The group of six turned to face us. The fire flickered ominously behind them.

  “Uh, hello everyone! Gentlefolk!” I announced. “We tried to knock, but it, um… anyway, you all wouldn’t mind if we slept here for the night, would you? Or… yeah, would that be alright?”

  For a moment no one spoke, and the room was silent save for the crackling fireplace and the growing pitter-pattering of rain. The maid blinked at me, her face a blank slate.

  Then the Dragon man’s expression cracked into a smile and he let out a deep belly laugh. “Well, it ain’t like any of us can throw you out, now, huh? Oh, ain’t this a hoot… and you don’t even know it! You’re stuck in here just like the rest of us!”

  The pale woman, Petunia, in her bleached white furs and funny little hat, was appraising us through electric blue, slit-pupiled eyes. I guess she was a Dragon too. “Wait, who are these people?” she asked, looking up at her companion with a lost expression. “Dracorn, you must tell me what’s going on. Are they friends of Dringel’s?”

  The red-haired woman sighed. Her eyes were damp and red-rimmed. She barely looked at us before gesturing wearily at the maid. “Get them a bed,” she said, then slumped back in her armchair.

  The maid immediately set about the room, opening various closets and taking out sets of fresh linens, while the rest of us watched her in awkward silence.

  Tatzel cleared her throat. “So… dare I ask who cast the one-way Shroud of Light over your manor?”

  There was a brief flickering of eyes between the red-headed family and the Dragons.

  Finally Dracorn spoke up. “No use playin’ coy about the thing, is there? Ol’ Dringel, the late master of this here estate, had a Deathclock Shroud all set up an’ ready to go for when–”

  “This is a family matter, Dracorn. You’ll kindly allow the family to manage its investigation,” the brawnier son said icily.

  “It most decidedly ain’t a family matter, seein’ as the damn Shroud is imprisoning your innocent houseguests! Not to mention this fine group o’… o’ random forest hooligans!” replied Dracorn angrily. The smaller Dragon, Petunia, took a dramatic sniffle to accent her companion’s point.

  The maid returned from the corner of the room, her face barely peeking over the stack of towels and downy comforters in her arms. She ignored the ongoing conversation and bowed to the red-haired woman. “Shall I show the new arrivals to their room, Lady Anya?”

  The red-haired woman, Anya, nodded.

  “Mother, wait!” said the scrawnier, younger brother. He knelt on one knee in front of her armchair. “We should tell these people what’s happened. They’re a neutral party, right? They fit the terms. If we can’t get a Necrodetective in time… they might be our only hope of uncovering who murdered Father!”

  Anya cradled her head between her hands. She said something unintelligible.

  “My Lady?” the maid asked.

  “I said fine, but it must be someone else!” Anya cried, raising her head from her hands. “Tell them, tell them everything, but… please, Lem, someone else has to do it, not me… I can’t… don’t ask me to talk about wh-what happened… oh, Dringel…” She lowered her head back down and sobbed. Lem, the scrawny brother, patted her arm consolingly.

  The brawnier, older brother scowled. “I can’t possibly imagine what roping this group of strangers into our affairs will accomplish. At best, they’ll bumble about and poke their noses into Father’s… my… business. And at worst, their interference will muddy the trail to the real killer.” From his tone, it was clear he already had an opinion on who that was.

  “Well, I say we let ‘em investigate! They’ll get to the heart o’ the matter quick enough, I figure,” boomed Dracorn. He held out a large, meaty hand and helped Petunia out of her chair. “But I don’t need no stinkin’ detective, Necro- or otherwise, to explain to me what happened here.” He pointed at the brawny brother. “I said it before and I’ll say it again: I heard Horlen here fightin’ and hollerin’ with Dringel last night. So if you three wanna play detective, I figure you oughta know, that’s the boy that done did it.” He wrapped his arm protectively around Petunia, and together the two of them stormed out of the room.

  Horlen’s fists were clenched tight at his sides. He didn’t relax until the Dragons were both out of sight.

  Tatzel cleared her throat. “Perhaps we could set down our belongings? Maybe have a bite to eat?”

  “Yes, fine. Agita will bring you to the guest quarters. One of my sons will come to get you when you’re ready to help us investigate.” She paused. “Should you be willing to help, that is; of course you’re under no obligation. But if you catch whoever… whoever murdered my husband, I will see to it that you’re richly rewarded. Regardless, you are my guests until the Shroud dissipates.”

  Agita the maid bowed to her mistress, then approached us with towels brandished in both hands. “Sorry, sir and madams. Just to keep your garments from dripping water on the floor.” Before we could process what was happening, Agita was toweling the three of us down with what I could only describe as a machine-like efficiency. She had obviously dedicated a number of Levels to her butlering abilities.

  Once the three of us were passably dry – despite the outraged noises Tatzel made at the treatment – Agita ushered us up a flight of stairs, leaving the red-headed family behind in the den. We passed a tastefully-framed portrait of a sturdy-looking, red-headed man. This must have been the deceased. He was posed staring dramatically into the distance, with a large hammer slung over one shoulder.

  “Your quarters are just at the end of the hall. I hope they’ll be to your satisfaction,” Agita said.

  “I’m sure they’ll be fine. But maybe you could tell us a little about what happened? You know, before we decide whether we want to help investigate?” I asked.

  Agita looked uncomfortable. “It’s… I’m sorry, sir, but it’s really not my place to say…”

  “C’mon, we won’t tell anyone!” said Aeshma. She tried to give the maid a reassuring smile, but it only seemed to frighten her.

  Agita gulped. “Oh, Lady Anya would be most displeased if she heard me spreading gossip about the family,” she said, as she looked over her shoulder to make sure no one else was within earshot. Then she spoke quickly, in hushed tones. “Master Dringel was murdered last night. Murdered in his bed, as he slept. Poor Lady Anya found him in the morning.”

  “The Shroud over the manor, the one stopping us from leaving, was Master Dringel’s doing. When we first discovered it this morning, we all thought that the murderer had cast it, in order to trap us all inside. But we learned the truth shortly before you three arrived.”

  She looked nervously towards the den to make sure no one was listening in. “We found his will,” she whispered, even more quietly. “It included a rather unusual clause. Years ago, Master Dringel arranged for a spell to be cast upon his person…with his own murder, should it occur, serving as its conditional trigger. Master always loved his murder mystery stories…”

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  “So when Dringel died, it activated the spell? The barrier over the exits?” I asked.

  “Yes, precisely. The will specified that the Shroud of Light would last a full forty-eight hours, unless… well, it was so strange, I remember the clause word-for-word. The Shroud shall endure for a span of forty-eight hours, or until such a time as the murder is solved by a neutral third party, who accurately articulates the circumstances of my death in a parlor scene.”

  “Oh, Queen save us,” muttered Tatzel.

  We reached the door at the far end of the hallway. Agita pushed it open, revealing a large and inviting bedroom complete with an oversized featherbed, an enormous mahogany wardrobe, and a bay window with a view of the estate’s front lawn. “Forgive me, but I’ve already said too much. I shall prepare your quarters,” she said, and set to work.

  “So we totally gotta solve this thing, right?” Aeshma whispered. She looked strangely excited for someone who just learned they were trapped in a building. “I bet Roland’ll get a ton of Levels out of it, and that lady said we’d be richly rewarded! Also, I totally want to play detective for a night or two.”

  “But what happens if we catch the killer? We don’t have the right to actually, like, arrest anyone, do we?” I whispered back.

  “You two can engage in this farce all you like,” said Tatzel, at full volume. “I’m not doing jack. I’m going to sit back, relax, and enjoy the last morsel of hospitality I’ll likely receive in my cursed life.”

  Agita, a consummate professional, pretended not to hear her.

  “Come on, Tatz! You liked tracking down those eggs at camp, remember? That was kind of like solving a mystery!” said Aeshma.

  “We got to eat the eggs afterwards. What does solving this murder mystery achieve? A meager bit of XP? I’d rather take an extra night’s lodging. We should wait out the Shroud, enjoy our accommodations while we can, and move on.”

  That sounded reasonable enough, but when I saw how disappointed Aeshma looked, my mind was made up. “Well, I’m gonna help investigate. Maybe it’ll be fun, you know?” I said. I started shaping Jie into a deerstalker cap. If we were going to be working as detectives, I might as well look the part.

  Tatzel tutted at me just as Agita finished fluffing the last pillow. “Please make yourselves at home,” the maid said, “I’ll go downstairs and start preparing your meal. Unless there’s anything else you need from me?”

  “Yes, hm, just some questions before you go,” Aeshma said, using the haughty, faux-academic voice she always used when she was trying to sound smart. “I recall that the, uh, big… Dragon guy…”

  “Mister Dracorn?” Agita asked.

  “Yes, yes, of course. Mister Dracorn indicated that Dringel and Horlen were engaged in some kind of verbal… intercourse.”

  “Altercation?” I offered.

  “Shhh, shut up Roland! You can do the next interview!” Aeshma hissed.

  Agita cleared her throat nervously. “Yes, Mister Dracorn did say he heard the two of them fighting last night. I heard them too; they were being frightfully loud.”

  “And what were the two individuals, uh, altercating about?”

  “I’m afraid I don’t know,” Agita said. “The walls in the manor are quite thick, you understand; I couldn’t make out a single word. But I’ve served the family for a long time, and I can tell you for a certainty that the voices I heard belonged to Masters Dringel and Horlen.”

  Aeshma narrowed her eyes suspiciously. “You’ve really got no idea what they were fighting about? Not a clue?”

  “Not except that they were fighting, no ma’am.”

  “Hmm, I see,” Aeshma said. “Just one more question – the two Dragons, this Dracorn and his… wife?”

  “Yes, the lovely Miss Petunia,” said Agita.

  “Indubitably. What, um, are they doing here?”

  “Mister Dracorn is… was… Master Dringel’s associate. A competitor in the blacksmithing business. He owns Dracornian Industries. Surely you’ve heard of it?”

  “Oh! Wow, he’s that Dracorn? Really?” Aeshma gushed, immediately losing her detective voice. “Of course I’ve heard of them, D.I. makes the best swords and daggers anywhere!”

  Agita frowned at that. “As you say, ma’am. Please, I’ve said too much already. I need to go start preparing supper.” With a final bow, she scurried back out the hallway, shutting the door behind her.

  “Hmm. Well ain’t this a pickle,” said Aeshma.

  I fixed Jie on my head with a flourish. “Quite the pickle indeed. We’ll have to exercise our utmost wits to solve this case.”

  We spent some time relaxing in our quarters, waiting for Agita to return with our lunch. In the meantime, Aeshma and I tried to review everything we knew so far about the case. Tatzel, for her part, just laid on the gigantic bed in the middle of the room and stared sullenly at the ceiling. She was clearly reluctant to get roped into things, but I felt confident that she’d hit her stride. If nothing else, she liked being rude to people… so maybe we could convince her to play the bad cop at some point.

  So what did we know so far? The red-headed family were the owners of this manor. They ran some kind of blacksmithing business, which Aeshma and I decided was probably the source of their fabulous wealth. The father, Dringel, was murdered sometime last night… the very same night that both Dracorn and Agita claimed he was heard arguing with his older son, Horlen.

  Obviously, that positioned Horlen as our prime suspect. But could we trust Dracorn’s claims? He was Dringel’s business rival; that alone was a built-in motive. Agita the maid claimed to have heard the fight too, but did she have an angle? Maids and butlers were always up to something nefarious in murder mystery stories.

  We didn’t know much of anything about the scrawnier son, Lem. He and Dringel’s wife, Anya, were at the top of our list for questioning.

  How Dringel was killed, we still didn’t know. Based on how much time remained on the Deathclock, the murder took place about ten hours ago. But that was all we knew.

  There were a series of raps on our door. The three of us sat up, excited for Agita to return with a hot meal – but it wasn’t her who barged in. It was the scrawny brother, Lem. “Greetings, guests,” he said. There was a note of lingering sadness in his voice, and his eyes were wet with tears. “If you are willing to undertake this… sniff… quest… then I will show you to the scene of my honorable Father’s… sniff… murder.”

  —-------------

  Introduction to The Manual of Spell Molding and Modifiers, by Quigley Sumptire. Archived on the Arcanonet.

  —-------------

  Spell modification is a subtle art, one which burgeoning spellcasters often find quite daunting. Just as no two spellcasters are identical, so too are no individuals’ methods of casting perfectly alike. Even a baseline, unmodified spell may require slight variations across casters: a different angle of holding the body, the substitution of a hand motion for a flick of the foot, instead.

  This quirk of spellcasting has long plagued magical pedagogy. The motions and intonations that work well for the instructor may be all but useless in the hands of his apprentice, and thus an instructor cannot simply show his students how to cast, but rather must explain the feeling of the spell, and how he arrived at his specific formula. When it comes to highly individual Classes, like the Ritualist or Oracle, it can be borderline impossible for practitioners to exchange any useful information beyond the faintest outline of their spellcraft.

  Thus, the most essential trait of a spellcasting mentor is not their magical aptitude per se, but rather a good eye for their students’ personalities and emotions. In fact, some of the most successful spellcasting instructors enlist the aid of non-magical but highly intuitive Classes, such as Shrinks, Mentalists, and even Dancers. A source who I will not name (but suffice it to say, who works within the halls of one of the most prestigious arcane institutions) even confided that some instructors don’t possess a single Level in any magic-using Class!

  When even baseline spellcasting is such a complicated, personal matter, how then can one learn the infinitely more subtle art of spell molding? The task, taken at face value, may seem impossible.

  This book cannot substitute for a knowledgeable mentor, nor is it intended to. Over the course of my career as a magical researcher and educator, I have seen countless spell modifiers be successfully (and unsuccessfully!) employed by a wide variety of casters and Classes. This manual provides only a foundational set of examples, in order that the reader may learn for themselves, hopefully with the assistance of a trained professional, precisely which modifications may be applicable to their unique person and needs.

  From the theoretically “simple” act of spreading one’s arms in a grand gesture, to more subtle full-body flexes; from modifying the color of an illusion to the far more complex act of delaying a spell’s activation until certain triggers are achieved. All this and more can be achieved with careful study, planning, and introspection.