murder-mystery-oneshot/npc/mags.md

Mags — The Other Half

"I've skinned things that would make your nightmares cry. So when I say sit down and answer my questions, understand that I'm being polite."

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Stat Block

Mags — Medium humanoid (human), neutral AC 16 (studded leather under her apron + DEX) | HP 65 (10d8+20) | Speed 30 ft.

STR	DEX	CON	INT	WIS	CHA
14 (+2)	18 (+4)	14 (+2)	13 (+1)	16 (+3)	12 (+1)

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

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.

Actions

Multiattack. Mags makes two attacks with her short sword or thrown knives.

+1 Short Sword. Melee Weapon Attack: +8 to hit, reach 5 ft., one target. Hit: 8 (1d6+5) piercing damage.

Thrown Knife. Ranged Weapon Attack: +7 to hit, range 20/60 ft., one target. Hit: 6 (1d4+4) piercing damage. She carries 4.

Emergency reserve. A flat metal vial beneath Mags's apron holds one dose of Oil of Etherealness. This is not part of the three field doses. She kept it on her for an extraction that never came and will surrender it only after accepting that the threat is Ethereal and that a specific person needs to cross. Applying it still takes 10 minutes, so neither Mags nor a looter can turn it into a reaction after Xarrul appears.

Reactions

Parry. Mags adds 3 to her AC against one melee attack that would hit her.

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Appearance

Late forties, wiry and hard. Short-cropped grey hair, practical. A scar runs from her left temple to her jaw — a pale, ragged line she makes no effort to hide. Her hands are rough and scarred, a cook's hands layered over a killer's hands. She wears a stained apron over functional clothing and moves through the kitchen with the same economy of motion she once used to clear rooms.

Her eyes are dark and sharp. When she looks at you, she's not making conversation — she's making assessments.

Read-Aloud: After the Murder

Žena, která vyšla z kuchyně, není vysoká, ale nějak zabírá víc prostoru, než by měla. Šedé krátké vlasy, jizva přes levou tvář, ruce, které vypadají, že celý život dělaly něco těžšího než vaření. Stojí nad Orennovým tělem a nehýbe se. Nedýchá. Aspoň se to tak zdá.

Pak zvedne hlavu a podívá se do místnosti. Její oči přejedou přes každý obličej — ne rychle, ne pomalu. Přesně tak, jak je potřeba, aby si každý zapamatovala. Když promluví, její hlas je tichý a plochý jako čepel nože položená na stole.

"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 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 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 exterior opening seals until midnight—front door, shutters and any route outside. The cellar trapdoor remains accessible to her own key. No password lifts the exterior shell. She cannot reopen it, and she locked herself in on purpose. (See the enchanted door & ward-crystal.)

• 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 withdraws power from the internal planar seals and throws that power around every exterior version of the house. It is the one thing Xarrul still needed, and it engineered the murder precisely so Mags would break it. She thinks she is only building a cage; she also opens its inner door. Xarrul crosses fully into the Material interior and regains Ethereal Jaunt, but remains trapped with everyone else until midnight. See the ward-crystal's true nature and Xarrul's plan.

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 — 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 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 Warden's Mark over her heart — a ward-scar Xarrul left during an earlier Stored Incursion. It resembles the hand-shaped Brand of Spite, but it is mechanically distinct and does not violate the combat Brand's one-target limit. Xarrul killed Orenn—the calmer keeper, who might not have reached for the panic button—and kept Mags in reserve because it needed her alive to seal the house and hold the room in line. The scar can incapacitate but not kill her, preserving Xarrul's compact with the Guest. 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 with a DC 14 Medicine or DC 15 Arcana check up close, or by following Bren's reaction 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.)
• Remove Curse, Greater Restoration, or killing Xarrul ends the ward-scar 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 (Scenario F): the trigger can create a brief opening to isolate or restrain her. If Xarrul does this publicly, everyone sees the party accept the same attack that killed Orenn; the main hall turns against them. The successful alliance path is quiet neutralization, a convincing frame or enough political support to leave Mags isolated.

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:

• The tavern's rules, history, and clientele
• That the assassins and cultists have been at each other's throats for weeks
• That Orenn was more than a barkeep — "we used to solve problems together. The kind you don't talk about."
• 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 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 — 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 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 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
• The reserve vial beneath her apron; she gives this one up only when the party has a concrete far-side role and the bedroom dose is lost, spent or inaccessible

Will never volunteer — but the players may find it themselves (and probably will, if they explore):

• The concealed door in the cellar and everything behind it — the Deep Cellar: the Vault, the laboratory, the caged Guest, 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 Veilhook Salt 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 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 midnight embodiment and escape—see The Warden's Mark for how to run that fight so the players, not Mags, decide the night.

At midnight if nobody intervenes: Mags is busy containing the faction war. Xarrul's compact prevents it from killing again before the exchange, but does not protect patrons from one another. Xarrul opens Cell One from below without using her keys, so she has no ordinary reason to inspect the secret level before the Vacancy. If the transfer was witnessed and changeling-bodied Xarrul enters the hall openly, cultist recognition—not Mags's cellar knowledge—reveals what happened. If it remained secret, Xarrul takes an innocuous face and attempts to leave among the released patrons.

When the exterior shell lapses, Mags still physically bars the front door until somebody has been made answerable for Orenn. Ordinary patrons may leave only after she accepts a culprit or the room overwhelms her authority. She never knowingly releases Xarrul; this is why an allied party must frame someone, isolate her or replace her authority rather than merely wait for midnight.

If someone disappears: the disturbed lower ward and Twinkle's web make the black key go cold against Mags's hip. Haddon can tell that Xarrul is seeking a vessel, but Mags will not admit the Deep Cellar exists or allow the cultists into it. She takes the key and goes alone. Unless the party follows or stops her, Xarrul kills her before beginning the Hollowing.

If the Vacancy resolves: if Xarrul takes the changeling body in front of her, Mags attacks Orenn's murderer. If the Guest returns empowered, it avoids that confrontation: it uses Orenn's voice to lure her to the cellar, ambushes her, puts her in Cell One and goes upstairs wearing her face. PCs can expose the false Mags by following, noticing the missing black key, testing a private memory or revealing a shapechanger.

If Xarrul is destroyed Ethereally: Mags sees the Brand of Spite finally leave Orenn's body. If Xarrul is bound instead, she treats the surviving brand as proof that containment is not justice and watches whoever controls the chains.

Relationships

• Orenn: The one person she let close. They understood each other without needing to explain. Their relationship wasn't romantic in any conventional sense — it was deeper than that, forged in shared trauma and mutual competence. They were partners in every way that mattered.
• 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: Grey Quay made the respect personal. A shared employer tried to burn Sevra, Orenn, and Mags after using them to kill a blackmailer and recover his ledger. They discovered the betrayal, escaped together, and closed the debt. Corren's signet is still the bottle opener beneath the bar. Mags knows Sevra returns for people when abandoning them would be profitable; Sevra trusts evidence Orenn and Mags put their names behind.
• Thera: Mags respects her control but never shared Orenn's complete faith in it. Orenn called Thera safe because she never killed emotionally; Mags answered, "That makes her careful. It isn't the same thing." She nevertheless honoured his judgment and expects Thera to help avenge him.
• Haddon: Fifteen years ago Haddon entered a collapsing circle, took its binding from Orenn, and saved his life at terrible cost. Orenn treated that sacrifice as proof Haddon could still choose better; Mags believes one good night does not buy a lifetime. Orenn was the only reason she still admitted him. She calls him Professor when she wants him to remember Bren.
• The Guest: 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. But claiming the Inn is different: Mags believes restitution can be owed without handing a wounded spymaster control of every secret and person under the roof. The Guest calls that one final refusal to pay. It is the clearest mirror of what "fixer" really meant, and Mags will not pretend otherwise once it's in the open.