[RPM] Thresholds and Wards (Safe as Houses, Pyramid 3-58)

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Icelander

As it turns out, a luxury hunting cabin owned by two doctors, close 'friends'* whose bachelor apartments in different cities actually represent the concept of home less for them than this cabin, has enough of a threshold to matter.

I find Safe as Houses tends towards decent thresholds. I'm getting about an 11 on the cabin. It goes up if you say they've lived there longer than a year, and it goes down if you count it being a shared residence and being used for something other than hunting.

I've done the work for some homes of family members, and gotten some pretty high numbers: Granddad's threshold is easily 16, and likely a bit higher. If the house's inhabitants are religious (particularly in certain ways) the numbers go way up. You don't actually need generations.

If you want a crappy threshold, you either need a rapid turnover apartment, abuse, or supernatural involvement. If you don't have one of those, you're likely to have at least a 9.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by ericthered

I find Safe as Houses tends towards decent thresholds. I'm getting about an 11 on the cabin. It goes up if you say they've lived there longer than a year, and it goes down if you count it being a shared residence and being used for something other than hunting.

They've owned it for nine years. They spend most of their vacations there and sometimes go up for weekends. All in all, maybe 50-70 days per year. They are able to live there together as a normal couple, which they could not do when visiting each other's apartments in Boston or Baltimore, as each of them has colleagues that they are not comfortable knowing the truth about them.

Metaphysically, the cabin probably counts as 'home' for both of them, even if they spend more time in their apartments near their respective hospitals. They have spent a lot of time decorating the place and making it theirs. It is comfortable, beautiful and reflective of their tastes and personalities. They both take a lot of pride in it.

One doctor believes in the supernatural, but is not traditionally religious, the other is Catholic by upbringing, but does not really believe in the supernatural. They have many guests there twice a year, long-standing family friends in both cases. Close family also visits more often than that, as the siblings of Dr. Harvey Allen do not object to his 'lifestyle'.*

The PCs specifically noticed when they arrived there that the doors were decorated with art that reminded them of the protective charms that Joe Greybear whittled from wood. There were little icons around some windows and around the backdoor, wolves, eagles, bears, foxes and badgers. The back door also had a bear's face carved into it and the front door a wolf. Those were not the hungry, wounded animals that the PCs associate with the murders they were investigated, but healthy animals whose stances suggest protectiveness. There were also wind chimes at both doors, glass bells in some windows, a horseshoe over the front door and in the stairs to the basement and a fairly large silver cross in the dining room, which belonged to Dr. Allen's grandmother.

One might wonder whether someone who lived there was actively trying to improve the threshold. Perhaps he feared something.

The threshold has been weakened by certain events, though. A person who often stayed in the basement during the yearly hunts may have been meddling in dark forces. Granted, any actual rituals would have been carried out elsewhere, but someone who sacrifices young women to hungry spirits probably carries a taint everywhere he goes. And some evidence indicates that a particular spirit may have been invited in once. The invitation has been revoked and protective charms put up to prevent him returning, but the threshold was still damaged.

Still much better than nothing. I'll simply rule that the basement does not benefit from the treshold, as that's where the dark entity visited. The basement will have a TR of at least 7 lower than the house itself.

I'll offer Maria Lucia's player the option of excluding the upstairs guest bedroom from the protection of her ritual, as well. Just draw the line of salt and blood outside the door to that room, instead of at the windows there. That way, she can use the higher threshold of the house without damage to it that the events in that bedroom would have caused, at the cost of leaving a room in the house open to evil influences. They'll nail up the broken windows and maybe even bar the doors, leaving what is in there isolated from the benign and protective energy.

That seems safe.

*Though they, privately, object to his life-partner, whom they view as cold, distant and even creepy.