contents

INTRODUCTION 4 Undead Immunities & Resistances 24

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Turning Undead 24
BACKGROUND 7 Energy Drain 25
Involving the Characters 8 Dying in the Chateau 25

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Random Events 8 Escaping the Chateau 26
Table: Random Events (d100) 10-13 Table: Joudain’s Fun 27
The Barrier 14
The Household Staff 15 THE CHATEAU 29
Using the Household Staff 15 Map Key 29
A Note About Language 15 Hedge Maze (M) 32
Chateau Grounds (C) 40
The Staff 16 Ground Floor (G) 45

— Bertrand - Groom 16
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— Arnaud - Land Steward 16

— Clareta - Chamber Maid 17

Upper Floor (U)
Basement (B)
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68
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— Elias - House Steward 17 REFERENCE 76
— Estève - Valet 18 The Staff 76
— Guilhèm - Page 18 Others 77
— Hervisse - Chef 19 Table: Joudain’s Fun 79
— Jaume & Miqèl - 1st & 2nd Footmen 19 Table: Random Events 80-83
— Julian - Gardener 20
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— Landri - Majordomo 20 MAP

— Laurensa - Parlor Maid 21 The Ayarai Estate Map 1-2
— Martin - Stable Master 21
— Mondette - Kitchen Maid 22
— Rixenda - Chamber Maid 22
— Ysabel - Maid 23
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tables
Random Events (d100) 10-13 (repeated on 80-83)
Joudain’s Fun 27 (repeated on 79)
Undead Immunities & Resistances 24 (repeated on 77)
Energy Drain Effects (d6) 25
Random Paintings in the Chateau (d20) 29
Drinking from the Fountain Effects (d8) 41
Drinking from the Vials (d10) 69
 introduction
H
AUNTED HOUSES HAVE
fascinated me since I
was a child. In part,
that’s a consequence
of my growing up in
the 1970s, a decade awash in horror
and the occult. It was also the decade
that brought us movies like The House
That Dripped Blood, The Legend of Hell
House, Burnt Offerings, and of course
The Amityville Horror—none of which
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I actually saw until years later, but
about which I had heard many second-
hand tales from older neighborhood
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kids as well as from the proverbial
cousins of my friends, who clearly
had very lenient and open-minded
parents, if even half the stories about
what they were allowed to do are
to be believed.
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THE CURSED CHATEAU is my attempt
to present a haunted house like the
ones I imagined in my childhood,
as seen through the lens of old-school
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fantasy roleplaying games. Consequently,
the chateau is something of a “fun
house,” a term used to describe a style
of early RPG adventure exemplified
by modules like Tegel Manor (written
by Bob Bledsaw and published in 1977
by Judges Guild) and Castle Amber
(written by Tom Moldvay and published
in 1981 by TSR). Depending on one’s
perspective, a fun house is either
“whimsical” or “nonsensical,” in that
its inhabitants and locations show
some degree of randomness.
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One room might contain nothing
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more than some dusty furniture while
the one right next to it is a raucous
spectral dinner party whose participants
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encourage the Player Characters to join
them, and the one right next to that is
home to a collection of skeletons dancing
to music no one but they can hear.
In a fun house, there’s often no way to
door or down a nearby corridor and
that fact irritates some players who
value naturalism and rationality even
in their fantasy. Without it, they argue,
it’s difficult, if not impossible, to plan
ahead or think strategically and thereby
minimize the likelihood of their
characters suffering some terrible fate.
I’m sympathetic to this perspective and,
in general, my adventure locales are
fairly reasonable, even orderly places
that “make sense”—which is precisely
why a place like the chateau makes
for a good change of pace!
One of the reasons I liked stories of
haunted houses as a child was because
haunted houses defied logic. The creepy
things that supposedly happened inside
them—disembodied voices, bleeding walls,
apparitions—represented incursions of
the weird and the supernatural into our
humdrum existence. They were
frightening precisely because they
followed their own rules rather than
those of the rational, scientific,
mechanistic world we believe
ourselves to inhabit. To my mind, that’s
what a fun house adventure locale does,
too: it breaks the rules of the game and
does its own thing.
Consequently, THE CURSED CHATEAU,
like most fun houses, is a difficult
adventure. The titular curse under
which the chateau has fallen literally
changes the rules of Lamentations of
the Flame Princess in various ways, both
subtle and obvious. These changes
punish certain types of behavior and
reward others. Players who either fail
to grasp the nature of the curse or who
choose to act against that nature will
soon find their characters suffering
under great disadvantages. This is by
design. At the same time, the chateau
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and its inhabitants aren’t wholly devoid
of meaning. There are clues, hints,
and information scattered about that
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perceptive and patient players may
discover so as to make their characters’
explorations less deadly. Such players
may even see their characters escape
the chateau not only alive but also
richer and wiser.
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THE CURSED CHATEAU existed in
two versions prior to the present one.
The original version was submitted to the
Fight On!/Otherworld Miniatures Adventure
Contest in the summer of 2008, where
it won Honorable Mention. A slightly
expanded version was later published in
2009 as a separate product. The version
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you now hold in your hands is much
larger than either of the two previous
versions and contains many changes
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and expansions. Some of these changes
were necessitated by the default
historical setting of Lamentations of
the Flame Princess; others were the
result of years of having run the
adventure myself and listening to the
feedback of others who did so as well.
It is hoped that this latest version will
be as well received as its predecessors.
— James Maliszewski
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 background
L
ORD JOUDAIN AYARAI
was the scion of a long
line of aristocrats in the
remote province of France
known as Averenha in the
local Occitan dialect. His family had been
wealthy and influential for longer than
any could remember. An only child, his
parents died when he was four years
old, entrusting him to older relatives
and servants, who cared for his education
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and upbringing. A precocious, charming
boy, Lord Joudain matured first into a
vain, dissolute youth and then a jaded,
venal adult. He had the power, money,
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and influence to satisfy his every desire
and did so—but it was not enough to
overcome his ennui.
Lord Joudain turned to necromancy,
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black magic, and eventually devilry as
means to alleviate his world-weariness
and boredom. He communed with
elemental entities, slew his servants
and raised them from the dead, and
even summoned demons from Beyond,
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but he found no pleasure in any of these
activities. Lord Joudain eventually came
to the conclusion that the mortal realm
offered him nothing but tedium and so
committed suicide according to a ritual
found in an ancient grimoire in the hope
that the next world might prove more
interesting than the present one.
Lord Joudain’s consciousness persisted
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after his death, just as he had hoped.
Rather than moving on to some other
plane of existence—or even the heaven,
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hell, or purgatory preached by the
Church—his being was instead bound
to his earthly home for reasons he had
neither anticipated nor could explain.
He could not move on to whatever
reward—or punishment—awaited him
forever linked to his chateau.
Unable to manifest himself in a visible
form for long, Lord Joudain can, however,
influence events within his old home
and command his now-undead servants
(see Joudain’s Fun, below). He can also
create a magical barrier that prevents
entrance to and egress from the chateau’s
grounds. This last ability is the primary
way Lord Joudain now seeks to entertain
himself: trapping foolhardy travelers
and tormenting them. As soon as the
characters enter the grounds of the
chateau, they are Joudain’s prisoners
and he intends to make full use of
them for his own purposes.