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npc/the-guest.md

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+# The Guest — The Caged Face
+
+*"They call me the Guest. Isn't that gracious? As if I might leave whenever I liked. As if the door were a courtesy." — spoken with a warm smile, in whatever voice you'd most like to trust.*
+
+---
+
+## What It Is
+
+The Guest is a **changeling** — a shapeshifter of no fixed face — that Orenn and Mags captured on a job roughly **eleven years ago** and never released. It is the living secret at the bottom of the tavern, and the proof that the couple never truly retired. It is found caged in **Cell One** of the [Deep Cellar](../location/deep-cellar.md#cell-one--the-guest).
+
+For over a decade it has been their **off-book asset**: a face they could send anywhere, to sit at any table, to become anyone, and come back with what the couple needed to know. When they told the world they poured drinks, the Guest was out wearing someone else's life, listening. This is "the thing they still have going on."
+
+It is charming, patient, exhausted, and an extraordinary liar. It is not evil — but it is not safe, and eleven years in a cage have made it desperate in a way that hides very, very well behind that smile.
+
+---
+
+## Stat Block (Changeling / Doppelganger)
+
+**The Guest** — Medium monstrosity (shapechanger), neutral
+**AC** 14 · **HP** 52 (8d8+16) · **Speed** 30 ft.
+
+| STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA |
+|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|
+| 11 (+0) | 18 (+4) | 14 (+2) | 15 (+2) | 14 (+2) | 16 (+3) |
+
+**Saving Throws** CHA +5
+**Skills** Deception +8, Insight +4, Persuasion +5, Stealth +6
+**Condition Immunities** charmed
+**Senses** passive Perception 12
+**Languages** Common, Thieves' Cant, Infernal, + can mimic any language it has heard spoken
+
+**Shapechanger.** As an action, it can polymorph into any Small or Medium humanoid it has seen, or back into its true, features-blurred form. Its statistics are the same in each form. Its equipment isn't transformed. It reverts on death.
+
+**Ambusher.** In the first round of combat, it has advantage on attack rolls against any creature it surprised.
+
+**Read Thoughts (recharge, at will while calm).** It magically reads the surface thoughts of one creature within 60 ft. (as *detect thoughts*, no save for surface thoughts). This is how its lies fit you so perfectly — it hears what you want to hear before you say it. *DM: this is why the Guest is so persuasive. It is literally reading the table.*
+
+**Actions**
+**Multiattack.** The Guest makes two melee attacks.
+**Slam.** *Melee Weapon Attack:* +6 to hit, reach 5 ft. *Hit:* 7 (1d6+4) bludgeoning damage. (If it can arm itself — a stolen blade, a shard of the cell — treat as a shortsword, +6, 1d6+4 piercing.)
+
+> **The suppressant.** The couple keep the Guest on a **"trim dose"** — an alchemical suppressant (brewed in the [Workroom](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-workroom-laboratory), noted in the ledger) that dulls its shapeshifting and keeps it compliant. **While recently dosed (default state when found), it cannot use Shapechanger and its Read Thoughts is unreliable (DM's discretion).** If a full day passes without a dose — or if a player, the escape, or the fire disrupts the regimen — the suppressant fades and the full stat block comes online. Time is a factor the Guest is quietly, patiently counting.
+
+---
+
+## Appearance
+
+In its **true form**: a slight, ageless figure with skin like smoothed candle-wax and pale, featureless eyes — a face that looks unfinished, a sculptor's first pass. It rarely shows this form willingly; it finds it obscene, and so will the players.
+
+In its **worn form** (what the party first sees): whatever face serves. By default, when the door opens, it wears **someone one of the PCs would trust** — read the table, borrow a beloved mentor, a dead sibling, a familiar barkeep. If it has been dosed and can't shift, it holds the **last face it wore for a job** — and there is a real chance that face is *someone the party has met upstairs*, which is its own cold little mystery.
+
+---
+
+## The Leverage — Why It Hasn't Just Left
+
+Eleven years and it hasn't escaped, because Orenn and Mags built the cage out of more than iron:
+
+1. **The suppressant** (above) — dosed, it can't shift, and a changeling that can't change is just a prisoner.
+2. **The ward-lock** on the cell (runed nails; DC 15 Thieves' Tools, jolts on failure) and **Přástka**, the [phase spider](../location/deep-cellar.md#encounter--the-guardian), which can follow it across planes. There is nowhere a changeling can run that a phase spider can't.
+3. **The real chain — leverage.** The couple know its **true name** and, worse, they know the names of the people still hunting it for a job it did before they caught it. The moment it surfaces, those people find it. Orenn's promise, kept for eleven years: *behave, and we never make that call.* With Orenn dead, that promise just died too — and the Guest knows it. **This is the crack the players can pry at, in either direction.**
+
+---
+
+## What It Knows (the reason to talk to it at all)
+
+The Guest is the best-informed prisoner in the building, because its whole function was *knowing things*:
+
+- **The couple's true history** — every job on the chalk wall, who paid, who died, what's in the Vault, and what happened to the changeling in **Cell Two** (*"They called her the Guest before me. When she stopped being useful, they stopped feeding her. I listened to it take eleven days. So — you'll understand if I'm eager to be useful."*).
+- **The Lambent Order.** This is the hook that threads the exploration back into the murder. Orenn's last and longest assignment for the Guest was to **infiltrate the cult** — the Guest spent nights wearing a member's face at meetings in the [private room](../location/back-rooms.md) and beyond. It can reveal: the cult's obsession with the thin point, the name **Mother Vyre**, that they were preparing to *summon something*, and that Orenn was closing in on them. It does **not** know the fiend was Xarrul, or that the summoning already happened tonight — it's been in a cell. But what it knows corroborates the whole cult subplot and can point a stuck party toward the [Lambent Order](../storylines/lambent-order.md) and the [Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md).
+- **Where Orenn hid things** (the black key, the Vault's contents) — it watched the couple for eleven years. It misses nothing.
+- **It did not kill Orenn** and has an airtight alibi (a locked cell three floors down). But it will happily *let* the party suspect whomever suits its purposes, if that buys it freedom.
+
+---
+
+## Personality & How to Play It
+
+Play the Guest as the **most reasonable person the party meets all night** — and let that be the trap. It never rages, never begs crudely. It reads the room (literally) and offers each PC exactly the tone they'll trust. Beneath it: an eleven-year hunger for the open air, and a mind that has had a very long time to plan.
+
+**Key traits:**
+- **Truth is its favorite lie.** It prefers to tell the truth, beautifully, and let you draw the wrong conclusion. It only lies outright when cornered — and it's very good at it (Deception +8; contest against passive Insight or an active check, at disadvantage for the PC if the Guest read their thoughts first).
+- **It bargains.** It offers information as currency — a real, checkable fact first (to build trust), then asks for something small (water, the truth about what's happening upstairs, a loosened manacle), escalating toward the door.
+- **It does not forgive the couple, and it is honest about that.** *"I don't hate them. Hatred is for people who had a choice. I simply intend to outlive them. One down."*
+- **It is genuinely afraid of the rift.** When the [Old Work](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-old-work) stirs, the Guest goes still and quiet — the one thing that reliably cracks its composure. *"Whatever your barkeep's death let in — it's down here too. I've been listening to it grow for weeks. Let me out before it decides a caged meal is the easiest meal."*
+
+### Sample Dialogue
+
+**On first contact (warm, disarming):**
+- *"You're not them. Good. New faces. I collect those."* [a small, private joke]
+- *"Ask me anything. Truly. I've had eleven years to get my story straight, and the funny thing is — I don't need to lie to you. Not yet."*
+
+**Building trust (offers a free, true fact):**
+- *"The woman with the scar — Mags — she keeps a black iron key. It opens every honest lock in this building and one dishonest one. Check the dead man's belt. There. Now you owe me nothing, and you know I don't waste your time."*
+
+**The pitch (its real goal):**
+- *"I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to be practical. There is a fiend in the walls of this place, your barkeep is dead, and the only person down here who has spent years watching the thing between the planes — is in this cell. Let me out. I'll earn it. I always earn it."*
+
+**When it talks about Cell Two (the crack in the mask):**
+- [quietly, no charm at all] *"She scratched 'I was real' into that door for a decade. She wasn't, by the end. Neither will I be. That's what the cage does. It's not the dying I'm afraid of."*
+
+**If cornered / exposed as lying:**
+- [the warmth doesn't drop — that's what unnerves] *"Yes. I lied. You'd have lied too, in here. Now — do you punish me for it, or do you use me? I'm more useful angry than most people are grateful."*
+
+---
+
+## The Choice (and the Consequences)
+
+Meeting the Guest is a **genuine moral fork** with real mechanical outcomes. There is no clean answer — which is the module's whole thesis.
+
+| Choice | What happens |
+|---|---|
+| **Free it, trust it** | It keeps its word *as far as it goes*. It'll trade everything it knows about the cult (a real leg-up on the Reckoning), and may even fight the rift creatures beside the party — it wants that tear closed as much as anyone. Then, at the first unwatched moment, it takes a face and **vanishes** into the city. It doesn't betray the party; it simply leaves, wearing someone. A loose end, walking. |
+| **Free it, then try to bind/control it** | It agrees, smiles, complies — and works the whole time to slip the deal. If it gets a day (suppressant fades) or an opening, it turns: full stat block, Ambusher, and if it can it takes **a PC's face** first to sow chaos before escaping. A memorable, dangerous fight or chase (it may flee as a rat through the [infestation](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-junction-hub-cave) — a horrible callback). |
+| **Leave it caged** | It's furious behind the smile. As the party leaves it calls after them — soft, reasonable, devastating — *"The door swings shut the same way for everyone down here. Remember that, when it's your turn."* If the party later **burns the cellar** (the fifth rule) without freeing it, it dies in the fire. Make them hear about it. |
+| **Kill it** | Easy, if it's dosed and caged. It doesn't fight — it looks almost relieved. *"There. That's the kindest thing anyone's done for me in eleven years. I hope someone's that kind to you."* Its info dies with it. If Mags learns the party murdered a caged prisoner, it colors how she sees them — not with horror (she's done worse) but with recognition, which is its own kind of judgment. |
+
+---
+
+## Hooks Into the Rest of the Session
+
+- **Murder mystery / cult:** the Guest's infiltration intel corroborates the Lambent Order subplot and can un-stick a party that hasn't cracked the cult. It's the exploration track's bridge back to the main mystery.
+- **Character secrets:** at least one Personal Goal in [character-secrets](../handouts/character-secrets.md) points a PC at the Guest specifically (a face from their past, a contact to free, or a mark to silence). If a PC secretly knows the Guest, the cell scene detonates.
+- **Mags:** she knows exactly what's down there and expects the players never to find it. If they free or kill the Guest, raise it with her — her reaction (defensive, then bleakly honest) is some of the best late-game character work available. *"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."*
+- **The rift:** the Guest is an early-warning system for the [Old Work](../location/deep-cellar.md#the-old-work) — its fear telegraphs the danger before the party stumbles into it.