fixing plotholes, streamlining

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.