Hollowfast House

The hook

The law firm of Pell & Daughters will pay handsomely for a simple errand: escort their clerk to Hollowfast House, have the last living Hollowfast — old Maren — sign three papers, and witness them. The house is a day’s ride out, past a village that stops talking when it’s mentioned. The clerk is cheerful. The horses refuse the last half-mile.

What’s really going on

Hollowfast House sits on a bargain: the founder, Aldous Hollowfast, promised the thing in the Undercroft the family, forever, in exchange for the fortune that built it. The house keeps its dead — every Hollowfast who ever died here is still here, in the walls, the portraits, the long gallery. Maren is the last, and the house cannot allow a signature that would sell it. The papers the clerk carries would do exactly that.

The haunting, in three acts

Act I — The Grounds at Dusk

The gates stand open in welcome — the house wants the papers destroyed and the visitors kept. Ravens track the party in shifts. The groundskeeper’s cottage has been lived in until very recently by someone who wrote WALLS on every surface.

Act II — The Long Gallery

Maren serves dinner as if guests come every week. The portraits are all of her, at every age — and one more panel stands covered. At night the gallery walks: armor, a rug that smothers like a grave, and a specter wearing the face from the covered portrait. Every Hollowfast death is recorded in the family bible, each in the same handwriting. Tomorrow’s date has an entry started.

Act III — The Undercroft

The bargain is kept in the crypt below the wine cellar, where Aldous — a wight now, still in his founder’s chain — holds court over the family’s bones. He does not want a fight; he wants a replacement signature. Someone stays, or the family stays. Burn the deed, free the dead, break the bargain, or sign — the table should leave believing every option was real.

Key NPCs

• Maren Hollowfast — kind, papery, and long past fear. Knows exactly what the house is and pours the tea anyway. Wants one night of honest company.
• Aldous Hollowfast — the wight in the Undercroft. Courteous the way a contract is courteous. Refers to the party as “prospective family.”
• The clerk, Odo Pell — brave right up until the portraits blink. His papers are the campaign’s real monster; guard them or lose them.

Running it

Run the Haunt soundscape low, and use the bell one-shot when the house marks an hour that shouldn’t exist. The clock matters: each midnight inside the house, one door the party came through is no longer there.