Ok, as mentioned in the everlasting bounty of run ideas that is Dunkelzahn's Bequest:

How did Big D get it? He's a Great Dragon, that's how.

It probably got nastier after the Awakening. That'd provide a reason for it to become undesirable to the Lord Protector, and an explaination for the hazards of spending the night. Castles where unpleasant things happen to you don't bring in many tourist pounds.

~J

Given the events of Macbeth, a Wraith would be utterly appropriate. Perhaps take some of the blame off the Lady.

~J

As Nasty as any of those, and more appropriate to the region, would be a free-spirit type verion of the "Wylde Hunt". The quote does use the term "agents" and "prey", and its always been hinted that the hunt was some sort of dark magic used by the immortal elves tho whack thier enemies, the magical equivalent of a state sponsored terrorist assination.
If somebody was to survive an encounter with a free Wylde Hunt, it would probably be because the manged to communicate with it and put it to rest, likely discovering its origen, nature, and purpose in the process.
And that would probably leave one of Dunkies old enemies (or just some bad people) with thier pants around thier ankles... in a pool of rising water... full of pirananna...

I know what a pirahna is, but a pirananna? Nan na na, nan na na na... Can't get you outta my head...

There are a lot of ghost stories associated with Glamis Castle that give way to it probably being a funky place in the Sixth World. One of my favorites involves an old Lord of Glamis in the 14th or 15th century who is reported to have played cards with the Devil (yes, with a capital D) in one of the rooms. Supposedly the room was so haunted that it was sealed up a couple of hundred years later.

There are a few other 'sealed' room in Glamis. A couple of them have windows on the exterior but no room inside the castle contains said window. There are some pictures and things you can Google for and such. It's a rather interesting subject, and there are a ton of things you could do to the place in the Sixth world.

Connor is right on the money, and you can get confirmation on the existance of the legends (and all kinds of great tidbits) from the link above.

Glamis is billed as one of the most haunted places around, and that's in the 5th world. Imagine what it would be like in the 6th world.

Back in the days of the old brown "jive" forums, we had a great discussion on how to write a run based upon attempting to claim the prize on the Glamis entry of Big-D's will. Unfortunately, I can't get the link to come up, I guess the old jive forum archives have finally been purged. Hopefully someone has a copy offline.

I've been toying with the idea of doing a Glamis Castle run and having it be inhabited by Cthulhu Mythos nasties. Just to be a truly evil GM.

I'll most probably populate it with Spectors and a Wraith or 2.

So the Big D acquired the castle out of a love for literature and Shakespear? I'd imagine there's something that's not as common as a wraith in there (though I expect there to be plenty of your typical awaked haunting creatures). Try to be more creative. There was something(s) in there that Dunklezahn. What was it?

What interests me even more: what would this place look like on the inside? I'm not looking for dscriptions but rather for maps. I already tried to find some in the times of the jive thread but didn't find any. The idea of running in there has been thrilling me ever since the discussion came up back in the day. It's really a pity the old thread is gone. There where some great ideas and pieces of naration in there...
Many, many haunts have accumulated there. I wouldn't even try to think of some canon stuff. I'd simply invent what I need. Most of these guys are for flavor anyways or immune to whatever the players do so they won't need any. There will be a few classical 'quests' to do with one 'main quest' to end the haunts, which was set up by Dunkie. I suppose he knew about the problems in this place and he knew that anybody who would spend a sufficient amount of time in the castle during a full moon would stumble across the problem and have to solve it to get out alive after that period of time.
The runners could also find the trapped souls of their predecessors or so...
The exact nature of the problem is of secondary importance but it should have a 'positive' outcome, a victory of the forces of good. After all, Dunkie must have had a goal with this. Maybe it's also some kind of retaliation or revelation.
Yet my problem is: I need a map! I can't run this if I can't describe the layout apropriately.

Perhaps there is some kind of Magical foci that is drawing the wraiths and various spooks to it. Kinda like a ghost magnet, and a good quest would be to find and destroy/sell/remove said foci.

Or there are souls (read: ghosts) trapped there that need to/want to go free but can't free themselves. They can contact the mortal world only during a full moon and the PCs have to do something to free them. This could be anything. Banish a ghost that is keeping them trapped, destroy an artifact that is functioning as a seal or whatever. If they don't do it they get trapped themselves and return every full moon in hope to find a savior...

A GM ran a Glamis-mission for us once: Of the castle there were now only thouroghly flattened ruins left. By spending the night there you were sucked into a very nasty metaplane and from there our GM used a converted a Ravenloft adventure.

I did some online searching. I didn't find any maps, and honestly, it's unlikely there are any anywhere. After all, making blueprints is expensive and time consuming, especially for a huge castle like that, and it really serves no purpose (except for curious people like us). Find the blueprints of any late age castle made for defense (most castles are actually 'luxury' castles, but that one looked more defense oriented) and it should work nicely.

Assuming there's no outside influence (like a bunch of shadowrunners with an affinity for demolitions), the castle will still be standing in 50 years, however it probably has fallen into severe disrepair and most of the modern luxuries will be worthless piles of rubbish.

If I had to guess, the castle is on top of the crossing of ley lines, or some similar point of magical importance. Perhaps ley lines with a background count? You'd probably have a half dozen random 'ghosts' (wraiths or whatever). Some would be hostile (for instance, the armored figure who's supposed to have been the earl who played cards with the devil), some would definitely not be (the grey lady) and some might just be loons (the woman with her tongue cut out). I think it would be fun if these people have stories to tell, and they're simply trying to share it, or there's something else they're trying to accomplish. But they lack the intelligence they had when they were alive; they're like a vague recollection or a recording, and that is the only clue they can offer you to finishing their quest. Most of the things they want you to find are horrible, terrible secrets of their own suffering, or they secret they've seen. They may all somehow link to the single mystery of the castle.

You might have some random monsters about; a vampire, 'Jack the Runner' could be just ahead of the Wild Hunt, stuff like that you'd be better off avoiding.

I think the biggest question is what is in the secret room? It might be 1-2 people playing cards with the devil, but that sounds like a story meant to scare little children. It might be a collection of Scottish ghosts, but come on... The only story I saw online that I liked was the story of the child who was born looking horrible disfigured. In which case, you have free reign to create any sort of monster you like, with any sort of goals you want to give him. (Is he a new species of monster? A troll 150 years before its time? A baby horror?)

All in all, this sounds like a great game to put away the dice. Even assuming these are highly charged versions of the present ghost stories, these creatures will appear only rarely, and mostly cannot or don't want to fight. There'd be all sorts of fun magical effects (I can imagine the magic in the air almost being oppressive; even the mundanes can sense it, and the magic users are overwhelmed by it. Spells get out of control, astral projection becomes difficult, at best. Normal equipment has an astounding failure rate. Guns jam, flashlights burn out...) It could be a lot of fun. Just remember to start making those sanity checks ; )

Ammunition randomly cooking off is good for spooking people. Especially if said munitions are flashbangs.

"Oh shit oh shit OH SHIT! We're blind and it's gonna fucking kill us!"

Tying into a thread mentioning Harlequin getting Richard the Lionheart's armor and looking for Excalibur, what if it was hidden in Glamis Castle? And there was somesort of circumstance preventing him from going in directly and getting it?

I think throwing in a bunch of ghosts, a wraith or 2, and maybe some free spirits, along with beasties roaming the castle grounds would be awesome.

Maybe teh full moon activates a magical artifact that opens teh door to the "hidden" room, where the sword is kept? And you have to get past the wraith somehow to claim it before you leave the castle?

I don't know if the writers ever intend to elaborate on this point of the will, but I have enough material and ideas to come up with an ineresting run myself.....

Perhaps there is a HORROR entombed in the basement?

Here's a link to a post on the old boards by Grimtooth regarding Glamis Castle. The Laughing Man (thelaughingman AT enter.net) says he has maps of the castle.

Here's a link to the Old Boards that works.

While that's cool, it isn't the thread that MrSandman was referring to. I recall that it was a relatively lengthy thread concerned pretty much solely with this bequest, and Glamis Castle itself. I tried in vain to find it earlier as well.

`I also have quite an unorganized collection of pics and basic maps of Glamis, if anyone wants me to roll it up and send it to them let me know. Some of the pics I have concern some of the hauntings, others are of the grounds and of the castle from various angles. Some are some tourist style maps of the grounds and such too...

[edit]

Also, concerning the castle itself. There are several wings which were built at various stages. The center of the castle was the original fortified part of the building. The other wings were added later during a surge of 'luxury' castle building/expansion. You can see the demarcations fairly clearly in the building.

I even think the official Glamis Castle website has a brief history that goes into the construction and such.

All of that is from memory, but if anyone wants detailed info, just ask and I can dig out all my old sources....

Fun little path this thread's gone on...


Ok, I admit the idea of a groups of runners, even "heavily armed, choromed and foci'd up to the yin-yang" soon-to-be-munchinites might find fighting a Wild Hunt IN CLOSE QUARTERS rather...vexing.

(Of course, a team of sam's wielding assualt cannons akimbo means that "close-quarters" is then regulated into "kibble-rubble-chunky-goodness." Chunky salsa? What chunky salsa?)

And some of the others ideas lead me to believe that "FF-to-infinity-and-beyond" is the main idea source for their runs


Since the task is to make it through a night - I'm going to throw in the assumption that an alchera is possibly active during the full moon.


There we go - instant cannon ™ explaination for strange, deadly, physically impossible and just plain whack happenin's, d00ds.


Now - how to actually break the "Curse" - if there is one? I mean, the word gets thrown around like it's a magical cure-all, but they DO tend to have specific cause-and-effect.

And I find it difficult in the extreme to believe that the Lord Protector would let any sort of "maybe connected to the royal family" property be disposed of with such ease...
"Just find a few promising sorts and use them to work this business out, would you Smythe?"
"Certainly, m'lord. And if they survive?"
"Kill them."

This indicates that Hidden-Agenda ™ may be active! What's keeping the "Lord of Sticky Fingers" out? And the rest of the entirely loveless bunch in pommy-land?

I mean, owning a castle must be cool, and after a while, even the Manchester slums will bore, so where are the crowds waiting to get in on the "Next Big Thing?" I would have thought the sheer weight of the curiosity-seekers would trample any material foe you could throw at them...

-So, something that can't be cured by brute force, numbers or the powers-that-be of England. And it's worth something. A big something.
(Everything in Dunkie's will is worth something - mostly more to other people...But that's a dragon for you.)

I think it's a personalized alchera/domain of a bound "free" spirit. It's a big ask for the masses and it fits in with the typical Draconic tendency to give with one hand while the other...uh (insert suitably gross physical abuse of choice).

And given Dunkie's sense of humour, I'd assume that the spirit (Or whatever) is powerful, irritable and for some obscure reason vital for the continued existance of the world as we know it. So, can't kill it, have to free it - somehow - with no idea on how "unbinding" will effect...well, everything.

Gods - this has "Dragon-run, may as well shoot ourselves now" written all over it.


L;

Hey, Tiralee, why don't you tell us how you really feel?

Um, whats an alchera?

An alchera is a spirit that turns lead to gold, silly! It makes firefights significantly less dangerous, and quite profitable.

I've been reading through the old DS forum... Here's a possibility.

1) The biggest story about Glamis is the secret room which no one can find and contains something horrible. This thing was horrible BEFORE the mana spike, so it may be different (or freed) now, hundreds to thousands of years later.

2) Most of Dunky's prizes relate to somehow stopping horrors. Developing optics, space exploration, killing blood mages. So it would make sense that this somehow also relates to getting a new anti-horror tool.

So what if the contents of the secret room somehow related to a horror (maybe a very minor horror, or a horror 'subspecies' that has to manifest), and the room had something which somehow trapped it. What Dunky wants someone to find is this secret room and what the secret is that slows down horrors so well. The reason the castle is haunted is because the existence of the horror corrupted the area and had weird manifestations. After so much time though, the horror has found a way to escape, but doesn't want to leave this immediate area which is corrupted so nicely for it. It will seek out the runners, and the runners need to seek out the secret room.

Another neat possibility is the castle is built upon something special; it's some sort of spirit trap. This ghost-glue is valuable, and that's what Dunky wanted us to find.

You're going to have to make up stories as to what happened to everyone else who's attempted this, because yes, there are going to be a LOT of thrill seekers. Another idea from the original DS forums, require a deposit payment of 1 million nuyen to fix any damage you might do staying there.

I would disagree that we can reliably say that this has anything to do with the Horrors. While it's not impossible, we have to remember that the Will also includes things such as a reward to the makers of popcorn to be popped over an open flame, a replacement car for one destroyed by a piece of falling building, repayment for a millenia-old debt, and communication with sentient nonmetahuman species like dolphins. Far Scholar was primarily focused on the Horrors, yes, but he had other interests.

~J

You ever watched the Mummy Returns? That oasis that magically appears when the Scorpion King makes the deal with the devil? That's a prime example of an Alchera to me.

I like the idea that whatever is trapped in the castle is important to the continued existence of the world.

And the entry in the Will is Dunkelzahn's way of seeing that it keeps getting fed.

My one problem with the Will and Glamis is that it's open to so much interpretation and there are too many possiblities that I've never been able to come up with something that satisfied my evil conspiritorial designs enough. Just about anything seems almost too run of the mill for it to fit with the history of Glamis and the whole inner workings of a Great Dragon.

What about the person he ordered a spirit to use the Accident power on for the period of a year? Or the person who he declared would for a period of time become a legal nobody?
Just because Far Scholar shows a kindly face doesn't mean he's all about love and happiness and bunnies.

~J

Yes, but I think those guys must have seriously pissed off Big D somehow. And remember those two instances are pretty specific as to who and how he should be punished.

Linking your two examples to saying D was a bad dragon is like saying his bounty on blood and toxic mages are bad things. Yes, the bounties are bad, for the BAD guys.

They may very well have deserved it, I don't remember offhand. Nonetheless, he is a dragon, and possessed of all the ruthlessness that that implies.

~J

Doing some more digging on Glamis because of this thread I ran across this interview. It has a few tidbits of information, including the size of the estate, 150,000 acres (wow!). The site is ghost related so they've asked some questions and recieved some "official" answers about some of the hauntings and ghost stories...

Glamis Castle Interview

Well, with certain groups, there are large numbers of them. It's hard to apply something to all of them. Great Dragons, on the other hand... how many are them? By the by, I made an error; I meant Great Dragons and just said Dragons (Daemon, especially, doesn't seem to have the ruthlessness thing going yet). On the other hand, Great Dragons have by necessity lived for thousands of years, survived all sorts of nasty events, and come out still kicking. I have little doubt that they are also brought up thinking of themselves superior to the lesser races, though certain Greats have had the ability to somewhat reduce this trend of thought.
The thing about generalizing Great Dragons is that unless there are a whole host of them that just haven't been mentioned in canon, in the Sixth World the generalization does in fact apply. I personally can't think of a single canon Shadowrun-era Great that isn't ruthless, and I have at least a passing familiarity with pretty much all of them. Generalizations only cease to apply when they become too broad to be accurate for most of what is being generalized. For instance, it's not unfair to generalize and say that humans have ten fingers, despite the existence of people with nine, eleven, or other numbers of fingers due to accident or mutation or whatever.

~J

Great Dragons are ruthless because they need to be. Jesus had enemies, and since GDs aren't Christ Almighty, they need to deal with their enemies more effectively(not that I'm saying God doesn't deal with His enemies effectively).

Yay, 150000 acres. That's a little over 607 square Km. Or 60 x 10 km. A hobby-farm up north, friend (Yes, Australian.)

Hell, Family friends farm over 80 square miles, which is...(Google-fu!) a little over 200 square Km, or 51200 acres. And they're 80 and 87.

Back to the thread...

Ok, so there's constant indicators of a hidden/secret room (all sites so far visited mention it.) where, possibly, bad things happen/ed.

Which tells me that someone, or a constant series of someones have seen/glimpsed/escaped it over the ages. And the tale has grown in the telling.

Glammis was built ~1300, with the usual "possible traces of fort/stronghold" - that all castles share (I mean, why build a castle somewhere noone else is going to want to visit? With armies?) so unless there was a particularly interesting case of weirdness deciding to reside during the dark ages (Last most-recent mana spike, wasn't it?) then it's likely that the old fort might have had something built into/on top of to keep it down ( ) and...

[Cue dramatic footage of torches carried by dirty men shovelling out the foundations of the fort/castle, the strange stone cap that no man can move, it's inclusion into the structure taking shape above, the ages pasing until the mana trickles back into the world, the gentle rock of the lid, as something inside tests its strength after so many centuries of confinement...]

Well - it might work. But if Dunkie suggested a visit at full moon, he probabily had a good reason. Which leads me to another loose end.

Excalibur. (No, not the sword, that's too...twee.) What made the sword special? (Apart from confirming kingship, that is.) Well, who is came from, and what it was stored in.

The various legends of Authur indiciate that he was a ninny to take Excalibur over the scabbard, advantages ranging from every man falling in his army being replaced 7-fold, to everlasting life. Cool.
But he chose the sword (It was sooo shiney...) -taking it from the Lady of the Lake.

She seems to be one of those usefully-vague figures in mythology who wear so many faces as to be annomyous, which leads to this long-winded hypothesis:

The Lady of the Lake is a hugely-powerful free-spirit / elemental. A strong magic user brought her to heel (Merlin) in Frenchy-land (Fountain of Barenton in Brittany) and persuaded her to accompany her to England where she gives a backwoods hick a collection of foci so powerful that any one could kick her ass.

But she got wise to the mage, trapped him in a non-stop confusion spell and set things in motion so that she could get her mits on the "big shiney" that the idiot human was playing with. After long and suitably tear-laiden death scenes, some other hopeless yoik in armour tosses the last item of her collection to her and she exits, stage left.

Now, fast-forward a few centuries, where the last of her power has ebbed and she's done everything to cling to a state of existance far greater than the level of mana available would allow.

Excalibur - Weapon focus with the propensity of creating favourable background counts, much like the Dragons of Wuxing do? (Or do they channel? I forget.)

A suitably-wandering IE spies this odd creature, a spirit using a foci-crutch, and tries to get some use out of it. Not coperating, it throws everything in it's depleted arsenal at the IE, then manages to tie itself to the foci (For survival) after the damn elf won't go away.

Said elf looks at the collection of bling, realises that he's got some time to waste before it's usable again and buries it somewhere safe and concealed.

Time passes.

The mana about is enough to keep the spirit going, but not by much. As it grows weary, it slowly goes toxic. Very, very toxic. So much so that the mana still drawn in is converted to a toxic background count on the way out.

This draws the rest of the nasties that tend to hang about in the castle, or castle ruins. The Alchera that holds the sword is guarded by aspects of the spirit's "programming", or by the same of the sword. (by the full moon, all things will be seen, etc.) so that takes care of the time. The how, well, that I'll leave for now.


Anyhoo-it's 3am, I'm tired and going ot be.

I may continue this wild idea later. Ideas, threats, screams of anguish?

L;

Actually, the only thing I've heard of Excalibur's scabbard was preventing the weilder from being wounded.

He got both from the Lady of the Lake. Morgan le Fay stole the scabbard from him, which is why he died in the end.

It depends on the version of the story. There are a LOT of versions of the story.