Dwells in this tower. The place is in disrepair, partly due to age and dereliction and partly due to the results of tragic arcane experiments gone wrong.
The 'research laboratory' based in a stone tower seperated from the main residence and held up by the branches of the great oak tree it is constructed within. The stone facade has large skulls carved in giving rise to the theory the tower was a Nergal temple in ancient times. A broken bridge to nowhere leads from the front door, it's arched now serving as a stable and pen for animal stocks.
A gargoyle supposedly lurks on the tower parapets. Some villagers believe that the animals around the place are the polymorphed forms of missing people.
An audience with Mazzah may be facilitated here. He has an interest in the Barrowmaze and relics recovered from the labyrinths.
Attachments
Mazzah's tower
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Sven visits the strange tower which much intrepidation. The tower is isolated from its neighbours in an overgrown and rugged parcel of land, thick with weeds and briars. The place easily located as the tall crenellated tower can be seen from far off, tottering unbelievably as a monumental piece of strange architecture in the branches. The more you look at it, the more you think it could just be the top half of another tower that somehow had been windblown to get entangled in the tree. In fact the whole tower looks rickety and has odd angled gables and uneven stonework.
Inside the stable block a goat ruts on a broody mare, large rooster feathered lizard creatures peck among wire fenced huts and some washing on a line seems to be pegging itself up.
White smoke comes from a chimney giving you confidence someone is at home. Knocking you wait patiently, an owl appears out of the corner of your eye, perched on a branch. It looks at you and hoots in indignation before flying off around the back of the tower.
Some moments later the door is unbolted, one slides noisily at the top followed by another near the bottom then a key creaks in a lock.
"Yes? Ah, another mutant I see. But you don't know it. Too much beta-carotene and vitamin A. You should be purple but you are a genetically modified specimen. Eh? What?"
The man, resembling the description of Mazzah that you have been given stares at your hair. His own looks no better, wild straw coloured and tied in cornrow dreadlocks, a contrast to his trimmed greying beard.
Beyond the door a suit of dented armour stands, it holds a pike in one hand, the other an ashtray. Red and blue tiles cover the floor, a cat licks a bowl of cream, a dusty bookcase against a wall, a vase of yellow primroses stands on top among other brik-a-brak. It looks more farmhouse than charnel.
“Yes, hello there sir. I must say this is a most interesting abode you have here. My name is Sven Jolly, new in town, and I am of the understanding that you know valuable information regarding the Barrowmaze. And enjoy hearing new valuable information that you don’t already know. Is that true……wait, did you just say I should be……purple?”
Mazzah"Carrots. Were originally purple. Deep purple." he looks over your shoulder as if peering at something in the far distance. "mmm ... Smoke on the water."
He snaps back to attention. "Another troll
trawling the village for rumours are you? Well, you are not a troll or a carrot, but what are you? Maybe
I should ask the treants but they are so slow these days."
He seems to mumble then smiles back.
"Well come in young Mr Jolly. So you have information that I don't already know." You see the corners of his mouth curl as he ponders your assumption that he doesn't know or that he wants, needs, must know.
"Valuable information. I am glad you put a value on my knowledge, not treating it as some worthless tittle-tattle. Are you figuring to trade? Your knowledge for mine? But perhaps what you know is the same imbecility as that vagabond Alastar. But then he knows more than most. The Barrowmaze has a penchant for erasing the sanity of those who seek its treasures.
You can have that knowledge for free."
He gestures for you to sit. A small table, some chinaware crockery arranged on top. As you speak he goes to a rear kitchen bringing back a tin percolator with a steaming hot black broth inside. He pours for both and snapping a finger sends the owl to come back with nuggets of sugar.
Breaking through any proverbial ice, Sven pulls out a tiny smoking pipe, even though its bowl has long been empty.
“Smoke on the water? Don’t mind if I do, sir!”
Looking around at all the wonders he can take in, Sven gladly accepts the drink and friendly offer of conversation.
“I think we both understand the value of great knowledge, and I would be willing to bet that yours is far more vast than anyone here in town. Especially that Krothos fellow, eh?”
He takes a sip from the coffee (?), adding sugar if it is offered to him.
“I thank you for any free information, since as you’ve already noticed, I am quite new to this area. I believe I may know something you don’t about a secret entrance into the maze, though I don’t know what that might be worth to one such as yourself. And I assure you that I didn’t learn this from some drooling beggar. I was out there myself, deep in the moors, just yesterday, and I saw it with my own eyes, sir!”
"Fire in the pipe." the mage flicks a little prestidigitation and the wooden pipe is lit momentarily by a striking match.
"Parlour tricks." he harrumphs, "and here we are in my parlour." He pauses while you puff in the empty pipe.
The room is fairly basic, about 15'ft square with a cloakroom to the left of the door and a stone staircase rising up. A functional kitchen adjoins the parlour. Sunlight comes through the arched windows, grimy with dirt. One leaden pane missing through which the owl departs.
"You know it is often, not what you say but what you don't say, that reveals the secrets or at least the intentions of the heart.
Yes I know more than Lord Krothos but then we have different priorities and focus. He has political ambitions, grandiose ideas of greatness. I have loftier notions of understanding the times and seasons we are in. History can teach us much and help us plan the future. I am building an observatory, with a dimensional ocular scope relative to time and space. Well you can't see into the future if you cannot observe the past can you?"
He muses a while, stirring his brew.
"So your secret entrance. Is it still secret? Did you take precautions to keep it so? Krothos knows of this place?
And you trust me not to sell you out. Tell the tomb robbers I am in league with to get you to spill the beans on its secrets or spill your guts? Maybe I could just resort to alchemical means. You noted I didn't take any sugar? The lumps are sweet to the taste but rot the body so, shrivel your groin up like a retreating acorn or button mushroom whenever you tell a lie."
He looks at you quite serious while you figure out if he jests or is actually intimidating you in some way. Can you remember him taking a sugar cube?
The giveaway lick to clean a thumb indicates he probably took a sugar lump. But then, he could be telling the truth anyway.
The black cat meows, the bowl empty. It busies itself sniffing the mouse holes in the skirting. "Mephistoffol. Mangy critter. Had him years, good for nothing lard arse now. Ah, but cats eyes. Very good for the dark. And cat paws to sneak about. Don't want to be a cat do you? Get you deeper into the maze than clodding about in boots and creating a hullabaloo.
Well I can teach you to see through a cat's eyes or another creature your vocation warrants. This maze, do you want to delve into it again?"
Sven brushes off the misunderstanding with the pipe.
“I couldn’t agree with you more. And that is why I brought up his name. I have heard that Krothos cares not for ruling the people and only wishes to advance his own position. Do you know anything about someone called Silas, Chieftain of the Mercians, or The Bear of the North? For it was his scepter the squires were sent to retrieve from the burial mounds.” He describes the staff they found in detail to the mage.
Sven smiles uncomfortably at the sugar exchange, deciding that he will trust this man isn’t trying to kill him on his first visit. He plops another sticky cube into his cup and continues stirring and sipping the hot brew. “I think I can trust you. Simpatico and all that. Neither of us has reason to distrust the other, so I will leave it at that.” His hand slowly reaches under the table to make sure he isn’t experiencing any retreating acorn symptoms at the moment.
“My companions have assured me that they will keep the location of the secret entrance to themselves, but I can’t trust that the squires will keep that information from Krothos forever, so the window of opportunity may be closing as we speak.”
As he nods at the cat and smiles, the orange hairs on the back of Svens neck stand up once the mage begins speaking of exploring more of the dungeons below the moors. He looks the mage straight in his eyes.
“Sir, the feeling I got when we opened that secret door is one I will never forget. My instantaneous desire to see what was below was akin to some kind of an addiction……”
The mage brightens up at the naming of Silas. "The mounds have been undisturbed for hundreds of years, until little by little the bold dug into them and relics and artefacts began to appear.
Always the mist was a veil of secrecy and few people travelled the moors. Indeed those who did encountered those who went before them and not in the form they expected. There are rumours of treasures and dangers and much more. The 'much more' is what both fascinated or frightens the wise.
As to Silas. His barbarian tribe lived here before the Moor evolved, ruling the lands and warring upon the humanoid savages. He died heirless. It was prophesied one would rise to reclaim his throne and lead his people. But they are as dead and buried as he his."
He expresses an interest in the staff and ponders it bring found at such a time as this. He will have to search through some archives and history books to get any wizi-pedia on it. "Lord Krothos for all is impetuous nature is no fool. I could imagine he will keep such an item away from the knowledge of his father."
He muses some more, taking out a pouch of tobacco and rolling the grains and passing some over for yourself. A little more prestidigitation and the two smoke in silence, blowing smoke rings at the cat.
"So, the mouse wants to play while the cat is away." he says of your desire to take advantage of the window of opportunity to enter the Barrowmaze before Krothos or the squires do so.
"I certainly would be interested in studying something more substantial than rumours and fish-wives gossip. As you say, knowledge is valuable in the right hands."
Sven is relieved when the senior mage doesn’t appear overly upset about the staff passing into the hands of Krothos, also glad that he agrees to look into it further. He smiles and nods in thanks to the shared leaf.
“We found two other mounds that had not appeared to be entered yet. One of them was already excavated down to a huge stone slab that appeared to be unmovable. There were signs of a gruesome battle outside the mound.”
“Let me ask you about another oddity we discovered out on the moors. There were two well sealed tan colored amphora wrapped up in heavy bear skins we found on a half sunken cart. One was adorned in motifs of the snake. It contained pickled human body parts, dried up kidney and intestine and some lung bits that look like cut up mushrooms. No eyeballs but a navel and umbilical cord.”
“The other jar had beetle designs on it and carried a magical aura of a necromantic nature. That one remains sealed until I can learn more about it. Any idea what they might be?”
When the mage finishes his thoughts, Sven gets excited. “Are you saying that you would be interested in joining us on our next trip out to the maze?”
"No, preliminary excursions are not my forte. I have enough on my plate here, crusty morsels that they are. The business I conduct is enough to keep the wolf from the door, leave him out on the Moors looking for others to devour or make homeless.
But any history or relics you bring back will be like a bit of extra meat or gravy. Amphora? It was very common for mummified remains to be disemboweled and have their bits and bobs dried for posterity's sake. Though what Posterity was going to do with them only heaven knows. But some, through the drying processes or enzymic agents applied to them are able to be compounded into materials suitable as ingredients in lotions and potions.
There are few laboratories around with the skilled hands necessary and the investment in conversion costs to produce enough worthwhile results. Take a typical potion, healing ones are all the vogue with adventurers. If the pharmacy had one off the shelf it will cost several hundred coins to buy. It probably took an alchemist two days to distill and half the gold price in catalytic compounds. Better to take the hundreds of gold and hire an army instead. Still in a labyrinth on your knees at deaths door, a snake oil cure-all might be worth its weight in gold.
But I digress. Until the internals are inspected and metered out, it is just speculation as to their viability.
As for necromancy. That might be the realm of the religious. Vicar Othar or one of his clerics might know."
Sven digests as much of the valuable information as he can, tapping his pipe out in the platemail ashtray holder.
His eyes visually light up at the talk of laboratories and potions.
“I will seek out the good vicar then.”
“Tell me, from the top of your tower, can you see how high the mists rise over the moors? Does your dimensional ocular scope see through the thick veil?”
“As I’m sure you already know, the journey through the moors is a difficult one. I am trying to think of ways to to get to the mounds and the maze quickly and easily. I know there are guides who know the way, but has anyone ever tried cutting a path on a more direct route straight from Helix before? I am wondering if constructing a raised road through the bogs would be helpful or profitable.”
“I assume that you know the location of the main Barrowmaze entrance? Do you have maps or journals of any earlier explorations done there? Any traps or tricks that can be avoided through valuable knowledge could prove to be priceless to a fledgling explorer such as myself.”
He pulls out the opal ring and the torc with the pair of grasping hands to show the mage next.
“Here are a couple more trinkets I found out there. Neither radiated as magical, but have you ever seen their likes before? Any rough idea of their worth?”
there was a pic with an observatory in the tree tower but I chose the castle one then read the BMz pdf and it said ' Mazzah has an observatory'.
So in game, that is something he is working towards. He has no functioning telescope built, at least not one you have seen. The way he spoke about, 'looking at the past and seeing into the future' might make you thing he hopes to produce a scope that will do more than look at stars.
The mist seems to be an unnatural feature of the Moor. The region of the Moor wasn't always what it is now. So that could be a point of future study.
The tracks and paths seasonally change as the water level ebbs with the winter freeze, so the peat moves and paths get overgrown or flooded. A constructed highway might be feasible but the cost for 10 miles of tarmac, iron rail, raised earth gravel path would be huge. The trail Helix to Ironguard is approximately 15 miles and has remained a rutted narrow carriageway for a century. I guess infrastructure is not high on the agenda.
As for entrances. There is not a main one but egress into the labyrinths has been excavated via a few of the tombs under the mounds. The present knowledge of which mounds 'have or have not' remains a tight lipped and valuable secret and the prudent keep it that way.
It seems most adventurers plan short term trips. Pick a mound, excavate as much as they can, return before dark. Rinse, repeat. But sometimes in your absence another group of prospectors turn up and 'claim rights' or turf war erupts. Some groups find it easier pickings to waylay expeditions in their return than do the digging and exploring themselves.
The ring and torc may be more accurately appraised by the jeweller. The torc hands are primate in design not human, nicely made but no obviously meaning otherwise than crafted that way.
Sven tries to wrap up his conversation with Mazzah.
“I have enjoyed our meeting, sir. I will be back with any new information I learn about the maze entrance we found. I hope to see what lies beyond the entrance as well. I might just organize a quiet little group and head in there before anyone else finds out about it.”
“Any final tips or advice about the maze you can think of? I trust you don’t want your newest connection running off blindly if there are some obvious but unforeseen dangers to be aware of.”
Mazzah wishes you best of luck. "May you have the eyes and lives of a cat." he says, escorting you to the door.
"While you are away would you like me to investigate the dried lungs and body parts? I will charge a commensurate fee, which can go to my ocular fund. At least when you come back you may have an answer and if you don't come back at all ... perhaps in a few hundred years your own dessicated parts can add to the pot?"
"Let me see. You say you cast a spell to check on any radiance on the amphora and contents, which they proved to be lacking in. But then that in itself does not disprove the ingredients being ineffective for potion making under the right conditions. Though proving that would have a similar attendance to casting any formal identification research.
I have an owl and wine aplenty, Carp are bred in the barrow paddy field. Pearls are a little harder to find, particularly fine ones not those drab orbs draped around Perni's neck.
Then there will undoubtedly be a physical cost. Such magic plays havoc with ones constitution. Then it boils down to how much material you have. I would say the initial consultation would cost 200gp for labour and materials, but that does not guarantee you anything, only confirming the materials possible efficacy or not. Then the alchemist needs to attend. Commissioned for a month may cost you a ballpark figure of 2,400gp but at the end you might get 10 potions to sell and profit 1,000gp."
"I suppose I could pay your initial fee of 200 coins, but I better hope to strike it rich out on the moors before we contact that alchemist. I don't have the funds it would take, but I must admit that 10 potions does sound very pleasing to me. As does the 1,000 coin profit."
Svan scratches at his messy head of hair for a moment before continuing.
"I think will bring the jar around all the same, since I have no current use for pickled lung tissue and umbilical cords. You can look them over and let me know if we have anything special before I get too far ahead of myself."
The mage understands some of your dilemma. "By the notice pinned up on the bulletin board, you promote your own ability to comprehend the arcane auras and appraise items.
To save costs, if you managed to obtain a pearl of quality, the other physical materials are easy. You could risk the Identify in your own comfort, then if you prove the amphora contents are efficacious then we can move to the next step of commissioning an alchemist and bring me the amphora then."
He gives you an owl feather from the bird which flew about earlier, suggesting an alternative to consider.
