Cursed mansion

**Cursed mansion**ArchitectureHistoryRelationshipsstatushistory
Monster explanation (Excerpt from documents in the reference room of the Adventurers’ Guild):

Cursed Mansion

This is a building inhabited by Undead who move and manipulate its doors, stairs, and furniture. Strictly speaking, the building itself is not a monster, but it is referred to as one for convenience’s sake.

In many cases, these are formerly residences of nobles and wealthy merchants, and they come into existence when these residences become the scenes of tragic incidents such as when the residence’s owners massacre their entire family or torture and kill their servants or lovers.

Because countless Undead exist within the mansion’s grounds, forming a collective with the mansion at its center, the Cursed Mansions themselves are considered as a whole when counting multiple of them, rather than counting the individual monsters within them.

The difficulty of destroying one such mansion depends on the size of the grounds, the hidden mechanisms installed in it, and how powerful the Undead within are.

A merchant’s mansion may sometimes contain hidden chambers to store secret treasures, but the mansions of nobles often contain hidden mechanisms such as emergency escape passages. There are even nobles who install hidden mechanisms that could not possibly see any regular use.

The monsters that appear within these mansions are often the servants, prostitutes, and abducted children who have become Undead; few of them are Undead that can cast spells, like Liches.

However, one must not let their guard down inside such a mansion, as it is possible to get ambushed from one’s blind spot by Ghosts, who are largely unaffected by physical attacks; mansion decorations that are haunted to become Living Mail Armors and Cursed Paintings; and Cursed Weapons.

When a mansion is abandoned for several centuries and it becomes heavily corrupted by miasma, it becomes almost identical to a real Devil’s Nest, making it even more dangerous as the garden’s plants and the insects and rodents living in the mansion become monsters as well.

Mansions previously belonging to nobles with a court rank of baron or lower are often smaller and have few hidden mechanisms. Five clerics with ability equivalent to that of D-class adventurers will suffice to purify such mansions. However, the purification of mansions previously belonging to nobles with a court rank of duke or higher quite often requires high priests with ability equivalent to that of A-class adventurers.

In Orbaume, there are few commissions to purify Cursed Mansions posted at the Adventurers’ Guild, but in other duchies, this task is sometimes performed by adventurers rather than the Church.

Before accepting this task, we recommend discussing things in detail with the client – Things such as ensuring that they will not demand compensation for the destruction of works of art that have become monsters, or confirming whether they would prefer that walls and doors be left intact.

Incidentally, dealing with a Cursed Mansion is considerably easier if the client does not mind if spells are cast repeatedly from outside the grounds until the entire mansion is destroyed, or the entirety of the grounds is doused in oil and set alight.

However, be aware that in many cases, the client will not allow such measures. Even if they do, if a stray spell hits another noble’s mansion or the flames spread to adjacent properties, the client and the adventurers performing the task will be held responsible. At best, they may get away with paying large sums as reparations; at worst, they could even be hanged. Therefore, we advise caution.

As the champion Farmaun Gold once said, “Living humans are scarier than the dead.”