House of Hell - Attempt 6

Last time, I was close enough to beating House of Hell that I was legitimately shocked when I didn't win.  It's all down to that brilliant, devious bastard Steve Jackson; why require a hidden key for the final room when you can make it two hidden keys?  So now I'm back at it, and on the look-out for the cast-iron key that will hopefully lead me on to victory.

For this attempt, I rolled a Skill of 10, a Stamina of 19, a Luck of 9 and a maximum Fear of 9.  That Fear score is the only worry: it's the minimum amount you can beat the book with, so I can't afford to take any chances.  One errant scare and it's all over, so I'm sticking to all the familiar pathways.  That means that this attempt is going to look very similar to my last couple, so I'm just going to run it down in point form without the usual flourishes (such as they are).

• You know the drill by now: rainy night, crashed car, spooky house, looking for a phone.  Lovely dinner with the Earl of Drumer where I avoid eating cheese or white wine.  (It's so hard.  I bloody love cheese.)
• Woken up in the night by the hunchback Shekou bringing me a drink.  We fight, and despite our equal Skill scores he pummels me down to 11 Stamina before I wallop him with a Luck-enhanced blow.
• Out on the landing I turn right (avoiding the encounter with the ghost bride and its attendant Fear increase), and head to the rain-soaked window where I find the following message: "Mordana in Abaddon".
• Back to the landing, I enter a storeroom where I take a meat-knife that I plan to do murders with.  Good murders, on bad people.
• Further around the landing, I enter the Abaddon Room and touch the gross dead old lady in the bed (raising my Fear to 2).  I have to fight her dogs with my knife, which further reduces my Stamina to 9.  Afterwards I question her about secret doors, and learn about the one under the cellar stairs.
• I head down to the ground floor and enter the drawing room.  I drink some brandy, which restores my Stamina to 12, and take some in a flask.  Investigating the fireplace I am attacked by Fire Sprites, which I smother with a curtain.
• I find a button on the fireplace, and pressing it sends me down a chute to the cellar.  The fall raises my Fear to 3.  In the cellar I meet Shekou again, and ply him with brandy to learn that the secret door password is like the name of the house - Drumer - but mixed up.
• I am set upon by bats (raising my Fear score to 4), and hide under the cellar.  There I find a secret door, speak the password - murder - and find the Kris Knife.  My Luck is restored back to 9.
• I head upstairs and enter a room with a table and six chairs.  There's a mirror that casts no reflection, which raises my Fear score to 5.  (Somewhere, there's an FF player whose character died because of this.)  The mirror is a portal into another room.  I find a golden key in a secret drawer under the table.  I hear voices coming, so I jump through the portal to escape.

The room beyond the mirror has two rooms, but in my last game I ignored them and went back through the portal to meet my eventual demise in the dreaded kitchen.  This time I tried the door on the right.  It was locked, but I was able to open it with my golden key.  The room beyond was empty, but I could see recent footprints on the dusty floor.  They led to a corner of the room, where I found a loose stone, and behind the stone there was a cast-iron key, with the number 27 on it.

I headed back through the mirror and out into the hallway, where I continued until I was faced with the choice of two doors.  The one on the right led to the Kitchen of Inescapable Doom, so I chose the one on the left.  I was able to open it with the cast-iron key (by subtracting the number 27 from my current paragraph), and enter the dining-room where I had previously taken supper with the Earl of Drumer.

I rang the bell to summon Franklins the butler, who in turn fetched Lord Kelnor, the Earl of Drumer.  Neither were happy at being summoned like this, and their mood didn't improve when I told them that I was here to put a stop to their Satanic goat-hatted shenanigans.

What is up with Franklins' forehead?

They advanced upon me, and I had to choose which of the two to attack first.  Remembering the First Law of Villain Identification - the butler did it - I jumped Franklins.  He tried to flee but I pressed the attack, stabbing him with the Kris Knife.  At that wound he shrieked, and underwent a hellish, hideous transformation...

His forehead is probably less freaky than Franklins'.

He was a Hell Demon, and the sight of him raised my Fear score to 8.  Bolstered by the Kris Knife, however, I leapt into the fray.

(At this point, I had to make a rules judgement.  The book says that, in this battle, the Kris Knife boosts my Skill by 6 points.  I had to decide whether this was added to my initial Skill of 10, or my unarmed Skill of 7.  Reading the rules and looking at some previous weapon-related paragraphs, I regretfully concluded that I should add it to my unarmed Skill.  This gave me a Skill total of 13, one point lower than the Demon's whopping 14.  We both had 12 Stamina.)

We went blow for blow, quite literally, with the Demon wounding me twice, and me wounding him twice.  I had the advantage, though, as I was able to successfully test my Luck to double the damage dealt.  With my Stamina at 8 and his at 4, I struck again.  Once more my Luck was with me, and I dealt the Hell Demon a killing blow.

The Earl of Drumer burst into tears, cradling the Hell Demon's body, but I had more immediate concerns: a chandelier had set some curtains on fire and the house was about to go up.  I raced outside (not through the kitchen I assume), and watched the House of Drumer burn to the ground.  A fitting end, for a house of hell!

THE POST-GAME
Huzzah!  No more House of Hell!  Well, except for the wrap-up posts.  But as far as playing it goes, I'm done.  I was a bit concerned at the end, due to the extremely high Skill of the Hell Demon.  I made it harder for myself by going with the more difficult rules interpretation, but I'll stand by it as the correct one.  Karma was on my side anyway, as the dice were very kind.

So what's next?  I have to do a Final Thoughts post, and rate the book.  (Spoiler: it's going to do very well.)  Following that, I might do an "Exploring Titan" of sorts where I dig into the various clues around the house and try and piece together some sort of history of the place.  From there it's on to Warlock Magazine #4 (featuring the short adventure The Dervish Stone), and then to Talisman of Death.  We're getting into the books I don't remember so well, and I'm looking forward to it.