Be Leary of the Castle — Ch 4.1
Fresh off their fake graduation, the party blows three weeks chasing a pop star’s tour — until a bar runs dry and a water-stained flyer begs for help against a mist that’s rotting the land and killing every bird for miles. The trail leads to a crumbling distillery castle where the wine is the finest in the world, the hosts are missing an alarming number of fingers, and a masked girl whispers a warning nobody sober would ignore. Be leary of the castle.
| Chapter / Episode | 4.1 — Be Leary of the Castle |
| Arc | Echoes of ITYS (DM Brin) |
| GM | Brin |
| Date / Duration | 2026-02-27 · ~4h00m (gameplay from 00:17:20) |
| Party | Xeros (Dave), Nortle (Steve), TBD (Chris), Foulclaw (Jesse) |
| Sits out | Basil — her player Brin takes the DM chair this arc |
| Ends on | Basil found chained in the castle’s hidden lab, both hands severed, as the harvest closes in |
Synopsis
The new arc opens on a changing of the guard: Brin takes the DM chair, Basil steps off-screen, and the crew is at loose ends after their (extremely fake) Honorary Diploma from the School of ITYS. Armed with fresh Tears of Selûne amulets and two doses each of Purple Filth, they spend three weeks as groupies on the tour of Foulclaw’s beloved kalashtar pop star LaDonna — whose new single Foulclaw has personally streamed to number one on “Bardify.” A round of the Seven Deadly Sips kicks off the bender: Xeros rolls the dreaded eight, downs a diluted dose of Fun powder, and spends the next seven hours as a woman the whole table can’t stop hitting on. When drunk Basil storms off to “blow off steam” (and Xeros instantly whips out his crystal ball to Scry on her — to the DM’s audible despair), the party is left aimless, drinking their way from concert to concert while Xeros slips off nightly to trade philosophy with a group of blue-robed Moonsionaries.
Two things drag them off the tour. First, the armless owlin messenger Herold finally tracks them down and dumps a three-week backlog of Lashara’s Will — a whole handcart of crumpled, unsorted junk they now have to organize. Second, a tavern goes dry: shipments have stopped because a Mist is spreading from Castle Leary, killing all the vegetation and leaving dead birds — feathered, quill-plucked, each with a single stab wound — along the road. A flyer promises “potential compensation” (in fine print), which is exactly TBD’s price. They trek two miles into the breathing, squelching haze — Nortle holding his breath the entire way — and find the once-glorious castle run down and guardless. Inside waits a teenage servant girl in a self-stitched burlap mask with purple glass eyes, breathing through a scrap of cloth, who ushers them in for a docent tour of the founding Leary family: their rise as the biggest distillery in all of Kouréas, their Orchard, and the tragic heir Baeden, who grew obsessed with merfolk and simply vanished.
Dinner is where the trap shows its teeth. The banquet hall is full of gray-skinned, purple-eyed servants — every single one missing a limb, a hand, or fingers — presided over by the robot-stiff Marie Holton, “Duchess consort,” and her daughter Millie, who slips the party a whispered warning: they’ll want your wings, your shell, your horns, and your height — lock your door. Their ruined old victim Morty turns up as the castle mop-boy, gets healed and paid off by Xeros, and flees screaming that they should all run. Then the “customary” drinking game, Ships-Captain-Crew, reveals its true stakes: the wager is body parts, and Nortle loses his right arm. Sent to guest rooms — Xeros into vanished Baeden’s old bedroom, whose fireplace hides footprints — the drunk party mostly forgets to lock up. That night the hypnotized servants come with stretchers. TBD accidentally shrinks to action-figure size in his sleep (they take him anyway); Nortle is wheeled off inside his shell. Only Xeros stays awake — and, using Ghost Step, phases through the walls to loot Marie’s treasure hoard, pocket a Mask of the Mindless and a Ring of Keys, and follow the pulsing dread down to a freakishly advanced, entirely non-magical basement lab. There, over the prepped bodies of his friends and a rack of the castle’s amputees, hangs a white-furred figure with both hands cut clean off. It’s Basil.
🎵 Song Recap (rhyming — drop into an AI song generator)
Scheme: AABB verses + chorus. Suggested vibe: gothic murder-ballad folk with a drunken sea-shanty lilt.
(Verse 1) Three weeks of concerts and a woman named Xena, A crystal-ball spy and a bar that’s gone cleaner; A flyer, a mist, and a whole lotta dread — Follow the road where the birds are all dead.
(Chorus) Be leary! (Be leary!) of the castle by the sea, The wine is a wonder and the rent’s your body; Ship, captain, crew — roll and pray you don’t lose, ‘Cause the losers leave a limb at Castle Leary tonight.
(Verse 2) A girl in a mask says to lock up your door, They’ll want your horns, your wings, and more; Poor Morty’s a mop-boy, he begs you to flee — “Get out of this castle before you’re like me.”
(Verse 3) The turtle’s wheeled off and the Goliath shrinks small, But the tiefling walks straight through the wall; Down past the gold to a lab with no name — White fur in the chains, and it’s never the same.
(Outro) Be leary… the hands on the table are hers, The mist keeps on breathing, the horror-show blurs; They came for a payday, they found a slaughter — and left the arc’s opener on a cliff over water.
📋 Point-by-point breakdown (player catch-up — everything that happened)
00:00:00· 🎭 RP — Cold open + housekeeping: Foulclaw walks everyone through the new inventory — Tears of Selûne amulets (armor of light / spell storing), two doses each of Purple Filth, and paired Span Quills.00:08:40· 🎭 RP — Character re-intros for the new arc: TBD the explosion-obsessed Goliath, Xeros the converting ex-boy-band tiefling, Nortle the athlete monk, Foulclaw the newly-graduated owlin — and Brin introduces herself as the DM (usually Basil).00:17:20· 📖 Recap — Brin rewinds Ch 3.10: the “participation-certificate” graduation, the new amulets, and the crew deciding to follow LaDonna on tour for three weeks — Foulclaw having streamed her single to No. 1 on “Bardify.”00:23:20· 🎲 Mechanic — The Seven Deadly Sips (d8): Xeros rolls an 8 → Fun powder, becoming biologically a woman for seven hours; Nortle & Foulclaw roll Envious Pinot Red (true sight then blindness), and TBD the Slothful Amber Ale (speed then sluggish).00:30:20· 🎭 RP — “Xena, Warrior Princess”: everyone rolls insight and is helplessly attracted to a woman-shaped Xeros; a wing-hug and a toothless-grandma kiss make it deeply weird.00:36:00· 🎭 RP — Drunk Basil slams down her drink and storms off to be alone (“if anybody follows me, I’ll cut you”) — writing her player out of the session — and Xeros immediately pulls his crystal ball to Scry.00:50:40· 📖 Lore — A dry bar: shipments have stopped because of a dark Mist spreading from Castle Leary; a flyer seeks aid “before it consumes us all,” with fine-print compensation.01:02:20· 🎭 RP — At a pawn-shop-style magic shop, the armless owlin Herold finally delivers Lashara’s Will — a handcart of unsorted junk the party must spend days organizing; Nortle buys a vintage LaDonna record.01:16:00· 🧭 Travel — On the road they pass dead birds — quill-plucked, each with one stab wound — and joke it’s Basil’s trail; the Mist thickens, decomposing all vegetation. Nortle holds his breath for the two-mile trek.01:22:40· 🎲 Mechanic — TBD Detects Magic on the rot and finds none — it’s straight-up “rapid accelerated pollution,” biological, not arcane.01:27:20· 🎭 RP — At the guardless castle, a masked servant girl (Millie) in a burlap sack with purple glass eyes drags them inside and fans the seeping mist away with a cloth.01:52:00· 📖 Lore — The foyer docent tour: the founding Leary family built Kouréas’s greatest distillery from their Orchard; the merfolk-obsessed heir Baeden vanished, and the Holtons “assumed” the castle after.02:03:00· 🎭 RP — Millie’s parting whisper — they’ll want your wings, your shell, your horns, your height; lock your door — before she runs off. Xeros Mends her hood into a tailored mask.02:04:20· 📖 Lore — The banquet hall: gray-skinned, purple-eyed servants, every one missing a limb, hosted by robot-stiff Marie Holton and her daughter Millie.02:11:40· 🎭 RP — Their old victim Morty is the castle mop-boy; Xeros Lesser-Restorations him, shoves 200 gold in his pants, and sends him back to ITYS — he panics, asks after “that bitch bunny,” and bolts.02:21:00· 🎲 Mechanic — Dinner is poison “moss soup”; Xeros (now multiclassed cleric) casts Purify Food and Drink, turning it into harmless seaweed water.02:40:00· 🎲 Mechanic — The “customary” drinking game Ships-Captain-Crew: a d4 sets each player’s wager — a body part (right arm / left leg / right leg / refuse = genitalia).03:02:00· 🎲 Mechanic — Nortle loses the game outright and, per the wager, loses his right arm — and everyone realizes why the whole castle is missing pieces.03:05:40· 🎁 Reward — Millie gives the winner Xeros the Mask of the Mindless: a bag-of-holding hood with black-light eyes that reveals glowing traces and guards the mind (10 minutes of air).03:09:20· 📖 Lore — Xeros’s room is dead Baeden’s old bedroom; with the mask on he spots footprints leading to and from the fireplace.03:18:00· 🎲 Mechanic — Night curfew: too drunk to lock their doors, TBD and Nortle are taken on stretchers. TBD accidentally shrinks to seven inches in his sleep — exactly the height they warned him about — but they cart him off regardless.03:21:40· 🎲 Mechanic — Xeros activates Ghost Step, phases through the walls into Marie’s room, and robs her obscene treasury blind, also finding a Ring of Keys (shape-shifting master keys) in the basement library.03:33:00· 🎭 RP — Down in the massive distillery basement, Xeros loots two of every Castle Leary-exclusive spirit (Love Tapped Nectar, Lairnoon, Draught of Ashes and more); Foulclaw finds eight level-three spell scrolls.03:55:00· ⚔️ Combat — Behind a glowing “Jackson Pollock” door: a freakishly advanced, non-magical lab where hypnotized servants prep Nortle and TBD for harvest — and a white-furred figure hangs in chains with both hands cut off. It’s Basil. Initiative, and cut to black.
Player Characters
| Character | Player | Race | Class | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Xeros | Dave | Tiefling | Bard / Cleric | Spends seven hours as “Xena,” Scrys everyone’s secrets, then Ghost-Steps through the walls to rob the castle and find his captive friends |
| Nortle | Steve | Tortle | Monk | Holds his breath through the whole mist; loses the drinking game — and his right arm — then is wheeled off inside his shell |
| TBD | Chris | Goliath | Wizard | The flyer’s fine-print “compensation” is his whole motive; accidentally shrinks to seven inches in his sleep, briefly dodging the harvest |
| Foulclaw | Jesse | Owlin | Sorcerer | Now a full PC — LaDonna’s No. 1 fan, texting her on a hidden Span Quill; drinks the Draught of Ashes and drifts the castle as ash |
| Basil | Brin | Harengon | Fighter | Sits out (Brin is DM); storms off drunk early — and is revealed at the cliffhanger as the castle’s captive, both hands severed |
NPCs
| NPC | Role | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Millie Holton | Masked servant girl; the quest-giver | Made the flyer and her own mask; smart, kind, warns the party what the castle wants — and rewards Xeros with the Mask of the Mindless |
| Marie Holton | ”Duchess consort” of Castle Leary | Robot-stiff, gray-hued, missing fingers; “assumed” the castle after the Learys left; hoards an obscene treasury in her room |
| Pamzy | Half-elf serving woman | The Chris-Farley-voiced cook in yellow rubber gloves; serves the moss soup and the wager drinks |
| Morty | Castle mop-boy | The party’s ruined School of ITYS victim, now a broken servant; healed and paid off by Xeros, he flees warning them to run |
| Herold | Armless owlin messenger | Chases the party across three weeks of concerts to deliver Lashara’s Will — a handcart of unsorted junk |
| LaDonna | Kalashtar pop star | Foulclaw’s beloved; the tour the party crashes for three weeks. “Material Plane Girl,” No. 1 on Bardify |
| Baeden Leary | Vanished heir of the Leary family | Grew obsessed with merfolk and disappeared; his old bedroom (footprints at the fireplace) is where Xeros sleeps |
| Nereza | Nortle’s late “beloved” | Named again as the missing/dead informant — the running “necrophile courtship” gag |
Factions
| Faction | Note |
|---|---|
| Holton family | Marie & Millie; the current keepers of Castle Leary — and, Marie at least, the engine of the body-part harvest |
| Leary family | The founders who built Kouréas’s greatest distillery from the Orchard; gone since Baeden vanished |
| Moonsionaries | Blue-robed moon-missionaries Xeros meets nightly on tour — his Conversion arc, quietly continuing |
| The Church of ITYS | The faith Xeros keeps tithing and praying to; where Morty is sent to seek re-enrollment |
| The Lashïngs | Lashara’s network; her Will (delivered by Herold) is the loose thread pulling the party this arc |
👹 Monsters
| Creature | Encounter | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Hypnotized servants (×3) | The basement lab | Gray, purple-eyed drones prepping Nortle and TBD for the knife; “the crappiest hypnosis ever,” but armed with scalpels — initiative is called on them at the cliffhanger |
| Marie Holton / the Holton harvest | Castle Leary | The true threat: the game and the drinks harvest limbs from anyone who loses; the castle is a slaughterhouse dressed as a distillery |
| The Mist | The whole region | An expanding, “breathing” biological pollution — no magic to it — that decomposes vegetation, kills the birds, and poisons every servant gray |
🎙️ Notable Moments
00:24:26— Kicking off the tour with a round of the Seven Deadly Sips, Xeros rolls the one result the table dreads — an eight.Xeros: Holy — I just rolled an eight. GM: It’s called Fun powder — a magic powder made by reclusive druids. It changes the user’s biological gender for one hour for every ounce consumed. Xeros: I’m going to be the hottest damn angel you guys have ever seen — and I’m gonna lean into it so hard. GM: Your name’s not Xeros right now. It’s Xena, Warrior Princess.
GM (Basil): I’ll be back — and if anybody follows me, I’ll cut you. Xeros: I pull out my crystal ball of telepathy, and I’m going to use Scrying. GM: I knew you were gonna do this. Every single thing I did, I was planning around it — Dave’s gonna pull out that crystal ball, and I don’t know how to combat it. Nortle: Think on your feet!
00:54:50— The bar's run dry and the crew is bored between concerts, until TBD rips a water-stained flyer off the tavern board.TBD: All shipments of spirits are postponed until the darkness passes. Castle Leary seeks aid in solving and containing a dark, mysterious mist. Please help before it consumes us all. TBD: Oh — wait, small print. Potential compensation? Foulclaw: Wait, did you just say there’s a darkness — some problem out there? TBD: I don’t know, I just saw there was a job. And money.
01:16:36— On the road to the castle the party passes a grim little clue — and reads it exactly wrong.GM: You start noticing a lot of dead birds along the trail. They’re missing feathers, and they all have the same wound — one stab. TBD: Are we following the trail of destruction Basil left in her wake? GM: …And they’re all missing their quills. Big falcons, owls, a couple of swans. Foulclaw: Is it only birds? (nobody yet clocks whose feathers those are)
02:03:00— The masked servant girl finishes her cheerful docent tour, then leans in with the line that names the episode.GM (Millie): Listen to me. They’re gonna want your wings. They’re gonna want your shell. They’re gonna want your horns. And they’re definitely gonna want your height. Lock your door. Xeros: As she runs off, I cast Mending on her hood — I’m sick of looking at it — and make it a beautifully tailored mask. TBD: So he doesn’t have to look at it. I lock the door behind her. GM: You hear her in the hallway — holy shit — and she’s gone.
02:14:40— The party's old School of ITYS victim, Morty, turns up as the castle's broken mop-boy; Xeros heals him and pays him to leave.Xeros: (shoving 200 gold in Morty’s pants) You get all the way back to ITYS, and you tell the dean to let you retake this. GM (Morty): It’s too late for me, man. I slept with… Nortle: He slept with his dad! GM (Morty): Where is that bitch bunny? You guys gotta get out of here right now. (he bolts)
02:42:00— Dinner's "customary" house drinking game, Ships-Captain-Crew, turns out to have unusual buy-ins.GM: Everyone roll a d4 — this is your wager. If you rolled a one, you’re betting your right arm. A two, your left leg. A three, your right leg. GM: And if you refuse to wager… you lose your genitalia. TBD: …This is a game? Nortle: What’s important is that you don’t lose.
03:02:00— Nortle loses the game outright — and the castle collects.GM: Grand total, Nortle — you will be losing your right arm. (the whole hall is drooling and laughing) Nortle: I haven’t lost nothing. You don’t know me. I always sleep inside myself. Xeros: Just make sure your right arm is inside your shell when they come in tonight. TBD: …And that’s why everyone here is missing a piece.
03:19:00— When the harvesters come for TBD in the night, a bad roll accidentally saves him.GM: You hear TBD’s door open — the servants pull back the sheets, and… TBD: I shrank in my sleep. I’m the size of an action figure. Good luck figuring this out. GM: It’s just so funny, because Millie warned you they’d want you for your height. Xeros: It’s like Honey, I Shrunk the Kids. (they take the tiny TBD anyway)
03:56:40— Xeros Ghost-Steps into the hidden lab, past the prepped bodies of his friends, and finds who else the castle has been harvesting.GM: As you get closer, you see it has white fur and ears. Both of Basil’s hands are gone. They’ve been cut off — her gauntlets are on the table, half taken apart. TBD: What? No! No! Xeros: …It’s Basil. GM: She’s unconscious, chained by the forearms. And the servants have noticed you. Roll initiative.
🗺️ Locations
| Location | Mentioned / Traveled | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Castle Leary | Traveled | The run-down distillery castle at the mist’s epicenter; a slaughterhouse harvesting body parts behind its “finest wine in the world” |
| The Forbidden Fruits Orchard | Mentioned | The Learys’ cliffside orchard that fed the distillery — the source of the castle’s fabled drinks |
| Iritha | Mentioned | Where LaDonna’s tour is headed next, across the middle sea — the reason the party peels off |
| El Cinede | Mentioned | The floating city (from ch1); the mist notably started spreading right around the party’s graduation up there |
| New Old | Mentioned | The Trinity capital left behind; home of the Church and school |
| The Trinity Cities | Mentioned | The wider Trinity region the tour rolls through |
| Kouréas | Mentioned | The continent; Castle Leary’s distillery supplies most of its alcohol |
🎒 Items
| Item | Used / Introduced | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Tears of Selûne | Used | The graduation amulets — armor of light (+2 AC) or spell storing; Basil’s adds radiant gauntlets that dispel darkness |
| Purple Filth | Introduced | Two doses each, now with “official” rules and Constitution-save side effects |
| Span Quills | Used | Foulclaw’s hidden, pluck-proof quill — he’s been texting LaDonna |
| Fun powder | Used | The eighth of the Seven Deadly Sips; turns Xeros biologically female for seven hours (“Xena”) |
| Envious Pinot Red | Used | Nortle & Foulclaw’s draw — true sight for eight hours, then blindness |
| Slothful Amber Ale | Used | TBD’s draw — extra movement and an extra action, then sluggish disadvantage |
| Mask of the Mindless | Introduced | Millie’s gift to the winner: a bag-of-holding hood with black-light eyes; reveals glowing traces and blocks mind effects, but only 10 minutes of air |
| Ring of Keys | Introduced | Mechanical shape-shifting master keys; opens any non-magical lock once per short rest, and gets painfully hot |
| Love Tapped Nectar | Introduced | A Castle Leary specialty spirit — reveals who cares for you as candlelight; drinking two of anything here knocks you out cold |
| Lairnoon | Introduced | Castle specialty elixir granting advantage on Intelligence checks and decoding hidden language |
| Draught of Ashes | Introduced | Castle specialty drink; lets Foulclaw drift as incorporeal ash, leaving no footprint, scent, or sound |
| Ghost Step Tattoo | Used | Xeros’s incorporeality tattoo — the whole heist runs on phasing through the castle’s walls |
| Distort Value | Used | Xeros’s signature — bumping his Ships-Captain-Crew cargo rolls up a point |
⛩️ Pantheon & Religion
| Power | Mentioned / Seen | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Selûne | Mentioned | The moon goddess whose “Tears” power the amulets; the Moonsionaries Xeros meets are her missionaries |
| Father ITYS | Mentioned | The faith Xeros keeps tithing to and where Morty is sent for redemption |
| Gog | Mentioned | Sworn by out of habit — “Gog help me” — as Xeros slips between his old vices and his new religion |
Cliffhanger
Deep beneath Castle Leary, in a lab too advanced and too un-magical to belong here, hypnotized servants stand over the prepped bodies of Nortle and TBD with scalpels — and chained to the wall by both forearms hangs a white-furred figure whose hands lie bloodied on a nearby table, her gauntlets half dismantled. It’s Basil. The “trail of dead birds” was never a joke. As the servants turn and advance, Xeros and Foulclaw roll initiative — and the arc opener cuts to black on a horror-movie image over the water.
Transcript
Full cleaned transcript: 260227-ch4.1-be-leary-of-the-castle-transcript · bundle on the tedit scratch SSD (
260227-ch4.1).
Related
Echoes of ITYS · 251204-ch3.10-honorary-diploma · 260320-ch4.2-cho-mamas-pho-cup · Castle Leary · Millie Holton · Marie Holton · The Mist · Basil · Baeden Leary · Morty · LaDonna · Mask of the Mindless