actually the villain here?* For that to land, Xarrul must be **felt all night** and slowly recontextualized — from ambient menace, to a voice that seems to taunt, to the only honest dealer in the room.
 
-Presence escalates on the **lockdown clock**. The moment Mags shatters the lockstone, the house seals across every plane into a closed vessel — and Xarrul, sealed inside on the ethereal side, begins finishing its crossing through the old tear. It has until **midnight**, when the seal lapses on its own. As the night runs, the crossing advances — the room grows colder, the ethereal bleed thickens (no longer diffusing away into the district, but pooling *inside*), Xarrul manifests more fully and kills more openly. If the clock runs out, Xarrul **crosses over completely**: permanent, material, no more Slip Between, far worse to fight. The players slowing or breaking the clock — **breaching a sealed exit** to re-open the vessel, the iron bell, re-powering the cellar containment, the fifth rule's *burn-and-seal* — is the pushback; their failure to act is complicity. (Full mechanism: [The Reckoning — The Clock](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#the-clock).)
+Presence escalates on the **lockdown clock**. The moment Mags shatters the lockstone, power leaves the internal seals, the house closes across every plane, and Xarrul crosses fully into the trapped interior. Nothing can enter or leave on any plane while the shell holds, so the Vacancy cannot begin: the Guest cannot be delivered to the Astral Plane. At **midnight** the shell lapses and the returning ward-power begins resealing the tear, creating the single three-round Vacancy window. Player pushback means exposing Xarrul, restoring containment, controlling the factions, reaching the Guest, or preparing the Old Work before that window opens. (Full sequence: [Natural Progression](../storylines/natural-progression.md).)
 
 **The escalation ladder (presence = the clock made audible):**
 
-1. **Ambient dread (Acts 1–2).** No identity yet. Cold spots, a candle that gutters with no draft, Bren flinching at something no one else senses, distortions in [Orenn's silver mirror](orenn.md#items-on-his-person). The house feels *inhabited*.
+1. **Ambient dread (Acts 1–2).** No identity yet. Cold spots, a candle that gutters with no draft, Bren flinching at something no one else senses, or a ghostly figure briefly crossing [Orenn's silver mirror](orenn.md#orenns-silver-mirror). The house feels *inhabited*.
 2. **It notices you (early Act 3).** Once the party investigates, Xarrul whispers to them — Voice Thief, telepathy. It uses **partial truths, omitted context, and questions**, never false statements. It points at genuine clues and corrects convenient mistakes only when doing so divides the room or earns trust. They cannot yet tell whether honesty is help or another weapon. That ambiguity is the engine.
-3. **Honest contact (mid–late Act 3).** A real channel opens — Veil Dust, the mirror, or it simply speaks near the thin point. Now it *converses*: candid about the murder, candid about *why*, and everything it says checks out against what they've dug up — while everyone with a face keeps lying.
+3. **Honest contact (mid–late Act 3).** Xarrul chooses to speak somewhere in the house, or the party reaches it under Oil of Etherealness. Now it *converses*: candid about the murder, candid about *why*, and everything it says checks out against what they've dug up — while everyone with a face keeps lying.
 4. **The pitch (Reckoning).** They have the context now. The offer becomes emotionally available (Scenario F).
 
 **The device that carries all of it: a recurring voice.** Dry, amused, unattributed. It seems to taunt early; it is slowly revealed to be Xarrul; it is slowly revealed to have *never once lied*. A few lines per scene. The reframe — *the cruellest-seeming thing turns out to be the only honest one* — lands itself.
 
 ### Dalla — The Truth as a Wedge
 
-During the brawl, Xarrul steals the two restricted extracts from Haddon's folio. It reads them through the binding's lingering sympathetic link and recognizes that Vyre caused Nessa's dislocation, Haddon knew, and both chose continued extraction over reintegration.
+During the brawl, Haddon's two restricted extracts scatter from his folio. Xarrul's Stored Incursion is fully occupied by Orenn's murder; it steals the papers in the first minute after Mags activates the lockdown and restores its Ethereal Jaunt. It reads them through the binding's lingering sympathetic link and recognizes that Vyre caused Nessa's dislocation, Haddon knew, and both chose continued extraction over reintegration.
 
 It first whispers in Haddon's voice while the real Haddon is visible: *„Mohla ji zachránit už před měsíci.”* Then: *„Zeptej se ho, co krmila tvoje krev.”* It plants the maternal-conduit extract where Dalla or the investigators will find it and withholds the E–III report until the first revelation has made its terminology meaningful.
 
@@ -253,37 +273,36 @@ Keep the **first impression genuinely menacing** (Orenn's horrific death, the sc
 
 ## Who It Kills, Who It Spares
 
-Sympathy is not safety. Xarrul is understandable, honest, and the lesser evil — **and** it methodically murders everyone who could stop it. The menace is in the *curation*: it kills exactly what threatens its crossing and is terrifyingly good at knowing who that is. Cold, surgical, inevitable. When the players realize everyone still breathing is *useful to it* — that it has been playing chess with the guest list all night — that is the coldest beat in the module.
+Sympathy is not safety. Xarrul is understandable, honest, and the lesser evil—and the compact, not mercy, is why it personally claims no victim after Orenn before midnight. It manipulates, isolates, and frightens freely; mortals may still kill one another without its direct act. A direct attempt to bind, banish, or destroy Xarrul invokes the self-defense exception. Once the Guest has been delivered Astral, the restraint is gone.
 
-Overt killing is expensive while it hides (it needs the smokescreen), so the body count **escalates with the lockdown clock** — the mask comes off precisely as it becomes real. Run every kill below as a **DM tool triggered by player choices**, not a scripted inevitability; otherwise you delete your own endings (kill Haddon on a timer and a party that never considered rebinding loses that branch for nothing).
+Run every permitted kill below as a **DM tool triggered by player choices**, not a scripted inevitability; otherwise you delete your own endings. Before the pact ends, Xarrul supplies motive, opportunity, confusion, and escalation, but leaves the final lethal decision to a mortal. After the Guest dies or the exchange finishes, that distinction disappears.
 
 | When | Move | Target | Why |
 |------|------|--------|-----|
 | Pre-game | Kill (done) | **Orenn** | The calm keeper — killed to trigger the lockdown and clear the one watcher. |
-| Early–mid Act 3, *if the party **converges*** | **Deniable** kill | **Kael** (the witness), or a minor patron | Not to start a war — to **scatter**. Kael is more useful alive (a self-propelled war-fuse) until he flips: the honest witness who starts focusing his testimony and rallying the room toward a *coordinated* hunt. Killing him then reshuffles the coalition back into mutual suspicion and buys another hour. War is a possible side effect, not the aim — a boil is high-variance cover; it wants a simmer. |
-| Conditional | **Reactive** kill | **Haddon**, *only if the party moves to rebind it* | "You reach for the chains, I take the hand." Punishes a choice instead of pre-deleting the rebinding path. |
-| Late / crossing | **Open** kill (mask off) | the most competent threat left standing | Done pretending. Fully manifest, kills in the open. Peak horror, gated on the clock. |
-| **Spared — always** | — | **Essek** (indicts the cult for it), **the Guest** (its willing vessel and promised Host), sometimes a **branded PC** (grooming) | The chess set. Notice-this-and-shudder. |
+| Early–mid Act 3 | Escalate accusation | **Kael and Rennt** | Xarrul wants argument and distraction, not a death that would break the compact. |
+| Conditional | **Reactive** kill | **Haddon**, *only if he knowingly moves to bind or banish it* | The compact's explicit self-defense exception: "You reach for the chains, I take the hand." |
+| Guest killed | **Open** kill / abduction | **The Guest's killer** | The exchange is impossible, the temporary restraint ends, and the killer is Xarrul's first replacement-vessel candidate. |
+| After Vacancy | **Open** kill | a direct anti-fiend threat, then anyone who can identify its new body | The compact has ended. It removes witnesses only if the transfer was exposed; otherwise it leaves quietly. |
+| **Protected from Xarrul** | — | **The Guest and everyone else in the Inn** | Orenn is the agreed exception. The pact does not protect them from one another and ends when the exchange finishes. |
 
 > **Grooming → conversion.** The "branded PC" it spares isn't just kept alive — it may be *turned*. A lone PC caught in the Deep Cellar can be marked with a brand of favor and genuinely persuaded to Xarrul's side (not charmed — argued). See [handouts/the-conversion.md](../handouts/the-conversion.md).
 
-**The laundering effect.** Most of the people it kills are ones the party has already soured on — fanatics building toward the apocalypse, a true believer who'd end the world to prove a point. A join-leaning table *rationalizes* those deaths ("Rennt was going to end the world anyway"). That is the seduction: Xarrul launders its violence through the party's own contempt for the victims. Which is exactly why it also needs one move they *can't* wave away — and the **Kael kill is one such move.** He is sympathetic, loyal, and no one's apocalypse-builder, and Xarrul kills him not for being dangerous but for being *useful to the truth*. Murdering the honest man to buy forty minutes stays cold even *with* the context. That is the whole principle in one beat: every kill is *explicable* — a cold observer can reconstruct exactly why it happened — but not every kill is *forgivable*. The context turns the murders from senseless into calculated, never from wrong into right.
+**After the promise expires.** Finishing the Vacancy removes both the Guest and the restraint it imposed. If the transfer was witnessed and the survivors can identify or immediately bind the new vessel, Xarrul performs cold, practical cleanup. If nobody saw the transfer, disguise is safer than slaughter and it joins the people leaving. A separate promise made to the party remains binding.
 
-### The Kidnap — Honesty Weaponized
+### The Abduction — The Hollowing
 
-Late game — cornered, or making its crossing — Xarrul pulls someone through into the Ethereal Plane (mechanically, an escalated **Ethereal Pull**; see Lair Actions) and holds them as **insurance**:
+If the Guest dies or its body becomes unusable, Xarrul does not take a hostage and promise a return. It abducts a replacement, drags the victim to the tear, and uses the breach to erase the victim and keep the body through the forced three-round **[Hollowing](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-h-the-hollowing)**.
 
-> *"Let me finish, and they come back to you, unharmed — you have watched me all night; you know I keep my word. Stop me, and the veil closes with them on the wrong side of it. Choose."*
+Target the PC most responsible for denying it the Guest. If that is impossible, choose a vulnerable humanoid with a useful identity, then a cultist it can isolate. The disappearance disturbs the Deep Cellar wards and Twinkle's web, alerting Mags. Haddon recognizes what Xarrul is attempting, but Mags bars the cultists from her secret level and goes alone; Xarrul kills her before the ritual unless the party follows.
 
-It does not bluff, and the players *know* it doesn't, because you've spent all night establishing it as the one thing that never lies. So there is no calling the bluff: let it cross to save them, or sacrifice them to stop it. Evil (a hostage), in character (instrumental, honest), and a real finale dilemma. Pick the hostage **flexibly — whoever the table has invested in most** — and make them at least somewhat sympathetic, so even a join-leaning party flinches.
-
-**Systemic hook:** the Guest is Xarrul's ideal and already-negotiated vessel. If the party **kills the [Guest](the-guest.md)**, Xarrul loses the only body prepared to receive it willingly and must **abduct a replacement** — the party's own choice *causes* the kidnap. If they free the Guest, they enable the far more complicated [Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit).
+The ordinary vessel is inferior because it cannot change shape, but Xarrul prefers an imperfect body to risking its new existence on a hostage bargain.
 
 ## The Warden's Mark (Mags)
 
-Xarrul worked on *both* of them. Orenn it branded and killed. **Mags it branded too** — a dormant Brand of Spite over her heart, the same hand-shaped mark Orenn bore, only fainter and cold rather than killing. It has held off triggering it, because **it needs her alive**: she is the one who seals the house (the murder is what makes her do it), and a living, grieving Mags is useful afterward — a scapegoat, a jailer keeping the others in line, a heart to break later. Two dead keepers at once would raise the alarm too soon.
+Xarrul worked on *both* of them. Orenn it branded and killed. **Mags carries a Warden's Mark** — a dormant ward-scar left during an earlier Stored Incursion, resembling a faint Brand of Spite but mechanically distinct from the one-creature combat Brand. It has held off triggering the scar because **it needs her alive**: she is the one who seals the house, and a living, grieving Mags keeps everyone else contained and in line. The mark can incapacitate her without killing her and therefore does not violate the compact.
 
-**Mags knows, and hides it.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks and told no one, not even Orenn. It is part of why she is so fatalistic; when she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she's a whole one of herself. The players can discover the mark — Orenn's silver mirror, a Medicine/Arcana check, Bren's reaction — a mid-game beat that says, without a word, that Xarrul is already inside the house, inside *her*. Full detail and the compromised statline live in [mags.md](mags.md#the-wardens-mark-dm).
+**Mags knows, and hides it.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks and told no one, not even Orenn. It is part of why she is so fatalistic; when she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she's a whole one of herself. The players can discover the mark through a Medicine/Arcana check or Bren's reaction — a mid-game beat that says, without a word, that Xarrul is already inside the house, inside *her*. Full detail and the compromised statline live in [mags.md](mags.md#the-wardens-mark-dm).
 
 **It is the finale's tuning knob**, and it means you build only one Mags:
 
@@ -301,12 +320,12 @@ Either way, triggering the mark keeps the spotlight on the PCs rather than on a
 - Nessa's astral projection was diverted by Vyre's E–III experiment, not by an innate defect
 - Dalla is the maternal conduit through which the Order siphoned Nessa's vitality into Xarrul and the Opening research
 - The direction and structure of Nessa's trapped silver cord; after leaving the lockdown, Xarrul can follow it and attempt a controlled reintegration
-- Nessa is not inside the Nether Inn. The lockdown seals the inn on the Material and Ethereal planes, preventing Xarrul from reaching her until it escapes or completes its crossing
+- Nessa is not inside the Nether Inn. The lockdown seals the Inn on the Material and Ethereal planes, preventing Xarrul from reaching her until it becomes embodied and escapes
 - The truth about the thin point: it's a natural fault the old summoners tore and someone sealed, nothing to do with The Opening — and that *Xarrul itself* is what's prying that seal open now, with the sealed house doing the rest
 - The Guest identified Orenn as the keeper whose death would make Mags trigger the lockdown; Xarrul verified the judgment and chose to act on it
-- The exact bargain it offered the Guest, including the Guest's permanent binding to the Inn and the three-round Vacancy in which neither spirit safely occupies the body
-- The exact method of its own destruction (the dual-plane kill) — it will NOT share this willingly, but it might slip in arrogance: "You cannot kill me. Not truly. Not unless you could be in two worlds at once."
-- It cannot guarantee what a dual-plane death would do to Nessa. The harvested energy should recoil along her cord, but a simultaneous violent collapse could reintegrate her, leave her stranded, or damage the tether. Its uncertainty is genuine, and it uses that uncertainty against the kill
+- The exact bargain it made with the Guest: Astral projection rather than annihilation, the changeling body for Xarrul, and the three-round Vacancy in which neither spirit safely occupies the body
+- The exact method of its own destruction (kill it in the Ethereal Plane) — it will NOT share this willingly, but it might slip in arrogance: "You cannot kill me here. And you cannot follow everywhere I go."
+- It cannot guarantee what an Ethereal death would do to Nessa. The harvested energy should recoil along her cord, but a violent collapse could reintegrate her, leave her stranded, or damage the tether. Its uncertainty is genuine, and it uses that uncertainty against the kill
 
 ## Items