Edgar Allan Poe’s The Cask of Amontillado and The Fall of the House of Usher influenced this adventure, as has, of course, Emily Brontë’s Wuthering Heights. John Irvin’s movie Ghost Story and Leonard Wilson’s Dungeons & Dragons adventure The Ghost of Mistmoor (from Dungeon #35) are more modern influences.
The Fork portion of the adventure is inspired by such movies as The Sting with Paul Newman and Robert Redford; the latest Casino Royale; and of course Alexandre Dumas’s The Three Musketeers.
Other inspirational material includes Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining, Hunter Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, A.S. Byatt’s Possession, Tennyson’s Lady of Shalott, Michelle Shocked’s Ghost Town, and the Eagles’ Hotel California. And while I can’t remember a specific episode I’d guess that watching way too much Scooby Doo in the seventies helped. I’d have gotten away with it if it weren’t for those darn kids! If you let one of the characters accidentally fall through the wall in Elizabeth Mardel’s room, it will definitely resemble the Mystery, Inc. hijinks.
The cover image—and the manor that the maps herein are based on—is Montacute House in England.
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