Here, where the writ of the Shuttered City ends at the borders of the Kingswood, lies Goss Hall. Its lord, Alan Goss, is an avid hunter and has filled nearly every room of his hall with hunting trophies brought back from the wild wood. Everywhere you go, the shining eyes of the dead beasts seem to track you and their yellowed teeth form constant leers. Every so often the baying of the long-tongued hounds that Lord Goss keeps well-fed on the blood of his kills can be heard.
Lord Goss himself is tall, handsome and whip-thin and seemingly not the worse of wear from the debauchery that keeps him up each night. He is constantly surrounded by mass of bards, mistresses and sycophants and often says that if a man hunts in the Kingswood it does not do to sleep even a moment when the sun is not in the sky.
As for Lady Goss, she is never seen and rumor states (falsely) that he has won himself an elven bride that he keeps locked in his highest tower. If one is to look for Alan Goss’s secrets it would be better to look low than high for beneath Goss Hall is a deep dungeon and worms north into the Kingswood. The dungeon’s twisting passageways are dug out of the raw earth and it is only the roots of the trees that lie above it that have kept (most of) it from collapsing.
In this dungeon a sorcerer in Lord Goss’s employ draws life from the trees of the Kingswood and crafts new life out of the limbs and organs of the creatures that Lord Goss brings back from his hunts. This is the source of the Hall’s servants, a quiet and efficient lot that wear loose robes to cover their “gifts.”
So far Alan Goss has been able to keep these experiments secret from even his own heirs, a fractious lot of Lord Goss’s adult children who are constantly conspiring against each other, although it might be some time before any of them inherits for their father looks not a day older than his eldest daughter.
Connections:
- One of the reasons for Lord Goss’s success is his displacer beast cloak (16.15), which makes it difficult to judge his position.
- Alan Goss is a former King of Hound’s Hearth (05.12) and was just barely able to escape his impending execution with several Houndishman heirlooms.
Hooks:
- What beasts has Lord Goss slain?
- Why does Alan feed his dogs blood?
- Why does Lord Goss stay up each night and never sleep unless the sun is in the sky?
- Who’s Lady Goss?
- What sort of things are being created in Goss Hall’s dungeons?
- Have some rooms collapsed? What was in them?
- Why isn’t Alan Goss aging?
- Why were the Houndishmen going to execute their king? What did Alan Goss take with him? What are the houndishmen doing to get it back?
