Draft:House of the Eclipse
The House of the Eclipse is Rampart's brothel. A paid night includes dinner, companionship, healing and experience; characters interested in neither men nor women can spend the evening on games or conversation instead. Forcing the inner door offers no shortcut to those services.
| Location | City travel name | Service hours | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Random building behind a closed outer door | brothel | 21:00-06:59 | 500 Au for a stay |
Entering
Find and open the building's outer door, then the service presents a separate reinforced inner door. Choose to try entering, then a to knock. At night the bouncer asks for 500 Au. During the day there is no answer to a knock. The service does not activate in Shadowform.
Agreeing to pay without enough cash causes 25 unstoppable damage and no admission. Declining the price avoids this penalty. The inner-door menu's other approaches do not use your ordinary lockpicking or bashing skills:
| Attempt | At night | During the day |
|---|---|---|
| b: Pick the lock | The bouncer throws you out; no direct damage | The door is bolted and barred; no entry |
| c: Bash the door | You rush through the opening door into a wall: 20 unstoppable damage | The door resists: 1 unstoppable damage |
The paid evening
Dinner is described as takeout from Les Crapuleux. The company depends on the preference chosen during character creation. That prompt advertises m and f, but also accepts y for either and n for neither. The House does not offer a new preference selection on arrival.
| Male company | Female company |
|---|---|
| Skarn the Insatiable, a satyr | Noreen the Nymph (omaniac) |
| Dryden the Defanged, an incubus | Angelface, a recanted succubus |
| Gorgar the Equipped, a centaur | Corporal Sue of the City Guard, moonlighting |
| Hieronymus, a mendicant priest of Eros | Sheena the Queena the Jungle, a wereleopard |
One name is selected randomly from the appropriate group, giving each a 1/4 chance. An either preference first chooses a group with equal probability, so each of the eight names has a 1/8 chance per stay. There is no menu to request a particular person. These are the named companions in the evening's narrative, not a selection of monsters placed in a room for combat or theft. Their individual names and species do not change the stay's reward.
With a neither preference, the evening instead consists of German Whist, philosophical discussion, chess or recounting your adventures to the employees. The four activities have the same benefits.
Recovery and rewards
A paid stay:
- Clears poison and disease and fills HP to its maximum.
- Sets nourishment to 40, about forty ordinary hourly hunger checks.
- Trims temporary attribute excess above normal maxima, accounting for equipped-item effects, but does not fully restore drained attributes.
- Adds one current Intelligence for a neither preference, or one current Constitution otherwise. The corresponding maximum is not increased.
- Awards 100 experience, shared with active guild experience pools in the usual way.
Other conditions are not comprehensively cured. Mana is not directly restored by the stay, although gaining a character level from the experience can replenish it through the ordinary level-up reward.
The attribute bonus is not unlimited permanent training. A healthy character with Intelligence 12/12 can leave at 13/12, but another stay trims the excess before adding the next point, leaving 13/12 again. The same principle applies to Constitution. A drained value can gain one point per stay, while other drained attributes remain damaged.
Time and the calendar
An evening arrival finishes in the 08:00 hour; an after-midnight arrival finishes in the 09:00 hour. The minute within the hour is retained, so 21:30 leads to 08:30, and 03:30 to 09:30.
The calendar handling is inconsistent: the evening stay crosses midnight without advancing the date, while the after-midnight stay adds a date despite ending later that same morning. The stay jumps the clock rather than simulating each intervening hour. Keep this in mind when planning around daily stock changes or other services tied to dates.
Strategy
Knock and pay when you want the service. Thief rank, a better lockpick or greater Strength will not turn either menu intrusion into free admission.
For poison and disease alone, the tavern offers a much cheaper 10 Au cure. The healer treats injuries for 50 Au. The House combines a full HP refill, food, experience and a small current-attribute bonus; compare that package with the cheaper individual services instead of treating its 500 Au price as mandatory recovery.
For damage across several attributes or a broad reset of temporary conditions, compare the Arms: neither the House's single-point bonus nor its healing is the same as a week's restoration of current attributes. Repeated stays also cost money and require another nighttime visit.
Trivia
The collision from a nighttime door charge can receive the death attribution a move worthy of Clouseau, invoking the accident-prone inspector from the Pink Panther films. BFI: The Return of the Pink Panther
Sheena the Queena the Jungle echoes the comics heroine Sheena, Queen of the Jungle; Omega recasts the named companion as a wereleopard. The shared title supports the allusion, rather than a claim that the two characters have identical abilities. Dynamite: Sheena comics