Sample Sanctum: The Fowles House

This week as a bit of filler as I unpack my own home, I'll present a modern-day wizard's sanctum from my first Mage: the Awakening game. The previous owner has gone missing but she's left many dangers behind.

The Fowles House

This turn of the century building sits nestled in a bad area of town. Once a manor house in an exclusive neighborhood but its former neighbors lie demolished and replaced with smaller homes and decaying apartments.

A small yard surrounds the towering structure, barely containing its detached garage. The rusty link fence can be made out through the weeds and bushes. A path of crumbling cement leads around back where a small shed has collapsed into a pile of debris. An odd collection of bird baths and houses fill the tiny backyard, most cracked and discolored.

Those venturing into the house find it crammed full of boxes, chests, and other objects making movement almost impossible. The three floors hold a wide range of rooms from tiny closets to a large dining room. The junk crowds against the windows, leaving the interior shrouded in darkness. Electric lights lurk within masses of debris, casting odd shadows across the ceiling.

The stench of cat urine permeates the house along with the odor of decaying wood. In places thick odors of oil or noxious chemicals fill the air inducing retching. Elsewhere the air is thick with dust or perhaps the tang of long rotten fruit.

The few things living inside keep to themselves. Occasionally the sound of footsteps (human or animal) echoes through the building. At night the house creaks ominously and much of the wood protests when in use. Sometimes strange noises waft from seldom used doors: music, laughter, machinery, even screams.

Those with magical sense detect a resonance of distance and paranoia. Somewhere nearby lies a Hallow, somewhere maddeningly out of reach. Halls twist in on themselves and the interior dimensions exceed those of the building as a whole.

Background

The house was built for the Fowles family in 1902 where they lived until 1943. Rumors to the contrary, nothing of interest happened during that time.

In 1946, the house was purchased by a Mrs. Aza Thoth. Azathoth, as the mage referred to herself, was an up and coming member of the Silver Ladder. Ambitious and powerful she was provost to one of the Consilium in the late 50s when the Silver Ladder decided to summon a powerful spirit. Thew spell backfired, the disaster destroying many mages outright while driving many of the rest mad.

By 1960, Azathoth retreated fully to her home. She would not stray from its grounds for more than 30 years. In this time her sanctum became a mass of interconnected Space spells as the fabric of the world frayed under her insanity. As she grew older, her paranoia and delusions grew. She feared her neighbors were plotting against her and crafted spells and creatures to strike at them first, resulting a rash of deaths. Slowly she contributed to the malaise that afflicted the neighborhood.

In mid 90s, the Consilium intervened. They subdued her and took her away. Since then the house has remained empty with the Silver Ladder and the Consilium split on its ownership. It remains in legal limbo. Meanwhile the utilities remain on and the sanctum slowly decays.

Thoth is presumed dead by the neighborhood and most involved in the case assume her madness consumed her completely.

Layout

Each floor contains between 5 and 8 rooms, not including the hallways or the numerous closets and crawlspaces. Additionally several rooms exist untethered to a specific floor. The notable rooms are listed below.

First Floor:

• The Downstairs Bathroom: A narrow corridor winds between the pillars of boxes to the toilet. Roaches climb brazenly up and down the "walls" under light streaming from a small shuttered window.
• The Boiler Room: Choked by cabinets full of moth-eaten clothing, clothes lines of dirty laundry further clog passage. Grit covers the bare concrete floor while the water heater pours out oppressive amounts of heat.
• The Kitchen: A horrible stench greets visitors. From the movement along the counter, this is the center of the cockroach infestation. The cabinets remain brimming with canned goods, now long past their expiration date. The refrigerator, still humming with power, leaks rancid oils from its base. A grimy slime lubricates the floor.
• The Living Room: Boxes and crates stack to the ceiling, turning what should be the largest room into a miniature labyrinth. Those who defeat this puzzle find a chair facing an ancient television set in the center. The babble of daytime TV distracts one momentarily from the smell of urine and a plastic tray covered with mold.

Second Floor:

• The Bedroom: Piles of books and photographs litter this room, surrounding a soiled bed covered by dirty clothes. A shotgun sits next to the bed and knife hides beneath the pillow.
• The Filled Room: Boxes, trunks, and other junk fill this room from top to bottom. It is impossible to get the door opened without first crushing the interior contents.
• The Upstairs Bathroom: Discolored porcelain tiles cover the floor and walls of this room. A decaying rug breaks up the pattern as does a rusty claw foot bathtub. A grimy shower curtain obscures the waterlogged mass of plastic dinosaurs and lizards filling the tub as well as the thick scum growing up around them. Piles of medicine bottles surround the sink, its surface caked in shades of red, yellow and white paste. A cracked toilet leaking into the room below completes the scene.

Third Floor:

• The Library: Largely looted, piles of open books cover the floor spilling out into the hall. Though the lacking in magical texts, explorers can find a diverse collection ranging from children's books to treatises on general relativity. Due to time and neglect, the yellowing pages are slipping free of their bindings on many of the texts.
• The Office: Entering this room requires pushing the filing cabinets within out of the way. Once inside visitors can dimly spot a desk in a room filled with 5 foot high filing cabinets. A poorly built chair sits behind the unfinished desk. Thousands of files on the people throughout the area fill the cabinets, the result of Azathoth's madness.
• The Rug Room: Over a dozen rugs cover the floor of this room, creating a foot high step into the chamber. Stacked furniture further hinders movement into and out of the room, as well as hiding the buried door set into the floor. That door leads to nowhere within the house but instead to the farmhouse.

The Inner Sanctum: Gaining access to this room is a challenge. Thanks to a potent spell, simply finding it requires 5 successes on an extended Intelligence + Investigation roll. Each roll requires 30 minutes and any failure forces one to start over.

Searching winding (yet straight) hallways and checking the numerous doors, eventually yields up a room on the third floor where one can directly access the Hallow.

The room itself is filled with ancient juice boxes filled with toxic vinegar and moldy fruit preserves. A few crusty plants curl in ceramic pots. An ivy made a desperate bid for freedom, its remains decorate the cracked window that looks out over the neighborhood. A few crates of old records sit in the corner with some old Christmas decorations. Behind one crate, an explorer finds an old jukebox filled with tunes from the 60s.

Untethered or Unattached:

• The Storm Room: A closet door leads instead to the basement of a retreat somewhere in the Appalachian mountains. The room (a closet really) is an oubliette with only a small high window to allow light in. A thunderstorm rages outside.
• The Farmhouse: the entrance to this room lies beneath the 23 carpets in the Rug room. Entered through a normal door set into the floor, it exits into a crumbling wooden room. A simple door on the opposite wall opens into a mostly collapsed farmhouse surrounded by overgrown fields. The building lies in Ohio and is haunted. The corpses of several murder victims lie within a pile of rotten wood that was once a barn. They awaken on the night of a new moon, digging themselves free and wandering into the barn seeking revenge on their forgotten killer.
• Garage: Completely stuff with boxes, the detached garage can only be accessed via the car door. Entombed beneath the debris is a long deceased 1959 Chevrolet Impala.

Shadow & Twilight

In Shadow, the neighborhood around the house remains blighted by dying flora and slouching buildings huddled together in a dense mass. Within its spiritual reflections, the house becomes even less accessible. Hallways lead nowhere, windows are merely painted facades, and rancid liquids fill several rooms from top to bottom. Several minor spirits lurk here including Urban Ferals, Door spirits, Roach spirits, and spirits of fear and pain. Most are weak (Rank 1) except for a powerful cockroach spirit known as the Dweller in the Walls.

Those travelling via Twilight find it easier to traverse the house though some of the objects have Twilight equivalents cluttering hallways and creating hazards. No ghosts haunt this house as spacial vortices devour ephemeral beings who lurk too long in its confines. Those spending more than an hour in Twilight must roll Resolve + Composure or become 'stuck' unable to move out of the house as long as they remain in Twilight.

Wards and Effects

A lingering ward (potency 5) shrouds the entire house. Several permanent portals remain in place as noted in the room descriptions. Lastly the Inner Sanctum has been hidden by the Hide Space spell.