He stood over the unfinished portrait on the easel. It had been an ill-defined outline of a woman’s face, the eyes still empty. Just the almond outline and eyebrows done, waiting for the artist to capture the hardest part of any woman. He pondered the direction he should take. Sleeping or awake. The calmness of sleep or the terror he’d seen swathing her face. This was the point of no return, he could always paint over if his viewpoint changed but he wanted to record her essence, if he could define what that was. He needed more time.
His sable brush danced over the canvas, creating cheeks flushed with red, lips open. Wisps of hair appearing like magic, blown by an unseen wind. Strand after strand appeared on the stretched canvas, his brush mixing an sheen in the hair as it peaked on her brow. Selecting a finer brush he dabbed it into a darker hue — an indescribable grey and worked on the neck, before defining the shoulders. With a damp cloth he smudged the oil — giving the illusion of the subject being caught mid turn, casting a glance backwards. The smudged paint ethereal in the twilight of the room.
As he turned to set aside his palette, he caught movement from the corner of his eye. There, near the edge of the canvas, a hint of red. One glance at the palette assured him he didn’t use any red, but it’s there.
The artist was given to drink heavily, thinking that it helped him focus.
In his mortal life, the Artist had a faithful dog, a lovable creature that brought joy to the family and was especially adored by their young daughter, Lily. Unfortunately, in a fit of anger fueled by obsession and drunken rage, the Artist inadvertently caused a fire in his studio. The family dog, attempting to fetch help, was tragically killed in the blaze.
Unable to finish the magnum opus to his satisfaction, he is trapped in a cycle of obsessive mental degradation alone in his ruined house, unable to come to terms with his own mistakes or move on from his failings.
The Artist has forgotten his name, just as he has forgotten the names of his wife and child. Scattered about the mansion are scraps of papers, notes, receipts and letters, many of which are addressed to the Artist or mention him. Alas every single instance of the recipient has been scratched out or crossed out by the Artist in his madness.
Originally he was driven to dismember the corpse of his deceased wife for the materials he required, other times he engaged in self-mutilation, in which he always regenerated. Nowadays he sees lone visitors as potential ‘donors’ for his magnum opus.
The Dark Powers have granted the Mad Artist the ability to assume the form of an Odem - an undead spirit that can take control of the bodies of others, but only when there are intruders available to possess in his domain. Once he takes control of that person, the person's body gradually transforms to resemble the Artist as he was in life: the victim's body acquires a limp. This transformation is permanent, incapable of being undone by anything less than a wish spell. Killing the host body merely releases the Odem to possess another.
Once the Artist is in possession of a new body, he becomes amnesic, relearning the details of his life and deeds through first-hand experience just as his host does.
At the end of his quest, the Artist completes the painting of his wife's pre-accident face, only to watch her beauty deform and burn up into a skeletal horror. Enraged, he picks up the painting and tosses it into a room filled with identical paintings. Even if he actually succeeds every time, his own madness will only let him see the skeletal failure. After this, he walks through his house, finding it the trashed wreck that it really is, locks himself up in his studio again, and returns to a blank canvas.
Other times, the Artist completes a portrait of his wife and child, only to realize that his artistic efforts can't bring back either of them and instead he burns himself alive along with his many failures rather than go on living a lie. The Artist cannot escape his curse by burning himself. Although he feels the tremendous agony of death, he cannot be permanently killed. The Dark Powers always restore the house to its former state. When visitors arrive, the Artist possesses one of them and always reappears at the front entrance as though just arriving. Visitors who are in the House should the Artist set fire to it are not immune.
The Land: The House of the Artist is a classic Pocket Domain, consisting entirely of the Artist's former residence, the house in which the horrific events occurred.
The domain consists of a sprawling, twisted, and ever-changing mansion that mirrors the mental state of the Artist. It is filled with countless halls, chambers, and galleries, each showcasing the Artist's gruesome works, which seem to come to life in the most terrifying ways. As the Artist's madness worsens, the mansion grows more deranged, extending into impossible dimensions.
Bottles of beer and wine are scattered throughout the house; a reminder of the Artist's alcoholism.
Morbid painting and statuary, such as Goya’s Saturn Devouring His Son fill it. Upon first glance, other than the strangeness of the art, the house's rooms appear perfectly normal. Upon a second visit, a character will notice a few oddities. Firstly, paintings appear to have moved, although no one was present to move them. Second, statues appear to have shifted form. Seated figures may now be standing. Other statues may move close to the door and appear to be waiting for the characters’ return.
Dynamic Environment Trait: Moving Art
Whenever a character leaves a room and returns, they must make a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check. On a success, they notice that the paintings and statues in the room have moved or changed. Paintings swap places or reorient themselves, while statues change poses or positions.
This unsettling phenomenon is an integral part of the Mansion's curse, reflecting the Artist's restless mind and his obsession with constantly altering his art. It also serves as a reminder that the Mansion itself is a living entity, continually changing and adapting to the Artist's tormented state of mind.
Trait: Anticipatory Statues
As characters explore the Mansion, they may also notice that some statues seem to anticipate their movements. Statues may subtly turn their heads to watch characters pass or slowly change poses to face towards doors that characters are about to open. Some statues may even move closer to doors, as if waiting for the characters to return.
Characters noticing these unsettling movements must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or become frightened until the end of their next turn. This save is made with disadvantage if a character is alone when they notice the statue's movement.
These environmental traits create an atmosphere of constant unease, reinforcing the haunted, unnerving nature of the Mansion of Endless Canvases. They ensure that no visit to a room is ever the same, reflecting the Artist's tortured psyche and the domain's ever-changing nature.
Among the mansion's eerie soundscape, two particularly haunting sounds stand out: the desperate cries of a woman and the unsettling sobs of a child. These echo throughout the mansion, their ghostly wails reverberating off the mansion's grand walls and darkened halls.
Trait: Crying Woman
As characters navigate the mansion's labyrinthine halls, they may occasionally hear the heart-wrenching sobs of a woman echoing from nearby rooms. The cries are filled with such pain and despair that they can chill even the stoutest heart. When characters approach the source of the crying and open the door, the cries abruptly stop. The room they find is empty, though a palpable sense of sadness lingers in the air.
The crying is, of course, the echo of Clara's endless grief, trapped within the mansion's walls just as she herself is trapped within her spectral form. It's a constant reminder of the tragedy that befell the Artist's wife and the pain that the Artist's obsession caused.
Trait: Child's Sobs
Just as disturbing, if not more so, are the eerie sobs of a child that periodically echo through the mansion. These sounds seem to emanate from nowhere and everywhere at once, their source impossible to pinpoint. The sobs are filled with a desperation that is deeply unsettling, tugging at the heartstrings of those who hear them.
These are the spectral echoes of Lily, the Artist's daughter, her fear and confusion trapped in time just like the cries of her mother. Her unseen presence serves as a chilling reminder of the innocent life that was irrevocably affected by the Artist's tragic descent into madness.
For both the crying woman and child's sobs, characters might be required to make Wisdom saving throws to avoid being frightened or taking psychic damage from the heart-wrenching sounds. The DC could vary based on how close they are to the source of the sound, and the effects could be more severe for characters who have children or traumatic pasts of their own.
Trait: Cryptic Messages
As if the mansion wasn't unsettling enough, cryptic messages often materialize on its walls, floors, and even on the canvases of paintings. The messages appear in a handwriting that mirrors the Artist's own scrawl, and they often contain fragmented sentences or phrases that suggest deep turmoil and an obsessive mind.
Some messages might be pleading, such as "Please, make it stop" or "Why can't I remember?" Others might reflect the Artist's constant dissatisfaction with his work, with phrases like "Not perfect enough" or "Need to start again." Some messages might be even more cryptic, perhaps bearing just a single word like "Fire" or "Deformation."
It's uncertain who or what writes these messages. Are they remnants from a previous 'loop' the Artist experienced? Or are they manifestations of the mansion itself, reflecting the tortured psyche of its master? The truth remains as elusive as the mansion's shifting layout.
These messages serve to further deepen the mystery and horror of the mansion. They hint at the Artist's self-inflicted torment and eternal dissatisfaction with his work, as well as his forgotten past. For the party, these messages could also provide important clues and hints about the mansion's history and the secrets it holds.
To add a mechanical layer to this feature, you could allow players to make Intelligence (Investigation) checks when they encounter these messages. A successful check might reveal additional information or context about the message, hinting at the mansion's past events or the Artist's state of mind when the message was written.
Trait: Infestation of Madness
Adding to the mansion's eerie atmosphere is the ever-present infestation of rats. The squeaking and skittering of these creatures echo through the halls, a disturbing soundtrack to the mansion's horrific tableau.
Stage 1: The Lone Rat
At first, characters may notice only a single rat. It might scamper across their path as they traverse a long hallway, or they might see its beady eyes gleaming in the torchlight from a dark corner. This stage serves as a subtle introduction to the rat infestation that plagues the mansion.
Stage 2: Growing Numbers
As characters delve deeper into the mansion, the number of rats increases. They begin to see small groups of rats skittering across the floors, hiding behind furniture, and peeking out from the shadows. The sight of these vermin only adds to the feeling of unease that permeates the mansion.
Stage 3: The Horde
The final stage of this infestation is a massive horde of rats that seemingly appears out of nowhere. They might pour from a hidden hole in the wall, swarm out from behind a large painting, or even cascade down the grand staircase in a terrifying wave. This sight can be truly horrifying, and characters might have to make a Wisdom saving throw to avoid being frightened.
The House floats randomly from place to place, manifesting in many different domains. In many cases, the Mansion appears in place of an already decrepit and abandoned house. These houses often have a reputation for tragedy and rumors of being haunted, making them fitting replacements for the Mansion. While in these locations, the Mansion seems to blend in, its grandeur and haunting nature hidden beneath an outward appearance of decay.
As long as the lords are not concentrating on keeping the borders closed, the House can move through the various domains. The lords of the domains the House visits generally remain totally unaware of its presence. A pity because the Artist's talents would be of great interest to some of them -- particularly D'Polarno.
Once inside, visitors become fully entrapped. They cannot exit. Windows to the outside may show the streets and buildings of the domain they left or perhaps not, showing strange and unfamiliar alleyways and the sides of neighboring houses that didn't exist before. Regardless of the weather conditions before, it is now a raining. Whatever time of day, the visitors entered it is always night time in the Mad Artist's house; the dark night of the soul.
Trait: Entrapment
As soon as visitors cross the threshold into the Mansion, they find themselves completely entrapped. The doors that they just walked through close behind them, locking on their own and refusing to open again. Attempts to break the doors or windows prove futile, as they are as unyielding as stone walls. Magic designed to breach or bypass the Mansion's walls is likewise ineffective. The Mansion will not release its guests until it is ready.
Trait: Distorted Reality
Looking out of the Mansion's windows provides no relief or sense of freedom. Instead, it reveals yet another level of the Mansion's twisted reality. Windows may show the familiar streets and buildings of the domain visitors left, or they may show entirely different scenes – unfamiliar alleyways, the sides of neighboring houses that didn't exist before, or even surreal landscapes that defy logic and reason.
The Mansion's external views seem to change randomly, and trying to predict or make sense of them can be as maddening as navigating the Mansion's shifting layout.
Trait: Eternal Night
Regardless of the time of day when visitors enter the Mansion, they find it trapped in eternal night. The Mansion's interior is lit only by flickering candles or the occasional flash of lightning from outside. The dim light casts long, eerie shadows, accentuating the Mansion's gothic architecture and the disturbing art pieces that adorn its walls.
The weather, too, is perpetually grim within the Mansion. Regardless of the weather conditions before entering, it is always raining outside the Mansion, creating an ambiance of melancholy and dread.
Originally the Artist and his tragic story may have had its origins on Gothic Earth. The accents and memorabilia suggest a North American origin - Boston perhaps.
As the madness takes over, the interior becomes larger and the layout shifts. Indeed the house becomes almost infinite in size. Hallways extend for hundreds of feet. Ceilings become as large as those of a cathedral or become as low as a tomb passage. If one walks through one door and then attempts to leave through it, they may find themselves in a completely different room than where they started - assuming, of course, that it didn't lock behind them. Sometimes the mere act of turning around changes details of the room, including making doorways vanish or appear elsewhere. Some doors will lead to nothing more than a brick wall.
The Folk: There is only one being that truly exists in the Domain, that being is the Mad Artist himself. Cursed to forever be alone, denied the companionship of those he discarded in his quest for perfection.
The restless spirit of the Artist’s wife haunts the endless maze of the house. She is a third magnitude specter. The Artist does not recognize the monster as his wife (indeed he has difficulty even remembering he was ever married). Every time the Artist sets out on his endless quest, she will attack him at least once, her mouth silently cursing him for her death. Alas she cannot find it in herself to destroy him. He merely suffers a loss of consciousness. Visitors will not be so fortunate.
Countless paintings are displayed throughout the house. Many of these are cursed or inhabited by malign Mist-born entities. The disembodied spirits that normally roam the Mists have possessed the artwork, but are likewise imprisoned by them. These entities can make the art telekinetically move, teleport, and statues can even become animated, picking up their pedestals and marching around, but they can do none of that while more than one person is watching. These intelligences wish to escape their art-bodies to indulge in all the decadence and mayhem the outside world has to offer. They can only do this by consuming enough flesh to generate a new biological body for themselves. If the art is ever left alone with a single character that it has seen at least once before, and no other possessed art is present, it attacks, with stats identical to a Stone Golem. Sculptures do so literally, ripping and rending the flesh of their victims in a gory feast. The attacks and damage done by a sculpture , but assuming they are carved out of stone, they should have the toughness, endurance, and strength of several men. Swords and guns do little to harm stone statues, but hammers applied to weak points are very effective. Paintings absorb their victims into themselves. (Roll 1d10. On a 8, 9, or 10, the victim is absorbed.) The victim of a painting appears in the painting, and will be digested fairly quickly, taking a number of minutes to be consumed equal to the character’s age.
Closing the Borders: Unlike other Darklords, the Artist has no control over sealing his Domain's borders. The Mansion of Endless Canvases is unique among Ravenloft domains, for its borders are defined by the imposing front door of the mansion itself which is the mansion's only entrance and exit. Once a visitor crosses its threshold, the door shuts behind them with an echoing finality, the lock clicking into place with an eerie sense of permanence. The Dark Powers have bound the Artist and all visitors within the domain, making the door impassable from the inside. Attempts to unlock, break, or magically manipulate the door prove futile; it resists all efforts as if mocking the despair of those trapped within. Similarly, the mansion's windows and exterior walls share this invulnerability. Despite their aged appearance, they are immune to any physical or magical harm. From the outside, they appear as clear as any ordinary window; however, from within the mansion, they present distorted, swirling images of an unnerving, gloomy forest that seems to repel all thoughts of escape. The Artist, in his eternal torment, is condemned to remain within the mansion, forever separated from the world beyond his self-inflicted prison. Visitors lured into the mansion are equally trapped, forced to confront the disturbing realities of the Artist's curse until they can find a way to break free – if such a way exists. The Mansion of Endless Canvases is thus both always accessible and always sealed – a domain forever open to unsuspecting new victims, yet pitiless in its confinement of those already ensnared within its harrowing halls. It is a cruel reflection of the Artist's own state: forever yearning for the peace of escape, yet bound to his never-ending cycle of obsession and despair.
A Black Dog (see Ravenloft Archetypes - Nightmare of Barovia) roams the mansion, a mockery of the family dog killed in the fire. Its form is as distorted as the paintings the Artist produced during his descent into madness. Its fur is the color of pitch, and its eyes burn with a foreboding, ghostly light. It appears solid yet shimmers with an otherworldly quality, its body sometimes becoming translucent, hinting at its spectral nature. The Black Dog seems to be particularly drawn to rooms where artworks related to fire hang. The sight of these fire-themed canvases appears to agitate the creature, causing it to yelp in a disturbing echo of the terror the family pet must have experienced during the deadly fire. These panicked yelps echo hauntingly throughout the mansion, adding a chilling layer to the domain's already oppressive atmosphere. For visitors to the Mansion of Endless Canvases, an encounter with the Black Dog is a deeply unsettling experience. The spectral hound is not aggressive, but its mournful eyes and the terrible, fearful sounds it makes can instill a deep sense of dread, serving as a harsh reminder of the tragedies that took place within the mansion's walls. For the Artist, the Black Dog is a manifestation of his guilt, a symbol of the innocent life he accidentally took in his descent into madness.
Dread Possibilities: Visitors are drawn to the Mansion by a twisted sense of curiosity or the promise of incredible art. Once they enter, they find themselves unable to leave, forced to navigate through the disorienting, ever-shifting halls. The Artist stalks them, either in his spirit form or by possessing one of them. He desperately seeks to understand his past, pushing his victims to unravel his life's story.
Intruders might also find themselves forced to take part in the Artist's macabre artistry. The Dark Powers have granted the Artist the ability to transform living or dead creatures into gruesome works of art. They might be turned into living statues, horrifying paintings, or parts of his unfinished magnum opus.
Dark Powers Checks: The Dark Powers Checks occur whenever a visitor exhibits signs of obsession or disregards the well-being of others in pursuit of their goals. Such acts echo the Artist's downfall and attract the Dark Powers' attention.