Another Damsel in Distress -- Saving Madeline

Entering the House of Usher I met Roderick and Madeline with their friend Margaret for a few brief introductions before Madeline literally ran away from us to rest. I quickly followed and left Fierce to speak with Roderick. She quizzed him discretely and tried to find out more about what was going on in Roderick's dreams and how his thoughts were degenerating, but he would not give much up to her besides that he had nightmares of his mother coming back from the dead. By following Madeline for a ways, I got the chance to explore the house for a bit and made sure I knew how to get around quickly from the bottom of the crypt to the top floor. I noticed only a few things that explained how crazy the family was, but traveling quickly, I may have missed a few things. The first thing I noticed was the rats running around on the floors and the random old Spanish painting throughout the house. There are a few thing that I would love to see added to the house and that would be more devotions to their mother. He said that she had been haunting his dreams and even pointed out a wreath he had made of her hair but it would be more effective if she were bearing down on him constantly.


If the walls had pictures of her and maybe even had it right over his bed, it would be much more convincing that his mother was haunting him. Also more old boxes would contribute to there insanity if they were lying around and when you opened them the items inside were junk that may or may not give clues to the avatars as ways to get Madeline out of the house or trick Roderick to go outside. This would add more to the house as there would be more options for how the story could go. One more thing that I felt would add to the house it maybe the participant could get buried alive and the other person would have to stop dealing with Roderick and Madeline and save the person trapped.


Back to talking with Roderick, he made it clear that he was terrified of his mother coming back from the dead even though she had died ten years ago and he had seen how dead she really was. In the crypt, I found his mother's skeleton out of it's casket and the poem he wrote and this very well may have contributed to the madness as he may believe that he released or disturbed her spirit. He wouldn't give up much about his thoughts except when speaking about the painting, especially the Goya, The Sleep of Reason. This is when Roderick finally opened up a little about where his madness was stemming from, saying that it was in his dreams that his mother haunted him and because of that the little sleep he got drove him to madness. He continued as Madeline shrieked, saying that her screams kept him up and did nothing but caused further damage to his mind.

I wanted to dig deeper into Roderick's madness but Madeline was found on her bed presumably dead which set Roderick off the deep end. This is when Fierce and I had to step it up and distract Roderick from going down into the crypt, and figure out why the random woman Margaret was there and the agenda she was plotting. Roderick was only calmed when I rescued Madeline from the crypt even though Fierce and I kept him from ever finding out she was trapped in the crypt, unless of course, he put her in there!