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Realms
by Night - Part 5
The Crying Girl
By Steven Schend
Typical Location: North Ward—The Anteos villa (N3/#141).
"I can never again attend a function at that villa again, despite the extravagance of them and the generosity of Lord Korras. Knowing all the windows are covered to prevent guests from seeing the Crying Girl unnerves me greatly, and the few times the music died down, light scratching at the glass could easily be heard. I never would have thought the sins of their father would follow Lords Dulbrawan and Korras all through their lives as well, but I cannot abide that house so long as that ghost exacts its sad vengeance."
In the Year of the Snow Winds (1335 DR), the handsome Lord Hamar Anteos brought ruin upon his house by having an illicit affair with a young Tethyrian cousin of the Ruldegost clan, despite the fervent love of his own lady wife and two small sons. When peaceful attempts to assuage the Lord Econ Ruldegost failed, a temper-filled duel ended the old man’s life. With his dying breath, Lord Econ cursed the Anteos family "to be heirless until they recognize and accept the ruin they have done me and mine." Soon after the bastard child was born to the young Kyara Ruldegost, she and Kyara were invited to a picnic on the Anteos lands near the Westwood outside the city. They never arrived, as "brigands" attacked their wagon, slaying them and dumping their bodies in the Stump Bog.
Since that day, as the Anteos clan returned in overly-dramatic shock over the attacks, the politically-less-powerful Ruldegosts had to be content with Kyara’s own vengeance: She appears in every window and every open external doorway to the Anteos villa at night, her transparent face wet with tears, dress muddied and bloody about a horrific neck wound, and pitifully clutching a vacant-staring blue-faced baby with frighteningly piercing eyes. For more than three decades, no Anteos has either produced an heir or had a peaceful night’s sleep. Lord Hamar went mad and died screaming after enduring only 12 years of the haunting, and his sons found that their father’s death did not release them from either the Ruldegost curse or its familial ghost. Even attempting to find rest elsewhere was impossible, as the Crying Girl manifests outside the windows no matter where the men might seek to sleep.
Related Stories:
Numerous other noble villas and real estate holdings have similar hauntings, as the abandonment of parental responsibilities seems a frequent theme among many morally bankrupt young nobles. While many share similar features and circumstances, the Crying Girl is among the strongest and most persistent.
DM’s Notes: The Anteos family, if discretely given the opportunity to make amends, could hire the PCs and others to find the rough location of the corpses of the Crying Girl and her baby in the Stump Bog. Recovery and reburial of the bones within the Anteos mausoleum within the villa might end the hauntings.
Read the other articles of Realms by Night: