xarrul rework

npc/mags.md

@@ -16,9 +16,9 @@
 **Saving Throws** DEX +7, WIS +6
 **Skills** Perception +6, Stealth +7, Intimidation +4, Investigation +4, Survival +6
 **Senses** passive Perception 16
-**Languages** Common, Thieves' Cant, Infernal (learned from years of dealing with fiends)
+**Languages** Common, Thieves' Cant
 
-**Cleaner's Instinct.** Mags has advantage on ability checks to track, identify, or analyze fiends and their effects. She can smell brimstone, necrotic residue, and ethereal bleed at close range.
+**Fixer's Read.** Twenty years of interrogations, negotiations, and reading a room for the one person about to draw a knife have made Mags preternaturally hard to fool. She has advantage on ability checks to catch a lie, gauge intent, spot a concealed weapon, or track a mark. She reads *people* the way a scholar reads a page. What she cannot read — what she has no instinct for at all — is anything from the other side of the veil.
 
 **Retired, Not Soft.** When Mags is below half her maximum HP or when an ally she cares about is threatened, she gains +2 to attack and damage rolls.
 
@@ -50,22 +50,51 @@ Her eyes are dark and sharp. When she looks at you, she's not making conversatio
 >
 > *"Tohle je můj dům. Tenhle muž byl můj —" Zarazí se. Polkne. "— byl můj. A nikdo z téhle místnosti neodejde, dokud nebudu vědět, proč je mrtvý."*
 
+## Act 2 — The Reveal (DM)
+
+This is Mags's set-piece: the beat that ends the party and cages everyone. Run it in order, fast, and don't let the players derail the momentum until the ultimatum lands.
+
+**1. Order first.** She comes out of the kitchen mid-chaos, cleaver in hand, and stops the brawl with her voice — not a shout, a *cut*. The room obeys because everyone here knows what she is. She relights the candles with a brass rod behind the bar — leftover house-magic she never thought to question; a word, and every wick catches at once.
+
+**2. The body.** Behind her, Orenn. She sees him a half-second after the players do and goes utterly still (the read-aloud above).
+
+**3. The forced heal.** Her grief comes out as rage, and it needs a target: the nearest cleric-looking PC (a cultist if there's no divine caster; failing that, *any* PC — "you. *Try.*"). She hauls them to the body and demands they heal him. It fails — he's long past a cure.
+
+**4. The forced Revivify.** She won't accept it. She rips the **diamond from her own necklace** — a stone worth a nobleman's ransom, far more than the rite needs — and presses it and a torn, written rite into the caster's hands: *Revivify.* She can't cast it herself — she never could; she's a blade, not a channel — which is *why* she needs them. It fails too. The diamond crumbles to grey powder in their palm. The magic fired, the cost was paid, and **there was nothing to call back.**
+   - *Why it fails (never state it):* the soul is unreachable. Leave the cause unspoken — it could read as a trapped soul, a curse, the wards, dark magic. It should feel *wrong*, not *diagnosed*. It quietly rhymes with what [Thera](assassins.md#thera-even-hand--the-radical-the-rot) does to souls — a horror the players may only connect much later.
+   - *It's universal:* even a non-divine PC stumbling through the rite fails for the same reason. Never let the player think they blew it — tell them OOC it wasn't them, even as Mags snarls something about *useless casters*. In-fiction she's cruel; out-of-fiction you wink.
+   - *What it shows:* she carries a resurrection-grade diamond as *jewelry*. She came prepared for someone to die, the way a fixer always is — the first real crack in the "retired barkeep's wife" story, and a hint of the [fixer past](orenn.md#background) she and Orenn buried.
+
+**5. The lockdown.** She takes a fist-sized **ward-crystal** from the shelf above the bar and shatters it on the floor. Every exit slams under an **Arcane Lock until midnight** — front door, cellar trapdoor, shutters. No password lifts it. *She* can't lift it. She's locked in with them, and she did it on purpose. (See [the enchanted door & ward-crystal](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door).)
+   - *DM — the trap she can't see:* the ward-crystal is the old den's **ritual-lockdown stone**, and shattering it does far more than bolt the doors — it starves the last of the leftover containment below and clamps the veil into a crossing-channel. It is the one thing Xarrul still needed, and it engineered the murder precisely so Mags would break it. She thinks she's building a cage; she's finishing the fiend's door, and she has no idea. See [the ward-crystal's true nature](../location/tavern-overview.md#the-enchanted-door) and [Xarrul's plan](xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation). This seeds the late gut-punch: the lockdown she triggered to protect everyone is what lets Xarrul cross.
+
+**6. The ultimatum.** Find her the killer by midnight, or every one of them is tomorrow's stew. No one in the room doubts she means it — that's what matters, whether or not it's literally true. Then she goes to Orenn's body and grieves, quietly, and does not stop working the problem for a second.
+
+### The Two-Layer Accusation (DM)
+
+Mags publicly blames **the strangers** — the PCs. Taken at face value it's thin (a room full of brawling killers, and she suspects the quiet newcomers?). It isn't thin, because it's **theater with a purpose**:
+
+- **The public reason (what she says):** she doesn't know them, so she doesn't trust them. Blaming the outsiders lets her put the screws on *someone* without openly accusing her armed, faction-affiliated regulars — which would light the exact faction war she's straining to prevent. The assassins and cultists relax ("she's after the new blood, not us"), and the lid stays on.
+- **The real reason (what she won't say yet):** the PCs are the only **neutral** party in the building. Everyone else has a faction, a stake, and a reason to lie. She needs investigators she can lean on and who can talk to *both* sides. The death-threat is the leash.
+
+She only levels with them privately once they've earned a sliver of trust — and that turn is a strong beat. Seed it early: a PC who makes an **Insight check (DC 15)** during her tirade clocks that she isn't looking at them like a *killer* — she's looking at them like a *tool*. That read is the thread to the honest conversation later. It also lets you cash Orenn's dangled carrot: *"He was going to open doors for you? Find me who did this, and I'll be what he was going to be to you."*
+
 ## Personality
 
 Mags grieves the way a blade rusts — slowly, internally, and it makes her more dangerous, not less. She won't cry in front of anyone. She might not cry at all. What she will do is find the thing that killed Orenn and end it with the same professional precision she's used her entire life.
 
-She is direct, blunt, and has no patience for lies. She can tell when someone is hiding something — years of interrogating captured fiends gave her an instinct for deception that borders on supernatural (WIS 16, Insight +6 effectively).
+She is direct, blunt, and has no patience for lies. She can tell when someone is hiding something — twenty years of interrogating marks, informants, and men who thought they were cleverer than her gave her an instinct for deception that borders on supernatural (WIS 16, Insight +6 effectively).
 
 **Key traits:**
 - Doesn't ask questions she doesn't already suspect the answer to
 - Respects competence, regardless of morality
 - Will work with anyone — assassin, cultist, player — if it gets her closer to the truth
 - 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*.
+- She does *not* know fiends — not really. When players bring evidence that the thing behind this came from beyond the veil, she doesn't turn expert; she turns *stubborn*. The grief hardens into a refusal to be out of her depth. She'll hunt it like a mark, because hunting marks is the only tool she has — and some part of her already suspects it won't be enough.
 
 ## 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.
+Mags carries a **dormant [Brand of Spite](xarrul.md#actions)** over her heart — the same hand-shaped mark that killed Orenn, only fainter and cold. Xarrul branded them both. It killed Orenn — the calmer one, who might not have reached for the panic button — and *kept Mags in reserve*, because it **needed her alive**: she is the one who seals the house (see [the lockdown](#act-2--the-reveal-dm)), and a living, grieving Mags holds the room in line while the fiend finishes its work. Two murdered keepers at once would have raised the alarm too soon. **She knows about the mark.** She has felt the cold hand on her chest for weeks, told no one — not even Orenn — and it is part of why she is so fatalistic. When she says *"Orenn and I could have taken it. One of us isn't here,"* the truth underneath is that she no longer believes she is a whole one of herself.
 
 **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*.
 
@@ -93,27 +122,27 @@ If a table needs a bigger fight on the join path, add **Sevra** at Mags's side r
 - That Bren has been getting worse lately — more agitated, more controlled
 
 **Will share if players earn trust (show evidence, demonstrate competence, or show genuine care for Orenn):**
-- The ward-sigils in the cellar and what they do
+- The old markings and gear in the cellar — she knows they belonged to the summoners who ran this place before them, not what they actually do
 - Orenn's letter (if she's read it by then)
-- That the tavern sits on a thin point between planes
-- That Orenn was investigating the Lambent Order
+- That the tavern sits on a thin point — and that they cleaned a den of summoners out of it years ago and sealed what those summoners had torn open. As far as she knows, that case is *closed*.
+- That Orenn was quietly working the Order of Mending — his surveillance, his case board down in the cellar
 - The location of the hidden compartment in the storage room
-- How to activate the iron bell (partially restores wards)
+- How to ring the iron bell (an old house-trick; she knows the knack, never the meaning)
 
 **Will share only under extreme circumstances (direct evidence of the fiend, the brand explained, or if she's convinced the players are the only chance):**
-- Full details of their cleaner past
-- How to use the binding circle in the cellar
-- 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.")
+- Full details of their fixer past
+- The summoners' binding circle in the cellar — she knows it *caged* the things they called, not how to work it
+- Her assessment of whether the fiend can be beaten ("Orenn and I could have taken it. Orenn and I. One of us isn't here anymore.") — bravado worn as certainty; she needs it to be true
 - The Oil of Etherealness in the bedroom
 
 **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."*
+- 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-fixers-arsenal) or silvervein root, handing over the black key with the flat instruction: *"Take what you need. Don't touch the cages. And whatever you find down there — it doesn't change tonight."*
 
 ## 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.
+She will not fight alongside the players unless the fiend manifests in the Material Plane inside the tavern. Then all bets are off. The retirement ends and the fixer comes back — and a fixer's answer to a problem is to end it.
 
 **If the players side *with* the fiend:** she becomes the obstacle between them and its crossing — see [The Warden's Mark](#the-wardens-mark-dm) for how to run that fight so the *players*, not Mags, decide the night.
 
@@ -126,4 +155,4 @@ 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.
+- **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 "fixer" really meant, and Mags will not pretend otherwise once it's in the open.