Start with your classic Winchester mansion setup - eccentric family, probably noble, maybe got their money from logging? They live a bit away from the nearby town, and the locals don’t like going there. There are rumours of people going missing, and the family are constantly hiring new staff to attend to the steadily-increasing mansion.
By now your players are probably going to think vampires or a cult. Therein lies the red herring.
The players go up to investigate. Maybe they pose as labourers, or guards from the town. That’s when they find the mansion is currently having a new extension built. Inside is a chaotic sprawl of dead ends, doors to nowhere, rooms within rooms, stairways that go into the ceiling, that sort of thing. There is no floor plan. The staff don’t like going anywhere alone. The family seems very large, with lots of children, but nobody will give you a clear answer on how many people live there.
The family, again, are wealthy, vain and eccentric. They were nouveau riche, but that was long enough ago that they can almost be considered old money by this point. The apparent family matriarch is oddly young, barely middle-aged. Her eldest son (16) is gearing up to take over the family business. There are assorted aunts and uncles, nieces and nephews, but no old folk. She insists her husband is ‘out’.
The family aren’t terrible, all things considered. They like to give tours of the house, and consider its architectural weirdness a charm point. They laugh at the incredible creepiness. You get used to it, they say. The staff don’t like to look at them. They’re all a bit artsy, and they love interior design - it’s why the keep expanding. The children aren’t creepy, but they are everywhere, usually gathered in flocks by harried-looking nannies. A headcount suggests dozens. Near the expansion you find a workshop making furniture for the new parlour. An uncle with big, tough hands. He barely notices when he nicks his finger with a chisel. He just looks at the wound with a tired resignation. He quickly smothers the injury with a rag when he notices the party. He’s the younger brother of the former, now-absent, patriarch.
Feel free to scatter more mysteries here. Talk to the workers and you find out that they constantly need new workers, but that’s because so many suddenly quit and leave. They don’t go back to the town. People disappear from the house, but it’s mainly the family. Older relatives, not young like you’d expect from vampires. A hidden portrait gallery, with hundreds of paintings. Nobody older than middle-aged at time of painting. The freshest painting looks like the matriarch’s eldest, but as a man, presumably his father. It was painted just last year. None of them have a date of death. A strange feeling of being watched in the newer bits of the building, and a tomb-like feeling in the hub. A beautiful, ethereal figure half-glimpsed in the background of several paintings, looking increasingly sour.
One night, an old crone arrives, begging shelter. When let in, though, she points at the matriarch and declares this whole place cursed, and if she had any love left in her ‘cold-wood heart’ she would tear this house to the ground and never come back. The crone leaves without another word.
At the end of the party’s stay, the family are ready to announce the grand opening of the new parlour. It’s rich, extravagant, all wood panels and hand-carved furniture. There’s a reception. The party might finally notice something weird about one of the chairs. The wood-grain almost looks like the jacket you saw in the patriarch’s painting. Whoops! Rumbled.
If you wanted a boss fight to close, this would be a good time for the uncle to transform. The party notice than his hands look less like skin now and more like gnarled wood. Too soon, he says. It’s his 35th birthday tomorrow, he says. Just one more night. The family look at him with a weird expression. Not fear. Certainly not sorrow. It’s almost ... hunger.
He begins to transform. He becomes a mighty tree monster, and bellows that they won’t take him alive. The fight commences. After he’s defeated, as a final blow, the new patriarch sunk a wood axe into his former uncle’s face. If necessary, the matriarch will explain.
The party leaves unable to cure the family’s mania. She assures them not to worry ... they’ve got plenty of material to repair the parlour now.
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