The Maestro Mortician

House Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rlTrdf4tTy8

Melton - aka The Maestro Mortitian - Male Human Musician

Meltan was a musical genius. He was born in Drayton to Annabelle and Hogran Dorth, poor farmers on the outskirts of town. His younger years were spent exploring the town and forest. He loved birds and could identify the sounds of any one he heard. He was an excellent whistler. In his teens he received his first piano, inherited from an elderly neighbor who passed away. He learned to play by ear, and quickly became a local legend for his rousing folk songs.

At 16, his father died protecting the family from a bielburt swarm. His mother lived, but suffered severe nerve damage. For a decade he remained in Drayton taking care of her. When she died, he finally left to discover the world.

He traveled the world, playing shows in taverns and restaurants. It was in Azulia that he met the love of his life, Persephone. She was an incredible pipe organ player. They married and moved back to Drayton where she worked in the church as resident musician.

By this time, Drayton was in decline with much of the population leaving or dying off. Not much need for a musician. Melton buckled down and became the town mortician. He spent his fortune to buy Heln Manor from the estate of the late mayor of town, and built a new morgue beneath it.

Melton and Persephone had a little girl named Annabelle in his mother's namesake. He loved her more than anything in the world. And by ten years old she was becoming quite the musician as well. She died in a bielburt attack. He was never the same again after that. He became despondent - experimenting in secret with necromantic and arcane art. He searched endlessly for a way to escape death until his obsession pushed the two of them apart. Persephone left him on his 50th birthday.

His studies required bodies. Luckily as a mortician he had the perfect cover. But as the population dwindled, he needed to speed along the process. During this time he developed a ritual that could remotely summon demons to attack and capture those he needed. He became adept at covering up his murders, and escaped detection from the minutemen for years.

He succeeded in discovering a magic that would allow his soul to become imbued in an amulet for eternity. Around this time his accomplice Jacob betrayed him to the minutemen. The night they came for him, he rushed down to his basement morgue and completed the ritual, sealing himself within the amulet.

Years later, Bethany Trashrich, daughter of Uazentonian noble Bagthony Trashrich found the amulet. She was also a budding musician, and reminded Melton of his daughter. Through the amulet, he twisted her mind and guided her to Heln Manor. She would enter the summoning room and exact pain and horrors on all Melton saw fit.

**Timeline A**

The bards Garamond and Kervon were hired by Bagthony Trashrich to track down his daughter and return her. They met up time Timeline A version of Vyk and worked together to save Bethany. They managed to shatter the amulet, finally sealing The Maestro Mortician's fate.

**Final Letter**

*"My dearest Persephone,*

*I’m afraid the time has come for my final*
correspondence, not that you’d ever respond anyway. You were right about
everything. My guilt… weighs on me. But the experience is unlike any emotion of
precedence. It manifests itself in ways that I’m not sure could be explained in
any… corporeal manner.

*Your pipe organ has been relocated – I*
think you’d be pleasantly surprised by what I believe to be one of my more
clever machinations. It will keep our secret safe until your inevitable return.

*I’ve entrusted Jacob this letter, and*
ordered him into hiding far away after finding you. Tonight the minutemen will
surely come for me. But I do not fear them, for I have seen into the fires of
eternity – a vision so frightening that to fear anything lesser becomes an
impossibility.

*In those fires however, I have found*
salvation - a way back.

*Time is but a window. Death*
is but a door. How I long to hear your sweet music once more.

*Forever.*

*Yours tru"*

On entering: You enter an enormous foyer with ornate décor.
In the center, a semi-circular staircase leads up to a balcony, and another set
of steps leads up into darkness. Two larger than life murals flank the sides of
the second staircase. The leftmost features a somber scene of a funeral for a
small child. A mourning crowd pays their respects, while an angelic childish
figure emerges from her open grave. Its expression and pose leaves you with
uncertainty as to if it is being lifted to the heavens, or dragged below the
ground. The rightmost painting depicts simply a shining blur, and it hurts to
look at. You feel compelled to avert your gaze.

Right side of the room: Ornate brass grating featuring
bas-relief angels separates this room from a deep shaft. To the right, you see
a hand crank embedded into a recess in the wall. To the left of the shaft is a
medium sized chute leading down. In the corner is a grand piano.

Left side of the room: Twilight seeps into the room through
tall, purple, tattered curtains. Patterns of light stretch across the room,
creating visages of haunted faces across the wood floor. Some seem to change
expression in the corner of your eye. …but it must be a trick of the light. A
heavy oak desk also sits on this side.

If look at the desk: Various everyday items are strewn about
the desk, but it looks like it hasn’t been used in a decade. There are also
some framed sketches. One features a string quartet of older men. The other is
a portrait of a beautiful middle-aged woman. A number of locked drawers are
built into the front.

TL drawer: An ink bottle, a pen, and a number of pieces of
parchment. It looks like it was hastily thrown into the drawer. One of the
pieces of parchment looks like a note.

BL drawer: A box containing a violin. It’s terribly warn
out, but mostly in tune. It is identical to the violin held by an old man in
the quartet sketch.

BR drawer: Empty. Secret drawer DC 12: 10 gp

Room with pipe organ – Must open by playing: A, E, D-sharp,
B, A, C, D, B-flat

As the elevator settles into its lowered position, a wall
torch on the opposite end of the room ignites.

Two by two, pairs of torches along the walls ignite,
revealing two long tables, a smaller table containing some sort of tools, a
receptacle in the wall meant to hold ice dropped from the chute on the first
floor, and eight rectangular drawers built into the walls. It seems to be a
relatively ordinary room meant to prepare dead bodies, if it weren’t for the
completely out of place pipe organ at the far end of the room.

The key guard is up, and the seat has a small area unmarked
by dust. A yellowed, open letter sits atop the sheet stand.

*Killing them was not*
my pleasure; I had to off them for good measure.

Deaths –
Aaemul Dabford – Dead by duel
Elliot Grimshank  - Bielburt got him
Darby Dubjarek – Died with a sharp pain to the neck
Berto Lik – Heart attack
Andy Krakick – Died in war from sword
Cordon Lerik – Lack of water
Dobey Yeimnek – Suicide
Bo Bunick – Flattened by a piano

Enemy dialog:

**0:49 in Ben’s Theme**

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YX6vb1B4DXw

On Kervon grabbing amulet:

You immediately receive a vision. You see Sydmon, years ago,
teaching you to do a coin trick. You’re very young – a child. You feel all of
it too as if you’re there. A sense of surprise, wonder, and a revelation.

The scene melts away into another. You and Twee are running
away from someone, grasping a fancy hat. You turn a corner and hide behind
rubbish as Duke Cressyvin runs past in the wrong direction. You can barely
contain your laughter.

You see your mother. You’re in a crib. Your vision is very
foggy. You hear her voice tell you that you’re the most beautiful baby she’s
ever seen.

Your vision comes back to normal, and you see an old man
standing behind the others.

“Kervon… I know why you came here. You believe what you’re
investigating has something to do with the song you’ve been hearing. Alas, it
is not me. But… I do know where it comes from Kervon. I can show you all of the
answers you seek. I can end the pain.
Kill them. Kill them all.

**2:10 in Ben’s Theme**