The Ashcombe Legacy Circle

Ashcombe's expedition departed in 1918 during the final years of the Great War, advertised as a scientific and geographical mission but partly financed through military intelligence and private collecting interests. Thirty-six men entered the Green Expanse. Only seven returned. Their reports contradicted one another so completely that the public assumed trauma and exhaustion had damaged their memories. Ashcombe used this confusion to conceal the artifact, presenting botanical samples, maps, and animal trophies as the expedition's principal achievements. In 1919 he was knighted, became wealthy through private sales, and established the Blackwood circle to control the remaining evidence. The first watershed moment came in 1920, when a London photographer produced a plate showing a small ash-covered figure standing behind Ashcombe during a formal reception. No one remembered the figure being present. Within weeks, the photographer disappeared, three guests reported the same dream, and Ashcombe ordered every copy destroyed. The second watershed moment came six months before the household was abandoned. A maid found dozens of tiny footprints leading from the museum wing to the nursery, where every mirror had been turned toward the wall. That night, several clocks stopped at the same minute, and Ashcombe sealed the lower vault. The household fled over the following weeks. Since then, the faction has survived as a struggle among people who want to inherit, sell, redeem, or bury the Ashcombe legacy.

Legacy network

The Ashcombe Legacy Circle

Type: Legacy network
Size: 60 members
Reach: Moderate in public…
Base: Blackwood Hall, outside the village of Merecombe in rural England, with active contacts in London museums, military clubs, auction houses, and private collections.

Overview

How it began

Sir Reginald Ashcombe founded the circle after returning to England in 1919 with six surviving members of an expedition that had begun with thirty-six men. During the public triumphal tour, Ashcombe presented himself as a disciplined explorer who had overcome disease, hostile terrain, and logistical disaster. Privately, he gathered his secretary, trusted servants, military patrons, curators, and financiers in Blackwood Hall and made them swear to protect the expedition's records until he decided how to reveal his greatest discovery. The oath was less a brotherhood than a bargain. Each participant received money, status, access to artifacts, or a promise of future recognition. None received the entire truth. After Ashcombe died or vanished from public life, the circle fractured into competing custodians. Some believed the artifact should be displayed as the crowning achievement of British exploration. Others wanted to sell it to an aristocratic collector. A frightened minority understood that every conversation about the fetish seemed to coincide with disappearances, altered memories, and impossible disturbances. They chose silence, but never agreed on what silence required.

How to know them

MottoWhat is discovered must be mastered.

EmblemA black stone clenched inside a brass compass ring, with a tiny green line crossing the design like a trail through leaves. Older members wear it as a lapel pin. The original emblem has a second detail hidden beneath the clasp: three small footprints walking away from the stone.

Colours

Bottle green
Tarnished brass
Ash gray
Blood red used only in private insignia

Signs

A black stone enclosed by a compass ring
Three tiny footprints pointing away from a trophy pedestal
A green thread stitched inside the cuffs of senior servants
A brass key with no visible lock
The phrase Stone is not prison, used only by those who have heard Toma speak

DressNo official uniform exists. Senior members favor dark hunting jackets, bottle-green ties, brass compass pins, and ash-gray gloves. Estate servants traditionally wear black with a narrow green thread sewn into the cuff. Those arranging illicit transport often use plain brown traveling coats and carry brass luggage tags stamped with Ashcombe's crest.

Standing

AlignmentLawful opportunist with fractured moral loyalties. Publicly devoted to scholarship, national prestige, and the preservation of history. In practice, its members range from frightened custodians to imperial profiteers willing to endanger lives for fame, money, or control of the narrative.

AgeFormally established in 1919, with roots in the 1890s imperial expedition culture and the Ashcombe household. Its active influence has persisted through private correspondence, museum patronage, locked archives, survivor networks, and competing claims to Sir Reginald Ashcombe's legacy.

WealthHigh but unstable. The Ashcombe estate, private collections, museum patronage, and inherited investments provide considerable resources. However, much of the wealth depends on stolen artifacts, concealed debts, insurance fraud, and the continued market value of the mystery. A public scandal or supernatural incident could ruin several members at once.

What they say they want

Preserve Sir Reginald Ashcombe's scientific and exploratory legacy

Catalog and protect the expedition's discoveries

Support British scholarship and geographical knowledge

Ensure that Blackwood Hall and its collection are not looted

Honor the men who died in the Green Expanse

Eventually place the undisclosed discovery in a reputable museum

What they are doing now

Recover the carved fetish from the vault beneath Blackwood Hall before rival claimants do.

Obtain the original expedition journals and determine which passages were removed or rewritten.

Prevent the elderly guardian from reaching London or speaking to a major newspaper.

Secure an official museum transfer order that can be used as forged authority by the faction's most aggressive members.

Locate the seven returning expedition members and reconcile their contradictory accounts.

Control the public story of Ashcombe's death, the abandonment of the estate, and the undisclosed discovery.

Move the artifact to a private railway carriage or museum vault before the growing supernatural disturbance becomes undeniable.

Where it leads

The faction's competing visions cannot coexist. The museum members imagine a controlled institution dedicated to Ashcombe's discoveries. The military patrons want a national legend and future expeditions. The collectors want private ownership. Edith Vale and a few frightened survivors want the artifact returned to the Green Expanse and the records destroyed. The most dangerous long-term possibility is that the faction succeeds in creating an international sensation around the fetish, turning the Hunter's attention toward London and everyone who has learned its story.

How others see them

To respectable society, the circle appears to be an informal but prestigious network of explorers, scholars, officers, servants, and patrons preserving the memory of a celebrated adventurer. Some see them as guardians of national heritage. Others regard them as eccentric aristocrats protecting a scandal. In Merecombe, they are associated with unpaid debts, abandoned servants, strange noises, and the deaths of people who asked too many questions.

People

5 ranks

Executor of the Ashcombe Estate

Edith Vale

Measured, observant, and socially formidable. She is capable of genuine compassion, but years of secrecy have made her view deception as a form of care.

The Ashcombe Executor1 member
Controls the surviving legal estate, decides which records are released, negotiates with museums and buyers, and claims authority over all legitimate recovery efforts.
The Four Custodians4 members
Represent the estate, military patrons, museum interests, and private collectors. They vote on major decisions, but each controls separate information and resources.
The Returned Men7 members
Surviving expedition personnel who provide testimony, security, field knowledge, and competing interpretations of the Green Expanse.
The Blackwood Retainers18 members
Former servants, estate workers, drivers, clerks, and house staff who maintain old contacts and know the physical secrets of Blackwood Hall.
The Corresponding Patrons30 members
Collectors, officers, academics, journalists, and financiers who provide money, introductions, transportation, and social pressure without being told the full truth.

Other key members

Thomas Rook Surviving rifleman and reluctant witness
Dr. Miriam Bell Scientific curator of the Ashcombe Collection at the Royal Museum of Antiquities
Lord Silas Vane Aristocratic buyer and principal financier of the recovery effort
Colonel Alistair Harcourt Military patron and chair of the Imperial Sporting Committee
Toma Elderly guardian, historical adversary, and hidden resident of Blackwood Hall

How they are organised

How it is runLoose legacy network built around patronage, secrecy, competing claims, and inherited access rather than formal membership

Who comes nextThe Executor is nominally succeeded by whoever controls the legal estate and the original letter of appointment. In practice, succession depends on which bloc controls the journals, the museum contacts, and the surviving witnesses. Edith Vale has attempted to name no successor, hoping the circle will dissolve. Lord Vane wants to buy the estate. Dr. Bell wants the museum to absorb its collection. Colonel Harcourt wants a committee answerable to the state. If the artifact is moved, the faction may split permanently between those who follow it and those who remain to bury the evidence.

How they recruitProspective members are approached through private clubs, museum correspondence, military introductions, or former household connections. They are first given a harmless task involving an ordinary expedition relic. If they prove discreet, they receive a fragment of the real story. Inner-circle members are shown a sketch of the fetish but are forbidden to hear its full description from another person. This rule is intended to limit shared awareness, though many members break it out of pride or curiosity.

To join

A personal connection to Ashcombe, Blackwood Hall, the expedition, or one of the institutions controlling its records
Willingness to protect the faction's secrecy and accept that official history may differ from personal knowledge
Access to money, authority, scholarship, transportation, or useful testimony
For inner-circle membership, direct knowledge of the artifact or possession of a document that could affect its ownership

Operations

What they do

Preserving and manipulating Ashcombe's reputation

Trading expedition artifacts and documents

Negotiating with museums, collectors, military patrons, and newspapers

Searching Blackwood Hall for unreleased records

Recruiting investigators to recover or secure the artifact

Suppressing the guardian's testimony

Arranging transport and ownership claims

Maintaining contradictory official explanations for the expedition's losses

How they do it

Forging permits, museum orders, and estate documents

Buying silence through pensions, patronage, and private settlements

Using newspapers and lectures to shape the heroic public narrative

Hiring discreet investigators and armed escorts

Splitting contradictory witnesses into separate interviews so they cannot compare accounts

Planting convincing but incomplete journals and maps

Arranging secret auctions and private viewings

Threatening to expose scandals involving rivals

Suppressing guardian testimony by presenting him as a diseased criminal or hallucinating servant

Services for hire

Ashcombe AuthorityA substantial fee or a favor owed to the estate
Provides a forged letter of introduction, museum credential, military pass, or legal claim to justify entry into restricted locations.
Quiet PassageA share of recovered valuables or future patronage
Arranges discreet transport of expedition relics through London warehouses, private rail compartments, or shipping contacts.
The Blackwood InquiryAccess to a personal secret, criminal record, or damaging correspondence
Uses its network to investigate a person connected to the expedition, the estate, or a competing claimant.
Restricted ConsultationA promise never to publish or repeat the result
Allows trusted investigators to consult journals, maps, survivor statements, and catalogued specimens.
Expedition SupportA favor of equal danger
Provides armed escorts, estate keys, servants' maps, or specialized equipment for recovering objects from Blackwood Hall.

What they can do

Can produce convincing forged authority through museum, military, and estate connections

Possesses contradictory but valuable firsthand accounts of the Green Expanse

Controls hidden records, maps, specimens, and architectural access to Blackwood Hall

Can mobilize wealthy patrons, legal threats, private guards, and newspaper influence

Understands enough about the artifact to recognize some signs of its attention, though not enough to remain safe

Can turn social curiosity into a dangerous chain of awareness by arranging lectures, exhibitions, interviews, and private viewings

Maintains historical links to both the explorer echo and the guardian, allowing members to identify recurring symbols and patterns

What they have

The Blackwood Hall estate and hidden museum vault

Original and altered expedition journals

Maps showing routes into the Green Expanse, including several that do not match ordinary geography

Letters of introduction from military patrons and museum directors

Legal claims over Ashcombe's collection

A locked case containing recovered darts, pigments, tools, and fragments of guardian material culture

Private railway, shipping, and auction contacts

The testimonies of seven survivors, though several are unreliable or compromised

A network of servants and former household staff who know hidden passages through the estate

Where they are weak

The faction is divided by incompatible motives and cannot maintain a single strategy

Its authority depends on documents that can be forged, stolen, or publicly contradicted

Most members misunderstand the supernatural danger and treat it as superstition, psychology, or market competition

Several key witnesses are elderly, unstable, compromised, or terrified into silence

The faction's secrecy creates distrust among allies and makes coordinated action difficult

Its wealth and social status make it vulnerable to scandal, legal exposure, and public accusation

The artifact's influence turns every internal dispute into a possible source of dangerous attention

The guardian knows hidden routes, concealed evidence, and weaknesses in the manor that outsiders cannot easily discover

Territory

Headquarters

Blackwood Hall, outside the village of Merecombe in rural England, with active contacts in London museums, military clubs, auction houses, and private collections.

KindAbandoned country estate, private museum, archive, and subterranean vault

Blackwood Hall is a sprawling Jacobean revival manor surrounded by wet lawns, neglected glasshouses, overgrown hunting paths, and a private museum wing. Its public rooms display trophies from the expedition, including weapons, botanical cases, maps, masks, and animal specimens. The lower vault is concealed behind a false wall beneath the museum's cartography room. The estate is both headquarters and trap. Documents have been hidden in servant passages, trophies have been rearranged to conceal missing pieces, and the manor's clocks stopped at one minute because the household staff fled simultaneously after witnessing the first major manifestation of the Hunter.

Lands they hold

Blackwood Hall and its grounds

The surrounding village of Merecombe

Ashcombe's London museum contacts and archive holdings

Private collectors' residences and auction rooms

Shipping and railway routes used to move expedition property

The fragmented social territory of imperial clubs, learned societies, and aristocratic salons

Outposts

The Royal Museum of AntiquitiesLondon, KensingtonHolds catalogued Ashcombe specimens, altered expedition reports, and Dr. Bell's private research files.
Vane HouseLondon, St. James'sPrivate meeting place for collectors, military patrons, auctioneers, and potential buyers.
The Blackwood LodgeMerecombe villageFormer estate office where servants, drivers, and local informants exchange keys, rumors, and copies of documents.
Ashcombe Shipping Locker 17Southampton docksContains crates, forged manifests, expedition equipment, and a reinforced case intended for the artifact.

Secrets

The big secret · GM only

Sir Reginald Ashcombe did not merely steal the artifact. He deliberately exposed each returning survivor to it, forcing them to handle it and describe it in writing so that he could determine whether the Hunter followed individual awareness. He discovered that the entity's attention could be transferred or intensified through testimony. The expedition's contradictory stories were not only trauma. They were the result of Ashcombe experimenting on his own men. The guardian has spent decades trying to undo the chain of awareness created by those experiments.

What they really want · GM only

Control the artifact long enough to determine whether attention can be transferred from one person to another

Erase every account that identifies the guardian culture as human and independent rather than primitive or supernatural

Use the expedition's mystery to secure political funding for a second expedition

Recover Ashcombe's missing private notebooks, which may contain a method for sending the Hunter's awareness elsewhere

Turn the artifact into a symbol of national prestige before rivals can claim it

Destroy the original journals only after extracting every profitable secret from them

Convince the public that the Blackwood haunting is a hoax while privately using the haunting to keep trespassers away

Hidden plans · GM only

The London collectors intend to make the artifact the centerpiece of an exclusive exhibition, believing that controlled publicity will increase prestige without creating danger.

Colonel Harcourt wants to use the expedition records to justify future military and commercial ventures into the Green Expanse.

Edith Vale suspects Ashcombe's wealth came from earlier thefts and wants to recover evidence before the family name collapses.

Dr. Miriam Bell believes the artifact is an unprecedented example of human symbolic culture and may risk public catastrophe to study it.

Silas Vane, the aristocratic buyer, has no intention of preserving the object. He wants to possess the thing that frightened Ashcombe and believes ownership proves courage.

Several members secretly hope the investigators will carry the artifact away from England, making them convenient scapegoats if the haunting worsens.

The explorer echo is being mistaken for Ashcombe's posthumous instructions. Some faction members are unknowingly serving a pattern created by the artifact's attention.

Smaller secrets · GM only

Ashcombe kept a second set of journals in shorthand inside the walls of his study.

A servant hid one of the expedition rifles because its barrel was packed with tiny carved bones.

The museum's catalog lists several specimens that never existed and omits several that do.

Thomas Rook remembers a ninth survivor who reached the coast but was not included in the official count.

Lord Vane has already paid for a reinforced traveling case designed to move the artifact across England.

Edith Vale has a letter proving Ashcombe planned to return to the Green Expanse before his disappearance.

The estate's old hunting dogs refused to enter the museum wing years before the haunting became public.

What insiders say · GM only

Trouble inside · GM only

The faction's central conflict is whether Ashcombe's legacy is a treasure, a scandal, or a warning. The Executor and military patrons want control. The museum curator wants knowledge. The surviving rifleman wants confession. The former secretary wants to preserve the estate's reputation while secretly trying to prevent anyone from opening the vault. The aristocratic buyer wants possession at any cost. Servants are divided between loyalty to the household and sympathy for the guardian. No decision is made cleanly because every member holds a different fragment of the truth. Their secrecy protects them from scandal, but it also ensures that the artifact remains discussed, pursued, and increasingly visible to the Hunter.

Crimes · GM only

Financing an expedition that used coercion, armed intimidation, and theft against an isolated human culture

Killing or abandoning local guides who refused to lead the expedition farther into the Green Expanse

Suppressing survivor testimony and altering journals to conceal the expedition's losses

Smuggling the artifact out of South America under false customs declarations

Threatening witnesses, bribing officials, and placing false evidence in Blackwood Hall

Attempting to confine, discredit, or silence the surviving guardian

Spreading sensational accounts of the artifact to increase its value despite knowing that attention may attract the Hunter

Selling expedition relics whose provenance was deliberately falsified

Plot hooks

9 hooks

1
The Page That Was Cut Out
Low to moderateReward: Money, estate access, and a letter of introduction to a museum or military patron
Edith Vale hires the characters to recover a missing journal from a London book dealer before Dr. Bell or Lord Vane learns that it contains a drawing of the guardian's people and a warning about awareness.
2
The Rifleman Remembers
ModerateReward: A survivor's testimony, a weapon, and the truth about one expedition disappearance
Thomas Rook asks the characters to escort him to Blackwood Hall. He claims he wants to retrieve his rifle, but actually intends to destroy the expedition's original map before the circle can use it to locate the Green Expanse.
3
A Proper Place for the Impossible
HighReward: Institutional support, research resources, and legal protection
Dr. Bell offers official authority and expert assistance if the characters recover the fetish for the Royal Museum. Her documents are genuine, but the mission would place the artifact in a crowded London institution and expose thousands to its story.
4
The Collector's Convoy
HighReward: A powerful patron, stolen resources, or evidence of the faction's crimes
Lord Vane dispatches hired men to Blackwood Hall with a reinforced case. The characters must decide whether to oppose them, infiltrate the team, or let the transfer proceed while tracking the artifact's growing influence.
5
The Ghost in the Servant Stairs
ModerateReward: The guardian's trust and access to hidden estate passages
A former servant claims the guardian is murdering trespassers inside the manor. The characters are asked to capture him alive and deliver him to the authorities, but the evidence reveals that the apparent attacks are staged echoes and that the real guardian is hiding nearby.
6
An Evening of Exploration
VariableReward: Prevention of a mass exposure event and influence among frightened insiders
The party finds a public lecture advertised under Ashcombe's name. The speaker intends to reveal the existence of the fetish through carefully chosen slides. Stopping the lecture may require social pressure, sabotage, or explaining an impossible danger to people who think they are attending entertainment.
7
Seven Stories, One Door
HighReward: A method for reducing awareness and a clue to the Hunter's behavior
A survivor's testimony changes every time it is retold. The characters must determine whether the witness is lying, possessed, or unconsciously repeating descriptions that allow the Hunter to perceive new minds.
8
Authority in a Locked Case
HighReward: Control of the artifact's immediate fate and proof of the circle's internal conspiracy
The characters recover a forged museum order authorizing the artifact's transfer. Three different groups possess copies, each bearing a different signature. The investigation becomes a race through London archives, auction houses, and railway depots while the artifact's influence causes streets and buildings to seem subtly rearranged.
9
The Hunter's Trophy
ExtremeReward: The chance to prevent a spreading supernatural catastrophe and reshape the legacy of an empire
A campaign-scale conflict begins when the Imperial Sporting Committee announces a national exhibition of Ashcombe's discoveries. The faction plans to display the fetish behind armored glass, while Edith Vale secretly wants the characters to return it overseas and Toma insists that the only safe route is through the Green Expanse itself.

Work they offer

1Recover a stolen journal from a London dealer

2Escort a survivor to Blackwood Hall

3Investigate who has been entering the sealed museum wing

4Find a missing servant who carried a key to the lower vault

5Verify the authenticity of an expedition map

6Prevent a private auction of Ashcombe relics

7Locate and discreetly question the seventh survivor

8Transport a sealed case without opening it

9Convince a newspaper editor not to publish a sensational account

What gets in the way

The faction is not a formal organization in the present day. Its members often work at cross purposes while claiming to act in Ashcombe's name.

Every attempt to investigate the artifact creates more witnesses, more records, and more dangerous awareness.

The surviving expedition men disagree about what happened in the Green Expanse and have built their identities around incompatible versions of the truth.

The museum faction wants documentation and public recognition, while the private collectors want possession and secrecy.

Several servants know that the manor was not merely abandoned. They have spent decades altering records to protect themselves from blame.

A forged letter or false expedition journal can redirect the entire investigation because outsiders expect the Ashcombe legacy to contain deliberate mysteries.

The guardian's testimony could destroy the heroic imperial narrative, exposing violence against an isolated people and proving that the expedition brought a danger home.

The explorer echo within Blackwood Hall sometimes imitates Ashcombe's authority, causing faction members to obey instructions that no living person gave.

Rumours

1Ashcombe returned with the preserved heart of an unknown animal. False, though one specimen case contains a stone shaped like a heart.

2The estate is haunted by the men who died in the Green Expanse. Partly true, but the visible figures are echoes of guardians and explorer memories.

3Ashcombe killed his expedition companions for gold. False, though he did conceal the circumstances of their deaths.

4A living pygmy has been hiding in Blackwood Hall since the 1920s. True, but the rumor is usually phrased as a cruel caricature of Toma.

5The artifact changes shape when no one is looking. Misleading. Its posture changes according to the observer's attention and expectations.

6The Royal Museum already owns the fetish. False, but Dr. Bell has prepared a display case and catalog entry for it.

7The clocks stopped because Ashcombe was murdered at midnight. False. They stopped at the same minute during a mass manifestation.

8The Green Expanse does not exist. False, though ordinary maps cannot reliably describe its routes.

9The survivor who refuses to speak knows the true name of the Hunter. Unconfirmed, but his notebooks contain the same symbol found beneath the artifact's case.

10Ashcombe's ghost wants the fetish displayed. False. The explorer echo appears to encourage recovery because it reflects the desires of people who approach it.

The Ashcombe Legacy Circle

The Ashcombe Legacy Circle

Overview

How it began

How to know them

Standing

What they say they want

What they are doing now

Where it leads

How others see them

People

Executor of the Ashcombe Estate

Other key members

How they are organised

Relations

Operations

What they do

How they do it

Services for hire

What they can do

What they have

Where they are weak

Territory

Headquarters

Lands they hold

Outposts

Secrets

Plot hooks

Work they offer

What gets in the way

Rumours

Media

Turn The Ashcombe Legacy Circle into a sheet