Patchwork Jack

Creedhall’s most powerful villain is Patchwork Jack, a corpse golem gifted with a genius for invention.

Patchwork Jack

Patchwork Jack is a towering flesh golem built from corpses and other refuse of the charnel house. Patchwork Jack is both Viktoria Frankenstein’s greatest scientific triumph and her greatest failing. Through some quirk of his creation, Patchwork Jack was endowed with a particularly fine mind. He learned quickly, becoming Viktoria’s laboratory assistant and collaborator. 

However, it was soon clear that Patchwork Jack was only interested in using his scientific genius for evil ends; unable to cope with the prospect of her creation’s desire to use his inventions to acquire and wield tyrannical power, Viktoria Frankenstein cast him out of Chateau Frankenstein and bade him never to return. 

    • Appearance: His hulking, mismatched form and the stitches that cover his body evidence his origins from among the dead remains of a variety of human beings.

    • Personality: The machinery of life and the inner workings of the mind fascinate him.

    • Motive: He desires a laboratory of his own that would allow him to create an army of corpse golems, take Chateau Frankenstein by force, and kill his “mother.”

    • Flaw: Despite his formidable intelligence, a bestial rage boils just under the surface of his cadaverous flesh.

The Iscarion Academy and the Malishnikov Factory

Two more potential adventure locations in Creedhall:

The Iscarion Academy

The Iscarion Academy is an exclusive boarding school for the young scions of wealthy, aristocratic families. The Iscarion Academy’s sprawling campus of stately buildings is located far from the hustle and bustle of Creedhall’s busiest districts—the better to keep its charges out of trouble and its nefarious agenda out of view. 

    • Visitors with a keen eye cannot help but notice the dragon motifs present in the decorative elements and the nouveau ornamentation found throughout the school.

    • Some youths sent to the Iscarion Academy are singled out for induction into the school’s secretive Hekate Program, a secret curriculum devoted to the accumulation and exercise of wealth, status, and social power. 

    • Students admitted to the Hekate Program are trained in a variety of skills and techniques, such as psychological manipulation, subtle interrogation, and the use of poison, that will allow them to exert political influence when they leave the school to enter the upper echelons of society. 

    • The headmaster of the school is Severina Feist, an accomplished hypnotist who uses mind-control to inspire utter loyalty in her charges, convince wealthy families to send their children to the Iscarion Academy, and secure outlandish funding for her school. 

The Malishnikov Factory

Located in a squalid ward of abandoned warehouses, the now-defunct Malishnikov Factory was once a workshop that produced a patent medicine of dubious efficacy. 

    • Although the factory is believed to be vacant, it currently serves as the lair of the Brass Messiah. 

    • The Brass Messiah is a sentient construct who preaches liberation to his fellow created beings; he believes that they are destined to rule over the “weak-fleshed mortals” who built them. 

    • The Brass Messiah’s constructed disciples call themselves the Prometheans; they wish to discover the magical and scientific processes needed to create more of their kind.

    • The Widow, a porcelain-faced mechanical construct, is the Brass Messiah’s lieutenant; she works alongside him to free other sentient constructed beings from bondage—though she vehemently disagrees with his more supremacist views. 

The Borcheza Perfumery and Strayling Observatory

Two mode potential adventure locations in Creedhall. The Borcheza Perfumery has a strong "Rappiccini's Daughter" influence. For the Strayling Observatory...I just think big telescopes are cool, man.

The Borcheza Perfumery

The Borcheza family has a long history in the fragrance trade in Krevborna, and they are justly famed for the alluring and exotic scents they have produced for the aristocratic class and the well-to-do. However, despite the sterling reputation of the Borcheza name, the family hides a dark secret.

    • Roderick Borcheza was terrified when he thought of the future of the family business; as he and his wife had not managed to produce an heir who could assume control of the company, it looked as though he would be the last of the famed Borchezas involved in perfumery. 

    • Desperate for a scion who could continue the Borcheza’s dominance of the perfume market, Roderick resorted to foul alchemy, combining the vital essences of hanged criminals and rare flora to “birth” a sentient plant granted human shape and the ability to exude a deadly toxin from her skin.

    • Roderick named the “girl” Isabel and raised her as his daughter, hopeful that the family business would survive under her eventual stewardship.

    • Isabel possessed a cruel cunning from her earliest years, a trait that only become more pronounced as she blossomed into a beautiful and precocious teenager. 

    • On her eighteenth birthday, Roderick got his wish—she assumed control of the Borcheza Perfumery. 

    • However, this was a hostile takeover; Isabel released a noxious, poisonous perfume within the Borcheza home, which she was immune to, that killed her ersatz “father” and “mother.” 

    • Claiming that her parents had been taken to their graves by the plague, Isabel became the head of the family business. 

    • Recently, Isabel has begun to replicate Roderick Borcheza's experiments in hopes of creating more of her inhuman kind within the greenhouses she has inherited.

Strayling Observatory

Built atop the highest hill at Creedhall’s outskirts, Strayling Observatory tracks the movements of the stars. The natural philosophers who maintain Strayling Observatory point its telescope into the night sky, charting the wonders of the cosmos. 

    • Although most of their work is mundane in nature, a few members of Strayling’s staff have a particular interest in using the observatory’s facilities to make contact with the entities they believe lurk beyond the firmament.

    • The eldritch-minded members of the observatory’s staff tirelessly work to decode the strange emanations of the stars used as arcane messages from the dark reaches of the cosmos.

Chateau Frankenstein and Creedhall University

Two locations in Creedhall, each of which twists the virtue of knowledge toward horrific ends.

Chateau Frankenstein

A lone manor stands on the isle at the center of Loch Riven—the foreboding Chateau Frankenstein. This ancestral seat has been inherited by Doctor Viktoria Frankenstein, the heir of the infamous Frankenstein family who continues the “family business” of creating golems from corpses and the refuse of the slaughterhouse.

    • The only visitors to the chateau are the body snatchers and resurrectionists Viktoria employs to bring her the grisly fodder for her experiments. 

    • Lightning continually flashes over Chateau Frankenstein; Viktoria’s monstrous apparatus draws it to the manor, where it is used to fuel her inquiries into endowing dead flesh with a semblance of life.

    • Viktoria Frankenstein is protected by a number of constructs of her own devise, such as the Orphan—a construct devised to look like a young girl who functions as Viktoria’s assassin.

Creedhall University

Creedhall University is the preeminent institution of higher learning in Krevborna. Although the university employs respected scholars from a wide variety of disciplines, some departments are dogged by rumors that they pursue less than savory scholarly interests. 

    • Some families are reluctant to send their children to the university’s lecture halls for fear that they will return steeped in occult lore instead of more practical subjects.

    • As the library of Krevborna’s most hallowed educational institution, Creedhall University Library is an astoundingly well-funded repository of learning and knowledge. 

    • The library possesses books related to any imaginable topic, though some of its archives are highly restricted due to the fell nature of the tomes involved.

    • Although most of the staff of the library works to maintain and catalog the library’s holdings or assists the scholars of Creedhall with their research, the library employs a number of adventurers who are tasked with seeking out and obtaining rare books, scrolls, and other writings under the aegis of its Special Collections Department. 

    • The agents of Special Collections Department are rarely sent after mundane books; they deal in the arcane, the occult, and the forbidden.

Creedhall Overview

Creedhall is essentially the Gothic end of "dark academia" in Krevborna.

Creedhall

A University Town of Dark Experiments and Mad Science

The town of Creedhall is regarded as a shining beacon of enlightenment in the superstitious darkness that pervades Krevborna. The atmosphere in Creedhall is electric; the town’s cafes and salons host fevered debates over the latest philosophical and scientific propositions, new ideas strike like lightning from the ether, and the academic community pushes innovations and modernization unheralded in the rest of Krevborna.

Creedhall is home to the prestigious Creedhall University, Krevborna’s premier institute of higher learning. Scholars and students garbed in dark robes bustle to and fro throughout the town, seeking curious shops tucked away on forgotten avenues that peddle tomes, scrolls, and other obscure research materials. Creedhall has a thriving trade in rare books, particularly tomes of an occult nature. Due to its culture of intellectual curiosity and mechanical inventiveness, artificers and inventors working at the crossroads of science and magic feel free to pursue their mad experiments within this Promethean burg. Creedhall is the only locale in Krevborna that is lit by magical lights—a gift to the town from a prominent scholar of the arcane.

Desolate, mist-shrouded moors surround Creedhall, enhancing the feeling that the town is a point of light in the darkness. The moors are notoriously haunted by a wide variety of spirits; paranormal researchers from Creedhall University often send expeditions to research ghostly phenomena. 

Hallmarks

The following elements and aesthetic notes define Creedhall:

    • Creedhall is a site of magical and technological marvels.

    • The town is home to the famed Creedhall University, Krevborna’s most prestigious institution of higher learning.

    • Obscure books can often be obtained from Creedhall's book stalls and markets.

    • The architecture in Creedhall tends toward neoclassicism; domed buildings and colonnades are common.