Rhiannon's Vow

Stats

• Players: 3-5
• Pillars: Investigation, social intrigue, tactical defense
• Setting: Caer Llwydion, a fortified estate on the border marches

The Hook

You arrive at Caer Llwydion as guests for Lady Rhiannon's wedding to Lord Cadwallon, a union meant to end decades of feuding between their houses. The fortress gates are barred, bowmen line the walls, and beyond the moat you see Rhiannon's own father leading a war band that has laid siege since dawn. Prefect Owain, the local magistrate, greets you with forced calm and insists this is merely a family disagreement—a routine matter of jurisdiction. But every clock in the fortress shows a different time, each precisely eleven minutes apart, and the servants whisper that time itself is breaking.

Background

Rhiannon murdered her younger brother Gareth three months ago during a hunting accident that was not an accident. She did it to inherit her father's estates, which pass only to the eldest child—but her father discovered the truth. The wedding to Cadwallon is her escape: once married, she falls under his house's protection and her father's jurisdiction ends. Lord Morcant, her father, brought his riders not to stop a wedding but to execute his daughter for fratricide before the vows are spoken. Prefect Owain knows the truth but has been bribed with land to delay Morcant until the ceremony concludes. The eleven-minute discrepancy exists because Rhiannon has been resetting the great clock in the chapel tower each night, stealing time to push the wedding hour earlier—but the other timepieces in the fortress remember. Reality is fraying under the weight of her temporal theft, and if the vows are spoken while the clocks disagree, the entire fortress will become unmoored from time.

The Threat

Lady Rhiannon herself—desperate, brilliant, and hollowed out by guilt she refuses to acknowledge. She will lie with perfect composure, redirect suspicion toward her father's 'madness,' and use every social lever to ensure the wedding proceeds. Her signature move is reframing: she makes her crimes look like virtues, her victims into villains, and anyone who questions her into the true threat to peace. She carries Gareth's signet ring on a chain beneath her gown and compulsively touches it when cornered, the only crack in her performance.

1. The Outer Ward

Dust devils spin between the stables and the barracks, though there is no wind. Prefect Owain offers wine and dismisses Morcant's siege as theater—but his hands shake and he keeps checking an hourglass that runs backward. If pressed, he insists everything will resolve itself by nightfall and tries to confine the party to guest quarters for their safety. The hourglass is evidence: sand flowing upward means localized time corruption. A servant named Eleri, silent and grim, will catch the party's eye and mouth 'the tower' before vanishing into the kitchens.

2. The Chapel Tower

The stairs spiral up past windows that show the courtyard at different hours—dawn, midday, dusk, all at once. At the top, the great clock's mechanism has been tampered with: gears wrapped in silk thread, weights doubled, the pendulum scored with careful knife marks. Anyone who understands timepieces or magic will recognize deliberate sabotage meant to advance the clock without detection. On the floor, a dried bloodstain—Gareth's, from when Rhiannon brought his body here to hide it briefly before staging the hunting scene. A scrap of his torn sleeve is wedged behind the clock face.

3. The Bride's Chambers

Rhiannon receives visitors with grace, seated in a shaft of light that seems too golden, too still. She speaks of her father's grief-madness since Gareth's tragic death, how the siege endangers innocent people, how she only wants peace through this marriage. If confronted with evidence, she does not break—she recontextualizes. The sabotaged clock? Her father's agents, trying to delay the wedding. Gareth's blood? He came to her injured during the hunt, she tried to save him. She is luminous and unshakeable, and beneath her composure is a yawning void. Her handmaid will slip the party a note if they gain trust: 'She talks to him at night. To the brother. He doesn't answer.'

4. The Gatehouse Parley

Lord Morcant stands beyond bowshot, unarmed, and calls for his daughter by name—not with rage but with broken love. He will speak truth to anyone who comes to parley: Gareth's horse was found with its girth strap cut, Rhiannon returned to the lodge with blood on her knife, he found his son's journal describing his sister's jealousy. He does not want war. He wants justice before his daughter escapes it forever. If the party negotiates, he will agree to trial by testimony before neutral witnesses—but only if it happens before the wedding vows are spoken, before jurisdiction transfers. He has until sunset by his clock, which shows the true time. The fortress clocks, manipulated, say sunset is hours away.

5. The Chapel Floor

The wedding begins with Prefect Owain presiding, moving through the rites with guilty speed. Cadwallon is oblivious, a decent man who loves Rhiannon and believes her innocent. Guests from both houses fill the pews, and outside the siege engines creak as Morcant prepares a final desperate assault if the law fails him. The clocks throughout the fortress are visible from here—each showing its different hour, minute hands jerking and stuttering. As the vows approach, shadows in the chapel begin to repeat themselves, guests flicker between ages, and a cold wind rises from nowhere. Time itself is rejecting the ceremony.

Climax

The party must choose what truth to speak and to whom before the vows conclude. Expose Rhiannon before the congregation and Morcant's justice is satisfied, but Cadwallon's heart breaks and the houses return to feuding. Support her and the vows complete, but the temporal fracture consumes the chapel—everyone present becomes unmoored, living all moments of their lives simultaneously until madness takes them. The third path: convince Rhiannon to confess. If she speaks Gareth's name aloud and admits what she did, the clocks synchronize, time heals, and she can face human judgment instead of metaphysical dissolution. This requires breaking through her perfect performance to the guilt she has walled away. The signet ring is the key—make her look at it, say what it means, remember her brother as a person rather than an obstacle.

Aftermath & Rewards

If Rhiannon confesses or is exposed, Morcant takes her into custody and withdraws. The wedding is annulled. Cadwallon, devastated, offers the party a writ of safe passage through all border territories and a strongbox of silver meant for the bridal gift—coins stamped with both houses' marks, accepted everywhere in the marches. If the vows complete and the fracture occurs, the party escapes the chapel but Caer Llwydion becomes a ruin haunted by moments looping eternally, and both houses blame the survivors. If Rhiannon is supported and escapes justice, she and Cadwallon depart, but the party has made a powerful enemy in Morcant and the knowledge that they enabled a murderer. Time in the region remains slightly wrong—milk sours early, shadows lag behind their casters, and locals avoid the fortress.

Scaling Notes

For an easier session, make Prefect Owain more overtly corrupt and willing to turn on Rhiannon when threatened, giving the party an insider ally. For a harder session, Rhiannon has already bonded herself to the fortress's timepiece through blood magic—stopping the wedding requires someone to take her place in the binding, living the same eleven minutes forever to keep the fortress anchored in reality.

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