S1 - Corven Vell's Hideout
Overview
Corven Vell's Hideout
A Respectable Townhouse Wrapped Around a Private Toxicology Laboratory
Sableglass Row is quiet by Kerse standards: narrow stone townhouses, polished brass knockers, clipped window boxes, and enough money in the masonry that nobody needs to advertise it.
Number seventeen looks almost aggressively ordinary. Pale stone. Dark shutters. A narrow greenhouse extension behind frosted glass. No crest hangs above the door, and the brass nameplate bears only two carefully engraved words:
C. Vell.
Corven Vell's Kerse residence is both a home and a private research site. The front rooms maintain the appearance of a successful independent alchemist's townhouse. The upper workrooms contain his legitimate toxicology practice. Beneath them, behind a reinforced laboratory door, Corven keeps the specimens, correspondence, and comparative research he does not trust to public laboratories or Golden Hand couriers.
Nothing in this location is required to create the Blight Seedling Neutralizer or continue the campaign. The party can ignore the address completely.
Exploring the house provides three kinds of reward: alchemical treasure, evidence about Corven and the Golden Hand, and an optional research method that can reveal later Golden Hand sites earlier than the normal story path.
Three Levels
| Level | Areas | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Ground Floor | H1–H2 | Public residence, security, conservatory. |
| Upper Floor | H3–H5 | Working laboratory, specimen collection, private correspondence. |
| Basement | H6–H7 | Golden Hand security and Corven's restricted comparative laboratory. |
Corven is not present. He took his field case and several current notebooks with him. The house is protected because he expected thieves, rivals, creditors, Golden Hand rivals, or investigators eventually to come looking.
The defenses are not theatrical death traps. They are the precautions of a toxicologist who thinks exposure, contamination, and controlled retreat are perfectly reasonable answers to burglary.
Hook from Reiver's Right
The Kerse Address
A routing slip among the Lower Works research papers identifies a private destination for material belonging to C.V.
C.V. — PERSONAL MATERIAL
Remaining RR specimens to be returned to Kerse residence.
Do not forward through Crucible stores.
Comparative work continues privately.
17 Sableglass Row, Kerse
Below the address, in a different hand, someone has added:
Vell says the house is warded. Send no one without him.
The note is enough. Do not have an NPC order the party to investigate the house. If they choose to follow the address while in Kerse, the hideout is available.
Running the Hideout
Running Corven's Hideout
Corven's house is a compact optional mini-dungeon rather than a conventional residence. The public-facing rooms are neat and restrained. The farther the party penetrates, the more clearly the building becomes a private research facility.
Suggested Progression
- Entry Hall: respectable exterior, reinforced locks, first concealed toxin trap.
- Conservatory: cultivated poisonous plants and a living or constructed guardian.
- Preparation Laboratory: formulas, reagents, tools, unfinished consumables, and crafting treasure.
- Specimen Gallery: labeled samples from unusual plants, venoms, fungi, and contaminated environments.
- Study: correspondence, invoices, Golden Hand evidence, and Corven's private annotations.
- Lower Laboratory: hired guards or a laboratory guardian protecting the secure work area.
- Comparative Laboratory: final trap, assay equipment, reference specimens, and Corven's most important research.
Do not turn this location into an early confrontation with Corven. He should remain available as a recurring antagonist, reluctant informant, rival researcher, or future encounter. The danger here comes from what he left behind.
Security & Consequences
Security, Noise, and Retreat
The house is occupied by a small hired security detail, not an army. Most of Corven's defenses are locks, toxic irritants, controlled ventilation, secure doors, and disposable laboratory hazards.
- H1: Two hired house guards may be present. Use level 1 Guard statistics or an equivalent low-level humanoid guard.
- H2–H5: Primarily hazards and investigation. Loud fighting gives the basement guards time to prepare.
- H6: Two additional guards protect the restricted laboratory. They are paid professionals, not fanatics, and may surrender if clearly outmatched.
- H7: The final defense is an alchemical archive-destruction system rather than another squad of enemies.
This is not an abandoned dungeon. If the party breaks windows, starts a prolonged street fight, sets the building on fire, or leaves bodies in public view, neighbors and authorities can become involved.
A careful infiltration can be completed without creating a citywide problem. The location rewards stealth, deception, Crafting, Thievery, Medicine, Nature, and alchemical knowledge as much as combat.
Final Discovery
Following the Blight Backward
Corven's deepest work is not a cure. It is a method of comparison. He discovered that infernal growths retain tiny chemical signatures from the stock, reagents, soil, stone dust, preservatives, and environmental contaminants present where they were propagated.
A neutralized specimen can therefore be compared against known samples. The result cannot name its creator or produce a magical arrow pointing toward a location, but it can establish that two specimens came from the same cultivated stock or identify unusual traces associated with a particular preparation site.
Later, after the party acquires a neutralized Infernal Seedling, Blightroot, Blight Crown, or comparable specimen, Corven's method can reveal an additional investigative lead toward a Golden Hand staging site.
The strongest use is an earlier lead toward the operation associated with the Pulgari Estate. Without the kit, the campaign reaches that material through its normal clues.
Corven Vell's Comparative Assay Kit
A Portable Laboratory for Comparing Infernal Blight Specimens
A fitted darkwood case holds silver capillary tubes, treated slides, indicator salts, calibrated glassware, botanical stains, a cold-iron mortar, separation coils, and a set of sealed reference samples labeled in Corven's precise hand.
Comparative Blight Assay
With a neutralized blight specimen, the kit, and 1 hour of laboratory work, a trained alchemist can compare the sample against Corven's reference collection.
The analysis can establish shared cultivated origin and identify distinctive contaminants such as unusual soil, mineral dust, preservatives, masonry residue, or specialized reagents.
This equipment does not create the neutralizer and does not replace Morwenna's work. It gives the party an optional method for extracting more information from specimens they later neutralize.
Corven's house should be unusually rewarding to an alchemist. Spread the treasure through H3, H4, H5, and H7 rather than placing everything in one chest.
- 12 gp of usable alchemical raw materials divided among labeled salts, solvents, binders, oils, dried plants, and mineral reagents.
- Formula notes for antidote, antiplague, acid flask, bottled lightning, smoke ball, lethargy poison, giant centipede venom, and cognitive mutagen, subject to normal formula and Crafting rules.
- A handful of finished level-appropriate consumables selected from Corven's formula book.
- Rare specimen ingredients that can later justify unusual one-off alchemical preparations.
The formulas are the long-term prize. The finished consumables and raw materials provide an immediate payoff without making this optional site necessary for progression.
copy of plans at Esteemed Bureaucratic Foundation
