Gladsheim - SuspireWiki

The house seems rather sinister due to its lack of care. It sits atop a steep ravine, and the property around it has gone wild in the most formidable manner imaginable - junipers, scrub vines, bushes and various forms of creeper climb wildly over the peeling walls and newly erected wrought iron fence. Signs every few yards threaten trespassers with being shot. A row of simple square pillars hold up the house's Greek revival porch roof on the front galley, and the central door is the original antique door of the home. The long windows in the front of the house need to be replaced and are grimy, and show little of the dark inside. Twin yew trees stretch their scrawny limbs to the heavens on either side of the front steps, and add a note of grimness to the already eerie property.

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The Inside

The front hall opens onto one large room, an is empty an full of shadows. It shows clear through to an open door at the back of the house, beyond which all is tangled and green. The patio doors to the back of the main room are barred and locked despite the heat, though the chirps of crickets and the croaks of frogs resonate off the walls. There is still dignity here; dignity and the weight of years.

The interior floors are a rich pine that glow with an inner and secret light, despite the dust and mud brought in from the large glass patio doors. The recently repaired interior staircase is located opposite the fireplace in the main room, and leads up to the second floor. Up there the wainscoting is mildewed but still stout. Broken windows upstairs have also been replaced but not all of the intruding wildlife is quite yet cleared out. Topping the upstairs rooms is the very tiny attic, little more then a small storage area. It is hot as a sauna and filled with rotting boxes full of various useless junk.

There is an entrance to the cellar by means of a hidden trap in the kitchen floor. A fetid, overpowering smell is there not unlike that which pervades tombs. A steeply-slanting flight of stairs leads down into darkness. They are in a terrible state of repair - in one place an entire riser missing, leaving only a black hole. The floor is earthen, the walls of stout brick, and hardly wet.

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The Garden

To the back of the house down the few steps of the worn planking off the main floor balcony, there are a few muddy flagstones and an overgrown trellis. Here large gruesome spiders make their homes among the overgrown flowers and vines. Often the buzz of captured insects is heard when passing under the wooden structure, making the skin twitch.

The gloomy shadows cast by the meager lights of the road and house and have turned the wild overgrowth beyond the trellis into some heinous looking jungle - beautiful, yet sinister. Wild Roses grow in profusion in a semi circle, almost concealing the crumbling stone wall that blocks this area from the encroaching swamp. Once into the semi-circle a deep sense of relaxation floods ones mind, an any thoughts of violence here seem taboo. (Garden Merit)

To the west of the garden there is a abandoned looking shed, nearly buried in scarlet sumac. Inside the various sized shears, shovels an old chain which may have once served as a fence take on the look of torture devices.

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Security on the Grounds

Legitimate access to the property is limited to the remotely operated gate along the main path towards the house. A simple intercom system will communicate would-be entrants with the security who open the gate only for people specifically cleared for entrance by Carter Rails. Additionally, anyone who isn't Carter Rails or Daphne Reece can expect to be loosely shadowed by at least two of the four security guards who are otherwise normally patrolling the perimiter fence in groups of two. They will make you wait to enter until a team can get reasonably near enough to the gate to keep an eye out.

Additionally, the signs scattered along the wrought iron fence declaring that "trespassers will be shot" seem to be anything but bluffs. Trespassers, and specifically gate-climbers, can expect to be under fire from the moment they cross over the top of the fence.

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