Lupanar

The Lupanar is one of the mysterious locations of the Hedge.

Overview
This building sits atop a hill in the Hedge, coils of crimson thorn ringing the bottom and a field of Fear Gortach (“hungry grass”), covering the rest of the knoll. The structure itself is nothing fancy, and in fact seems far too plain for the Hedge: it’s a three-floor construction, just a bland block of dried clay with square windows and a square door. No ornamentation. Little color. Bland in nearly every way — and that includes the interior of the building, too. It is, for the most part, a series of seven rooms per floor, and each room is just (you guessed it), a square room with square windows and a rectangular bed in the middle of the floor. And the bed? It’s made of stone. No pillows. No comforter. Just hard, cold stone.

It’s perhaps tough to envision that this is actually a brothel (of sorts). Soon as one enters the building, a parade of hobgoblins emerges from the shadowed corners of the rooms, and these entities offer themselves to the character. The hobgoblins run the gamut: beautiful succubi, strange aliens, insectile monsters, and so forth. If a character shows any inclination toward one over another, that hobgoblin tries to take the changeling off to a room. For the most part, the goblin offers no discussion — he, she, or it gets right down to business. No discussions of money take place. They engage in a hard sell of seduction, or at least attempt to. Should the character be unwilling or instead seek to talk first, most of the hobs will allow the changeling some measure of hesitation. The creatures will talk (provided their  fey  biology  allows  for  such  communication). But they’ll always try to return to the act itself, even bringing in other hobgoblins to try to continue the seduction. They never force the issue, but they certainly make for not-so-gentle urgings.

When the Hedge-trollop is “done” (or has been summarily rejected), it will return to the shadows where it once more hides in the corner, barely seen. Should a character engage in violence against one of the Lupanar’s workers, the Madam will emerge to ensure the safety of her children.

Rules
With the Lupanar, the following rules are in play:

• Characters that engage in sex here unwittingly perform a trade-off. Every five minutes of fornication with one of the hobwhores causes one of the following to happen: the character loses one point of Willpower and gains one point of Glamour; the character takes a –1 dice pool in a Skill category (Mental, Physical or Social) but gains +1 in a different Skill category (Mental, Physical or Social) with these new modifiers lasting for the next 24 hours; the character heals one point of bashing or lethal damage, but loses one point of Glamour.

• Time  is  not  consistent  here. Every minute  spent  within the Lupanar is a half-hour passed once the characters have left (so, spending 30 minutes within the brothel means the characters have actuallyspent 15 hours inside its walls).

• Any  characters  with  Lust  as  a  Vice  who  engage  in  any kind of  sexual  or  seductive  act  with  the  hob-whores  gains  two Willpower points as a result, not just one.