Your heroes win, inherit, or are rewarded with the old pile at Blackwood Manor. It’s a fine stone building, but it’s in rough shape and will require a lot of work, starting with rousting out the vermin.

A decaying mansion looms over the surrounding countryside. Locals refuse to approach it after sunset. Dead gardens, tangled ivy, fallen statues, and a neglected chapel with cemetery surround the house….

There are numerous mansion battlemaps available for download, many of them free. Choose one with sufficient secret doors and dungeons and start planning.

• Explore the place and slay or chase off various creatures, such as oversized spiders and rats, a mimic, a lurker above, and rust monsters.
• Determine which of the numerous keys here and there open which locked rooms.
• Discover the house’s secret doors and passages and other awful secrets:
  • The attic converted to an asylum for a family lunatic.
  • A secret room used for dark rituals.
  • The dungeon cell that held an enemy captive in secret.
  • Family records revealing hidden relationships.
  • The cellar alcove walled up with the skeleton of a jilted lover.
• Attend a ghostly banquet to gain second sight to see spirits, auras, and such.
• Find lost treasures hidden by vermin or forgotten in their hiding places.
• Disarm old traps and hazards:
  • Swinging blade in a hallway.
  • Guillotine built into a window frame.
  • Trick stairs that flatten into a delivery chute to the cellar, but the lever is faulty.
• Rid the place of ghosts with unfinished business by:
  • Reading personal journals to figure out which paintings were meant to go where.
  • Finding and laying to rest the lost corpse of the master of a spectral hound.

• Quell the corrupted undead in the chapel and cemetery. They can smell living blood.
• Hire workers to make repairs to the roof and windows and clean and paint.
• Hire workers to clean out the grounds and the moat… but first slay its resident monster.
• Replace decaying tapestries, drapes, and books for the library.
• Host a fancy ball to impress neighboring lords with your improvements.