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npc/mags.md

@@ -63,6 +63,27 @@ She is direct, blunt, and has no patience for lies. She can tell when someone is
 - Has not processed Orenn's death and will not during this session. She's running on professional autopilot. The crash comes later, when the doors open and the night is over.
 - She knows fiends. When players bring evidence of fiendish involvement, something changes in her — the grief hardens into something older: the *work*.
 
+## The Warden's Mark (DM)
+
+Mags carries a **dormant [Brand of Spite](xarrul.md#actions)** over her heart — the same hand-shaped mark that killed Orenn, only fainter and cold. Xarrul branded both wardens: it killed Orenn and *held* Mags in reserve (two dead wardens at once would raise the alarm too soon, and a living Mags keeps the room in line). **She knows.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks, told no one — not even Orenn — and it is part of why she is so fatalistic. When she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she is a whole one of herself.
+
+**Discovery (a mid-game presence beat):** the players can find the mark through [Orenn's silver mirror](orenn.md#items-on-his-person) (the distortion sits over her heart, like the thin point), a DC 14 Medicine or DC 15 Arcana check up close, or Bren reacting to it. It tells them, without a word, that Xarrul is already *inside* the house — inside *her*.
+
+### The Compromised Statline (Finale)
+
+Full-power Mags (AC 16, 65 HP, two attacks at +8) will either solo Xarrul or steamroll a party that turns on her — neither of which you want. So when it matters, **Xarrul triggers the mark** (Visions of Spite through the brand), and Mags fights *compromised*:
+
+- **HP 39** (she has been bleeding vitality to the brand for weeks).
+- **Disadvantage on attack rolls** — she is fighting through a waking nightmare (Orenn's death; or the unlabeled child's shoe from the Vault).
+- At the start of each of her turns, **DC 15 Wisdom save or she loses her action**, frozen in the vision. *(This is the exact mechanism that killed [Orenn](orenn.md#how-he-died).)*
+- *Remove Curse*, *Greater Restoration*, or killing Xarrul ends it and restores her to full.
+
+**Use it both ways:**
+- **Party opposes Xarrul:** the trigger is a crisis — their heaviest hitter drops out, and clearing her brand becomes a priority mid-fight.
+- **Party sides with Xarrul ([The Open Door](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul)):** the trigger is the alliance's first favor — Xarrul sidelines her *for* the party, and they watch it do to Mags exactly what it did to Orenn. The finale becomes a desperate **holding action** against a grief-broken, half-frozen Mags rather than a slugfest: winnable, tragic, and *the players'* to win, not hers.
+
+If a table needs a bigger fight on the join path, add **Sevra** at Mags's side rather than inflating Mags's numbers.
+
 ## What She Knows
 
 **Will share freely:**
@@ -85,12 +106,17 @@ She is direct, blunt, and has no patience for lies. She can tell when someone is
 - Her assessment of whether the fiend can be beaten ("Orenn and I could have taken it. Orenn and I. One of us isn't here anymore.")
 - The Oil of Etherealness in the bedroom
 
+**Will never volunteer — but the players may find it themselves (and probably will, if they explore):**
+- The **[concealed door](../location/cellar.md#the-concealed-door)** in the cellar and everything behind it — the **[Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md)**: the Vault, the laboratory, the caged **[Guest](the-guest.md)**, the corpse in the second cell, and the failing rift. This is the couple's real, ongoing operation, and Mags assumes no one alive but her knows it exists. If the players surface any of it — the fortune, the prisoner, the trophies implicating patrons upstairs — she doesn't lie, but she goes very still, and what she says next is some of the rawest honesty in the module (see Relationships). In the direst circumstances she may *send* them down for the [Fiendbane Salt](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-cleaners-arsenal) or silvervein root, handing over the black key with the flat instruction: *"Take what you need. Don't touch the cages. And whatever you find down there — it doesn't change tonight."*
+
 ## Her Role in the Session
 
 Mags is the emotional anchor and the gatekeeper. She controls access to the tavern's secrets and to the most powerful tools available. She's also the person enforcing the lockdown — which means she's keeping assassins and cultists in the same room, a pressure cooker that she's managing through sheer force of will.
 
 She will not fight alongside the players unless the fiend manifests in the Material Plane inside the tavern. Then all bets are off. The retirement ends and the cleaner comes back.
 
+**If the players side *with* the fiend:** she becomes the obstacle between them and its crossing — see [The Warden's Mark](#the-wardens-mark-dm) for how to run that fight so the *players*, not Mags, decide the night.
+
 **If the players fail or choose not to confront the fiend:** Mags will hunt it herself after the session ends. She'll probably die. She doesn't care.
 
 ## Relationships
@@ -100,3 +126,4 @@ She will not fight alongside the players unless the fiend manifests in the Mater
 - **Bren:** She's been feeding him and keeping him safe for months. She suspects something is wrong beyond madness but hasn't had time to investigate.
 - **Sevra:** Professional respect, mutual wariness. Mags knows what the guild does and doesn't approve, but Sevra has always respected the rules of the house.
 - **Haddon:** She doesn't trust him. Never has. Can't articulate why — just a feeling. (Her instinct is correct.)
+- **The [Guest](the-guest.md):** The prisoner she's fed twice a day for eleven years and never once called by a name. If the players confront her about it, she doesn't defend it and she doesn't flinch: *"He was a tool. A person-shaped tool. Orenn always said we'd let him go eventually. We never did. That's the whole of it. That's who we are."* If they freed it, she's grimly unsurprised. If they killed it in its cage, she doesn't recoil — she *recognizes* the choice, and that recognition is its own quiet verdict on them. The Guest is the clearest mirror of what "cleaner" really meant, and Mags will not pretend otherwise once it's in the open.