murder-mystery-oneshot/npc/the-guest.md

# The Guest — The Caged Face

*„Říkají mi Host. Není to milé? Jako bych mohl kdykoli odejít. Jako by ty dveře byly jen zdvořilost.” — proneseno s vřelým úsměvem, hlasem, kterému byste ze všeho nejraději věřili.*

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## 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 a sadist, but it is no longer innocent. Eleven years taught it that there are no free people, only **keepers and things being kept**. It no longer means to escape that arrangement. It means to stand on the other side of it.

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## 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.

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## What It Wants — The Guest Takes the Inn

The Guest does **not** chiefly want to leave the Nether Inn. It wants the Inn.

Orenn is dead. Mags is compromised. The Guest knows every patron, debt, secret room, faction and unfinished job in the house. It wore the faces that gathered half of Orenn's intelligence and did the work for which the couple took credit. In its accounting, eleven years of captivity did not merely incur a debt of freedom. They made the tavern **back pay**.

Its desired ending is to control the Inn without inviting every armed patron to vote on succession. If it returns from the Vacancy empowered, it plans to lure Mags below with Orenn's voice, imprison her in Cell One, take her shape and return upstairs as the keeper everyone already obeys. Recognition can come later, when opposition is weaker.

This is not simple greed. The Guest has learned the cage's lesson perfectly and wrongly: a person is safe only while holding the key. It would rather become the jailer than risk becoming a prisoner again.

> *„Říkali mi Host, aby to znělo dočasně. Orenn je mrtvý. Tenhle dům mi dluží jedenáct let. Myslím, že je načase, abych se stal hostinským.”*

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## 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 **Twinkle**, the [feyspitter spider](../location/deep-cellar.md#encounter--the-guardian), denned one room over. It feels every footfall through the webs that lace the warren, blinks ahead to cut off a runner, and grapples with reach — there's nowhere down here a changeling on foot gets past it.
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.**

---

## The Compact in the Walls — Xarrul and the Guest

Xarrul has spent weeks working the tear near the Guest's cell. They have spoken through stone and across the veil: two captive assets comparing owners.

Their first trust was one unqualified promise from Xarrul: **"I will not kill you."** It still holds. A forced Hollowing would destroy the Guest's projected spirit and therefore break that promise, so Xarrul cannot simply take the changeling body by force. If it wants that body intact, it must obtain the Guest's willing Vacancy.

The Guest gave Xarrul the last piece of local knowledge its murder required. It explained that **Orenn was the cautious keeper** and that Mags would reach for the emergency lockstone if he died. Xarrul recognized what Mags did not: the emergency device would pull power out of the internal seals, throw that power around the exterior, and let the fiend cross fully into the resulting cage. Xarrul chose Orenn and spent its one Stored Incursion killing him. The Guest never touched him and never left its cell—an airtight alibi constructed entirely from truth.

The Guest proposed a precise exchange. It will willingly vacate its changeling body at the tear in the Old Work—the breach the transfer requires. Xarrul will project the Guest's coherent spirit into the Astral Plane rather than destroy it, take the empty mutable body and walk into the world disguised. Xarrul described the price without euphemism: the Guest will be alive but bodiless, with no route back tonight.

The later compact's restraint is deliberately simple: **one death to close the house—Orenn—and Xarrul will kill no one else until the exchange is finished.** Xarrul retains the right to defend itself against someone knowingly trying to bind, banish, or destroy it. The promise constrains Xarrul's own hand and deliberate commands; it does not oblige the fiend to save patrons who choose to kill one another. The Guest wants an intact Inn and living outsiders it can recruit against Xarrul. It asks for nothing after the exchange because it expects only two outcomes: Xarrul dies during the exposed transfer and the Guest returns empowered, or Xarrul wins and sends it Astral, where the Inn is no longer its concern. Xarrul never breaks this promise. The moment the Guest is delivered Astral at the end of the Vacancy, the temporary restraint expires; the original promise not to kill the Guest does not.

The Guest accepts the risk because it intends to do better.

During the transfer, both spirits must briefly leave the body. Xarrul will be fully committed, unable to jaunt away, with its Ethereal essence exposed to attacks from either side. The Guest cannot defeat it alone and Xarrul knows that. The Guest's concealed weapon is the party: if they destroy Xarrul's exposed spirit, its embedded planar imprint collapses into the vacant changeling body. The Guest can reclaim both the body and part of Xarrul's power — the Inn in one hand, an Ethereal step in the other.

Xarrul sees the Guest's appetite and enters anyway. Without outside intervention, the fiend wins every time. The Guest's advantage is not that Xarrul is stupid; it is that the Guest is better at recruiting strangers and understands what the right borrowed face can accomplish after the fight.

> **Xarrul:** *„Nezabiji tě.”*
>
> **Host:** *„To není totéž jako nechat mě žít. Ale pro začátek to stačí.”*
>
> **Host:** *„Vezmi si mé tělo. Vstupu bránit nebudu.”*
>
> **Host:** *„Jedna smrt, aby se dům zavřel. Orenn. Nikoho dalšího nezabiješ, dokud naše výměna neskončí.”*
>
> **Xarrul:** *„Pokud se mě nepokusí spoutat, vyhnat či zničit. Souhlasím.”*
>
> **Xarrul:** *„Jakmile budu uvnitř, hodláš sklapnout čelisti.”*
>
> **Host:** *„Obě tvrzení mohou být pravdivá.”*
>
> **Xarrul:** *„Nedokážeš mě zadržet.”*
>
> **Host:** *„Pak se nemáš čeho bát.”*

The full transfer encounter is **[The Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy)**.

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## 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** (*„Přede mnou říkali Host jí. Když přestala být užitečná, přestali ji krmit. Poslouchal jsem, jak jí to trvá jedenáct dní. Takže jistě chápete, proč tak toužím být užitečný.”*).
- **The Order of Mending.** 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 knows the cult's obsession with the thin point, the name **Mother Vyre**, that they summoned Xarrul, and that Orenn was closing in on them. It can corroborate the whole cult subplot and point a stuck party toward the [Order of Mending](../storylines/order-of-mending.md) and the [Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md). It omits that it has since negotiated privately with the summoned fiend.
- **Where Orenn hid things** (the black key, the Vault's contents) — it watched the couple for eleven years. It misses nothing.
- **Exactly why Orenn died.** The Guest truthfully says it did not kill Orenn and could not have left its warded cell. It does not volunteer that it told Xarrul which keeper to kill or what Mags would do afterward. If directly asked whether it helped Xarrul, it answers with another exact truth: *„Mé ruce nepotřeboval.”*

---

## 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. It is running two negotiations at once: Xarrul believes it has a willing vessel; the party believes it has found Xarrul's intended victim. Both possess true pieces of the arrangement.

**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, then asks for water, news, a loosened manacle, freedom, and finally help reaching the place where Xarrul can be made vulnerable. None of the requests reveals the whole bargain.
- **It does not forgive the couple, and it is honest about that.** *„Nenávidět je? Nenávist patří lidem, kteří měli na vybranou. Já je prostě hodlám přežít. Jeden je pryč.”*
- **It is genuinely afraid of Xarrul.** The bargain is not confidence; it is a wager against annihilation. Its fear sells the lie because the fear is real. *„Chce mě vydlabat a obléct si, co zbude. Jakmile vstoupí, nebude moci uniknout. To může být vaše jediná šance ho zničit.”* Every word is true.
- **It calls ownership justice.** It does not want to burn the Inn or merely punish Mags. It wants the keys handed over as payment. If challenged, it calmly itemizes eleven years of work and confinement as though settling a debt-journal.
- **Being called an asset is a tell.** The Handler's countersign works, but the word *asset* freezes the smile for half a beat. To the Guest, a new handler promising extraction is another owner describing a longer leash.

### Sample Dialogue

**On first contact (warm, disarming):**
- *„Nejste oni. Výborně. Nové tváře. Ty sbírám.”* [a small, private joke]
- *„Ptejte se na cokoli. Opravdu. Měl jsem jedenáct let, abych si urovnal příběh, a vtip je v tom, že vám nemusím lhát. Zatím.”*

**Building trust (offers a free, true fact):**
- *„Ta žena s jizvou — Mags — má černý železný klíč. Otevírá každý poctivý zámek v tomhle domě a jeden nepoctivý. Prohledejte mrtvému opasek. Vidíte? Teď mi nic nedlužíte a víte, že nemarním váš čas.”*

**The pitch (true, but not its whole goal):**
- *„Nežádám vás o důvěru. Žádám vás o praktičnost. 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.”*
- *„Chce mě vydlabat. Když neuděláte nic, přestanu existovat takový, jaký jsem. Když udeříte, dokud bude odhalený, zemře. Ani jednu část jsem vám nepodal nepravdivě.”*

**If called an asset:**
- [a tiny pause] *„Samozřejmě. A až své aktivum vyzvednete, kde ho vaše spojka skladuje?”*

**If accused of choosing Orenn:**
- *„Xarrul se zeptal, kdo z nich rozbije kámen. Odpověděl jsem. Na slitování se neptal.”*

**If the Executioner threatens to kill it:**
- [calm, almost helpful] *„Zabij mě a jeho slib zemře se mnou. Pak jsi nejbližší použitelné tělo a on už tě smí zabít. Splň zakázku. Jen si nemysli, že se dožiješ odměny.”*
- If challenged, it explains the exact compact. This is leverage, not a bluff: its killer is Xarrul's first choice for the Hollowing.

**When it talks about Cell Two (the crack in the mask):**
- [quietly, no charm at all] *„Deset let ryla do dveří ‚Byla jsem skutečná‘. Ke konci už nebyla. Já také nebudu. To dělá klec. Smrti se nebojím.”*

**If cornered / exposed as lying:**
- [the warmth doesn't drop — that's what unnerves] *„Ano. Lhal jsem. Tady byste lhali také. Takže — potrestáte mě, nebo mě využijete? Rozzlobený jsem užitečnější než většina lidí vděčná.”*

---

## 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 and follow its plan** | It supplies real cult intelligence and engineers [the Vacancy](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-g-the-vacancy), the easiest opportunity to destroy Xarrul. The party discovers only at the transfer that killing the exposed fiend will pour part of its nature into the Guest. |
| **Destroy Xarrul during the Vacancy** | The Guest reclaims its body with Ethereal Jaunt, Voice Thief and Shadow Cloak. It thanks the party, takes the black key and claims the Inn. Mags refuses. The easy boss fight produces a dangerous succession crisis. |
| **Allow the exchange** | Xarrul takes the changeling body and can leave disguised. The Guest is stranded alive but bodiless in the Astral Plane; recovering it requires a later planar rescue and a new vessel. |
| **Try to bind or control it** | The Guest treats the attempt as proof that rescuers and jailers differ only in vocabulary. It may expose the party's private goals or bargain with Xarrul against them. The Vacancy itself cannot begin before the shell lapses at midnight. If ordinary escape becomes possible, it takes a useful face and disappears only as a last resort; the Inn remains the prize. |
| **Leave it caged** | Before midnight Xarrul opens Cell One from the Ethereal side and leads it deeper to the tear in the Old Work. When the shell lapses, the Vacancy proceeds without the party unless somebody notices. |
| **Kill it** | The exchange becomes impossible and the temporary restraint on Xarrul ends immediately. Xarrul loses its preferred vessel, but may now kill directly; it chooses the Guest's killer first for the [Hollowing](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-h-the-hollowing). The threat *"kill me and you die before this night is over"* is substantially true. |

### If the Guest Takes Xarrul's Imprint

Keep the Guest's normal stat block and add **Ethereal Jaunt**, **Shadow Cloak** and **Voice Thief** from [Xarrul](xarrul.md). It does not inherit Brand of Spite, Waking Dream or Xarrul's full durability; those belonged to the fiend's will, not merely its planar shape. It remembers fragments of Xarrul's centuries and knows how to work the Inn's old wards. This is enough to make recaging it nearly impossible and to make a fight with Mags dangerous without turning the Guest into a second full boss immediately.

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## Hooks Into the Rest of the Session

- **Murder mystery / cult:** the Guest's infiltration intel corroborates the Order of Mending and can un-stick a party that hasn't cracked the cult. It did not strike Orenn, but it chose which keeper Xarrul should remove; its locked-cell alibi is the module's purest half-truth.
- **Character secrets:** the Agent wants it rescued, the Executioner wants it dead, and the Mourner needs its testimony. During the Vacancy both projected spirits—and the empty body—become separate targets, bringing those goals directly into the finale.
- **Mags:** she knows exactly what's down there and expects the players never to find it. An empowered Guest avoids a public claim: it lures her below with Orenn's voice, cages her, takes her shape and keeps the Inn through deception.
- **Xarrul:** honest fiend and consummate liar enter a bargain both understand. Xarrul underestimates not the Guest's treachery, but its ability to recruit other hands.
- **The rift:** the Guest's apparently useful warning points toward the anti-fiend tools needed to attack Xarrul's projected spirit. It is preparing the party for its own gambit.