fixing plotholes, streamlining

storylines/complication-toolkit.md

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+# Complication Toolkit
+
+DM-facing pressure moves for moments when the players have found the path of least resistance and the scene needs a new cost, witness, accusation, or decision.
+
+The goal is not to invalidate a good plan. A complication should do one of four things:
+
+- make the players reveal what they are doing;
+- make them spend a resource or owe someone a favor;
+- force them to choose who they trust;
+- advance a neglected NPC or faction while their plan still remains possible.
+
+## How to Use This
+
+1. Identify what currently feels too easy: secrecy, time, faction agreement, access, or combat preparation.
+2. Pick a complication that pressures a **different** resource. Do not simply declare their successful work undone.
+3. Give the players one clear chance to answer it.
+4. Escalate only if they ignore it or fail visibly.
+
+Use one complication at a time. Two simultaneous complications feel like the world reacting. Four feel like the DM refusing to let a plan work.
+
+### Pressure Levels
+
+| Level | Use when | Effect |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Nudge** | Momentum is slowing or a scene is too comfortable | A question, tell, suspicious witness, or private warning |
+| **Obstacle** | The party has a strong uncontested route | An NPC demands access, payment, proof, or a concession |
+| **Crisis** | The party ignores an established warning or the clock is nearly spent | A public accusation, stolen tool, abduction, attack, or faction ultimatum |
+
+---
+
+## d20 Quick Complications
+
+Roll or choose. The entries are deliberately short; fuller versions appear later.
+
+| d20 | Complication |
+|---:|---|
+| 1 | **Thera catches the cellar party returning.** She asks what they found and gently reminds them that Mags owns every secret below. |
+| 2 | **Mags notices the black key is missing.** She closes the kitchen and searches everyone who passed through it. |
+| 3 | **Dace recognizes stolen evidence.** He offers silence in exchange for seeing it first. |
+| 4 | **Haddon recognizes old summoner equipment.** He publicly asks why the party is carrying it and who opened the lower rooms. |
+| 5 | **Sevra demands a chain of custody.** Evidence without a named finder and location will not move the House. |
+| 6 | **Kael sees a cult pin, ritual component, or suspicious blade.** He assumes the nearest cultist planted it. |
+| 7 | **Rennt calls the party Mags's hired thieves.** He demands the cult's papers and property back. |
+| 8 | **Dalla finds the conduit extract at the worst moment.** Rebinding negotiations stop immediately. |
+| 9 | **Essek's brand flares while he helps.** Haddon notices his brass indicator warming. |
+| 10 | **Bren becomes lucid in public.** He identifies Xarrul's presence but also calls Haddon “Professor.” |
+| 11 | **Haddon recognizes the Workroom's Oil of Etherealness.** He publicly asks who opened Mags's hidden laboratory and demands custody of the planar tool. |
+| 12 | **A soulcoin whispers from someone's pocket.** Thera hears it and calmly asks to inspect their belongings. |
+| 13 | **Xarrul exposes one true secret in a stolen voice.** The accused denies it too quickly. |
+| 14 | **A branded NPC remembers a PC tampering with evidence moments ago.** The memory is false, but the witness is sincere. |
+| 15 | **One anti-ethereal dose is missing.** It was moved, not destroyed; three different NPCs have reasons to possess it. |
+| 16 | **The iron bell rings once by itself.** Everyone who knows it matters assumes someone else has begun a ritual. |
+| 17 | **A cellar ward pulses.** Mags knows someone touched a cage, the Vault, or the Old Work—but not which. |
+| 18 | **The factions issue competing ultimatums.** Sevra wants one suspect surrendered; Haddon wants one item returned. |
+| 19 | **A trusted voice rises from the cellar stair.** One PC hears an offer the others do not; it may be Xarrul, the Guest, or only an echo. |
+| 20 | **Xarrul marks the plan's indispensable person.** The ritualist, bell-ringer, ethereal observer, or salt-carrier now has a visible death clock. |
+
+---
+
+## Someone Notices the Cellar
+
+Use these when the party returns too cleanly from the Deep Cellar, carries conspicuous equipment, or begins treating the hidden level like a consequence-free supply room.
+
+| NPC | What they notice | What they say | What they want |
+|---|---|---|---|
+| **Thera** | Dust, old webbing, or the smell of the lower wards | *„Co jste tam dole našli? Myslím, že Mags nebude nadšená, až uslyší, že se jí hrabete ve sklepě. Nemyslíte?”* | Information first; leverage if they evade |
+| **Mags** | Missing key, moved barrel rack, or lower alarm | *„Položte to na stůl. Pak mi řeknete, které dveře jste otevřeli. V tomhle pořadí.”* | Protect the cells and learn whether the rift was disturbed |
+| **Sevra** | New weapons or evidence appearing without provenance | *„Důkaz bez původu je jen předmět, který někdo potřeboval položit na správné místo. Kdo ho našel?”* | A chain of custody before she acts |
+| **Dace** | Ledger page, cult pin, or Vault trophy | *„Tohle nevypadá jako něco, co Mags půjčuje hostům. Můžu se nedívat. Bude mě to něco stát?”* | See or steal anything that implicates him |
+| **Kael** | Ritual dust, cult material, or Dace's records | *„Kdes to vzal? A nelži. Dneska už mám lží dost.”* | Immediate public disclosure |
+| **Haddon** | Binding coffer, old notation, or planar instrument | *„Fascinující. Tohle nebylo nahoře. Takže—který z vás otevřel starou pracovnu?”* | Recover the coffer and control its interpretation |
+| **Rennt** | Anything bearing the Order's symbols | *„To patří Řádu. Vrať to, nebo přestaň předstírat, že jsi vyšetřovatel.”* | Recover cult property and provoke a loyalty test |
+| **Dalla** | Blood tubing, conduit notes, or a child's object | *„Proč je na tom moje jméno?”* | An immediate explanation, regardless of the current plan |
+| **Essek** | Someone carrying volatile summoner equipment incorrectly | *„Nedržte to tak. Prosím. Až se Haddon zeptá, kde jste to našli, neříkejte moje jméno.”* | Prevent disaster and secure discretion |
+| **Bren** | The silver mirror, silvervein root, or a prepared dose of Oil of Etherealness | *„Vidíte ho? Tak se nedívejte na mě. Dívejte se na ty nitě.”* | Recognition, one lucid moment, or freedom |
+
+### Fast Resolutions
+
+- Tell the truth and lose secrecy.
+- Lie and create a future witness against them.
+- Offer a share, favor, or piece of evidence.
+- Bring the NPC into the plan, accepting their preferred ending.
+- Silence the witness socially, magically, or physically—and let that choice matter.
+
+---
+
+## Corrosive Whispers
+
+Xarrul prefers true content delivered in the most damaging voice. Every statement below is true in the underlying story, although the imitated speaker may never have said it.
+
+Use a whisper when the room is becoming cooperative or when one faction has accepted the party's plan too easily.
+
+| Target | Voice used | Whisper | Truth underneath | Likely accusation |
+|---|---|---|---|---|
+| **Kael** | Rennt | *„Dace nám prodal Haratha tři dny před varováním.”* | Dace sold the Harath dossier | Kael attacks Dace and blames Rennt for knowing |
+| **Sevra** | Dace | *„Haddon má můj podpis. Když shoří jeho deník, nemá nic.”* | Haddon's journal contains Dace's field-sign | Sevra moves to seize both Dace and the journal |
+| **Dalla** | Haddon | *„Mohla ji zachránit už před měsíci.”* | Vyre postponed Nessa's reintegration | Dalla confronts Haddon immediately |
+| **Dalla** | Haddon | *„Zeptej se ho, co krmila tvoje krev.”* | Her blood fed the binding through Nessa | Rebinding loses Dalla's support |
+| **Rennt** | Sevra | *„Až se ty dveře otevřou, první umřeš ty.”* | Sevra intends to answer the archive attack | Rennt prepares a preemptive strike |
+| **Haddon** | Essek | *„Pouto je pryč. Zůstalo jen krmení.”* | Essek knows Xarrul is unbound | Haddon searches or punishes Essek |
+| **Essek** | Haddon | *„Viděl jsem, jak ti značka hoří.”* | Haddon's brass indicator reveals strong activations | Essek panics and may flee a safe conversation |
+| **Dace** | Thera | *„Devět dní.”* | Thera has already marked him | Dace searches for the source and exposes fear |
+| **Mags** | Haddon | *„Kruh dole ho dokáže znovu spoutat.”* | Haddon can adapt the circle | Mags realizes Haddon knows more than he admitted |
+| **Mags** | Guest | *„Orenn věděl, koho jste nechali zemřít ve druhé cele.”* | Orenn knew about Cell Two | Mags assumes the cellar secret has escaped |
+| **Sevra** | Thera | *„Tohle není moje mince.”* | Thera recognizes soul-withdrawal | Sevra starts asking why Thera has a category for it |
+| **Any PC** | Another PC | A true sentence from that PC's dossier or disclosed goal | Xarrul has listened all night | The party must decide whether the speaker betrayed them |
+
+### Whisper Guardrails
+
+- Use only facts Xarrul plausibly knows.
+- The sentence itself remains true; the falsehood is attribution, timing, or omitted context.
+- Let a careful player compare where the imitated speaker actually was.
+- Bren should react when Xarrul comes close enough to place a whisper. His sudden lucidity is the counter-clue.
+
+---
+
+## Visions and False Memories
+
+Use a **momentary vision** on a branded target through Visions of Spite, or on an oil-user crossing near the tear in the Old Work. Use a persistent **false memory** only on a creature Xarrul has branded and affected with Waking Dream.
+
+**Hard limit:** Waking Dream can rewrite only the preceding minute. It cannot add a new witness to Orenn's murder, change what someone remembers from the opening brawl, or revise an interrogation that happened earlier in the lockdown. It can only falsify something that appears to have happened **just now**.
+
+A fresh false memory may change how someone interprets older evidence—“I just saw that PC plant Orenn's dagger”—but it cannot change the older event itself.
+
+| d12 | What the victim experiences | Accusation it encourages | Tell that can break it |
+|---:|---|---|---|
+| 1 | They remember a PC slipping a current piece of evidence into their coat seconds ago | “They are hiding or replacing evidence” | The item is still in its original place or another witness watched it continuously |
+| 2 | They remember Haddon wiping fresh black residue from his fingers after examining an item | “He just contaminated the evidence” | His hands and handkerchief carry no residue |
+| 3 | They remember Kael passing Dace's ritual-marked dagger beneath the table moments ago | “The House is coordinating a cover-up” | The dagger is somewhere neither man could have moved it from |
+| 4 | They remember Mags quietly ordering a PC not to mention what they found below | “Mags is suppressing the cellar evidence” | The PC never spoke with Mags, or someone heard the actual exchange |
+| 5 | They remember Dalla handing Rennt a fresh vial of blood | “The cult is preparing another ritual now” | Dalla still possesses every vial, or the supposed vial cannot be found |
+| 6 | They remember Essek tracing a wall sigil immediately before a ward pulse | “Essek just activated the house wards” | His fingertips lack chalk or residue and the real pulse began elsewhere |
+| 7 | They remember Sevra slipping Dace a folded note or payment during the latest argument | “Sevra is protecting the traitor” | A search finds nothing and another witness saw both of Sevra's hands |
+| 8 | They remember Thera planting a warm coin in a PC's pocket seconds ago | “Thera is framing that PC—or the PC is carrying soul-work” | The coin remains on Thera, or the PC's pocket is empty |
+| 9 | They remember hearing the Guest's voice answer from inside a returning PC's coat or pack | “The party smuggled something out of Cell One” | Searching the pack finds nothing; Bren reacts to Xarrul elsewhere |
+| 10 | They remember a trusted PC nicking or smearing the active salt line a few heartbeats ago | “That PC is sabotaging the finale” | The line is intact, or the mark predates the PC's approach |
+| 11 | They remember another PC whispering their private secret to Haddon or Sevra within the last minute | “My companion betrayed me” | The supposed recipient cannot repeat any supporting detail |
+| 12 | In a momentary vision, every person present wears Orenn's dead face except one NPC | “The unchanged person is controlling this” | This is a present hallucination, not a memory; Bren stares toward Xarrul's true position |
+
+### Escalating a Vision
+
+1. The victim becomes distracted or frightened.
+2. They privately confront the apparent culprit.
+3. If dismissed, they accuse them publicly.
+4. Only then should they draw a weapon or sabotage a plan.
+
+This gives the party several chances to discover that the accusation is sincere but the memory is wrong.
+
+---
+
+## Upstairs Escalation Beats
+
+Use these to keep the upstairs pressure cooker moving underneath the investigation. Pick the faction that has been least pressured recently. Before the Vacancy finishes, Xarrul's compact keeps it from landing or deliberately commanding a killing blow, but faction NPCs remain dangerous to one another.
+
+| Beat | What happens | What stops it |
+|---|---|---|
+| **Search the cult table** | Kael demands every cultist empty their bags. Rennt refuses on principle. | Sevra accepts a narrower search with a named item |
+| **Search the assassins** | Haddon publicly identifies Dace's ritual-marked dagger and demands equal scrutiny. | Evidence that the dagger concerns Dace, not the whole House |
+| **The missing folio** | Haddon accuses the nearest PC or assassin of taking his two extracts. | Produce one extract, expose his panic, or point out the theft happened in darkness |
+| **Dalla collapses** | Her accumulated blood loss catches up with her during an argument. Both sides accuse the other of magic. | Medicine, visible care, and examination of her old scars |
+| **Essek's brand activates** | He cries out while contradicting Haddon. Rennt calls it proof of betrayal. | Hide the brass indicator and physically protect Essek |
+| **Dace takes a hostage** | Evidence closes around him, so he grabs Bren or an isolated PC. | Safe passage, a distraction, or exploiting his fear of Thera |
+| **Thera offers order** | She calmly proposes that one suspect be bound “until facts improve.” | Notice that she selects whoever threatens her secret, not Xarrul |
+| **Kael hears the laugh again** | Xarrul repeats Rennt's original laugh from behind him. Kael swings before looking. | Someone recognizing the impossible direction or Bren's reaction |
+| **Rennt demonstrates the Opening** | He produces a brief planar flare to prove the cult's theory. The room interprets it as an attack. | Haddon counterspells his own ally or the party contains the flare |
+| **Sevra sets a deadline** | She gives the investigators ten minutes to produce the traitor or the House acts. | Concrete evidence, a professional counterproposal, or invoking Grey Quay through Mags |
+| **Mags's mark flares** | Mags freezes in an Orenn vision while both factions think the other attacked her. | *Remove Curse*, Bren's explanation, or showing the matching brand |
+| **A patron disappears** | During a distraction, Xarrul nonlethally isolates someone coordinating the cellar search. | Immediate headcount and a coordinated search before Mags takes control |
+
+---
+
+## Complications by Easy Ending Route
+
+### The Vacancy Is Too Easy
+
+- The Executioner arrives at the circle and takes the clean shot at the projected Guest.
+- Mags hears Orenn's stolen voice below and begins descending.
+- Haddon realizes Xarrul is committed and tries to preserve it for rebinding.
+- The vacant body takes damage, forcing the party to protect the vessel as well as attack Xarrul.
+- The Guest reads a PC's plan and exposes their secret objective to buy protection.
+- One anti-ethereal character must choose between attacking Xarrul and keeping the Guest's cord safe.
+
+### Rebinding Is Too Easy
+
+- The conduit extract reaches Dalla just before she offers blood.
+- Essek states publicly that the ritual restores feeding, not control alone.
+- Mags asks Haddon why the ritual requires the blood of a desperate mother.
+- Sevra demands custody of Xarrul after the ritual, which Haddon refuses.
+- Before capture, Shadow Surge breaks a Litany reader's sightline and opens a route away from the circle.
+- A reader must choose between spending their action on the chant or casting the verbal spell that would save an exposed ally.
+- Once captured, Xarrul tells Dalla exactly what the restored conduit will do to Nessa; if she stops, the 2d6 psychic backlash can break a second station.
+- Xarrul tells Rennt that Haddon knew the command line was dead. Rennt demands an answer while all three stations must remain active to make progress.
+
+### Bell-and-Sigils Is Too Easy
+
+- Dalla fears the seal will make Nessa unreachable and demands proof the connection survives.
+- Haddon wants the circle rewritten as a binding before he will help restore it.
+- Xarrul marks the bell-ringer, making every approach to the bell dangerous.
+- A foundation sigil lies beneath an active faction skirmish.
+- The salt line is complete except for a section directly under Mags, frozen by her Warden's Mark.
+- Thera offers to hold Xarrul in place, but doing so exposes her soul-work or gives her access to the tear in the Old Work.
+
+### Ethereal Destruction Is Too Easy
+
+- Haddon and Rennt try to pull the Ethereal hunter back rather than openly joining Xarrul.
+- Xarrul remains Material and mauls the weaker Material group, refusing the side where the waiting executioner has the advantage.
+- An Ethereal oil-user is isolated, blinded or forced away just as Deathless Slip carries Xarrul across at 1 HP.
+- Xarrul brands the only character covering one side of the veil and uses the mark to track and avoid them.
+- The Ethereal group sees Skein threatening Bren at the same time Xarrul becomes vulnerable.
+- Dalla withdraws her support at the last moment after a vision of Nessa's silver cord snapping.
+
+### The Planar Pincer Is Too Easy
+
+- Xarrul kills or blinds the character with ethereal sight first.
+- Voice Thief sends the salt-carrier toward the wrong manifestation.
+- Xarrul manifests beside the salt-carrier, forcing them to choose between anchoring it and protecting a vulnerable ally.
+- The bell reveals Xarrul, but it immediately moves away from the restored sigils and binding circle where the toll could suppress its jaunt.
+- Haddon counterspells a decisive attack because he still wants the asset alive.
+- A frightened defender drops the only remaining Veilhook Salt between the factions.
+
+### Siding With Xarrul Is Too Easy
+
+- Mags conducts a roll call before opening the doors and notices an extra or missing face.
+- Sevra uses a private House countersign that disguised Xarrul cannot answer.
+- The Guest demands that its Astral fate be included in the bargain and threatens to expose the party.
+- Xarrul agrees to spare everyone but refuses to accept a vague promise; it demands the exact person being framed.
+- Dalla will help only if Nessa's rescue is spoken as an explicit condition in front of witnesses.
+- A framed suspect produces an alibi that only another PC can destroy by revealing their own secret.
+- Mags offers the framed suspect a final private interview, where her Fixer's Read is strongest.
+
+### The Empowered Guest's Takeover Is Too Easy
+
+- False Mags uses the wrong hand for Orenn's black key.
+- Bren reacts to Voice Thief coming from “Mags.”
+- Twinkle refuses to obey the person wearing Mags's face.
+- Sevra asks about Grey Quay, a history the Guest only partly knows.
+- The real Mags pounds a coded house rhythm through the pipes from Cell One.
+- The Guest offers one PC ownership or secrecy in exchange for ignoring a tell.
+
+---
+
+## Secrets as Complications
+
+When the party is cooperating too smoothly, bring one dossier goal into the open without naming the entire secret.
+
+| Secret conflict | Pressure move |
+|---|---|
+| **Debtor vs. Collector** | A loose ledger page falls from someone's coat in front of both PCs. The fireplace is three steps away. |
+| **Agent vs. Executioner** | The Guest speaks the Agent's countersign, then tells the Executioner: *„Zabij mě a jeho slib zemře se mnou. Pak jsi jeho první nové tělo.”* |
+| **Mourner vs. Executioner** | The Guest offers the Mourner's answer only after its cell door opens. |
+| **Recruit vs. Blackmailed One** | Haddon asks the Recruit, publicly, whether their companion has “completed the agreed service.” |
+| **Blade vs. cult helper** | Sevra announces that proof of PC collaboration will activate the contract's replacement clause. |
+| **Mercy** | The infection settles near the Guest, then begins pulling harder toward the Old Work, proving the apparent answer was incomplete. |
+
+---
+
+## Last-Resort Crisis Moves
+
+Use these only near midnight or after the party repeatedly ignores pressure.
+
+- Xarrul brands the one person every current plan requires.
+- A faction seizes one anti-ethereal tool and barricades itself around it.
+- Mags declares the cellar closed and places herself physically between the party and the stairs.
+- Dalla offers her blood to the first side that promises Nessa will live.
+- Thera kills or extracts Dace before he can testify.
+- As the shell lapses, the Guest begins the Vacancy at the tear before every PC reaches the Old Work.
+- Xarrul abducts the person the party has invested in most and begins preparing the Hollowing.
+- The faction war starts while half the party is still below.
+
+Every crisis should still leave at least two responses. The point is to force a decision, not announce a result.
+
+---
+
+## Five Reliable Lines to Keep Ready
+
+When there is no time to search a table, use one of these:
+
+- **Thera:** *„Co jste tam dole našli? A komu jste to ještě neřekli?”*
+- **Mags:** *„Jeden člověk zmizel. Dveře zůstávají zavřené. Začněte mluvit.”*
+- **Haddon:** *„Než to zničíte, možná byste se měli zeptat, koho tím vláknem držíte při životě.”*
+- **Sevra:** *„Máte jednu minutu na důkaz. Potom přestanu čekat na svolení.”*
+- **Xarrul, in a trusted voice:** *„Řekli ti plán. Neřekli ti cenu.”*

storylines/ending-tree-revisit.md

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+# Ending Tree — Revisit List
+
+Resolved propagation checklist. The canonical outcome map is [Natural Progression](natural-progression.md); encounter mechanics are in [The Reckoning](the-reckoning.md).
+
+## Resolution Mechanics
+
+- [x] **Remove exterior breach.** The mundane door can be opened or destroyed, but the planar shell behind it cannot be punctured or dispelled before midnight and is not an anti-Xarrul solution.
+- [x] **Write the Hollowing.** It is a three-round forced transfer with a projected victim, vulnerable body, restricted Xarrul, delay saves and several interruption methods.
+- [x] **Choose Hollowing targets.** Prefer the PC most responsible for denying Xarrul the Guest, then a useful vulnerable humanoid, then an isolated cultist.
+- [x] **Define planar death.** Xarrul has one HP pool, regenerates Ethereally, cannot die Materially and is permanently destroyed at 0 HP in the Ethereal Plane.
+- [x] **Remove cross-plane force damage.** Force damage follows the ordinary planar boundary; seeing an Ethereal target does not allow an attack to cross.
+- [x] **Define the iron bell.** Alone it reveals Xarrul. With restored sigils it blocks Ethereal Jaunt inside the circle. All three seal Xarrul between planes.
+
+## Vacancy and Guest
+
+- [x] **Replace the spectral Host.** A completed Vacancy puts Xarrul in the changeling body and projects the Guest into the Astral Plane. House actions and spectral succession were removed.
+- [x] **Decide the Astral fate.** The Guest remains coherent and alive but bodiless. A future astral expedition and new vessel could recover it; it cannot return tonight.
+- [x] **Explain the unattended Vacancy.** Xarrul opens Cell One from the Ethereal side, triggers the lower alarm while Mags is occupied by the faction war, and escorts the willing Guest deeper to the tear in the Old Work.
+- [x] **Fix the Vacancy at midnight.** The lockdown blocks the Guest's Astral release; the shell's collapse opens the only three-round transfer window before internal containment returns.
+- [x] **Add the compact.** Xarrul first promises never to kill the Guest, preventing forced Hollowing of the changeling. Their later compact permits it to kill Orenn but nobody else until the exchange finishes, except direct self-defense; patrons remain dangerous to one another.
+- [x] **Make the Guest the leash.** If the Guest dies or repudiates the exchange, the temporary restraint lifts immediately. Xarrul can kill directly and selects the responsible character as its first Hollowing target.
+- [x] **Rewrite empowered-Guest succession.** It uses Orenn's voice to lure Mags below, imprisons her in Cell One, takes her form and returns as proprietor.
+- [x] **Add false-Mags counterplay.** Following Mags, the missing black key, Twinkle, private memories, cell messages and shapechanger detection can expose the Guest.
+- [x] **Recheck character secrets.** Handler's Agent and Executioner now state the Astral/Hollowing consequences. Mourner and Mercy's base secret remain compatible.
+- [x] **Recheck Mercy's gifts.** The Guest gift now explicitly requires striking Xarrul during the transfer; Xarrul's gift still requires allowing the transfer and remains its opposed route.
+
+## Xarrul's Character and Strategy
+
+- [x] **Reframe intelligence.** The Guest devised the superior disguise and quiet succession; Xarrul understands the magical risk but is not mastermind of every layer.
+- [x] **Make faction war the loophole.** Timed whispers, last-minute edits and true accusations push mortals to choose killing blows Xarrul is forbidden to deliver itself.
+- [x] **Make post-Vacancy cleanup conditional.** Once the Guest is delivered Astral, its protection expires. Xarrul removes witnesses only if the transfer was exposed; otherwise it leaves disguised.
+- [x] **Rewrite the deliberate-Xarrul finale.** Its obstacle is Mags's authority, not a holding-action boss fight.
+- [x] **Develop framing.** Haddon, Rennt, Dace, Thera and the Guest each supply part of a frame; a viable story needs hand, motive and fiendish evidence.
+- [x] **Develop quiet neutralization.** Drugging, the Warden's Mark, Cell One, impersonation and political replacement all have stated costs and tells.
+
+## Passive and Faction-War Timeline
+
+- [x] **Write timed escalation.** Natural Progression now has beats at T−90, T−60, T−30, T−10 and midnight.
+- [x] **Preserve witnesses.** Haddon or Essek remains able to identify Xarrul if the transfer is exposed.
+- [x] **Write recognition.** Haddon senses the absent command binding, alien vessel and matching brand; Rennt's denial breaks and the survivors unite.
+- [x] **Write cleanup priority.** After an exposed Vacancy, Xarrul targets Ethereal/salt users, bell and sigil operators, then witnesses able to identify the new vessel.
+- [x] **Reconcile casualties.** Orenn is Xarrul's only permitted pre-Vacancy victim; faction casualties can still occur by mortal hands, and Xarrul's later cleanup depends on exposure.
+
+## Mags and the Deep Cellar
+
+- [x] **Add the lower alarm.** Cell wards and Twinkle's anchor web turn Mags's black key cold and make Twinkle hammer the wall.
+- [x] **Clarify Haddon's knowledge.** He knows the original containment direction, not the later cells, Vault, laboratory, Guest or Twinkle.
+- [x] **Write Mags barring cultists.** She refuses to expose her private operation and takes the black key down alone.
+- [x] **Write Mags's death.** Unless followed, Xarrul kills her before committing to the Hollowing.
+- [x] **Clarify midnight.** The shell lapses automatically, but Mags physically bars departure until she accepts a culprit. She never knowingly releases Xarrul.
+
+## Nessa and the Remaining Connection
+
+- [x] **Bell-and-sigils outcome.** The seal preserves the connection and leaves Nessa recoverable later.
+- [x] **Rebinding outcome.** Nessa remains lost, but the Opening could return her at catastrophic cost.
+- [x] **Dalla's death.** Nessa remains stable and unaging; losing the maternal conduit makes recovery much harder, not immediately fatal.
+- [x] **Remove conventional banishment.** *Banishment* sends native Xarrul Ethereal and suppresses its Material return while maintained; it is setup, not an ending.
+- [x] **Empowered Guest.** It retains the stolen vitality; safe extraction requires a new ritual or later adventure.
+- [x] **Xarrul bargain.** Exact spoken terms before witnesses are the proof: name Nessa, safe return, protected lives and completion conditions. Xarrul honors wording, not implications.
+
+## Files Synchronized
+
+- [x] `storylines/the-reckoning.md`
+- [x] `storylines/murder-mystery.md`
+- [x] `storylines/order-of-mending.md`
+- [x] `storylines/natural-progression.md`
+- [x] `npc/xarrul.md`
+- [x] `npc/the-guest.md`
+- [x] `npc/mags.md`
+- [x] `npc/cultists.md`
+- [x] `npc/assassins.md`
+- [x] `location/tavern-overview.md`
+- [x] `location/main-hall.md`
+- [x] `location/cellar.md`
+- [x] `location/deep-cellar.md`
+- [x] `handouts/character-secrets.md`
+- [x] `handouts/the-conversion.md`
+- [x] `prints/secrets/3-handlers-agent.md`
+- [x] `prints/secrets/4-executioner.md`
+- [x] `prints/secrets/8-mourner.md` — reviewed; no change required.
+- [x] `prints/secrets/9-mercy.md` — reviewed; no change required.
+- [x] `prints/gifts/mercy-guest-cizi-kuze.md`
+- [x] `prints/gifts/mercy-xarrul-pruchod-sedi.md` — reviewed; already matches the Xarrul route.
+- [x] `overview.md`
+- [x] `Core Move.md`

storylines/ethereal-trip.md

@@ -1,142 +0,0 @@
-# The Ethereal Trip — Veil Dust Subplot
-
-## Overview
-
-**Veil Dust** is a narcotic that temporarily thins the user's perception of planar boundaries, allowing them to see — and partially interact with — the Ethereal Plane. It's trippy, disorienting, beautiful, terrifying, and addictive. In this oneshot, it serves as the bridge between subplots: the drug that reveals the murder's true nature, Skein's existence, and the thin point's danger.
-
-Vetch is the entry point. He wants a fix and knows where Orenn hid the last packet he confiscated from him. If the players recover the Workroom cache, Vetch offers to guide a shared trip. Taking it is optional but opens doors that nothing else does.
-
----
-
-## Obtaining Veil Dust
-
-| Source | Method | Notes |
-|--------|--------|-------|
-| **Deep Cellar Workroom** | Follow Vetch's lead through the concealed door; locked drawer, DC 14 | 4 doses: three diagnostic doses and Vetch's confiscated packet. The Workroom is the first chamber below. |
-| **Kitchen herb rack** | DC 14 Nature/Herbalism Kit | Identifies dried nightwhisper as a Veil Dust component. Orenn's preparation marks match the bundles in the hidden Workroom. |
-| **Vetch** | He has nothing. That's the problem. | He asks for one dose as payment for the lead and offers to guide any PCs who take the remaining doses beside him. |
-
----
-
-## Taking Veil Dust — Mechanics
-
-### Onset
-Immediate. The dust is inhaled. Effects begin within 6 seconds (1 round).
-
-### Initial Save
-**DC 13 Constitution saving throw.**
-- **Failure:** Incapacitated for 1 round as the perception shift overwhelms the user. Vivid, uncontrolled visions — the DM describes what the Ethereal Plane looks like before the user can act.
-- **Success:** The transition is smooth. The user sees both planes overlaid on each other and can act normally.
-
-### Duration
-- **Standard:** 1 minute (10 rounds). Enough for observation, not exploration.
-- **At the thin point (cellar):** 10 minutes. The natural weakness in the boundary amplifies the effect.
-- **Double dose:** 10 minutes regardless of location, but requires a DC 15 CON save or suffer 1 level of exhaustion when it ends.
-
-### Effects While Active
-
-**Ethereal Sight.** The user can see into the Ethereal Plane as if under *See Invisibility*, but specifically for ethereal entities and objects. The Material Plane appears washed out and grey; the Ethereal Plane overlays it in faint, translucent detail.
-
-**Ethereal Interaction.** The user can touch, speak to, and be touched by ethereal entities. This is *not* full planar travel — the user is still physically on the Material Plane. But their sensory and tactile connection crosses the boundary. In mechanical terms:
-- Can target ethereal creatures with attacks and spells
-- Can be targeted by ethereal creatures
-- Cannot move through solid objects or fly (still physically present)
-
-**Perception Enhancement.** Advantage on Perception checks while the dust is active. The user notices things at the boundary: cracks in wards, planar residue, ethereal trails.
-
-**Hallucination Risk.** Each round while the dust is active, roll a DC 12 Wisdom save. On a failure, the user experiences a **hallucination** (see table below). Hallucinations are brief (1 round) and don't incapacitate, but they're disorienting and might influence the user's actions.
-
-### Comedown
-When the effect ends:
-- **WIS save DC 14:** On failure, the user feels the pull of addiction — a deep, aching desire to see the Ethereal Plane again. For the rest of the session, they have disadvantage on Wisdom saves against taking another dose if offered.
-- **Side effect:** Disadvantage on Wisdom saving throws for 1 hour after the trip ends (the boundary in the user's mind is still thin).
-- **Vetch's warning:** "The flat world comes back. It always does. And every time it's harder to live in."
-
----
-
-## The Trip — What Players See
-
-### In the Main Hall
-
-The main hall overlaid with its ethereal echo. Everything is grey, translucent, *thin*. Living creatures glow faintly — warm colors for strong life force, dim for weak. The candle flames appear as pale blue phantoms. The stone walls are semi-transparent, and behind them: nothing. The grey void of the deep Ethereal, stretching into infinity.
-
-**Specific observations:**
-- **Bren** glows dimly — his life force is being drained. Beside him, **Skein** is clearly visible: a knotted spider-thing with tendrils in his skull. It reacts to being seen — it *notices* that it's being noticed and shrinks back, pulling its tendrils tighter.
-- **The bar (where Orenn died):** A dark, acrid stain on the ethereal side. The Brand of Spite left a residue — a scorch mark that exists on both planes. It smells of copper and old fire.
-- **The fireplace bell:** Glows faintly with old enchantment. The wards it's connected to are visible as thin lines of light running down through the floor — most of them flickering, cracked, barely holding.
-- **The curtained booth:** Nothing supernatural, but its privacy makes it a useful place to compare what the user sees without alerting either faction.
-- **The cultist table:** Dalla glows dim. A hair-thin silver filament passes through her chest, bends toward empty space where Nessa is not, then pulls taut against the tavern's lockdown and vanishes into its boundary. DC 15 Arcana recognizes a sympathetic conduit leading to a projected consciousness outside the inn. Essek's wrist brand glows amber — it's ethereal in nature, visible on both planes. Haddon has a faint aura of arcane residue.
-
-### In the Cellar
-
-The cellar is transformed. The stone walls glow with the ghost-light of old wards — thin, silvery lines, the summoners' long-dead work. Most of them are dark now, drained, bleeding shadow instead of light. The old sigils appear as *wounds* in the ethereal fabric, their light bleeding away toward the thin point.
-
-**The thin point** is visible as a **tear** — not metaphorical, a literal rip in the grey fabric of the Ethereal Plane. The Material Plane shows through it in muted color. Standing near it feels like standing at the edge of a cliff.
-
-**Xarrul's nest:** Shadows coiled in a corner of the ethereal cellar. Claw marks on the ethereal stone. The faint, acrid smell of the Brand of Spite. If Xarrul is present, it's visible: a gaunt, angular figure with charred-paper skin and burning amber eyes. It sees the users immediately. It *smiles*.
-
-**The binding circle:** Blazes with silver light in the Ethereal Plane. It's intact and potent — a beacon of old, careful craftsmanship (the summoners', not Orenn's). Anything bound within it on the Material Plane is also constrained on the Ethereal Plane. Xarrul avoids it.
-
----
-
-## Hallucination Table
-
-Roll d8 each round on a failed WIS save:
-
-| d8 | Hallucination |
-|----|---------------|
-| 1 | **Echoes of the Dead.** You see a translucent figure that might be Orenn, standing behind the bar, polishing a glass. He looks at you, opens his mouth, and says nothing. He's gone when you blink. |
-| 2 | **The Walls Breathe.** The stone walls pulse slowly, like a sleeping creature's ribcage. You feel the building's age — centuries of secrets soaked into the stone. |
-| 3 | **Thread Everywhere.** For a moment, everyone in the room is connected by thin, knotted threads — like Skein's tendrils, but linking every person to every other. The threads vibrate with tension. Then they're gone. |
-| 4 | **The Floor is Glass.** The floor becomes transparent. Beneath it, the cellar — and beneath the cellar, the deep Ethereal, grey and infinite. You feel vertigo even though you're standing on solid ground. |
-| 5 | **Wrong Reflection.** If near any reflective surface (a glass, a puddle, a blade), your reflection doesn't match. It moves a beat behind you. It looks scared. |
-| 6 | **Orenn's Voice.** You hear Orenn's voice, calm and clear: "Check the cellar. The walls are down." When you turn, no one is there. (This may or may not be a hallucination. The DM decides.) |
-| 7 | **Something Watched.** The certainty that something very large, very old, and very patient just looked at you. Not Xarrul — something beyond even the fiend. A pressure on the back of your skull. Then it's gone. (This is flavor. It's the deep Ethereal. It's nothing. Probably.) |
-| 8 | **Beautiful.** For one round, the Ethereal Plane is breathtaking. The void isn't empty — it's full of light, faint and distant, like stars seen from underwater. You understand, for a moment, why Vetch can't stop coming back. |
-
----
-
-## The Shared Trip — Dramatic Beats
-
-If players trip with Vetch, the following beats play out:
-
-### Beat 1: The Wonder
-Vetch guides them through the initial perception shift. He's calm, experienced, almost gentle. "Don't fight it. Let it settle. There — see? The world has another layer." This is the only time Vetch is the most competent person in the room.
-
-### Beat 2: The Discovery
-Players see Skein attached to Bren. If they didn't know about the possession, this is the reveal. If they did, they can now see the full extent of it — the tendrils, the way Skein pulses as it feeds, the way Bren's life force dims where the threads connect.
-
-### Beat 3: The Trail
-Near the bar, the ethereal residue of the Brand of Spite leads downward. A trail of dark, acrid energy, like smoke frozen in air. It leads to the cellar stairs. The murder left a scar on both planes.
-
-### Beat 4: The Threat
-If players follow the trail to the cellar, they see the thin point and (if Xarrul is there) the fiend. This is the moment the murder mystery becomes something else entirely. Xarrul is aware of them. It doesn't attack immediately — it watches, amused. Voice Thief activates: a whisper in someone's head. "You see me. How interesting. Do your friends know what you've found?"
-
-If they noticed Dalla's silver filament, Xarrul looks directly along it before adding: „To dítě není v tomhle domě. Udělali z matky cestu a pak se divili, že krvácejí oba její konce.” It will not yet explain further; the stolen conduit extract is the proof.
-
-### Beat 5: The Comedown
-The dust wears off. The Ethereal Plane fades. The grey, translucent world collapses back into the flat, mundane tavern. It feels like going deaf after hearing music. Vetch shudders. "Every time," he mutters. "Every time it's worse."
-
----
-
-## Read-Aloud: The Trip Begins
-
-> *Prášek chutná jako mrazivý vzduch a měď. Vdechnete ho a na okamžik — jeden krátký, tichý okamžik — se nic nestane.*
->
-> *Pak se svět rozpůlí.*
->
-> *Ne rozpadne. Rozpůlí — jako byste celý život dívali na obraz a teď vám někdo ukázal, že ten obraz je namalovaný na skle a za sklem je další místnost. Všechno, co vidíte, je pořád tady — stoly, židle, tváře — ale je to najednou průsvitné, vybledlé, jako vyrudlá fotografie přeložená přes realitu. A za tím — za tím šedým, průsvitným stínem světa, který znáte — je něco jiného. Éterická rovina.*
->
-> *Je šedá. Rozlehlá. Nekonečná. A není prázdná.*
-
-## Read-Aloud: The Comedown
-
-> *Skončí to bez varování. Svět za sklem zmizí. Šedá hloubka, průsvitné stíny, éterický opar — všechno se stáhne jako odliv a zpátky zůstane jen hospoda. Jen kameny, dřevo, svíčky a tvrdá realita bez druhé vrstvy.*
->
-> *Cítíte se, jako byste ohluchli po koncertě. Svět je plochý. Obyčejný. Nedostatečný.*
->
-> *Vetch vedle vás tiše zasténá. "Víte," řekne potichu, "jednou jsem četl, že slepí lidé nevidí tmu. Nevidí nic. Nemají čím vidět. Přesně tak se teď cítím. Jako bych neměl čím vidět to, co jsem právě viděl."*
->
-> *Odmlčí se. Podívá se na své ruce.*
->
-> *"Půjčil byste mi na ještě jednu dávku?"*

storylines/house-of-scales.md

@@ -101,7 +101,7 @@ She needs at least **two pieces** of concrete evidence (the pin found on Dace, H
 "Even if I met with them — which I'm not saying I did — it was intelligence gathering. I was trying to find the mole. Working alone because I didn't want to tip anyone off."
 
 **Stage 3 — Violence** (if cornered):
-Dace grabs the nearest vulnerable NPC (Vetch, Bren, or a player who isn't watching him) as a hostage. He has a concealed dagger coated in Essence of Ether (DC 13 CON save or unconscious for 1 minute). He demands safe passage out of the tavern.
+Dace grabs the nearest vulnerable target (Bren or a player who isn't watching him) as a hostage. He has a concealed dagger coated in Essence of Ether (DC 13 CON save or unconscious for 1 minute). He demands safe passage out of the tavern.
 
 **Resolution options:**
 - Let him go — Sevra won't allow it. The guild's justice requires an answer.
@@ -149,14 +149,14 @@ No single clue explains it; the horror is in assembling small wrong things until
 2. **The gestures.** A PC watching Thera greet or part from someone catches the doorframe-touch, the coin turned once, the murmured word (DC 16 Perception; DC 14 Insight to feel it was ritual). She did all three to Dace earlier, "comforting" him. Meaningless now; unforgettable in hindsight.
 3. **The read.** DC 16 Insight: her warmth is real and skin-deep, and underneath she is *appraising* people, gently, like livestock.
 4. **The brand.** Ask her about Orenn's body and she reads the soul-withdrawal fluently — *"That isn't a wound, it's a withdrawal… not our coin, though. Cruder."* She becomes a murder suspect (a dead end — Xarrul did it) and a much larger question (why does she know this on sight?).
-5. **The mark on Dace.** His shadow falls a half-breath late at the candles (DC 15 Perception); true sight / *Veil Dust* / Mags / DC 15 Medicine or Arcana up close shows the grey seam at his throat. He is condemned and doesn't know it.
+5. **The mark on Dace.** His shadow falls a half-breath late at the candles (DC 15 Perception); true sight, Mags, or DC 15 Medicine or Arcana up close shows the grey seam at his throat. He is condemned and doesn't know it.
 6. **The soulcoin** — the proof (below).
 
 ## The Soulcoin (the gut-punch)
 
 The single object that makes the whole thing land. Thera carries at least one. Getting it off her is hard — DC 20 Sleight of Hand and she'll notice — but she may spend one in a fight (**Soulcoin Surge**), and one is on her body if she falls.
 
-A warm coin, faceless on both sides, that whispers when held to the ear in a quiet room — and, held longer, seems to be *listening* instead. It is a person, minted: not destroyed, folded cold and recoverable while it holds charge. Mags smells the necrotic residue and goes grey; a cleric feels the trapped soul; *Veil Dust* shows it glowing wrong; DC 15 Arcana reads a personal, fingerprint-like necrotic signature. Its warmth dates the kill — a warm coin matches a *recent* sealed contract on the guild's rolls, nailing Thera to a specific death. **Destroy it with charge left and the soul escapes** — to thank its liberator, to testify, or to lash out if it died screaming.
+A warm coin, faceless on both sides, that whispers when held to the ear in a quiet room — and, held longer, seems to be *listening* instead. It is a person, minted: not destroyed, folded cold and recoverable while it holds charge. Mags smells the necrotic residue and goes grey; a cleric feels the trapped soul; true sight shows it glowing wrong; DC 15 Arcana reads a personal, fingerprint-like necrotic signature. Its warmth dates the kill — a warm coin matches a *recent* sealed contract on the guild's rolls, nailing Thera to a specific death. **Destroy it with charge left and the soul escapes** — to thank its liberator, to testify, or to lash out if it died screaming.
 
 Full description and mechanics: [the roster entry](../npc/assassins.md#the-soulcoin-the-gut-punch).
 
@@ -185,7 +185,7 @@ There is no clean win here — that's the point. Options, in rough order of how
 - **Let it lie.** Most tables. They feel *something* is wrong with Even-Hand and can't prove it, and she walks out courteous and beloved. The rot continues. Deeply unsettling; entirely valid.
 - **Take it to Sevra.** Run [Sevra's arc](../npc/assassins.md#the-thing-she-cant-name-dm--her-arc): denial → one undeniable physical crack → terrifying thoroughness. Convince her and the loyalists turn — Sevra, and a broken Kael, side with the players. This is the emotional peak: the codex-faithful turning on the thing wearing the codex's face.
 - **Confront Thera directly.** She doesn't panic — she reframes as righteousness ("which of us is the mercenary?"), then withdraws or fights. If Sevra is convinced, the guild fights *with* the party; if Sevra is still in denial, the players face Thera alone, possibly against Kael, who won't believe it until too late. See her stat block for **Soulcoin Surge** — she is hard to kill for good, and even a "failed" kill leaves the players a cracked coin as proof.
-- **Free a soul.** Destroying a charged coin (in the cellar's thin point, or during the fight) releases a spirit — a witness, a thank-you, or a scream. The clearest possible statement of what she has been doing.
+- **Free a soul.** Destroying a charged coin at the tear in the Deep Cellar's Old Work—or breaking it during the fight—releases a spirit: a witness, a thank-you, or a scream. The clearest possible statement of what she has been doing.
 
 ---
 
@@ -207,7 +207,7 @@ There is no clean win here — that's the point. Options, in rough order of how
 | **0 — Ambience** *(free, drop for everyone)* | Just being in the room | Thera's chapel-stillness; Kael checking on her like a dog on its master; a dog that won't settle near her; milk souring by her cup |
 | **1 — First pull** | A PC examines Orenn's body **or** asks about Thera | The **brand-read** (*"a withdrawal… not our coin"*) **or** **Kael's unease** (*"the priest couldn't find him"*) |
 | **2 — Second pull** | A PC watches her closely / presses the thread | The **gestures** (doorframe, coin-turn, whispered word — DC 16 Perception); the **appraising read** (DC 16 Insight); **Dace's late shadow** (DC 15 Perception) |
-| **3 — Proof** | A PC digs for something physical | The **grey seam** at Dace's throat (true sight / *Veil Dust* / Mags / DC 15 Medicine·Arcana), or the **soulcoin** (pickpocket DC 20, her Surge in a fight, or her body if she falls) |
+| **3 — Proof** | A PC digs for something physical | The **grey seam** at Dace's throat (true sight / Mags / DC 15 Medicine·Arcana), or the **soulcoin** (pickpocket DC 20, her Surge in a fight, or her body if she falls) |
 | **4 — The fork resolves** | How the players handle Dace | Expose/kill him → mark runs. Let him slip quiet → Thera reaches for him instead |
 
 **How it ends** (pick by the players' last, hardest choice):
@@ -229,6 +229,6 @@ The assassin subplot feeds the murder mystery and the fiend arc:
 
 2. **Dace's meetings map the wards.** The diagram in the private room was made during a Dace/Haddon meeting. The cult was mapping the wards — which Xarrul was also breaking. The tavern's defences were weakened from both sides at once: Haddon from inside (mapping), Xarrul from the Ethereal Plane (scratching).
 
-3. **The House accidentally freed Xarrul.** The Order sent the fiend into the inner archive to steal the Severance Nail, not kill Sevra. The archive's automatic Final Closure severed every outside claim crossing its threshold, including the Order's command binding. Xarrul caught itself in the Border Ethereal instead of snapping home. Witnesses saw an Order-marked creature near senior rooms, three injured blades, false voices, and then smoke; the House reasonably misread the heist as a failed assassination and the disappearance as banishment. The assassins in the tavern know only hearsay.
+3. **The House accidentally freed Xarrul.** The Order sent the fiend into the inner archive to steal the Severance Nail, not kill Sevra. The archive's automatic Final Closure severed every outside claim crossing its threshold, including the Order's command binding. Xarrul slipped home into the Border Ethereal while carrying the power torn loose from that command. Witnesses saw an Order-marked creature near senior rooms, three injured blades, false voices, and then smoke; the House reasonably misread the heist as a failed assassination and the disappearance as banishment. The assassins in the tavern know only hearsay.
 
 4. **Two hungers, one veil (DM texture, not a reveal).** Orenn died to a fiend crossing the veil; Thera feeds a debt beneath the city. They are unrelated predators — which is exactly why Thera can look at Orenn's brand and say *"not our coin."* The tavern is a thin place, and thin places draw more than one kind of appetite. Let attentive players feel that resonance; don't explain it.

storylines/murder-mystery.md

@@ -3,9 +3,9 @@
 ## Timeline of Events
 
 ### Before the Session
-- **Three weeks ago:** The Order sends bound Xarrul into the House of Scales to steal the Severance Nail. The archive's automatic Final Closure cuts the Order's command binding. Xarrul catches itself in the Border Ethereal instead of being dismissed. The House mistakes the intrusion for a failed assassination and believes the fiend banished; the Order's instruments still show its binding energy and most cultists believe it remains controlled but unreachable.
+- **Three weeks ago:** The Order sends bound Xarrul into the House of Scales to steal the Severance Nail. The archive's automatic Final Closure cuts the Order's command binding. Xarrul slips home into the Border Ethereal while carrying the power torn loose from that command. The House mistakes the intrusion for a failed assassination and believes the fiend banished and gone; the Order's instruments still show its binding energy and most cultists believe it remains controlled but unreachable.
 - **Weeks ago:** Xarrul, now unbound, finds this thin point on the cult's map — a fault already worked thin by the summoners who once denned here — and anchors to it. In the hidden deepest chamber it begins prying open the old, sealed tear from the Ethereal side, night after night, siphoning the summoners' leftover sigils to do it.
-- **Weeks ago, below the Inn:** Xarrul begins speaking through the stone to the caged Guest. The Guest recognizes the Order's missing asset from its infiltration work. It tells Xarrul which keeper is cautious and which will break the emergency lockstone in grief; Xarrul recognizes the old summoners' stone and supplies the occult half of the plan. In return, they negotiate the body-for-house exchange that can become [the Vacancy](the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit).
+- **Weeks ago, below the Inn:** Xarrul begins speaking through the stone to the caged Guest. The Guest recognizes the Order's missing asset from its infiltration work. It identifies the cautious keeper, predicts Mags will break the emergency lockstone in grief, and proposes the useful exit: Xarrul takes a body that can wear any face while the Guest is projected alive into the Astral Plane. Their compact permits Xarrul one death to close the house—Orenn—but forbids it from killing anyone else until the exchange is finished, except in direct defense against binding, banishment, or destruction. The promise does not make Xarrul responsible for violence chosen by others. The Guest secretly intends to recruit outsiders to kill Xarrul during [the Vacancy](the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy), reclaim the empowered body and take the Inn.
 - **Days ago:** Orenn's surveillance turns up a district-wide wrongness he reads as an *underworld* problem — deaths that don't add up, the Order stirring. Uneasy, he buys holy water and ward supplies as insurance and writes the contingency letter he tucks in Mags's apron. He never once suspects the sealed rift under his own floor; that case is closed.
 - **Tonight, before the party arrives:** Tension between the factions is at a breaking point. Kael has evidence that the Merchant Quarter kill — a guild contract — was done by someone else with ritual marks. He's ready to confront the cultists.
 
@@ -14,7 +14,7 @@
 #### Act 1 — The Table (calm)
 - The PCs, strangers to each other and to Orenn, share the only free table. Orenn works them personally — business or pleasure, the house rules, the carrot of "references in high places."
 - Faction tension is palpable but contained: Kael glaring at the cultists, Thera still as a chapel, the cultists half-arguing over texts.
-- Bren mutters in his corner while Vetch fidgets near the cellar stairs.
+- Bren mutters in his corner while the factions watch one another across the room.
 - Orenn steps down to storage for supplies. His absence is what lets the next beat run unchecked.
 
 #### Act 2 — The Spark
@@ -37,12 +37,12 @@
 
 - **The brawl lasts 3–5 rounds. Non-lethal — the rules hold.** Fists, bottles, furniture, and shove/gust/thunderclap *throws* that fling PCs around (use them to pull the party in and to position them for the reveal). NPCs keep their lethal kits holstered; save the assassins' real danger for the finale. If a PC would drop, they're knocked out at 1 HP, not killed. (See the [Brawl Toolkit](#the-brawl-toolkit).)
 - **The blackout.** A few rounds in, pressed in the scrum, **Rennt casts Thunderwave** — a legitimate knockback move that also snuffs every candle at once. The room goes black. It looks damning for the cult (they blacked out the room the instant Orenn died) — and they're innocent of the murder. Perfect misdirection.
-- **The murder, under cover of the dark.** Orenn, back from storage, wades in to quell the brawl and takes a knock (a bottle, a chair) — so he's already bruised and bleeding, alive. In the blackout, Xarrul jaunts partially into the Material Plane behind the bar, brands him (Brand of Spite), freezes him (Visions of Spite), and strikes. Xarrul retreats to the Ethereal. Total exposure: seconds. The mundane knock is a **decoy wound** (see the crime scene).
+- **The murder, under cover of the dark.** Orenn, back from storage, wades in to quell the brawl and takes a knock (a bottle, a chair) — so he's already bruised and bleeding, alive. Xarrul spends the one Stored Incursion it charged during the previous night: it manifests behind the bar for three rounds, brands Orenn, freezes him with Visions of Spite, and lands the killing Multiattack before the charge drags it back Ethereal. The mundane knock is a **decoy wound** (see the crime scene).
 - **Only witness:** Bren. He saw a shape reach through the air behind the bar. Skein forces him to stay silent. (Kael also saw Bren go rigid, staring at the bar rather than the fight.)
 - **Mags brings order.** She storms from the kitchen, cleaver up, and quiets the room with her voice. She relights the candles with a ward-focus — and behind her is Orenn's body. What follows — the forced heal, the forced **Revivify** with the diamond from her own necklace (both failing), the shattered ward-crystal that seals the tavern until midnight, and the ultimatum — is scripted in **[Mags — Act 2: The Reveal](../npc/mags.md#act-2--the-reveal-dm)**.
 - Both factions immediately blame each other. Mags, for show, blames the strangers (see her two-layer accusation in the same section).
 
-> **DM — the murder is the plan, not the start of the mystery.** Xarrul didn't kill Orenn for spite or to frame anyone (those are bonuses). It killed him to make **Mags seal the house.** A killing in the Nether Inn is what triggers the lockdown, and the lockstone she shatters is the closed cross-planar vessel Xarrul needs to finish crossing (see [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door)). The Guest identified *Orenn* as the calm one so that the *grieving* keeper would be left holding the stone and would use it on protocol; Xarrul verified the judgment, chose, and struck. The whole "who killed the barkeep" question is the fiend's smokescreen: the answer (a fiend) comes cheap and early. The deeper answers are what it is doing with the sealed house—and who downstairs helped it choose.
+> **DM — the murder is the plan, not the start of the mystery.** Xarrul didn't kill Orenn for spite or merely to frame anyone. It killed him to make **Mags seal the house.** The lockstone trades the internal planar barrier for an exterior cage: Xarrul crosses fully into the Material interior and regains Ethereal Jaunt, but nobody can leave on any plane until midnight. The Guest identified *Orenn* as the calm keeper whose death would make grieving Mags follow protocol, and Orenn became the compact's single permitted victim. The whole "who killed the barkeep" question is the fiend's smokescreen: the deeper answers are what the lockdown admitted, what must happen at midnight, and who downstairs helped choose the victim.
 
 #### The Brawl Toolkit
 
@@ -58,7 +58,7 @@ Don't restat the room. Hand any NPC these non-lethal moves and narrate fast. All
   - **A cultist / Essek — *gust of wind* effect:** no damage, just throws people, papers, and flame.
   - **A blade — disarming shove or a flung tankard:** reposition, don't wound.
 
-As Essek's gust scatters the cultist table, Haddon's restricted research folio opens. During Rennt's blackout, Xarrul steals its two loose extracts from the Ethereal side. See [Haddon's Missing Research Folio](order-of-mending.md#haddons-missing-research-folio). Afterward, Haddon repeatedly searches the debris while pretending to organize his ordinary notes.
+As Essek's gust scatters the cultist table, Haddon's restricted research folio opens and its loose extracts scatter with the ordinary notes. Xarrul's entire pre-lockdown manifestation is spent killing Orenn. In the first minute after Mags breaks the crystal—while everyone watches the failed Revivify and her ultimatum—Xarrul uses its restored Ethereal Jaunt to manifest briefly, steal the two extracts, and retreat. See [Haddon's Missing Research Folio](order-of-mending.md#haddons-missing-research-folio). Afterward, Haddon repeatedly searches the debris while pretending to organize his ordinary notes.
 
 Roll initiative only if your table wants dice; otherwise run it as a narrated montage with a decision point or two, and cut it off with the Thunderwave.
 
@@ -118,8 +118,8 @@ The clues are designed to point at both factions while the truth (the fiend) hid
 | Claw marks behind bar | Bar floor | Investigation 16 | Something partially manifested here |
 | Bren's testimony | Bren (agitated state) | Persuasion/patience | "A hand that wasn't a hand, reaching through the thin place" |
 | Siphoned foundation sigils | Cellar foundation | Arcana 13–15 | Something ethereal has been feeding on the summoners' old work here — points *down* |
-| Vetch's observations | Vetch (if given dust or befriended) | — | Something dark and hungry in the Ethereal Plane |
-| Ethereal trail (timed) | Behind bar → cellar | Detect Magic within 30 min | The killer went *down* — toward the thin point |
+| Mirror sighting | Orenn's silver mirror catches Skein or Xarrul in its reflection | — | An invisible or Ethereal creature is physically present in the reflected space |
+| Ethereal trail (timed) | Behind bar → upper cellar | Detect Magic within 30 min | The killer went *down*; the residue follows the ward-lines toward the concealed Deep Cellar and the tear |
 | Partial manifestation scratches | Private room table | Investigation 14 + Arcana 16 | Someone mapped the wards to *break* them |
 | Orenn's preparations | Storage compartment, bedroom | Investigation 15+ | Orenn feared something not-human was moving — and hedged |
 | Orenn's letter | Mags's apron | — | "If something happens to me in the bar, it came from between." |
@@ -142,14 +142,14 @@ As players dig deeper:
 - Bren becomes agitated if questioned about the murder → partial truths emerge
 - Haddon's journal and the private room connect Dace to the Order through physical evidence
 - The cellar and back rooms reveal Orenn's preparations → fiendish angle opens up
-- Vetch mentions the Ethereal Plane → alternative explanation emerges
+- Orenn's mirror reveals Skein beside Bren or catches Xarrul nearby → an Ethereal explanation emerges
 
 **Expected result:** The fiend theory starts competing with the faction theories. Players have a choice of which thread to pull.
 
 ### Late Phase (60+ minutes)
 If players pursue the fiend angle:
 - The siphoned sigils and the failing seal below confirm long-term ethereal interference
-- Veil Dust trip reveals Xarrul (and Skein, and the thin point)
+- Orenn's mirror can reveal Xarrul or Skein whenever either appears within its reflection
 - Orenn's letter and bestiary confirm he feared something not-human was moving — though he never knew it was under his own floor
 - Essek (if gotten alone) reveals the summoning
 
@@ -163,7 +163,7 @@ These are Xarrul's work — the fiend actively planted or encouraged these:
 
 1. **Xarrul engineered the brawl.** Kael's confrontation with Haddon was real and his anger genuine — but the *laugh* that tipped him over (Rennt's) was amplified in his ears by Xarrul (Voice Thief), which layered a statement only Kael heard beneath it: „Haddon vybral toho šlechtice. Zeptej se ho.” This is true—Haddon selected the victim—but phrased to detonate Kael's existing suspicion. Rennt laughed but never spoke those words. The brawl gave Xarrul its cover without requiring Xarrul to make a false claim.
 
-2. **A cultist component pouch** was left near the bar (Xarrul moved it from the table during the chaos). It contains ritual chalk and dried blood. DC 17 Investigation to realize the pouch was placed deliberately — the blood is old and doesn't match the murder.
+2. **A cultist component pouch** was left near the bar. Xarrul moves it from the scattered table in the first minute after the lockdown begins, when Ethereal Jaunt has returned; its Stored Incursion was fully consumed by Orenn's three-round murder. The pouch contains ritual chalk and dried blood. DC 17 Investigation reveals deliberate placement—the blood is old and doesn't match the murder.
 
 3. **Dace's dagger** under a barstool near Orenn's body. It fell during the brawl — genuinely accidental, not planted by Xarrul — but it's a nasty red herring in its own right: a quality piece with a Scales-guild hilt *and* ritual sigils etched down the blade, so it reads as both an assassin's sidearm and a cultist ritual knife. It's still coated in **Essence of Ether** (a PC who handles it roughly makes a DC 13 CON save or drops unconscious for 1 minute). Its proximity to the body implicates *both* factions and, for anyone who digs, points at Dace himself — the blade's sigils match the second cultist pin hidden in his boot (DC 14 Investigation of his person). A productive dead-end: it cracks open the traitor, not the murder.
 
@@ -174,22 +174,22 @@ These are Xarrul's work — the fiend actively planted or encouraged these:
 The murder can resolve in several ways. None of them are clean.
 
 ### Path A: The Fiend Is Found and Destroyed
-Players identify Xarrul, confront it, and destroy it (see [The Reckoning](the-reckoning.md)). The Brand of Spite fades from Orenn's body. The truth is known. But:
+Players identify Xarrul, cover both planes and reduce it to 0 HP in the Ethereal Plane (see [The Reckoning](the-reckoning.md#scenario-c-ethereal-destruction)). The Brand of Spite fades from Orenn's body and Nessa wakes as the stolen vitality recoils. The truth is known. But:
 - The cultists summoned the fiend → they're complicit
 - The assassins freed the fiend → they're complicit
 - Everyone is guilty. No one is the murderer.
 
-### Path B: The Fiend Is Found but Escapes
-Players discover the truth but Xarrul retreats into the Ethereal Plane and leaves the area. The truth is known but justice is impossible. Mags now has a target — she'll hunt it alone.
+### Path B: The Fiend Is Bound
+Players discover the truth and capture Xarrul before it can complete the Vacancy. They either return it to the Order through Haddon's ritual or seal it neutrally with the binding circle, restored sigils and iron bell. Nessa remains suspended because the invested vitality does not recoil, but her connection survives. The immediate murderer is contained; who owns its chains determines whether this is justice or merely restored exploitation.
 
 ### Path C: The Factions Are Blamed
 Players don't find the fiend. One or both factions are blamed for the murder. This leads to violence — the assassins and cultists fight for real. Mags tries to stop it but she's one woman. Several people die. The fiend watches from the Ethereal Plane, satisfied.
 
-### Path D: Stalemate
-No one is conclusively blamed. The lockdown ends at dawn. Everyone leaves with suspicion and unresolved tension. The thin point keeps growing. Mother Vyre's Phase Two continues. Nothing is resolved — but the players *know* things, and knowledge has consequences.
+### Path D: The Party Does Nothing
+No one enters the cellar or interrupts the escalating accusations. The compact keeps Xarrul from killing again, but it does not protect the factions from one another; the room remains divided and close to lethal violence. Before midnight Xarrul opens Cell One and positions the willing Guest at the Old Work. When the shell lapses, it completes the three-round Vacancy and strands the Guest in the Astral Plane. If nobody witnessed the transfer, Xarrul takes an innocuous face and leaves with the released patrons. If witnesses can identify or bind its new body, the expired compact no longer protects them from Xarrul and it removes them. See [Natural Progression](natural-progression.md#passive-default-nobody-enters-the-cellar).
 
 ### Path E: Negotiated Peace
 Players reveal enough truth to make both factions realize they've been played by a third party (the fiend). Temporary alliance. Joint confrontation. This is the hardest to achieve and the most satisfying — it requires players to have engaged with both faction subplots deeply enough to broker trust between groups that hate each other.
 
 ### Path F: The Vacancy
-Players free the Guest and accept its offer to expose Xarrul during the body transfer. For three rounds the killer, its accomplice and the empty vessel are separate targets. Destroying Xarrul avenges Orenn but pours its power into the Guest who helped choose him; allowing the exchange frees the murderer in changeling flesh and makes the Guest the spectral owner of the Inn. In either branch Mags starts the next confrontation. Solving the murder decides who deserves punishment, not who gets to walk away clean. See [The Vacancy](the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit).
+Players free the Guest and accept its offer to expose Xarrul during the body transfer at the tear in the Old Work. For three rounds the killer, its accomplice and the empty vessel are separate targets. Destroying Xarrul avenges Orenn but pours its power into the Guest who helped choose him; allowing the exchange frees the murderer in changeling flesh and strands the Guest bodiless in the Astral Plane. An empowered Guest later lures Mags below and takes her place. See [The Vacancy](the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy).

storylines/natural-progression.md

@@ -0,0 +1,370 @@
+# Natural Progression and Outcome Map
+
+This is the DM-facing causal map for the night. It describes what happens without player intervention and how increasingly informed intervention changes the result.
+
+## Guiding Principle
+
+> **Doing nothing should generally produce the worst outcome. Engaging with the story should visibly change what survives, what escapes, and what the players learn.**
+
+This is a rule of thumb, not a promise that every action is good. Killing the Guest without understanding the larger situation is allowed to be a plainly bad choice. The important thing is that it still changes the ending.
+
+Solving Orenn's murder is also not enough by itself. The lockdown has already admitted Xarrul to the Material interior. The active threat is the body it intends to take during the midnight resealing window.
+
+---
+
+## Canonical Terms
+
+### The Vacancy
+
+The negotiated transfer between Xarrul and the Guest at the tear in the Deep Cellar's Old Work.
+
+- It cannot begin while the lockdown blocks the Guest's Astral release. Midnight opens its single three-round window.
+- The Guest willingly projects out of the changeling body.
+- Xarrul projects into it.
+- For three rounds, Xarrul, the Guest's projected spirit, and the vacant body are separate targets.
+- If nobody intervenes, Xarrul takes the changeling body and the Guest is projected into the Astral Plane. The Guest does **not** become the spectral Host of the Inn.
+- If the players destroy Xarrul during the transfer, the Guest returns empowered by Xarrul's planar imprint.
+
+### The Hollowing
+
+The forced replacement ritual used if the Guest is dead or otherwise unavailable.
+
+- Xarrul abducts a living humanoid and brings the victim to the tear's containment circle.
+- The ritual resembles the Vacancy visually: victim's spirit, empty body, and Xarrul become separately visible.
+- Unlike the Guest, the victim has not consented and receives no bargain.
+- Xarrul destroys the victim's projected spirit and silver cord, then keeps the empty body.
+- The victim is never promised back. A Hollowing that finishes is murder followed by possession, not a hostage exchange.
+
+The Hollowing gives Xarrul an ordinary mortal body. That is useful, but much less dangerous than a changeling body able to become anyone.
+
+---
+
+## Ending Tree at a Glance
+
+```text
+LOCKDOWN BEGINS
+    |
+    +-- Players do not affect the cellar or the factions
+    |      |
+    |      +-- Guest alive
+    |      |      -> Vacancy succeeds
+    |      |      -> Xarrul takes changeling body
+    |      |      -> Guest is lost in Astral Plane
+    |      |      -> pre-transfer compact expires
+    |      |      -> Xarrul leaves secretly, or kills only exposed witnesses able to stop it
+    |      |
+    |      +-- Guest dead
+    |             -> Xarrul abducts replacement
+    |             -> Mags searches Deep Cellar alone and dies
+    |             -> Hollowing succeeds
+    |             -> Xarrul enters upstairs war in inferior mortal body
+    |
+    +-- Players help only the Guest
+    |      -> destroy Xarrul during Vacancy
+    |      -> empowered Guest returns
+    |      -> Guest secretly cages Mags and takes her identity and Inn
+    |
+    +-- Players provide anti-Xarrul tools but no political solution
+    |      -> loyal cultists try to rebind
+    |      -> everyone else tries to destroy Xarrul Ethereally
+    |      -> cult loyalists die; Xarrul dies if the planar pincer survives their sabotage
+    |
+    +-- Players provide tools and win a political solution
+           |
+           +-- Rebind Xarrul
+           |      -> everyone can survive
+           |      -> Xarrul becomes the Order's weapon again
+           |      -> Nessa remains lost but the connection remains
+           |
+           +-- Bell-and-sigils seal
+           |      -> everyone can survive
+           |      -> Xarrul is trapped between planes
+           |      -> Nessa remains lost but the connection remains
+           |
+           +-- Ethereal destruction
+           |      -> Xarrul is permanently destroyed
+           |      -> Nessa wakes
+           |
+           +-- Deliberately release Xarrul
+                  -> party secures protection after the Guest's compact expires
+                  -> party must fool, frame, or neutralize Mags
+                  -> Xarrul leaves disguised in changeling body
+```
+
+Any political plan can degrade into casualties. If the disagreement consumes too many rounds or kills the people carrying the anti-ethereal tools, Xarrul wins.
+
+---
+
+## Passive Default: Nobody Enters the Cellar
+
+The PCs may investigate nothing, or they may not be present at the Nether Inn at all. In either case, no outsider enters the cellar and no one interferes with Xarrul and the Guest.
+
+### During the Lockdown
+
+- Xarrul guards the Guest, the anti-fiend tools and the midnight transfer site below; there is no crossing progress to tend.
+- Upstairs, it uses stolen voices, true accusations, waking visions, and altered memories to sharpen the existing conflict without killing anyone itself.
+- The assassins and cultists interpret every new incident as enemy action.
+- Mags can suppress individual confrontations, but she cannot restore trust.
+- By the final portion of the lockdown, the factions are exhausted, divided, and one failed accusation away from lethal violence.
+- The compact permits Xarrul to kill Orenn but nobody else until the exchange finishes, except direct defense against binding, banishment, or destruction. It does not protect the factions from one another.
+
+Use this relative clock if the players need visible escalation:
+
+| Time | Default event upstairs | Xarrul below |
+|---|---|---|
+| **T−90 minutes** | A fresh, true accusation is heard in the wrong voice; Kael openly blames Haddon. | Checks Cell One and the tear from the Ethereal Plane. |
+| **T−60 minutes** | A last-minute memory edit makes one NPC sincerely accuse the wrong speaker; Mags prevents the first drawn weapon. | Weakens the cell ward and confirms the Guest is ready. |
+| **T−30 minutes** | Rennt or Kael turns a shove into a lethal attack; Sevra and the cultists choose sides. Mags or the PCs can still prevent the first faction death. | Opens Cell One and moves the willing Guest toward the Old Work. The lower alarm fires, but Mags is occupied upstairs. |
+| **T−10 minutes** | A rescue or retaliation widens the fight. Keep Haddon or Essek able to recognize the danger if the transfer is exposed. | Positions the Guest and watches the prepared transfer site; the Vacancy still cannot begin. |
+| **Midnight** | The shell lapses. Anyone who noticed the lower alarm has one last chance to reach the Old Work. | Begins the three-round Vacancy. Afterward, leaves secretly or removes exposed anti-fiend threats and witnesses. |
+
+Move the entries earlier when the party exposes faction secrets without mediating, and later when they produce credible evidence of the common threat.
+
+The default upstairs conflict is not one neat battle with predetermined sides. It is a sequence of accusations, attacks, rescues, and revenge strikes. Xarrul cannot kill anyone itself before the exchange finishes, but the factions can kill one another. Keep enough survivors for the players' choices and, if the transfer is exposed, the recognition beat.
+
+### The Uninterrupted Vacancy
+
+No PC needs to free the Guest. Xarrul and the Guest planned this together.
+
+The lockdown has already made Xarrul fully capable of manifesting inside the Inn. Before midnight it opens Cell One from the Ethereal side and escorts the willing Guest to the tear. They cannot begin while the shell blocks the Guest's Astral destination. The moment the shell lapses, returning ward-power opens the three-round Vacancy window inside the containment circle.
+
+Without outside hands, Xarrul wins automatically:
+
+1. The Guest leaves its body.
+2. Xarrul takes the changeling body.
+3. The Guest's spirit is pushed into the Astral Plane and abandoned there.
+4. Xarrul retains its own abilities and gains the changeling's Shapechanger ability.
+
+This is Xarrul's best possible result. It can now become Mags, a cultist, a guild blade, a city official, or anyone else whose face it has studied.
+
+### After the Compact Expires
+
+Delivering the Guest Astral completes the exchange and ends its restraint on Xarrul. What Xarrul does next depends on exposure, not a fixed appetite for massacre.
+
+If nobody witnessed the Vacancy, Xarrul chooses an innocuous face, joins the frightened patrons as the doors release, and leaves. Contradictory living witnesses who never saw the new body are better cover than a tavern full of corpses.
+
+If the transfer was exposed, the surviving patrons know too much and may already be moving anti-fiend tools against the new vessel. Xarrul then removes the people who can identify or stop it.
+
+If it enters the hall openly:
+
+1. The remaining cultists feel the old binding react without accepting a command. They finally understand that they never regained control.
+2. Haddon or Essek recognizes Xarrul's signature and identifies it as the thing that killed Orenn.
+3. They tell Mags. The faction fight stops for one brief, terrible moment.
+4. Everyone turns on Xarrul.
+5. They can see pieces of the problem—Essek may perceive it and Mags may ring the bell—but sight alone cannot cross the planar boundary, and they cannot pin Xarrul consistently after the faction war. Mags and Haddon each possess a reserve dose of Oil of Etherealness, but neither has the ten uninterrupted minutes needed to apply it after this revelation.
+6. Xarrul uses Ethereal Jaunt every round, kills the few people who can perceive or hurt it first, and dismantles the rest.
+
+Its cleanup priority is practical:
+
+1. Anyone currently Ethereal or carrying Veilhook Salt.
+2. Whoever reaches for the iron bell or restored sigils.
+3. Haddon, who can identify, bind and later report it.
+4. Essek, who understands its planar nature.
+5. Mags and Sevra, then the remaining witnesses.
+
+The defenders possess fragments of a counter, not the preparation and coordination needed to hold Xarrul in one plane.
+
+### Passive Ending
+
+- Orenn is dead.
+- The Guest is stranded in the Astral Plane.
+- Xarrul has the changeling body and can move through the city wearing any face.
+- If the transfer remained secret, the remaining divided patrons face no further attack from Xarrul; if it was exposed, those capable of identifying or stopping the new vessel may die.
+- Nessa remains lost.
+- Mother Vyre loses one local cell but does not know what left the tavern wearing its faces.
+- Xarrul walks out after midnight with no living witness able to identify its chosen face.
+
+This is the worst ending because Xarrul gains permanent embodiment and maximum concealment; the precise body count depends on whether the party exposed the transfer without stopping it.
+
+---
+
+## Bad Intervention: The Players Only Kill the Guest
+
+This means the players kill the Guest in Cell One and take no effective action against Xarrul, the midnight vessel-working, or the upstairs pressure cooker.
+
+### Immediate Effect
+
+- The Guest's intelligence and testimony are lost.
+- The Vacancy is no longer available as an easy opportunity to attack Xarrul.
+- The Handler's Agent and Mourner fail their objectives; the Executioner succeeds.
+- Xarrul loses the uniquely valuable changeling body.
+- The exchange is now impossible, so the compact's temporary restraint ends immediately. Xarrul can kill directly rather than working through faction violence.
+- The Guest's killer becomes Xarrul's first replacement-vessel target. Its warning to the Executioner was not a bluff.
+- Mercy's call continues and points deeper. The call came from Xarrul and the rift, not from the Guest.
+
+### The Abduction
+
+Xarrul selects an isolated mortal body as a replacement. Prefer, in order:
+
+1. A PC directly responsible for killing the Guest.
+2. A vulnerable but useful NPC separated by the faction conflict.
+3. A cultist whose body will let Xarrul approach the survivors without immediate suspicion.
+
+The victim vanishes during one of Xarrul's manufactured distractions.
+
+### Why Mags Goes Down Alone
+
+- The disappearance is noticed.
+- Twinkle's agitation, a disturbed lower ward, or Mags's private alarm confirms that someone entered the Deep Cellar.
+- Haddon knows enough about the building's original containment to understand the direction, but Mags refuses to let the cultists enter her secret operation.
+- She takes the black key and goes alone, intending to retrieve the missing person and keep the cells hidden.
+- Xarrul kills her before beginning the Hollowing. It will not risk the owner of the house interrupting the transfer.
+
+### The Hollowing
+
+The victim is projected out of their body. Xarrul destroys the projected spirit and takes the body. There is no promise, safe return, or future rescue.
+
+Afterward, Xarrul enters the ongoing upstairs conflict. The conclusion broadly resembles the passive ending, but Xarrul has an ordinary stolen body rather than a changeling body. The choice was bad and caused additional immediate harm, but it denied Xarrul its most dangerous long-term disguise.
+
+---
+
+## Narrow Intervention: The Players Only Help the Guest
+
+“Help the Guest” means freeing it, bringing it to the tear in the Old Work, protecting its projected spirit, and destroying Xarrul during the Vacancy.
+
+### Vacancy Result
+
+- Xarrul is destroyed during the one moment when it cannot escape.
+- The Guest reclaims its body.
+- Xarrul's planar imprint burns out the suppressant and gives the Guest Ethereal Jaunt, Shadow Cloak, Voice Thief, and fragments of Xarrul's memories.
+- Nessa's stolen vitality remains in the empowered Guest rather than returning to her. Nessa remains lost.
+
+### The Guest Takes the Inn Quietly
+
+The Guest is smarter about ownership than Xarrul is about witnesses. It does not challenge Mags in the main hall.
+
+1. It uses Orenn's voice from below to lure Mags into the cellar alone.
+2. It leads her to Cell One under the pretense that Orenn left something there or that the wards are failing.
+3. It ambushes and imprisons her in its old cage.
+4. It takes Mags's form and returns upstairs.
+5. Wearing Mags's authority, it stops or redirects the faction conflict and keeps the Nether Inn.
+
+If the players truly do nothing beyond helping the Guest kill Xarrul, they may leave believing Mags survived and retained the house. Discovering the exchange is a later consequence.
+
+If they continue investigating, they can notice the false Mags, rescue the real one, support the Guest's claim openly, or trigger a succession fight.
+
+---
+
+## Tactical Intervention Without Political Agreement
+
+The players discover or distribute Veilhook Salt, Oil of Etherealness, the silver mirror, the iron bell, or another meaningful defense, but fail to create agreement about what should happen to Xarrul.
+
+When Xarrul appears, the room splits:
+
+- **Haddon and Rennt** want Xarrul alive and rebound.
+- **Sevra, Mags, and most unaffiliated defenders** want the murderer destroyed.
+- **Dalla** supports rebinding until the conduit truth is exposed; afterward she refuses it.
+- **Essek** supports ending Xarrul rather than returning it to the Order, if he believes anyone can protect him.
+
+The cult is therefore not automatically one unified side. “The cultists die” normally means Haddon, Rennt, and anyone still loyal enough to help them sabotage the attack.
+
+If the armed defenders retain an Ethereal attacker and enough strength after that internal fight, they maintain pressure on both planes and destroy Xarrul in the Ethereal Plane. Nessa wakes. If the Ethereal hunter falls or loses access before the final blow, Material defeat only triggers Deathless Slip; Xarrul escapes into the Ethereal interior, heals and turns the fight.
+
+If the argument destroys the tools, their users, or the positioning needed to cover both planes, Xarrul wins instead.
+
+---
+
+## Political Resolutions
+
+These endings require both the necessary tools and enough persuasion to make the room follow one plan. Failed persuasion does not merely close a dialogue option: it creates dissenters who may interfere, die, or hand Xarrul the opening it needs.
+
+### Rebinding
+
+The party convinces Mags, Sevra, Dalla, and the other defenders to let Haddon conduct the ritual.
+
+- Everyone can survive.
+- Xarrul is bound again.
+- The Order regains its weapon and continues toward the Opening.
+- Nessa remains lost, but her connection through Xarrul and Dalla still exists.
+- The cult believes the Opening can eventually return her. That possibility is real; the price of the Opening remains catastrophic.
+
+### Bell-and-Sigils Sealing
+
+The party restores the foundation sigils, traps Xarrul in the binding circle, and rings the iron bell.
+
+- Everyone can survive.
+- Xarrul is sealed consciously between the Material and Ethereal planes.
+- The Order does not regain direct control of it.
+- The energetic connection to Dalla and Nessa remains intact.
+- Nessa can potentially still be recovered later through the Opening or, preferably, through a safer method developed from the surviving research.
+
+This is a genuine alternative to rebinding, not merely “leave Nessa lost forever.” It preserves the possibility of rescue without immediately returning Xarrul to Haddon.
+
+### Ethereal Destruction
+
+The party convinces enough of the room to cover both planes and pursue Xarrul wherever it shifts.
+
+- Everyone can survive if nobody sabotages the planar pincer.
+- Xarrul is permanently destroyed when reduced to 0 HP in the Ethereal Plane.
+- The stored vitality returns through Dalla's conduit.
+- Nessa wakes.
+
+Haddon and Rennt may still resist. If that resistance removes the Ethereal hunter or breaks one side of the pincer, Xarrul can recover and win.
+
+---
+
+## Deliberately Siding With Xarrul
+
+Xarrul does not need a massacre in order to escape. Once it has the changeling body, it can disguise itself and walk out through the front door after the lockdown lapses.
+
+The Guest's compact restrains Xarrul's own killing only until the exchange finishes. If the players want guaranteed survival afterward—especially if their intervention will expose Xarrul's new body—they must secure a separate promise. Xarrul keeps it.
+
+The real obstacle is Mags.
+
+### Mags's Position
+
+Mags will not let the doors open on an unresolved murder, and she will never knowingly allow Orenn's murderer to leave. The party must therefore do one of the following without turning the entire room against itself:
+
+- **Frame someone else** convincingly enough that Mags accepts a false murderer.
+- **Convince Mags that Xarrul did not act alone** and sacrifice the Guest or another accomplice as the actionable culprit.
+- **Neutralize Mags quietly** through imprisonment, incapacitation, or manipulation of her Warden's Mark.
+- **Replace or bypass her authority** long enough for disguised Xarrul to join the people leaving at midnight.
+
+An open attack on Mags normally turns Sevra, Kael, Thera, and any surviving regulars against the party. This path should be a social and covert finale, not simply another combat.
+
+### Successful Escape
+
+- Xarrul takes the changeling body.
+- The Guest is projected into the Astral Plane.
+- Xarrul leaves in the face of someone permitted to walk out.
+- It keeps any explicit promise protecting the room after the Guest's compact expires.
+- If rescuing Nessa was included in the bargain, it later follows her tether and returns her.
+- Mags remains framed, imprisoned, incapacitated, or convinced that someone else paid for Orenn's death.
+
+Xarrul is not the cleverest creature in every room. The Guest conceived the better body-and-escape plan; Xarrul supplied the planar knowledge and power to make it possible.
+
+---
+
+## The Pressure Cooker as the Default Overlay
+
+Faction war is the threatened consequence underneath every unresolved route. Before the Vacancy finishes, the compact keeps Xarrul from personally joining it lethally but does not protect the factions from one another.
+
+- Without intervention, Xarrul's whispers bring the room into lethal conflict before midnight. It does not land or deliberately command the killing blows itself.
+- A clear plan can pause it.
+- Exposing the Order without controlling Sevra and Kael accelerates it.
+- Attempting to destroy Xarrul without addressing Haddon and Rennt turns it into a three-sided fight.
+- Severe casualties remove anti-Xarrul tools and can turn an otherwise successful plan into Xarrul's victory.
+
+When evaluating an ending, ask two separate questions:
+
+1. What did the party decide should happen to Xarrul?
+2. Did they persuade enough people to let that happen?
+
+---
+
+## Outcome Ladder
+
+This is not an objective moral ranking, but it is the intended progression of player impact.
+
+| Engagement | Typical result |
+|---|---|
+| **None** | Xarrul gains changeling body and leaves unseen; exposed witnesses die only if they can identify or stop the new vessel |
+| **Violent but uninformed** | Guest and replacement victim die; Mags dies; Xarrul escapes in an inferior body |
+| **One-sided alliance with Guest** | Xarrul dies; Nessa remains lost; empowered Guest secretly takes the Inn |
+| **Tactical preparation only** | Cult loyalists die; Xarrul is destroyed if the defenders keep an Ethereal hunter in the fight |
+| **Preparation plus consensus to rebind** | Everyone survives; Xarrul and Nessa's connection remain under the Order's control |
+| **Preparation plus consensus to seal** | Everyone survives; Xarrul contained; Nessa may still be recovered later |
+| **Preparation plus consensus to destroy Ethereally** | Everyone survives; Xarrul permanently destroyed; Nessa wakes |
+| **Deliberate bargain with Xarrul** | Disguised Xarrul escapes; survival after the Vacancy depends on what the party did to Mags and what promises they secured |
+
+The propagated decisions are recorded in **[Ending Tree — Revisit List](ending-tree-revisit.md)**. For at-the-table pressure moves when a route becomes too easy, use the **[Complication Toolkit](complication-toolkit.md)**.

storylines/order-of-mending.md

@@ -129,7 +129,7 @@ During Essek's gust in the opening brawl, Haddon's folio bursts open and its pap
 Use the extracts as two paced discoveries rather than one exposition dump:
 
 1. **Maternal-conduit extract** — [print handout](../prints/vyre-zaznam-matersky-konduit.md). Xarrul plants this first, after whispering to Dalla in Haddon's voice. Good locations: beneath the cellar stairs, folded into Haddon's displaced book, or pushed from the Ethereal Plane into Dalla's reach. It identifies Dalla but hides the meaning behind clinical terminology. DC 14 Arcana, Medicine, or a direct explanation from Haddon/Essek establishes that a *maternal conduit* is a blood-relative used to reach and drain Nessa across planes.
-2. **Dislocation-event extract** — [print handout](../prints/vyre-zaznam-dislocacni-udalost.md). Xarrul withholds this until the players can understand its value. Good locations: beside the thin point, in the Deep Cellar near Xarrul's worksite, or offered during negotiation. DC 16 Arcana translates the argument: Nessa's projection was healthy enough to return until experiment E–III diverted it into the Border Ethereal and trapped her silver cord. The phrase *iatrogenic transplanar dislocation* means the researchers caused the condition they later claimed to treat.
+2. **Dislocation-event extract** — [print handout](../prints/vyre-zaznam-dislocacni-udalost.md). Xarrul withholds this until the players can understand its value. Good locations: beside the tear in the Deep Cellar's Old Work, elsewhere along Xarrul's ethereal route, or offered during negotiation. DC 16 Arcana translates the argument: Nessa's projection was healthy enough to return until experiment E–III diverted it into the Border Ethereal and trapped her silver cord. The phrase *iatrogenic transplanar dislocation* means the researchers caused the condition they later claimed to treat.
 
 Neither handout names Xarrul or explains the conclusion plainly. Let the players ask what the terms mean. Haddon initially calls them preliminary models taken out of context; Essek recognizes Mother Vyre's approval mark and can interpret both.
 
@@ -231,7 +231,7 @@ Dalla can absorb the exposed summoning and remain loyal: she believes it served
 >
 > „Našla nás, protože už věděla, co udělala."
 
-Essek's testimony or Vyre's correspondence can add the final horror: the Opening would release Nessa only by abolishing the world she could return to. After either full proof or proof plus Essek's explanation, Dalla shares everything she knows and openly opposes Haddon. But she does **not** automatically support the dual-plane kill; Xarrul now offers what sounds like the safer rescue.
+Essek's testimony or Vyre's correspondence can add the final horror: the Opening would release Nessa only by abolishing the world she could return to. After either full proof or proof plus Essek's explanation, Dalla shares everything she knows and openly opposes Haddon. But she does **not** automatically support killing Xarrul in the Ethereal Plane; Xarrul now offers what sounds like the safer rescue.
 
 ### Xarrul's Offer to Dalla
 
@@ -253,14 +253,31 @@ If players never uncover the two research extracts—or if they side with the cu
 - Requires the complete summoner's binding coffer from the [Deep Cellar Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory)
 - Requires Dalla's blood (she gives it without hesitation only while loyal; after the conduit extract, she refuses)
 - Requires the binding circle in the cellar (DC 16 Arcana to adapt the summoners' circle)
-- Haddon leads the ritual, Rennt assists, takes 10 minutes
+- Requires two readers to use the coffer's [Litany of the Averted Step](../prints/litanie-odvraceneho-kroku.md) as directional wards while a third character forces Xarrul into the circle
+- Takes ten minutes to prepare outside initiative; the final three knots take three rounds with Haddon, Dalla and Rennt all actively maintaining separate stations
+
+The true-name Recall brings Xarrul to the outer edge of the upper cellar, not into the circle. Each litany reader prevents Material Xarrul from willingly moving closer to them; two readers positioned apart create a funnel, while melee hits that forgo damage, shoves and other forced movement drive it inward. The litany does not stop Ethereal Jaunt, so the party still needs *Private Sanctum*, Veilhook Salt or another planar anchor.
+
+During the final three knots, all three cultists must act. Three active voices advance the ritual, two stall it, one loses progress and none releases Xarrul. When one voice breaks, the other active ritualists each take 2d6 psychic damage, which can cascade through their concentration. PCs therefore keep the ritual alive by healing, protecting concentration, taking over a station or using what they learned upstairs to answer Xarrul's truthful attack on each cultist's loyalty. See the complete mechanics in [The Reckoning](the-reckoning.md#scenario-b-the-rebinding).
 
 **If it succeeds:** Xarrul is bound again. The cult has their weapon back. Dalla's connection stabilizes — Nessa stops getting worse but doesn't improve. Her body remains suspended. The cult continues toward Phase Two. Dalla tells herself this is progress. Players leave having "solved" the murder by rebinding the weapon, but they've handed the cult exactly what it wanted.
 
-**If it fails** (Xarrul breaks free mid-ritual, DC 17 CHA save): Combat. The cellar. Xarrul is furious at being bound twice. This is the worst-case scenario — a fight with no preparation and the cultists caught in the crossfire.
+**If capture fails:** Xarrul remains loose in the upper cellar and attacks the readers, salt-carrier and whoever is operating the Recall. **If all three final stations fail:** the prepared components burn out, the adapted circle releases Xarrul and the fight resumes with the cultists injured by backlash.
 
 **This resolution is available even to players who don't dig deep.** It's the easy answer. It solves the immediate problem. It feels like a win. It isn't.
 
+The restored binding preserves the connection to Nessa. She does not wake, but a future Opening could still pull her home. This makes rebinding a genuine rescue route as well as a restoration of the Order's weapon—and makes its moral price sharper.
+
+### Bell-and-Sigils Containment
+
+The party can refuse both rebinding and immediate destruction. If they restore the foundation sigils, hold Xarrul inside the upper-cellar circle and ring the iron bell correctly, the three workings seal Xarrul consciously between planes. The Order does not regain command, and Xarrul cannot act. Nessa remains lost, but her connection stays intact for an Opening or safer future research. See [The Bell-and-Sigils Seal](the-reckoning.md#the-bell-and-sigils-seal).
+
+### Banishment Drives It Home
+
+The Border Ethereal is Xarrul's native plane. *Banishment* sends it to the corresponding place there and prevents it from jaunting Material while the spell lasts; it does not end the encounter or release the harvested vitality. Material death likewise fails: Deathless Slip leaves Xarrul Ethereal at 1 HP even through planar restraints. Permanent destruction requires reducing it to 0 HP in the Ethereal Plane, whether during a planar pincer, the exposed Vacancy or the Hollowing.
+
+If Dalla dies, Nessa does not immediately die. Her suspended body remains stable and unaging, but the easiest living conduit is gone. Reaching her becomes much harder and requires reconstructing the path from the blood records, Xarrul or the stored vitality in an empowered Guest.
+
 ### The Cult Fractures (Requires Truth)
 Only happens if players uncover the real nature of The Opening and share it:
 - Dalla turns on Haddon when the extraction is explained; the E–III report destroys her remaining faith in Vyre
@@ -282,8 +299,9 @@ If the assassins learn the cult sent a bound fiend into their archive to steal t
 Deep investigation does not make Dalla the mouthpiece for one correct ending. It gives her three terrible options:
 
 - **Rebinding:** before the conduit extract, she supports it because Haddon calls it progress. Afterward, she knows it reconnects the extraction and refuses to give blood willingly.
-- **The dual-plane kill:** destroying both halves of Xarrul should release the harvested vitality back along Nessa's silver cord. It might pull her home; a violent recoil might also damage the cord. No one in the inn has tested it. Dalla wants the possibility but fears gambling Nessa when another route exists.
+- **Ethereal destruction:** killing Xarrul in its native plane should release the harvested vitality back along Nessa's silver cord. It might pull her home; a violent recoil might also damage the cord. No one in the inn has tested it. Dalla wants the possibility but fears gambling Nessa when another route exists.
 - **The Open Door:** Xarrul claims it can guide Nessa back after the lockdown ends. Dalla becomes this option's strongest advocate because it is the only offer made by someone who both understands the binding and has not yet lied to her.
+- **Bell and sigils:** sealing Xarrul between planes preserves the cord without handing it back to Haddon. Dalla accepts this as a delay only if the party commits to continuing Nessa's rescue.
 
 Her argument is not that Xarrul is good:
 
@@ -293,7 +311,7 @@ The opposing voices become clean and strong:
 
 - **Rennt and Haddon:** rebind Xarrul; preserve the work and the only "proven" path to the Opening.
 - **Dalla:** free Xarrul and make it keep its promise.
-- **Essek:** attempt the dual-plane kill; end the extraction now rather than trust a fiend later.
+- **Essek:** maintain a pincer across both planes and kill Xarrul Ethereally; end the extraction now rather than trust a fiend later.
 - **Mags:** destroy Xarrul by whatever method does not loose it into the world; Nessa cannot erase Orenn.
 
-The central choice is earned by finding the notes. Players who only scratch the surface receive Haddon's rebinding plan and think they have found the safe answer. Players who learn what Dalla and Nessa really are must decide which dangerous witness deserves their trust.
+The central choice is earned by finding the notes. Players who only scratch the surface receive Haddon's rebinding plan and think they have found the safe answer. Players who learn what Dalla and Nessa really are must decide which dangerous witness deserves their trust. If they bargain with Xarrul, Dalla insists that the spoken terms explicitly name Nessa, her safe return, the people to be spared and the moment the obligation is complete; Xarrul keeps exact words, not implied mercy.

storylines/possession.md

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
 
 ## Overview
 
-Bren Aldara was an arcanist. Seven years ago, he studied a thin point between planes — this one, beneath the Nether Inn — and something latched on. **Skein**, a parasitic entity from the Ethereal Plane, attached itself to Bren's mind and has been feeding on him ever since. What the tavern patrons see as a madman talking to himself is a prisoner begging his captor for mercy.
+Bren Aldara was an arcanist. Seven years ago, he studied the thin point—the still-sealed tear in the Old Work beneath the Nether Inn—and something latched on. **Skein**, a parasitic entity from the Ethereal Plane, attached itself to Bren's mind and has been feeding on him ever since. What the tavern patrons see as a madman talking to himself is a prisoner begging his captor for mercy.
 
 This subplot is about recognizing that what looks like madness is actually captivity, and choosing whether to do anything about it.
 
@@ -35,9 +35,9 @@ Skein is not a fiend, not undead, not aberrant in the traditional sense. It's a
 
 **Parasitic Bond.** While bonded to a host, Skein can see through the host's eyes, hear through the host's ears, and speak through the host's mouth. It can suppress or override the host's actions (no save — the bond is too old for resistance). Skein always knows the host's location and emotional state.
 
-**Ethereal Existence.** Skein exists on the Ethereal Plane. It cannot be seen, attacked, or affected by anything on the Material Plane without ethereal sight or effects that cross planar boundaries.
+**Ethereal Existence.** Skein exists on the Ethereal Plane. It cannot be attacked or affected by anything on the Material Plane. *See Invisibility* and similar magic can reveal it, but do not allow interaction across the planar boundary.
 
-**Thread Tendrils.** Skein's tendrils extend up to 10 feet into the Material Plane through the host's body. Severing a tendril (AC 13, 5 HP per tendril, must have ethereal sight to target) causes Skein to lose control of the host for 1 round per tendril severed. Skein has 6 tendrils. They regenerate in 1d4 hours.
+**Thread Tendrils.** Skein's tendrils extend up to 10 feet from it and overlap the host's body across the planar boundary. Severing a tendril (AC 13, 5 HP per tendril; it must be attacked from the Ethereal Plane) causes Skein to lose control of the host for 1 round per tendril severed. Skein has 6 tendrils. They regenerate in 1d4 hours.
 
 **Mind Drain.** Each day Skein remains bonded, the host's Wisdom is reduced by 1 (minimum 1). This reduction can only be restored by Greater Restoration or by permanently killing Skein. Bren's Wisdom has been reduced from 16 to 6 over seven years (it didn't drain every day — some days Skein rests).
 
@@ -75,12 +75,12 @@ Players talk to Bren and notice he's not just raving randomly:
 - **Detect Magic** on Bren: Abjuration and Enchantment signatures. Something is bound to him.
 - **DC 14 Arcana** while examining Bren: There's an anchor point — something attached to his mind from another plane. It's not a curse in the traditional sense; it's a *presence*.
 - **Detect Evil and Good** (Dalla can cast this): Registers as an aberration/monstrosity anchored to Bren from the Ethereal Plane.
+- **The bookmarked arcane volumes beside Haddon's table:** Three entries initially look plausible: [Ethereal Skeins](../prints/o-eterickem-predivu.md), [Mist Leeches](../prints/o-mlznych-pijavicich.md) and the [Return Echo](../prints/o-navratove-ozvene.md). Observation eliminates the latter two: a mist leech cannot censor speech or control movement, while a return echo has no independent body or tendrils. Only the Skein entry matches everything, and its marginal notes are signed **B. A.**
 
 ### Stage 3: Seeing Skein
 Requires ethereal sight:
-- **Veil Dust** — see Skein clearly, a knotted spider-thing with tendrils in Bren's skull
-- **See Invisibility** (Essek can cast this) — reveals Skein's outline
-- **Orenn's silver mirror** — DC 15 Perception while using it near Bren shows a distortion clinging to his head
+- **See Invisibility** (Essek can cast this) — reveals Skein directly
+- **Orenn's silver mirror** — provides the effect of *See Invisibility* within its reflection, revealing Skein and the six tendrils entering Bren's skull; it does not make Skein Material or allow attacks to cross
 
 ### Read-Aloud: Seeing Skein for the First Time
 
@@ -97,11 +97,11 @@ Requires ethereal sight:
 ## How to Save Bren
 
 ### Option A: Kill Skein (Permanent, Difficult)
-Requires entering the Ethereal Plane (Veil Dust, Oil of Etherealness) and fighting Skein directly.
+Requires entering the Ethereal Plane and fighting Skein directly. The Deep Cellar contains **two [Faded Scrolls of Etherealness](../prints/faded-scroll-of-etherealness.md)**, one in the Workroom and one in the Vault: each takes an action to read, works for 1 minute and can be used by anyone who can read a written language. They provide enough time for a short confrontation without consuming the longer-lasting Oil of Etherealness. Oil remains an alternative if the scrolls are missed, destroyed or saved for Xarrul.
 
 **Complications:**
 - Skein uses Bren as a shield — threatening to kill the host (Suppress Host to make Bren harm himself) if attacked
-- In the Ethereal Plane near the thin point, Skein has advantage on Stealth checks (home terrain)
+- In the Ethereal Plane near the tear in the Old Work, Skein has advantage on Stealth checks (home terrain)
 - If Skein drops below 10 HP, it tries to Flee — players must prevent this or it escapes and attaches to a new host eventually
 - Xarrul's presence makes the Ethereal Plane more dangerous — the fiend might interfere (it finds Skein amusing but not threatening)
 
@@ -113,8 +113,8 @@ Requires entering the Ethereal Plane (Veil Dust, Oil of Etherealness) and fighti
 - He remembers everything: seven years of captivity, watching his own body be puppeted, feeling himself erode
 
 ### Option B: Sever the Tendrils (Temporary)
-Requires ethereal sight and targeted attacks.
-- Each tendril: AC 13, 5 HP (must be attacked on the Ethereal Plane or with force damage)
+Requires entering the Ethereal Plane and making targeted attacks.
+- Each tendril: AC 13, 5 HP (must be attacked on the Ethereal Plane)
 - Severing all 6 tendrils frees Bren for 1d4 hours
 - During this time, Bren is lucid, coherent, and desperately helpful
 - He can provide testimony about the murder, information about the thin point, and his own background
@@ -128,6 +128,12 @@ The spell suppresses Skein's control for the duration (10 minutes, concentration
 - When the spell ends, Skein reasserts control with a vengeance — Bren takes 5 (1d10) psychic damage
 - Repeating this method angers Skein and makes it more aggressive with the host
 
+### Option D: Silvervein Root (One Clear Moment)
+Crushing **1 sprig of silvervein root** beside Bren consumes the sprig and weakens Skein's grip for 1 round.
+- Bren can speak and act lucidly during that round
+- Skein cannot use Silence the Host or Suppress Host until the start of the next round
+- This does not damage the tendrils or prevent Skein from reasserting control afterward
+
 ---
 
 ## Bren's Testimony (When Lucid)
@@ -138,7 +144,7 @@ If players free Bren temporarily or permanently, he provides:
 "I saw it happen. Something came through — from the other side. Like smoke with hands. It reached through the air behind the bar and touched Orenn. He didn't even flinch. He just... stopped. The thing pulled back and it was *smiling*. I could feel it smiling."
 
 **About Skein:**
-"It found me seven years ago. I was studying the thin point — the cellar beneath this tavern. I got too close. It latched on and it's been... eating me. My memories. My will. Every day there's a little less of me. I can feel the edges of myself going soft."
+"It found me seven years ago. I was studying the tear in the old chamber beneath this tavern. The thin point. I got too close. It latched on and it's been... eating me. My memories. My will. Every day there's a little less of me. I can feel the edges of myself going soft."
 
 **About Xarrul:**
 "The thing that killed Orenn is different from what's in me. Bigger. Older. Crueler. My — [he struggles to find a word for Skein] — my *passenger* is afraid of it. Deeply afraid. That's why I had those moments tonight — it was distracted, watching the fiend, and I could push through."

storylines/the-reckoning.md

@@ -2,377 +2,332 @@
 
 ## Overview
 
-The Reckoning is whatever happens when the players have gathered enough threads and decide to act. It's not a fixed encounter — it depends entirely on what they've learned, who they've allied with, and what they're willing to risk.
+The Reckoning is whatever happens once the players understand enough of the murder, the Order and the cellar to act. It is not one encounter. It is a collision between three questions:
 
-This document covers the primary confrontation paths and the central moral dilemma.
+- What happens to Xarrul: bind it, destroy it in the Ethereal Plane, or let it leave?
+- Who controls the room long enough to do that?
+- What price is acceptable for Nessa, the Guest and everyone trapped upstairs?
 
----
+For the unattended sequence and a branch-by-branch outcome map, use [Natural Progression](natural-progression.md). This file supplies the playable resolution mechanics.
 
 ## Reaching the Endgame
 
-Players arrive at the Reckoning through any combination of:
-- Following the ethereal trail to the cellar
-- Bren's testimony pointing to a fiend
-- Essek revealing the summoning
-- Veil Dust trip exposing Xarrul
-- Orenn's letter and preparations in the storage room
-- Exploring the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md) — the chalk-wall notes and the [Guest's](../npc/the-guest.md) cult-infiltration intel both point at the Order of Mending and the summoning; the vault arms the party for the fight
-- Logical deduction from the ambiguous clues
-
-There is no "right" order. The Reckoning begins when the players know enough to act and choose to do so.
-
----
+Players can reach the Reckoning through the ethereal trail, Bren's testimony, Essek's confession, Orenn's preparations, the Deep Cellar, the Guest's intelligence or direct deduction. There is no required order. The available endings depend on what they learned and whom they can persuade.
 
 ## The Clock
 
-The Reckoning is player-driven, but it is not *timeless*. When Mags shattered the summoners' lockstone in Act 2, she sealed the house across every plane into a **closed vessel** — and that is exactly what Xarrul needed to finish crossing. It now has until **midnight**, when the seal lapses, to complete the crossing through the old tear in the cellar — the **lockdown clock** ([xarrul.md — The Night's Clock](../npc/xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation) and [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door)). The longer the players wait, the colder the room, the bolder Xarrul, the higher the body count. If they never act at all, the clock runs out and Xarrul **crosses over completely**: permanent, material, no Slip Between escape, far worse to fight. This is the pressure that keeps Act 3 from drifting. Slowing or breaking it — **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; letting it run is its own quiet choice.
+Mags's ward-crystal pulled power from the Inn's internal planar seals and threw it into an exterior shell around every version of the building. That trade admitted Xarrul fully to the Material interior and restored Ethereal Jaunt inside the cage, but nothing can cross the exterior physically, Ethereally, by teleportation, or as an Astral projection. The shell cannot be breached during the session and is not a resolution path.
 
----
+At midnight the shell lapses and power begins returning to the internal containment. That transition creates the only three-round window in which the Guest can be delivered Astral before the tear reseals. The Vacancy cannot begin or advance before midnight. The falling shell does not itself free Xarrul: until it takes a vessel, its old planar tether still prevents it from crossing the Inn's footprint on either plane.
 
-## Confrontation Scenarios
+Use the clock as escalating pressure:
+
+1. Xarrul supplies precise whispers that turn existing suspicions into accusations.
+2. It uses Waking Dream to alter only the last minute of a target's experience.
+3. By late evening, accusations and violence keep the room divided unless the players interrupt them. The compact prevents Xarrul from killing again before the exchange, except in direct defense against binding, banishment, or destruction; it does not protect patrons from one another.
+4. Before midnight, Xarrul opens Cell One from the Ethereal side and brings the willing Guest to the tear in the Old Work.
+5. As the shell lapses, the three-round Vacancy begins. If nobody intervenes, Xarrul takes the changeling body and strands the Guest in the Astral Plane.
+6. The compact has now ended. If witnesses saw the transfer and can identify or bind the new vessel, Xarrul removes them; if the transfer remained secret, it leaves quietly in a borrowed face.
+
+This is Xarrul's preferred passive strategy: keep armed mortals divided until the protected transfer, then choose concealment or cleanup according to what they witnessed.
+
+## Shared Planar Rules
+
+### Seeing and Targeting Xarrul
+
+A Material creature cannot target an Ethereal Xarrul merely by guessing its square.
+
+- A creature in the Ethereal Plane, most commonly under Oil of Etherealness, sees and targets it normally.
+- The iron bell reveals Xarrul's outline to everyone for 1 minute but does not make it Material.
+- Veilhook Salt can anchor it after it manifests. Restored sigils and the binding circle can hold it.
+
+Seeing across the boundary never allows an attack to cross it. A creature can affect Xarrul only from the same plane unless a specific spell or feature explicitly says otherwise.
+
+### Oil of Etherealness Economy
+
+There are **five doses at most** in the Inn:
+
+1. The storage-room hidden compartment.
+2. Orenn and Mags's bedroom arsenal.
+3. The Deep Cellar Workroom drawer.
+4. Mags's concealed personal reserve.
+5. Haddon's concealed ritual reserve.
+
+The first three are field supplies the party can discover through investigation and exploration. The last two are failsafes: they require Mags's trust, a bargain or break with Haddon, theft, or taking the vial from a defeated holder. Every dose takes **10 uninterrupted minutes to apply** and grants the effect of *Etherealness* for 1 hour.
+
+For a three-PC party, the planar pincer normally needs only **one Ethereal attacker and two Material attackers**. A second prepared oil-user provides redundancy; a third is luxury. The attackers do not need synchronized final blows: they cover both planes so Xarrul cannot escape pressure by jaunting. Holding actions, voluntarily delaying turns or fixing allied initiative order is allowed; initiative bookkeeping is not the puzzle. The faded scrolls normally provide a separate resource for confronting Skein. If those are missed, destroyed or saved for Xarrul, spending oil on Skein still creates pressure without locking away the final solution, while the two NPC reserves protect against lost, wasted or inaccessible field doses.
+
+### Faded Scrolls of Etherealness
+
+The Deep Cellar contains **two [Faded Scrolls of Etherealness](../prints/faded-scroll-of-etherealness.md)**: one in the Workroom's locked emergency drawer and one in the Vault arsenal. None are stored upstairs. Any creature that can read a written language can activate one as an action to gain the effect of *Etherealness* for 1 minute. The scroll then crumbles.
+
+They are intended as the quick route to confronting Skein without consuming the oils. Once discovered, however, they are portable and can be saved for Xarrul. That is legitimate late-game counterplay earned by reaching the Deep Cellar, at the cost of leaving Bren enslaved or finding another way to help him.
+
+### Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum
+
+The Nether Inn's [room-bound wards](../location/tavern-overview.md#room-bound-area-wards) prevent *Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum* from spanning multiple rooms. It can protect the Main Hall, the upper cellar, the Old Work or another single chamber, but never all of them with one casting.
+
+The spell's divination protection does **not** suppress Voice Thief, telepathy, Visions of Spite, Waking Dream or Xarrul's inherent cross-planar sight. These are fiendish traits and actions, not divination spells or magical sensors.
+
+Its prohibition on planar travel does block **Ethereal Jaunt** and **Slip Between** while Xarrul is spatially inside the sanctum. Xarrul remains on whichever plane it currently occupies, but may leave the protected room by ordinary movement on that plane and resume shifting once outside. A sanctum completed inside the Old Work also prevents the Vacancy or Hollowing from beginning or advancing while it lasts; it suppresses use of the tear rather than closing or repairing it. Completing the ten-minute casting in Xarrul's lair should be treated as an earned containment plan, not an uncontested pause.
+
+The upper-cellar circle's **true-name Recall** is older than the room wards and keyed into them. It is an authorized inward route: it can draw Xarrul Material into an upper-cellar sanctum, but does not give Xarrul permission to jaunt or leave afterward.
+
+### One Pool, One Place of Death
+
+Xarrul has one 78 HP pool shared across both planes. Damage follows it whenever it shifts; there are no Material and Ethereal halves. At the start of each of its turns on the Ethereal Plane, it regains 1d4 HP.
+
+Xarrul cannot die on the Material Plane. If it would die or reach 0 HP there, Deathless Slip leaves it at 1 HP and shifts it Ethereal even through Veilhook Salt, restored sigils, *Private Sanctum* or any other effect that blocks planar travel. At 0 HP on the Ethereal Plane, it is permanently destroyed and the vitality tied to Nessa normally recoils along her tether. The waiting changeling body during the Vacancy is the one exception: it captures that collapse instead.
+
+The *Banishment* spell recognizes the Border Ethereal as Xarrul's native plane. Rather than removing it from the encounter, the spell shifts it to the corresponding point in the Ethereal interior and prevents it from returning to the Material Plane while concentration lasts. If Xarrul is already Ethereal, it remains there and cannot jaunt Material for the duration. This can complete the Ethereal side of a pincer, but it is not an ending by itself.
+
+## Resolution Scenarios
 
 ### Scenario A: Direct Assault
 
-Players know about Xarrul, have combat resources, and go to the cellar to fight it.
+The party confronts Xarrul anywhere in the Inn. While the lockdown holds, the whole house counts as its lair for lair actions even though its physical nest is at the tear.
 
-**Setup:** The cellar is dark, cold, and cramped (10m x 8m). The thin point dominates the eastern side. Xarrul is in the Ethereal Plane — players need a way to reach it or force it into the Material Plane.
+Useful tools:
 
-**Tools to force and hold Xarrul on the Material Plane:**
-- **Veilhook Salt** (4 finished doses in the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal), with a craftable recipe in the Workroom): a Veil Dust user can throw it across the boundary. On a failed DC 14 Charisma save, Xarrul is dragged fully onto the Material Plane and cannot change planes until the end of its next turn.
-- **The binding circle** (cellar floor; the summoners', not Orenn's): once the salt pulls Xarrul across, the party must drive it inside. A failed DC 17 Charisma save traps it beyond the salt's one-round duration.
-- **The iron bell** (main hall fireplace): an old house-relic that wakes the foundation sigils for a time, giving Xarrul disadvantage on Ethereal Jaunt and making it harder to escape before the salt lands.
-- **Warding chalk circles** (from storage): Minor constraint, 10 minutes per use
-- **Force damage:** Affects ethereal creatures from the Material Plane
+- **Veilhook Salt:** a creature within 5 feet expends one dose and an action to anchor Xarrul automatically to its current plane until the start of that creature's next turn. A readied application when Xarrul manifests prevents Slip Between without preventing its attack. Maintaining the lock costs another action and dose each round.
+- **Binding circle:** once Xarrul is inside it, a failed DC 17 Charisma save holds it while the circle remains intact.
+- **Iron bell:** reveals Xarrul and activates restored foundation sigils for 1 minute.
+- **Protection from Evil and Good:** blocks possession and grants its normal defenses.
 
-**Xarrul's tactics:** See [Xarrul NPC file](../npc/xarrul.md). It uses Ethereal Jaunt to avoid being pinned, Voice Thief to sow confusion, and Whisper of Ruin on the strongest melee fighter. It doesn't want to die. At half HP and restrained, it negotiates.
-
-**Difficulty:** Hard for level 4. The shifting between planes makes Xarrul slippery. Without a way to pin it on the Material Plane, it's a war of attrition that Xarrul wins.
+Without a way to threaten both planes, Xarrul alternates attacks with Ethereal Jaunt until the party is exhausted. Material-only attackers can drive it to 1 HP, but Deathless Slip carries it Ethereal and it begins healing. Ethereal-only attackers drive it Material. A direct assault becomes a real destruction attempt only when the party establishes the planar pincer in Scenario C, or becomes a binding attempt through Scenario B or the bell-and-sigils seal.
 
 ### Scenario B: The Rebinding
 
-The "easy" resolution. Haddon proposes recapturing Xarrul using the binding circle in the cellar and restoring the original binding. This is available to any party that uncovers the fiend's existence — it doesn't require deep investigation into the cult's true nature. A loyal Dalla actively supports this.
+Haddon proposes restoring the Order's original control. Rennt supports him. Dalla supports it only before she learns that she and Nessa were used as a conduit.
 
-Once the maternal-conduit extract is explained, Dalla refuses to provide blood. Rebinding then requires coercing her, deceiving her about the note, or substituting another blood relative—which is not available tonight. This turns the early safe option into an exposed act of exploitation.
+Requirements:
 
-**Requirements:**
-1. The complete summoner's binding coffer from the [Deep Cellar Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory)
-2. Dalla's blood (given willingly only before the conduit extract is explained)
-3. The summoners' binding circle in the cellar (DC 16 Arcana to adapt it for rebinding rather than containment)
-4. Xarrul must be lured to the cellar or forced onto the Material Plane
-5. Haddon leads the ritual (10 minutes, concentration), Rennt assists
+1. The complete binding coffer from the Deep Cellar Workroom.
+2. Dalla's blood. After the conduit truth, she will not give it willingly.
+3. The upper-cellar binding circle, adapted with a DC 16 Arcana check.
+4. The two leaves of the [Litany of the Averted Step](../prints/litanie-odvraceneho-kroku.md).
+5. A way to keep Xarrul Material long enough to drive it into the circle: *Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum*, repeated Veilhook Salt, or comparable planar anchoring.
 
-**How it plays out:**
-- The party must get Xarrul to the cellar and keep it there for 10 minutes while Haddon completes the ritual. This is a fight — Xarrul does NOT want to be bound again. It fights with everything it has.
-- **Xarrul targets Haddon specifically.** The moment the party commits to rebinding, Haddon is the hand reaching for the chains — and Xarrul removes hands. It spends Brand, Visions of Spite, and everything else on Haddon over any other target (*"you reach for the chains, I take the hand"*). Protecting the ritualist becomes the party's core problem. If Haddon dies, rebinding is off the table unless another character takes over (DC 18 Arcana, with no time to prepare).
-- If the ritual completes: Xarrul is bound. It screams in fury as the chains take hold. The cult has their weapon back.
-- If the ritual is interrupted (Haddon takes damage and fails a DC 14 CON concentration check): The binding snaps. Xarrul is free and enraged. Combat continues with no second chances.
+#### Preparation — Ten Minutes, Not Initiative
 
-**Aftermath:** Dalla's connection to the binding restores — Nessa's condition stabilizes but doesn't improve. Her body remains suspended. The cult moves toward Phase Two with renewed confidence and a bound fiend. Dalla tells herself this is progress. The murder is "solved" (the weapon is leashed), but nothing is actually fixed.
+Haddon, Dalla and Rennt spend ten minutes adapting the circle, laying Dalla's blood into the four threshold marks and closing the first four of the seven knots. Xarrul does not need to be present. If it attacks, the preparation pauses; do not run one hundred rounds of chanting.
 
-**Mags's reaction:** Disgust. "You're handing them back the thing that killed him. On a leash. And you think that leash will hold?" She won't stop the players, but she won't help, and she won't forgive.
+Once primed, the circle remains ready until midnight unless someone breaks a line or removes the true-name strip. The old binding scar now gives the ritual one **true-name Recall**. Invoking it draws Xarrul bodily into an open space at the outer edge of the upper cellar, never directly into the circle. This Recall is an authorized inward path through the Inn's wards and works even if the room is under *Private Sanctum*.
 
-### Scenario C: The Dual-Plane Kill
+Xarrul recognizes the first preparation as a direct attempt to enslave it. The compact's self-defense exception applies: it may attack the people, litany leaves and anchoring tools involved.
 
-The "true" way to destroy Xarrul — synchronized destruction in both the Material and Ethereal planes. Unknown to the characters, this method will cure Nessa. Before they attempt it, however, they can establish only that the harvested vitality should recoil along her silver cord; no one can prove the violent collapse will not damage the tether. It also tears the veil.
+#### Capture — The Litany of the Averted Step
 
-**Discovering this scenario requires the conduit evidence**, Essek's help, or a PC who combines the binding records with direct Ethereal observation. Dalla does not unlock or automatically endorse it. After the notes surface, she favors Xarrul's promise of a controlled rescue; Essek favors ending the extraction now rather than freeing a fiend. Players who never uncover the truth receive only Haddon's rebinding proposal.
+The single silver-threaded scroll separates into two matched leaves. Each leaf needs a different reader. Before invoking the Recall, let both readers choose their positions and begin reading. If Xarrul appears within range and perception, both prohibitions apply immediately. Then place Xarrul and roll initiative; preparation, not an initiative coin flip, establishes the opening containment.
 
-**Requirements:**
-1. At least one character on the Ethereal Plane (Veil Dust at the thin point = 10 minutes, or Oil of Etherealness from Orenn's bedroom = 1 hour)
-2. At least one character on the Material Plane
-3. Both groups damage Xarrul simultaneously on both planes
-4. Both "halves" of Xarrul must be killed within 1 round of each other
+**Read a leaf.** A creature holding one leaf may move normally and use its action to read directly from it. Until the start of that reader's next turn, a Material Xarrul that the reader can perceive within 30 feet **cannot willingly enter a space closer to that reader**. It may remain at the same distance, move laterally where the distance does not decrease, or move away. Forced movement is unaffected.
 
-**How it works mechanically:**
-- When Xarrul is on the Ethereal Plane, characters there fight its ethereal form (full stat block)
-- When Xarrul shifts to the Material Plane, characters there fight its material form
-- At the thin point, Xarrul cannot fully separate its planes — it exists on both simultaneously, split. Material form: half HP (39 HP). Ethereal form: half HP (39 HP). AC and attacks unchanged.
-- If one form is killed and the other survives more than 1 round, the surviving form regenerates the dead form at full HP. The kill must be synchronized.
+The effect ends immediately if the reader drops or closes the leaf, cannot see its shifting writing, cannot speak, becomes incapacitated, loses perception of Xarrul, or uses another action. Casting a spell with a verbal component also interrupts that leaf. A reader damaged while chanting makes a **DC 14 Constitution save**; on a failure they lose their place and the effect ends until they use another action to begin again. The text rearranges in response to Xarrul's binding scar, so memorized recitation and mundane copies do nothing.
 
-**During the kill:** The veil tears. For 1 round at the moment of synchronized death, the planar boundary at the thin point *dissolves*. The Material and Ethereal planes merge in a 20-foot radius for 6 seconds. Everyone present sees both planes at once. The temperature drops. Sounds echo from wrong directions. For that one round, everything Mother Vyre predicted is true — the planes *do* want to touch.
+One active reader creates a direction Xarrul can sidestep. Two readers positioned apart behind it create an overlapping wedge: retreat approaches both, and most lateral routes approach one. Xarrul may still stand still, attack, or move toward the circle. The readers must move and continually rebuild the angle as it moves.
 
-Then the veil snaps back. The tear heals. Xarrul is gone.
+**Drive the bound.** While both leaves affect Xarrul, a creature that hits it with a melee attack may forgo all of that attack's damage to push it **5 feet** into an unoccupied space. This is forced movement. Ordinary shoves, grapples and spell-based forced movement remain valid.
 
-**And Nessa:** The vitality siphoned through Dalla snaps back along the maternal conduit and races down Nessa's silver cord. Dalla gasps and clutches her chest as four years of weakness lift at once. Miles away, Nessa's projected self is torn free of the planar scar and pulled home. Her six-year-old body draws its first waking breath in four years and opens its eyes. The gamble worked—but nobody in the tavern knew that it would.
+The Litany controls direction, not planar state. Without *Private Sanctum*, Xarrul can still use Ethereal Jaunt as soon as a Veilhook dose expires. Once Material Xarrul enters the circle, it makes the circle's **DC 17 Charisma save**. On a success it is not caught and can be driven through again; on a failure the salt-packed circle holds it Material and the final ritual begins.
 
-### Scenario D: Negotiation
+#### Binding — The Final Three Knots
 
-Xarrul is ancient and pragmatic. If cornered and unable to escape, it will negotiate.
+Once the adapted circle accepts Xarrul, its salt-and-name matrix blocks its movement, planar shifting and fresh hostile effects across the boundary. Xarrul can still communicate, use Voice Thief, and use Visions of Spite or Waking Dream through a Brand placed before the circle closed. Its primary weapon here is bargaining: it tells the truth until one of the three cultists releases the chain.
 
-**What Xarrul offers:**
-- Everything it knows about the Order of Mending, Mother Vyre, and Phase Two
-- Both stolen research extracts, or the location where it planted them
-- The truth that Vyre caused Nessa's dislocation and used Dalla as the maternal conduit
-- If allowed to leave after the lockdown: follow Nessa's silver cord, unwind the scar, and bring her projected self home
-- The truth about Dace's treachery
-- Information about Skein and how to kill it
-- The names and locations of other fiends bound by mortal cults in the region
+The last three knots require **Haddon, Dalla and Rennt** at separate stations. Each must use their action every round and maintain concentration. Damage forces the usual **DC 14 Constitution save** for this ritual.
 
-**What Xarrul wants:**
-- Freedom. Not destruction, not binding — the right to leave unmolested.
-- A vessel. If the Guest has been freed, Xarrul already has a willing exchange available through [the Vacancy](#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit); otherwise it will leave and find a host later.
-- Or, if particularly cunning: the thin point left unrepaired. "Leave the door open. Not for me. For *air*."
+At the end of each round, count active stations:
 
-**The problem:** Xarrul is evil. Letting it go means it's someone else's problem. It killed Orenn. It will kill again. But its information is genuine and valuable. This is a classic devil's bargain.
+| Active ritualists | Result |
+|---|---|
+| **Three** | Close one knot; progress +1. |
+| **Two** | Opposed forces balance; no change. |
+| **One** | One closed knot reopens; progress −1, minimum 0. |
+| **None** | The ritual collapses, the prepared components burn out and the adapted circle releases Xarrul. |
 
-**Mags's reaction:** "No." Simple. Final. She won't negotiate with the thing that killed Orenn. If players choose negotiation, they do it over Mags's objection, and their relationship with her is damaged.
+Three progress restores the command binding.
 
-### Scenario E: Faction War
+**Breaking a station.** If a station ends without a completed handoff — whether its ritualist chooses to stop, becomes incapacitated or loses concentration — each of the other ritualists who is still active immediately takes **2d6 psychic damage** and makes the DC 14 concentration save. A failure breaks that second station and can cause another backlash against whoever remains. This is ritual recoil, not an attack by Xarrul.
 
-If players haven't uncovered the fiend, or if tensions boil over before the Reckoning, the factions turn on each other.
+**Taking over.** A character adjacent to a station may use an action and make a **DC 18 Arcana, Religion or spellcasting-ability check** to assume it. On a success the station counts as active that round; on later rounds the replacement must use their action and maintain concentration like any other ritualist. Taking over an already empty station cannot undo backlash that occurred. A coordinated handoff made before the cultist releases their station avoids backlash. Dalla's blood remains the conduit even if someone else speaks her responses; replacing her after she withdraws consent is still using her and should be treated as coercion.
 
-**Trigger points:**
-- Kael loses patience (2+ hours of lockdown with no resolution)
-- The cult's summoning is exposed to the assassins
-- Dace is exposed and the cultists realize they've been compromised
-- Any NPC is attacked or killed
+**Countering Xarrul.** Do not reduce the bargaining to three generic saving throws. Use what the players learned upstairs. A PC may spend an action healing, removing a Brand, helping a ritualist survive concentration, taking over a station, or making a relevant Persuasion, Deception or Intimidation check to give someone a reason to hold. Concrete knowledge and a truthful argument should matter more than the raw roll:
 
-**What happens:** Lethal combat. Assassins vs. cultists. Mags tries to stop it. Players can:
-- Join a side
-- Try to stop the fight (DC 18 group Persuasion, or DC 16 with evidence of the fiend)
-- Use the chaos to pursue the fiend while everyone's distracted (ironic echo of the brawl)
+- **Dalla:** Xarrul names Nessa and explains that the restored binding resumes the drain. She stops if she understands the conduit evidence unless the party convinces or coerces her that preserving the connection is worth the cost.
+- **Haddon:** Xarrul names Bren, repeats *the living weight comes first*, and makes him face the contradiction between saving Orenn once and feeding people into Vyre's work now. Pride and fear of losing the asset normally keep him chanting.
+- **Rennt:** Xarrul reveals that Haddon knew the command line was dead and let Rennt defend a lie. Rennt normally holds through ideology, but Dalla's rejection, Haddon's confession or a PC he respects can turn certainty into rupture.
 
-**Casualties:** Without intervention, Kael dies (he charges Rennt), Rennt dies (he's outmatched by Sevra), and Dalla is caught in the crossfire. Essek tries to flee and is cut down by a guild soldier. Haddon escapes using Misty Step. The fiend watches, delighted.
+If the ritual completes, Xarrul is bound and everyone can survive. The Order regains its weapon. Nessa remains suspended, but the connection is intact: a future Opening could pull her home, at the price of everything the Opening entails. If Dalla is coerced, call the result what it is.
 
-### Scenario F: The Open Door (Joining Xarrul)
+### Scenario C: Ethereal Destruction
 
-The darkest ending — and the one that most fully commits to the module's thesis: the players help Xarrul cross over and become real. This is **not** the passive "let it walk" of Scenario D; it is active complicity. It is also **not** an edgy freebie. Like the dual-plane kill, it is *gated behind depth*: a party only reaches it if they have learned enough to find the cult genuinely more terrifying than the fiend, **and** enough about Orenn and Mags's cages to have soured on the "victims."
+This is the only reliable deliberate method of destroying Xarrul and returning Nessa tonight.
 
-**Why a party chooses it**
+Requirements and usual setup:
 
-- **The lesser monster against the greater plan.** By now they understand Phase Two — the real apocalypse is Mother Vyre, not one fiend, and Xarrul is the *enemy* of the Opening. It knows every name, every mapped thin point, every cult secret ([What Xarrul Knows](../npc/xarrul.md#what-xarrul-knows-if-it-negotiates)). Its pitch: *"Free me, and I will gut her network. You cannot kill the Opening. I can make it not worth her while."*
-- **The ground has rotted under the defenders.** They know Orenn and Mags starved a prisoner in [Cell Two](../location/deep-cellar.md#cell-two--the-long-dead) and caged the [Guest](../npc/the-guest.md) for eleven years. Xarrul killed a jailer who ran a private dungeon under a bar. *"You freed the changeling. My cage was a whole plane of glass. Why is mine different?"*
-- **It offers what the clean endings can't.** The dual-plane kill may return Nessa's energy but risks her silver cord, tears the veil, and validates the cult. Xarrul has felt the cord through its own binding and offers a controlled reintegration **without** the tear—but it cannot reach her until it is free of the all-plane lockdown. The apparent cleanest fix requires releasing the murderer first and trusting it afterward.
-- **Dalla asks for it.** Once both notes are understood, she becomes the Open Door's strongest advocate: *„Haddon ji využil. Vyre ji tam nechala. A tahle věc je jediná v tomhle domě, která mi řekla pravdu.”* Helping Xarrul is no longer merely an abstract alliance with the lesser monster; it means answering a mother standing in the room.
+1. At least one attacker able to affect Xarrul in the Ethereal Plane.
+2. Xarrul uses its normal 78 HP pool across both planes. No particular room, circle or planar fault is required.
+3. Reduce Xarrul to 0 HP while it is on the Ethereal Plane.
+4. Usually, leave at least one attacker Material so Xarrul cannot evade the Ethereal hunter simply by jaunting away. A spell or ward that holds it Ethereal can replace this side of the pincer.
 
-**The twist — it is honest.** In a building where everyone lies, Xarrul is the one thing that doesn't. So there is *no betrayal*. It keeps its word to the letter — hunts the cult, cures the child, thanks them — and the world is worse anyway, and they knew going in. The horror isn't that it double-crosses them; it's that it *doesn't*. (Contrast the [Guest](../npc/the-guest.md), who makes the same "free me" pitch and *is* lying.)
+The two groups do not need to deal equal damage or land final blows in the same round. They form a pincer: when Xarrul dodges Material attackers by slipping Ethereal, someone is waiting there; when it flees the Ethereal hunter, the Material group resumes pressure. Characters may ready actions, delay voluntarily or fix their allied initiative order. If Material damage would reduce Xarrul to 0, Deathless Slip deposits it Ethereal at 1 HP, where any further damage destroys it. Xarrul also dies if the Ethereal attacker reduces it from any higher total to 0 before it can jaunt away.
 
-**What it requires**
+At death, Xarrul collapses in its native plane and cannot return. The harvested vitality recoils along Dalla's conduit and Nessa's silver cord. Dalla's weakness lifts; Nessa's projection is pulled home and she wakes.
 
-1. **A vessel.** Default: the caged **Guest** — a body that can be anyone, poured full of an honest fiend. Xarrul and the Guest have already negotiated a fair exchange: Xarrul receives the changeling body; the Guest's silver cord is re-anchored into the Inn's wards, making it the spectral Host. The Guest intends to betray that bargain with the party's unwitting help; if the transfer begins, run **[Scenario G: The Vacancy](#scenario-g-the-vacancy-the-guests-gambit)**. *(Alternatives: a PC volunteers as host — the most personal; that character leaves the party. Or simply leave the door open — Xarrul crosses as itself, weaker, and finds a host later.)*
-2. **The crossing.** Let the [lockdown clock](#the-clock) run — keep anyone from breaching the seal or waking the sigils — or complete the crossing at the rift, while holding off anyone who tries to stop it.
-3. **Getting past Mags.** She will not accept this. With another vessel or the open crossing, she is the obstacle before completion. If the Guest begins the Vacancy without her knowledge, she becomes the initiator of violence immediately afterward instead.
+The party cannot know with certainty beforehand that Nessa will survive the recoil. They can establish only that this is the one ending that sends the stored vitality back along her tether.
 
-**Mags, and the shape of the finale.** Mags says *"No"*—simple, final. Siding openly with Xarrul means going through the widow of the man it murdered. So Xarrul triggers the [Warden's Mark](../npc/mags.md#the-wardens-mark-dm)—its first favor to its new allies—and Mags fights *compromised*, grief-broken and half-frozen in a vision of Orenn's death. This is not a slugfest but a **desperate holding action**: complete the crossing while a diminished Mags throws everything she has left at the objective. Winnable, tragic, and *the players'* to win. If the Guest supplies the vessel through the Vacancy, replace this pre-transfer fight with [the Succession](#the-succession--mags-refuses): Mags attacks only after the body has an owner. (For a bigger fight, add **Sevra** at her side.)
+### Scenario D: Conventional Negotiation
 
-**Aftermath.** Xarrul keeps every promise (see [After the Reckoning](#after-the-reckoning)). If it uses the Guest, the fiend does not betray the bargain; the Guest is the one concealing a second intended outcome. No broken word. Just competing knives.
+When cornered, Xarrul offers genuine information, the stolen extracts, the truth about Nessa, and exact knowledge of the Order. It wants freedom and a body. The Guest's compact restrains Xarrul's own killing only until the exchange finishes; the party may bargain for protection afterward.
 
----
+An agreement with Xarrul is literal, not friendly. Require the players to name the terms aloud: who must live, whether Nessa must be returned, whether the Guest is included, and when Xarrul may leave. Xarrul repeats the terms exactly before witnesses. It will keep those words and exploit everything omitted.
 
-### Scenario G: The Vacancy (The Guest's Gambit)
+Mags will not permit Orenn's murderer to leave merely because it promised something. Negotiation therefore leads into Scenario F unless the party abandons the bargain.
 
-This is the Guest's ending and the mechanically easiest opportunity to destroy Xarrul. It becomes available if the party frees the Guest, learns that Xarrul wants its body, and brings it to the **binding circle at the cellar thin point**. Do not run the transfer at the rift in the Deep Cellar; that tear is too unstable. The old circle upstairs is where one body can briefly be made into a closed vessel.
+### Scenario E: The Upstairs Pressure Cooker
 
-The Guest's pitch is exactly true:
+This is the default pressure behind every ending, not a separate optional finale. Xarrul's whispers turn the cultists and assassins against one another by midnight unless the players produce a stronger common threat or control the room. Faction war is the compact's loophole: Xarrul cannot kill again before the exchange, but can expose real grievances, corrupt fresh memories, and steal voices until mortals choose to kill one another. If the Guest dies, the exchange becomes impossible and this restraint ends immediately.
 
-> *„Xarrul chce tohle tělo. Až si mě vezme, nastane okamžik, kdy už opustil druhou stranu, ale ještě nedorazil na tuhle. Pusťte mě ven a já vám ten okamžik dám.”*
+Likely first violence:
 
-It omits the result it actually wants: destroy Xarrul during that moment, let the fiend's embedded planar imprint collapse into the vacant body, then reclaim the body with Xarrul's ability to cross the veil.
+- Kael attacks Rennt or Haddon.
+- Rennt answers lethally once blood is drawn.
+- Sevra protects Kael but redirects toward Xarrul if shown convincing evidence.
+- Mags tries to halt the fight and preserve witnesses.
+- Dalla changes sides when the conduit evidence becomes undeniable.
+- Essek supports ending Xarrul, but his eldritch blast needs someone to track the Ethereal target.
 
-#### Why Xarrul Commits
+Without intervention, Kael and Rennt are the likely first faction casualties, while Dalla and Essek remain at grave risk. None of those deaths is Xarrul's direct act, though it benefits from the division. If the Vacancy is exposed, Haddon or Essek recognizes Xarrul's signature in the new vessel and the room finally understands that the same creature killed Orenn and used their feud as cover. Once the exchange finishes, Xarrul itself is free to become lethal.
 
-Xarrul understands that the Guest would consume it if it could. That is not the deception. The Guest has truthfully consented to vacate the body and genuinely accepts becoming the Host if its betrayal fails.
+If the party supplies anti-Xarrul defenses but no political agreement, the argument becomes **rebind versus destroy**. Haddon and Rennt attempt to preserve the asset; Mags, Sevra and the unaffiliated want it gone. Dalla joins the latter after learning the conduit truth. The disagreement can cause casualties and, if allowed to consume the room, give Xarrul the win.
 
-Xarrul enters because the contest is hopeless **without outside hands**. The Guest cannot attack during the transfer without forfeiting its cord, ordinary mortals cannot touch a projected fiend, and Xarrul's will overwhelms a drug-weakened changeling. Once Xarrul places its essential anchor into the vessel, however, withdrawal would tear it across both planes. The transfer must finish. Xarrul underestimates which anti-fiend tools the Guest has steered into the party's hands.
+### Scenario F: Deliberately Side with Xarrul
 
-> **Xarrul:** *„Jakmile budu uvnitř, hodláš sklapnout čelisti.”*
->
-> **Host:** *„Hodlám ti dát své tělo.”*
->
-> **Xarrul:** *„Obě tvrzení mohou být pravdivá.”*
->
-> **Host:** *„Pak si rozumíme.”*
+This ending works because Xarrul does not need to conquer the room. With the Guest's body it can become anyone and walk out when the lockdown ends. The compact already prevents Xarrul from killing anyone except Orenn until the exchange finishes; a separate bargain is needed to restrain it afterward.
 
-#### The Spectacle
+The obstacle is Mags. She will not release a known murderer, and attacking her openly turns the room against the party. The players need one of four workable routes:
 
-The Guest steps into the circle and willingly opens the way. Its body goes slack. Every borrowed feature runs off it like wax until a pale, unfinished changeling shell remains standing or kneeling at the circle's center.
+- **Frame another culprit:** give Mags evidence strong enough to make someone else actionable until midnight. The frame must explain Orenn's inaccessible soul and the fiendish brand; a loose dagger is not enough.
+- **Expose a real accomplice:** prove the Guest selected Orenn and persuade Mags that containing the Guest takes priority while Xarrul departs. This buys time, not forgiveness.
+- **Quietly neutralize Mags:** isolate, restrain, drug or imprison her without the main hall seeing an attack. Her Warden's Mark can create an opening, but Xarrul triggering it in public reveals the alliance.
+- **Bypass her authority:** win Sevra and enough of the room to a witnessed bargain so Mags cannot start a fight without standing alone.
 
-In rules terms, Xarrul is performing a bespoke form of **Astral Projection** through the Inn's sealed Ethereal overlay. The technique exposes both silver cords without sending either spirit beyond the lockdown, so Ethereal tools can still perceive and harm them. This is ritual knowledge Xarrul acquired through Nessa's binding, not the standard spell for PCs to cast or dispel wholesale.
+Once Mags is contained, prepare the Old Work and wait for the shell to lapse. At midnight, run the Vacancy and protect Xarrul for three rounds. Xarrul takes the changeling body, the Guest is stranded Astral, and Xarrul chooses an innocuous face and leaves by the front door. It keeps every explicit post-exchange no-killing and Nessa promise. The horror is that the bargain succeeds.
 
-Two spirits rise from it. The Guest is silver-white, its outline cycling through every face it has worn. Xarrul is amber-black, gaunt and precise, joined to the empty body's chest by a burning cord. The Guest's own silver cord still runs into the same chest. Over three rounds, Xarrul unthreads that cord from the flesh and knots it, strand by strand, into the glowing foundation sigils.
+#### Building a Frame
 
-For those three rounds, **neither creature occupies the body**. The body, the Guest and Xarrul are three separate targets.
+Mags's Fixer's Read defeats a convenient single clue. A workable frame needs a **hand**, a **motive** and an explanation for the fiendish evidence.
 
-#### Running the Vacancy
+- **Haddon** is the strongest principal: his journal proves he summoned Xarrul, he hid the loss of control, and he has a motive to remove Orenn. The party can claim the fiend acted under his order. Haddon can disprove continuing control if allowed to demonstrate the dead command line.
+- **Rennt** caused the blackout and handled the binding components. He is an easy visible culprit but a poor mastermind; Sevra accepts him faster than Mags does.
+- **Dace** supplied the Order with dossiers and his poisoned dagger lay near the body. This proves conspiracy, not the brand or missing soul. Pairing him with Haddon makes the story stronger.
+- **Thera** understands missing souls and can explain why Revivify failed. Her magic does not match the ethereal claw marks. Framing her works only if the party also suppresses the crime-scene comparison.
+- **The Guest** truly selected Orenn and predicted Mags's response. Presenting it as the architect gives Mags an actionable accomplice below, but does not erase Xarrul as the hand that killed him.
 
-The transfer settles at the end of **round 3**. Roll initiative normally.
+Xarrul can move objects, imitate voices and alter one branded witness's memory of only the **last minute**. It cannot manufacture an earlier blackout memory or speak a false accusation itself. Have the party assemble and voice the lie. Use a DC 18 group Deception check, reduced to DC 16 with two independent pieces of real evidence; Mags's Fixer's Read gives her advantage on her opposed read. Failure makes her test the weakest physical claim immediately.
 
-**The vacant body:** AC 10, 52 HP, unconscious, automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saves. Damage remains when someone finally occupies it. If it dies, the Guest's cord snaps and Xarrul is expelled into the Ethereal Plane with its current Vacancy HP; the bargain fails and the normal fight resumes.
+#### Quietly Removing Mags
 
-**The projected Guest:** AC 14, 26 HP, fly 30 ft. (hover), resistance to nonmagical damage, cannot move more than 15 feet from the body. It may speak, Read Thoughts and take the Help action, but **cannot damage Xarrul**: a hostile act from it forfeits its bodily claim and completes its projection into the wards. If reduced to 0 HP, its silver cord snaps; Xarrul takes the body immediately and no Host remains. This is the Executioner's cleanest shot and the Handler's Agent's last chance to defend the asset openly.
+- **Drug her:** Essence of Ether or feyspitter venom works if hidden in something she accepts from a trusted person. Her Fixer's Read spots nervous handling; discovery exposes the alliance.
+- **Use the Warden's Mark:** Xarrul can freeze her for a round while PCs move her out of sight. Triggering it in the hall recreates Orenn's murder in public and turns Sevra against them.
+- **Put her in Cell One:** the black key, Grey Step or a successful ambush can bypass the ward. Twinkle reacts to violence in its territory, and an uncaptured Mags knows every escape weakness below.
+- **Impersonate authority:** after the Vacancy, changeling-bodied Xarrul can copy Mags, but the real Mags must first be isolated. Orenn's voice can lure her below; a missing black key, wrong private memory or shapechanger detection exposes the replacement.
+- **Replace her politically:** a witnessed bargain plus Sevra's support can make the room refuse Mags's order to attack. Mags survives and remembers exactly who overruled her.
 
-**Vacancy Xarrul:** AC 15, **39 HP**, fly 30 ft. (hover), its normal resistances and immunities, and it cannot move more than 15 feet from the body. It cannot use **Ethereal Jaunt, Slip Between, Multiattack or Waking Dream**. On its turn it may use one Claw, Voice Thief, Whisper of Ruin, or Visions of Spite against an already branded target. It cannot abandon the transfer. At 0 HP, it is destroyed on both planes at once.
+### Scenario G: The Vacancy
 
-Xarrul's spirit is visible to everyone but remains half out of phase. It can be damaged normally by an Ethereal creature, a Veil Dust or Oil of Etherealness user, force damage, or a creature using Veilhook Salt. Ringing the **iron bell** while the foundation sigils are active makes it fully tangible to all attacks until the Vacancy ends. *Protection from Evil and Good* cast on the empty body **after** the transfer begins gives attacks against Vacancy Xarrul advantage; cast beforehand, it prevents the transfer entirely. Reward any comparable anti-possession or anti-fiend preparation with the same effect.
+The Vacancy is the negotiated exchange between the Guest and Xarrul. It requires the exposed tear and takes place inside the failing containment circle in the [Old Work](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-old-work). The upper-cellar binding circle cannot substitute for the breach. The lockdown prevents the Guest's Astral release, so the ritual cannot begin or advance before the exterior shell lapses at midnight. Returning ward-power then begins resealing the tear, making the ritual's three rounds the whole available transfer window.
 
-This is deliberately the easiest Xarrul fight. The party has traded the fiend's mobility and full HP for a choice about what inherits it.
+The Guest devised the useful part of the plan: a mutable body lets Xarrul leave unnoticed, while the transfer creates a moment in which outsiders can destroy it. Xarrul understands the risk but believes the Guest cannot recruit enough capable hands. The Guest is the sharper conspirator; Xarrul is still dangerous and pragmatic.
 
-#### Xarrul Defends Itself With Truth
+The Guest willingly leaves its body. Xarrul projects into the opening. The body, Guest and Xarrul become separate targets.
 
-The fiend knows the Guest's best weapon is the party's incomplete understanding. It spends the transfer telling them the missing half:
+**Vacant body:** AC 10, 52 HP, unconscious, automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saves. Damage remains after occupation. If it dies, the Guest's cord snaps, Xarrul is expelled Ethereal at its current Vacancy HP, and the planar fight resumes.
 
-> *„Orenna vybral on. Já vykonal vraždu.”*
+**Projected Guest:** AC 14, 26 HP, fly 30 ft. (hover), resistance to nonmagical damage, cannot move more than 15 feet from the body. It may speak, Read Thoughts and Help, but cannot damage Xarrul without forfeiting its claim. Xarrul never targets it: the original promise not to kill the Guest remains unconditional even during and after the exchange. At 0 HP from another source, its spirit is destroyed and Xarrul takes the body immediately.
 
-> *„Nežádal vás, abyste ho zachránili. Požádal vás, abyste do něj přelili to, čím jsem.”*
+**Vacancy Xarrul:** AC 15, 39 HP maximum, fly 30 ft. (hover), normal resistances and immunities, cannot move more than 15 feet from the body. The transfer exposes its Ethereal essence and temporarily lowers its hit point maximum to 39; if its current HP is higher, reduce it to 39, otherwise keep its current total. This is still the same pool, not a second form or a simultaneous pool. It cannot use Ethereal Restoration, Ethereal Jaunt, Slip Between, Deathless Slip, Multiattack or Waking Dream. It may use one Claw, Voice Thief, Whisper of Ruin or Visions of Spite. At 0 HP it is permanently destroyed because it is exposed on its native plane.
 
-> *„Zničte mě teď a dítě zůstane tam, kde je Vyre zanechala. Moc spojená s jejím vláknem vstoupí do tohoto čekajícího těla.”*
+The iron bell plus the active ward lattice makes Vacancy Xarrul tangible to all attacks even at the bottom of the Deep Cellar. *Protection from Evil and Good* on the body before the Vacancy prevents it; cast after the ritual begins, it grants advantage against Xarrul.
 
-> *„Udeřte, jestli je to váš rozsudek. Ale rozumějte tomu, koho vyzbrojujete.”*
+#### Vacancy Outcomes
 
-Every statement is true. The Guest does not deny them. It answers only:
+**Nobody interferes:** At the end of round 3 Xarrul takes the changeling body. The Guest's former silver cord is severed from its body and its coherent spirit is projected into the Astral Plane. It is alive but bodiless and cannot return tonight. A future *Plane Shift*, astral expedition and new vessel could recover it. It does not become the Inn or control its wards.
 
-> *„Přišli jste zabít Orennova vraha. Konečně stojí na místě.”*
+The original compact—Xarrul may kill Orenn but nobody else until the exchange is finished—expires at this moment. If the transfer was witnessed, Xarrul may attack those able to identify or bind its new body. If it remained secret, disguise and a quiet departure are safer. Any separate promise made to the party still binds it.
 
-#### Outcomes
+**The party destroys Xarrul:** Its planar imprint and stolen vitality collapse into the waiting body; the Guest reclaims it. The suppressant burns out. It gains Ethereal Jaunt, Shadow Cloak and Voice Thief and fragments of Xarrul's memories. Nessa remains stranded because the vitality entered the Guest instead of recoiling along her tether.
 
-**The party destroys Xarrul.** Xarrul's amber cord recoils into the vacant body, carrying the stolen vitality with it instead of releasing that energy down Nessa's distant tether. The Guest's silver cord snaps home an instant later. The transfer burns the trim-dose suppressant out of its blood. It wakes with its full stat block plus **Ethereal Jaunt, Shadow Cloak and Voice Thief**, fragments of Xarrul's memories, and no intention of being caged again. Nessa remains trapped and Dalla remains drained. The Guest thanks the party, takes the black key and claims the Inn as eleven years' payment. Mags refuses; proceed to **The Succession** below.
+**The party destroys the projected Guest:** Xarrul takes the body immediately. The Guest's death makes the exchange impossible and ends the temporary restraint at once, so changeling-bodied Xarrul may turn lethally on the party in the same encounter. Killing the Guest is a plainly bad choice unless the party values the contract above every consequence.
 
-**The party waits or protects the bargain.** At the end of round 3, the Guest's cord knots into the foundations. Xarrul enters the changeling body, using its own stat block and gaining Shapechanger. The Guest becomes the **Host**: it perceives every room, speaks through walls and reflections, and controls the Inn's doors and active wards, but can never cross the threshold. Xarrul intends to keep its promises and leave. Mags attacks Orenn's murderer; proceed to **The Succession** below.
+**The party destroys the body:** The Guest dies, the temporary restraint ends, and Xarrul is expelled Ethereal into a planar fight with no remaining limit on whom it may kill. If Xarrul survives or wins, it proceeds to the Hollowing.
 
-**The party destroys the projected Guest.** Xarrul takes the body immediately; the Guest is gone and the Executioner's contract is complete. Mags attacks. Xarrul owes the dead Guest nothing further.
+#### The Empowered Guest's Quiet Succession
 
-**The party destroys the vacant body.** The Guest dies as its cord snaps. Xarrul is expelled, wounded but free, and the encounter returns to a conventional fight. If it survives, it abducts a replacement vessel.
+The Guest does not demand the Inn in front of armed witnesses. It goes upstairs wearing a harmless face, uses Orenn's stolen voice to tell Mags that the cellar has opened, and lures her below alone. It ambushes her, locks her in Cell One, takes her appearance and returns to the bar as Mags. It keeps the Inn by letting everyone believe the old proprietor survived the night.
 
-#### The Succession — Mags Refuses
+Counterplay should remain possible:
 
-The Vacancy resolves Xarrul's body, not ownership of the Nether Inn.
+- A PC follows Mags or refuses to let her go alone.
+- Twinkle or the lower alarm reacts to the wrong scent and movement.
+- The false Mags lacks the black key, gets a private memory wrong or handles Orenn's body without genuine grief.
+- Mags escapes Cell One or leaves a message in the scratched door.
+- A PC with truesight, Moonbeam or comparable shapechanger detection exposes it.
 
-If the **empowered Guest** returns, it takes the black key and demands the house as payment. It may wear Orenn's face behind the bar, not as a joke but as a claim: half his intelligence, half his work, and now his place. Mags will confess the imprisonment, offer coin, or permit the Guest to walk free. She will not surrender the Inn or enter Cell One. If the Guest presses the claim, she fights. The party must decide whether freeing a prisoner includes helping it become the keeper.
+If caught, the Guest bargains from strength. If not, the Inn has a new keeper before dawn and almost nobody knows.
 
-If **Xarrul takes the body**, Mags attacks before it can leave. The new spectral Host uses the Inn's locks and wards to protect Xarrul's paid passage: not out of affection, but because its first act as proprietor is to enforce a completed bargain.
+### Scenario H: The Hollowing
 
-**Host house actions.** On initiative count 20 (losing ties), the Host takes one action while the foundation sigils remain active:
+The Hollowing is Xarrul's forced substitute when the Guest is dead, repudiates the exchange, becomes unreachable, or the changeling body is destroyed. Xarrul's unconditional promise not to kill the Guest prevents using the Hollowing on it: forced separation destroys the projected spirit. If the Guest itself repudiates the bargain, or another hand makes the exchange impossible, the temporary restraint on Xarrul's killing dissolves immediately. It may kill directly and abduct an ordinary replacement, preferring the person responsible for killing or denying the Guest. Like the Vacancy, the Hollowing can function only at the tear inside the Old Work's containment circle, but there is no exchange and no promised return. Because it destroys the victim's spirit locally instead of projecting it Astral, it can begin during lockdown; a completed vessel still cannot cross the exterior shell before midnight.
 
-- **The House Shuts.** One door, shutter or trapdoor slams and Arcane Locks. A creature in its threshold makes a DC 14 Dexterity save or is pushed to the Host's chosen side and knocked prone.
-- **The Wards Bite.** One creature touching the floor or walls makes a DC 14 Dexterity save, taking 7 (2d6) force damage on a failure or half on a success.
-- **A Voice Behind You.** The Host speaks in a trusted voice from the target's own shadow. One creature has disadvantage on its next attack before initiative count 20.
+**Target priority:** the PC most responsible for killing or denying the Guest; otherwise a vulnerable humanoid with a useful identity; otherwise a cultist Xarrul can isolate.
 
-A creature adjacent to an active foundation sigil can suppress these actions for one round with an action and a successful DC 15 Arcana check, or by defacing the sigil. Suppressing the Host does not evict it; removing it permanently requires destroying or rewriting the house's ward lattice after the night.
+The victim is dragged into the Deep Cellar and down toward the Old Work. Twinkle's webs and the disturbed ward alert Mags. Haddon recognizes the direction and understands that Xarrul needs a vessel, but Mags bars the cultists from her secret level and goes alone. Unless followed, she reaches the tear before the ritual and Xarrul kills her. The Hollowing then begins inside the containment circle.
 
-> **Mags:** *„Zavraždil Orenna.”*
->
-> **Hostinský, ze všech stěn:** *„A zaplatil mi.”*
->
-> **Mags:** *„Uhni.”*
->
-> **Hostinský:** *„Dluhy se ctí. To jste mě naučili.”*
+Roll initiative. It completes at the end of round 3.
 
-Either version makes Mags—not the winner of the Vacancy—the initiator of the final violence. The easy fiend fight leaves the party with the harder question: who has the right to hold the keys?
+**Victim's body:** use the victim's AC and current HP; it is unconscious and automatically fails Strength and Dexterity saves. Damage persists.
 
----
+**Projected victim:** AC 12, HP equal to half the victim's maximum, fly 20 ft. (hover), tethered within 15 feet. On its turn it can speak, Help, or make a DC 15 Wisdom or Charisma save to delay the next ritual step until the following round. Each creature can cause only one delay.
 
-## The Central Dilemma: The Choice
+**Hollowing Xarrul:** AC 15, 39 HP, same restrictions as Vacancy Xarrul. Its essence is exposed Ethereally; reducing it to 0 permanently destroys Xarrul, returns the victim to the body and sends the stolen vitality recoiling toward Nessa.
 
-Once the notes surface, the finale is no longer simply whether to kill Xarrul. It is which compromised source the players trust with Nessa and the planar fault.
+At the end of round 1, Xarrul pins the victim's cord. At the end of round 2, it begins severing the spirit from the flesh. At the end of round 3, it destroys the spirit, keeps the body and all hope of restoring that victim ends. If the projected victim reaches 0 HP, round 3 resolves immediately.
 
-### The Case For
-- If the energy returns safely, Nessa wakes and Dalla regains the vitality taken from her.
-- Xarrul is permanently destroyed. The murderer is dead.
-- Justice, in a form.
+*Protection from Evil and Good* cast before the ritual prevents it. Cast during it, the spell gives the projected victim advantage on its delay save and attacks against Xarrul advantage. Destroying the body kills the victim and aborts the ritual; Xarrul returns Ethereal and the planar fight resumes.
 
-### The Case Against
-- The method requires thinning the veil — a micro-Opening. It validates Mother Vyre's core theory.
-- The recoil along Nessa's silver cord has never been tested. The characters cannot know beforehand that she will survive it.
-- Haddon is watching and taking notes. He now has empirical data for Phase Two.
-- Rennt and Haddon will actively resist the destruction of their bound asset.
-- Even if the tear heals, the thin point is *weaker* afterward. Future attempts at the Opening are easier here.
+The resulting ordinary vessel cannot shapechange. Xarrul can still imitate voices and use magic, but it cannot simply become Mags and walk away. This is worse for the abducted victim and tactically worse for Xarrul than obtaining the Guest.
 
-### NPC Reactions During the Choice
+## The Bell-and-Sigils Seal
 
-| NPC | Reaction | Why |
-|-----|----------|-----|
-| **Dalla** (fractured) | „Xarrul ví, kde je. Nechte ho, ať ji přivede zpátky, aniž bychom museli roztrhnout ještě něco dalšího.” | She will not gamble Nessa's cord while a controlled rescue appears viable. |
-| **Rennt** | Openly hostile. „Nezničíš celé dílo jen proto, že tě vyděsila jeho zbraň.” | The kill wastes the sacrifice and betrays Vyre's ordained plan. |
-| **Essek** | Supports the kill despite the risk. „Když tomu uvěříme, jen přeneseme nebezpečí za tyhle zdi.” | Better an uncertain release now than a free fiend holding the only promise. |
-| **Haddon** | Opposes it, then takes notes if overruled. | He wants the asset rebound; if it dies, he will salvage the data. |
-| **Mags** | Conflicted. She wants Xarrul dead. But not like this. "That tear's been sealed under my feet for fifteen years and I slept fine. You want to rip it *wider* to kill one fiend?" | She respects the sacrifice but fears the consequence. |
-| **Sevra** | Pragmatic. "Does it work? Then do it. Worry about theory later." | Results-oriented. |
-| **Bren** (if lucid) | "The thin point has been growing for years. One more tear won't matter." (This might be true. Or it might be exactly what Skein wants him to say.) | Unknown — is this Bren's genuine assessment or Skein's manipulation? |
+This is an alternative to rebinding, not an exterior breach.
 
-### There Is No Right Answer
+Requirements:
 
-If the players attempt the dual-plane kill, they gamble Nessa's tether, tear the veil, and arm the cult with proof—but destroy her exploiter. If they rebind the fiend, the cult gets its weapon and power source back. If they join Xarrul, Nessa is rescued without a tear and the Opening loses an enemy—but an honest murderer walks free, over Mags's objection. If they destroy Xarrul during the Vacancy, the fight is easier but the stolen vitality pours into an empowered Guest who means to take the Inn. If they destroy it conventionally, the stored vitality dissipates and Nessa remains trapped. If they never find the notes, they receive the rebinding and may think they won.
+1. Restore the cellar foundation sigils with the Workroom materials and a DC 16 Arcana check.
+2. Drive Xarrul into the binding circle.
+3. Ring the iron bell correctly while the circle remains intact.
 
-Every choice costs something. The depth of investigation determines which choices are even on the table. That's the point.
+The bell reveals Xarrul; the sigils prevent Ethereal Jaunt inside the circle; the circle closes around both of its planar states. Xarrul becomes sealed consciously **between** planes. It cannot act, bargain beyond whispers, or be moved without reopening the working.
 
----
+This preserves rather than breaks the conduit. Nessa remains lost tonight, but can potentially be recovered by a future Opening or by slower research into her silver cord. The option avoids returning Xarrul to the Order while keeping the dangerous connection available.
+
+## Nessa Outcome Reference
+
+| Ending | Xarrul | Nessa |
+|---|---|---|
+| Rebinding | Bound to the Order | Lost; connection stable; Opening could return her |
+| Bell-and-sigils seal | Trapped between planes | Lost; connection preserved for future rescue |
+| Ethereal destruction | Permanently destroyed | Wakes immediately |
+| Xarrul destroyed in Vacancy | Destroyed; imprint enters Guest | Lost; vitality remains in empowered Guest |
+| Xarrul destroyed in Hollowing | Destroyed; victim restored | Wakes immediately |
+| Xarrul leaves under bargain | Free in changeling body | Returned only if the promise was stated explicitly |
+| Dalla dies | Any | Remains suspended and stable, but the easiest conduit is gone; recovery becomes much harder |
 
 ## After the Reckoning
 
-### The Lockdown Ends
+At midnight the exterior shell lapses and the three-round Vacancy window opens. What leaves the Inn afterward depends on the chosen ending: survivors, a bound weapon, an empowered changeling wearing Mags, or Xarrul wearing anyone.
 
-Dawn comes. Mags opens the doors. People leave. The night is over.
+The local Order may collapse, but Mother Vyre and Phase Two remain. If Nessa is still suspended, her body does not age or fail tonight. If the Guest carries Xarrul's vitality, safely extracting that power is a new ritual or a future adventure—not a spell cast before breakfast.
 
-**What follows depends on what happened:**
-
-**If Xarrul was destroyed (any method):**
-- The Brand fades from Orenn's body. Mags closes his eyes.
-- The thin point remains — weaker if the dual-plane kill was used, stable if not.
-- The cult's cell is fractured or exposed.
-- The guild's mole is found or still hidden.
-- Mother Vyre's Phase Two continues elsewhere. The players know about it. That's something.
-- If it died during the Vacancy, its power and Nessa's stolen vitality remain in the Guest, and ownership of the Inn may still be violently unresolved.
-
-**If Xarrul escaped:**
-- The fiend is loose in the city. It will find new entertainment.
-- Mags hunts it alone. Her chances aren't good.
-- The thin point continues to grow.
-
-**If the players sided with Xarrul (The Open Door):**
-- The fiend is real and walking the city, wearing a borrowed face — and it keeps its word. The cult's local cell is gutted; Mother Vyre has a new, patient enemy who knows all her secrets.
-- Nessa is cured — cleanly, no veil torn.
-- Mags is dead, defeated, or gone: walked into the dawn without a word, and she is not the kind to let it lie.
-- If the Guest supplied the vessel, it is now the spectral Host bound to the Nether Inn—unless another player destroyed its projection during the Vacancy. If the party used another vessel, the Guest remains caged below or loose.
-- The players *won*. That is the worst part.
-
-**If the Guest took Xarrul's imprint (The Vacancy):**
-- Xarrul is dead and Orenn is avenged, but Nessa remains trapped; the power that could have returned to her now armors the Guest.
-- The Guest owns the keys, or is fighting Mags and anyone who denies its claim.
-- If Mags survives without the Inn, she begins hunting the thing the party created. If she retains it, the Guest has gained every tool needed to return.
-- The Nether Inn's promise of neutral ground is broken either way. Everyone present saw what its keepers kept below.
-
-**If the faction war happened:**
-- Bodies. Regret. A tavern full of the dead and dying.
-- Mags survives (she's the most dangerous person in the room).
-- She locks the door again. From the outside. She doesn't look back.
-
-### Loose Threads (For a Potential Follow-Up)
-
-- **Mother Vyre and Phase Two.** The Opening is still coming.
-- **Nessa.** Awake, still suspended, or awaiting Xarrul's promised return.
-- **Bren.** Free or still possessed. If free, he has knowledge that many people would kill for.
-- **Essek.** Escaped the cult or still trapped. His brand might still burn.
-- **Dace.** In guild custody, escaped, or dead.
-- **The thin point.** Growing, stable, or weakened further. It will attract more entities.
-- **Orenn's letter.** "If the veil tears, burn the cellar stores and seal the door." Mags hasn't done this yet. Maybe she should.
-- **Xarrul, if it crossed.** A fiend at large that owes the party a debt — and, being honest, pays it. Their most unsettling asset, and someone's unfinished business. If Mags lived, she is already hunting it, and them.
-
----
-
-## Read-Aloud: Dawn
-
-> *Světlo. Pod dveřmi hospody se objeví tenký, bledý proužek — první ranní světlo, šedé a studené a krásné tím způsobem, jakým jsou krásné věci, o kterých jste nebyli jistí, že je ještě uvidíte.*
->
-> *Mags stojí u dveří. Chvíli na ten proužek světla jen hledí. Pak sáhne na závoru. Kov skřípe. Dveře se otevřou a do místnosti vpadne vlhký ranní vzduch, který chutná po dešti a po městě, které se probouzí, aniž by vědělo, co se tu v noci stalo.*
->
-> *Otočí se. Podívá se na vás. Neřekne děkuji — možná proto, že pro to, co se tu stalo, to slovo nestačí. Možná proto, že ještě neví, jestli je na místě.*
->
-> *"Jděte," řekne tiše. "Je ráno."*
->
-> *A vy vyjdete po těch třech kamenných schodech nahoru, do světla, do dne, do světa, který vypadá přesně stejně jako včera — a vy víte, že to tak není. Že pod povrchem, za tou tenkou vrstvou, kterou většina lidí nikdy neuvidí, se něco pohnulo. A už se to nezastaví.*
-
----
-
-## Alternative Ending: The Bell
-
-If players **rekindled the foundation sigils** AND rang the iron bell AND have Xarrul trapped in the cellar's binding circle:
-
-The old sigils flare to life. The thin point *contracts*. Xarrul, caught between the binding circle and the woken sigils, is crushed between planes — not killed, but *sealed*. Trapped in the space between Material and Ethereal, conscious, unable to move, unable to escape. A fate some would call worse than death.
-
-Nessa is not cured (the binding energy isn't released). But Xarrul is contained. The thin point stabilizes. The tavern is safe again.
-
-Mags looks at the cellar floor where the fiend is imprisoned. "Orenn would have done it this way," she says. "Clean. Contained. No loose ends." She pauses. "I hate it. But it's right."
-
-This ending costs the least and gains the least. It's the safest choice. It's also the one where a six-year-old girl remains suspended, and a fiend spends eternity screaming silently between worlds.
-
-Safety is not the same as goodness. That's the last thing the players learn.
+Use the exact branch consequences in [Natural Progression](natural-progression.md) and the pressure beats in the [Complication Toolkit](complication-toolkit.md).