King Lenard II
A black statue of the one-eyed King Lenard II stands in the Statue Room of the Accursed Den, stinking of sulfur and Rotblack Sludge. Obvious cavity where the eye would be. Investigation reveals bloodstains in the socket.
He is the only named Shadow King in canon. Long dead. Presumed prior Shadow King — the hereditary anchor that proves the line is a line and not a title invented by Fletcher to keep Aldon imprisoned. His statue is the lock.
What He Does
He is dead. He does not do anything. Everything Lenard II does, he does through his statue.
- He locks the door. "Place an eye in the king's socket: the door to the Son's room opens with a loud crack." The Son's Room (13) is where Aldon is held. Without the eye, the door is sealed. With it, the door opens. The puzzle is a hereditary blood-key — a one-eyed monarch's statue accepts an eye and rewards the offering with access to the heir of his line.
- He bleeds. The socket has bloodstains. Someone has done this before. The statue has been used as a key, perhaps many times, by people supplying eyes that may or may not have been their own.
- He proves the dynasty. His name being remembered — the statue still standing, the puzzle still working — establishes that the Shadow King's line extends back through at least one named, one-eyed predecessor. The line is real. The current Shadow King is not the only one to have sat that throne.
How He Appears in Scenes
Only as the statue, only in Rotblack Sludge. Players entering room 12 of the Accursed Den:
- See the statue. "Black statue of the one-eyed King Lenard II."
- See the cavity. "Obvious cavity where the eye would be."
- See the blood. "Investigation reveals bloodstains in the socket."
- Eventually realize they need an eye. (Whose? The scenario does not say. Their own. A corpse's. A torn-out enemy's. Fletcher has both his eyes. The crooked guards have eyes. The mad prisoners in room 5 have eyes.)
- Place the eye. Hear the loud crack. Enter the Son's Room. Find Aldon gnawing human bones, refusing to leave.
Why He Matters
The Shadow King line is otherwise unverifiable. The current Shadow King is "a being obscured by ritual" (Bare Bones p.13) — no portrait, no name, no description. Lenard II is the only proof the line has history.
He is also the cruelty index of the whole Rotblack Sludge module. The dungeon-key is harvested from a body. The previous adventurers who got this far either gave up an eye or took one. The bloodstains are the legacy.
Relationships as Actor
- Successor (probable): the current Shadow King of Graven-Tosk, whose son Aldon is locked behind Lenard's statue.
- Successor (potential): Aldon himself — the heir whose recovery is the scenario's purpose. The line passes through Lenard II to whoever sits the Palace of the Shadow King now to Aldon (if he can be brought home sane).
- Replacement-of-last-resort: the current Shadow King's imbecile brother (Bare Bones p.13), who inherits if Aldon is lost.
- Custodian (de facto): Fletcher, who possesses Lenard's room by force and uses Aldon as leverage.
Shadow King, Aldon, Palace of the Shadow King, Graven-Tosk, Rotblack Sludge, Accursed Den, Fletcher
Lenard II is named once. Nothing is known about his reign, when he lived, how he lost the eye, or how the statue ended up entombed in the Accursed Den beneath sulfur and butterfly-stream water. Whether his eye was lost in battle, gouged out in ritual, or simply rotted is unwritten. Why a statue of a Shadow King is a hereditary lock — and whose blood originally seeded the bloodstains — is a perfect canonical seed. Other Shadow Kings (Lenard I? Lenard III?) are uncalled for in canon and would write themselves: a numbered dynasty whose names survive only in stone.