Panic Attacks at Candlewick Cabin — One Shot Play Report
I ran the lovely Eon’s Something Sinister at Candlewick Cabin at my local library recently. They broke into a house, caused multiple NPCs to have panic attacks, and generally created merry chaos. Here’s the story of what happened.
The village of Farmingvale has a problem. Corpses have been going missing from the cemetery, and the townsfolk suspect that the candlemaker Lucan Rushlight, who has locked himself in his home, is behind it. A group of travelers — Cael, Celotie, Flynx, Rain, and Zoril — are asked to investigate the candlemaker’s home.
The party began by carefully examining the exterior of the cabin where Lucan (and his nephew-apprentice Blagden) live. The windows are boarded up and the front and back doors are locked. After some deliberation, the PCs climbed the stairs onto the candle-stub covered porch and Flynx smashed open the door.
Walking into the simple dining room, they found a table with four place settings but only two chairs, as well as a child’s cradle filled with wax-covered blankets. The floor was covered in more candle stubs, these ones lit. Zoril, suspicious, stomped on a cluster. They went out as normal.
With nothing more for them in the dining room, they went down the hallway at the back of the room. Choosing between locked doors into the kitchen on the right and two bedrooms on the left, the party went left, first entering Blagden’s room. A simple affair, the only things in the room were a bed, a desk, and a sketchbook. The walls were covered in wildlife sketches. Opening Blagden’s sketchbook, they saw more sketches. But unlike the ones on the walls, these drawings were of various fae creatures.
Confused and concerned, the PCs crept into Lucan’s chambers. Only a bed, a simple wardrobe, and a rug shoved in the far corner filled this room. Celotie, opening the wardrobe, found a locked chest. The party took turns hitting it until the lock broke. Suspecting it to be an illusion, Celotie dumped the 250 gold in it onto the floor.
While that went on, Rain was poking at the oddly-placed rug in the room’s corner. Finding spots of wear on the side that suggested it may have been grabbed, he dragged the rug aside, revealing a trapdoor. As soon as it was open, a smell of rotting meat wafted up. Wasting no time, Flynx eagerly descended, followed by the rest of the party.
At the bottom of the ladder was a pokey room with fieldstone walls. At the end across from the ladder was a stool with a shrine on its top. A portrait of a happy-looking human woman sat with a fat candle in front of it. The candle flame burned purple. Above the portrait hung a pristine wedding veil. Cael, approaching the shrine, discovered that the putrescent scent was definitely coming from the odd candle. Between the ladder and the shrine, a door was set into the wall, closed.
Celotie snuck over to the door in the wall and, standing behind it, opened it a sliver. Peeking through the crack, he saw a boy, presumably Blagden, listening at another door. Incidentally, this is where I diverged the most from the published module, and it was completely by accident. Having read the adventure beforehand, I ran mostly from memory so I didn’t have to keep glancing at the (rather small) text on the page. This worked, mostly. But when describing this room, I misremembered Blagden’s age. In the module, he is twenty-something. When I ran it, he became thirteen. This caused the proceeding scenes to go rather differently than if I had been running perfectly to the letter of the module.
Pushing past Celotie, Flynx opened the door fully. “Hello!” he said. Blagden, surprised, stammered at them to say who they are. He asked if they were involved in “his uncle’s project,” but refused to say more. Rain, guessing based on the cradle in the dining room, asked through the doorway about wax babies. Blagden was relieved that the PCs seemed to know about his uncle’s work, but still danced around the subject.
Closing the closet door, Flynx grabbed Blagden’s arm and tried to get him to explain what was going on. His player said, “but I’m trying to be nonthreatening,” to which I and the other players reacted with varying levels of disbelief. Terrified, Blagden hammered on the door he was snooping at.
A pale, emaciated man with dark bags under his eyes opened the door. Breaking free from Flynx’s grasp, Blagden ran to hide behind his uncle as the rest of the party opened the door Flynx had closed. The group xplained that they meant no harm (and gave Flynx dirty looks). Lucan, clearly distracted, instructed them to wait while he finished what he was doing. He led them down a hallway and through a room which contained some tables and three cradles, past an abnormally tall figure dressed in a mourning dress made of raven feathers, and into a meeting room with a large table surrounded with chairs and birdbaths. He then closed the door, hidden on this side behind a bookshelf filled with various iron objects.
Opening the bookshelf door, the PCs crept out in the workshop as Lucan and the gangly figure went through a door on the far side of the room. A short person with grey skin watched them apathetically from where he stood guard beside the door Lucan had entered. Under the distracted gaze of the guard, the party inspected the cradles. Each held a baby made of wax, which giggled and wiggled on loop, like a GIF. The tables on the other end of the room held sculpting tools, a mortar and pestle, vats of wax, and a burlap sack.
As the rest fo the party continued to explore the room and poke at the wax babies, Flynx confronted the guard. “What’s in the room? What are they doing in there? Can I go in there?” he asked incessantly. The guard just idly tested the blade of his dagger with a finger before waving it lazily in Flynx’s direction. Getting the idea, he backed off, grumbling.
After a few minutes, the party heard a clap from the room and Lucan crying, “Marigold!” The figure in mourning clothes emerged, grabbed two of the babies from the cribs, and swept out of the room. The guard, carrying the final wax baby, followed.
Once the fae had left, Lucan and Blagden entered the workshop followed by an utterly naked wax statue of the woman from the shrine. Confronting the overjoyed Lucan, the party asked him how he did it all. He explained that the wax babies were just a form of golem made from candlewax and human bone dust. The fae couldn’t tell that they weren’t actual human children, and were more than happy to take them in exchange for favors. He used those favors to get in contact with Astraphel (the tall figure in the raven feathers) who had great knowledge of life and death. “And now,” Lucan nearly wept, “I have my wife back!” And he motioned to the animated statue behind him.
The characters joined Lucan’s entourage and he led them to a room, concealed behind a secret door in the meeting room. In this room a large silver bell hung from a stand. Lucan, checking a calendar he’d scratched into the wall, realized it was Sunday. He stuck the bell. Immediately a sprite with tonsured green hair poofed into existence and introduced himself as Ossifer. Lucan explained that Ossifer had taught him the ritual to create wax golems.
Curious if the wax statue was truly Lucan’s late wife Marigold, the PCs asked some questions. To the statue, they asked if she knew who Lucan was. She said yes she knew, he was her husband. Then they asked how she knew that. “He told me so.” Carrying on, they asked if she remembered her childhood. She asked right back, “what’s a childhood?” Finally they asked her how she knew she was real, and if she had a soul. Staring at her hands, she slumped against the wall in an introspective fugue. By this point, Lucan was looking near-panic. The party then asked Ossifer if he thought the statue was really Marigold. Ossifer responded in the negative.
At this point, Lucan fell to the chamber floor and curled into a sobbing ball. His nephew tried his best to comfort him, patting him on the shoulder and glaring accusingly at the PCs. Cael came to the rescue, pulling a book out of his bag and distracting the waxen figure with a discussion of dialectical materialism. After calming her down a bit, he went over to Lucan and engaged him in a conversation about the fine points of wax sculpture, eventually calming him as well.
As the session closed, the statue had a few realizations. First, she did in fact seem to exist, at least enough to pull her out of her spiral. Second, she was probably not Lucan’s wife, dead or otherwise. And third, she didn’t have an identity yet. I closed the session as the PCs continued to try to give Lucan grief counseling and encourage the wax woman to do some self-discovery.
Everyone seemed to have fun with the session, although some moreso than others. Flynx’s player wished for more GM guidance (which simply isn’t the way I run games) and made that complaint clear as he left. However, he laughed during the session, so he can’t have only hated it. He was a bit of a problem player anyhow, cutting others off and declaring that he was going to roll in lieu of describing his character’s actions. I mostly just ignored him as I resolved what other people were doing and then addressed him. This worked acceptably well, but in a future situation like this I think I’d pull the player aside if the problem persisted and tell them to knock it off.
This was my first time running Something Sinister at Candlewick Cabin, and I really enjoyed it. It’s a fun, concise module (the whole thing fits on the front and back of a single sheet of paper) which can easily be run in a single session. I’m sure I’ll run it again in the future, and I recommend you check it out as well as all of Eon’s work; he’s a lovely person and his art (which graces all of his modules) is gorgeous and distinctive.