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.