Electric Eden: The House of Canon

A multi-wing dungeon module for Electric Eden

Premise

Cecil Sharp House has become a living dungeon, an institutional labyrinth where Folknet's power is strongest. Its halls are lined with display cases, curated exhibits, and polished versions of unruly traditions. Within each wing, an overlooked collector is imprisoned, their voice suppressed, their work twisted into Sharp's control.

The party's task: free these lost collectors, gather their abilities, and storm the Great Hall to confront Cecil Sharp himself. Without allies, the raid wipes. With them, tradition might just break free.

Dungeon Overview

Structure: Six liberation wings + final boss chamber Estimated Play Time: 3-4 hours Party Size: 3-6 players Difficulty: Scales with Canon Weight accumulation

Core Mechanic: Coalition Building

Unlike traditional dungeons where you defeat bosses, here you rescue allies. Each freed collector provides a unique ability that counters one of Sharp's final raid mechanics. The more collectors you save, the more survivable the final encounter becomes.

Wing One: The Espérance Hall

Atmosphere

Endless rows of sanitized morris dancers in pristine white kit march in suffocating unison. The air hums with respectability. Ribbons float like animated snares, seeking to bind anyone who moves out of formation.

Encounters

• Animated Ribbons: Attempt to bind players into "proper" positions (require EDEN rolls to work within tradition, ELECTRIC rolls to break formation)
• Synchronized Dancers: Move in perfect lockstep; breaking their rhythm causes chaos but attracts Folknet attention (+1 Canon Weight)

Environmental Hazards

• Respectability Aura: All improvisation attempts suffer -1 die penalty
• White-Kit Conformity: Players wearing non-traditional clothing become increasingly visible to Folknet

Prisoner: Mary Neal

Location: Center of the hall, bound in ceremonial white ribbons Liberation Condition: Players must either restore "fun" to the dancers (ELECTRIC approach) or demonstrate the historical validity of joyful morris (EDEN approach) Rescue Mechanic: Success frees Mary Neal and grants the Fun Aura ability

Reward Ability: Fun Aura

Cancels Sharp's "Respectability Debuff" and restores improvisation to the party

Wing Two: The Welsh Annex

Atmosphere

Empty dance floors stretch into darkness, haunted by puritanical shades muttering "sinful... sinful..." under their breath. The floor itself resists any attempt at dance, making footsteps heavy and graceless.

Encounters

• Ghost Judges: Spectral figures that erase any improvised dance steps (players must succeed on stat rolls or lose their action)
• Phantom Congregations: Whisper condemnations, forcing morale checks when players attempt Welsh folk dances

Environmental Hazards

• Moral Weight: Each successful dance move requires increasingly difficult rolls as ghostly disapproval accumulates
• Erasure Field: Failed dance attempts are literally wiped from memory—players forget what they tried

Prisoner: Lois Blake

Location: Attempting to reconstruct dance steps from flickering phantom movements Liberation Condition: Help her piece together a complete Welsh folk dance from the fragments Rescue Mechanic: Players must succeed at a sequence of EDEN rolls (using traditional knowledge) or ELECTRIC rolls (forcing new interpretations)

Reward Ability: Dance Revival

Negates Sharp's "Erasure Wave" that deletes cultural variants

Wing Three: The Everyday Gallery

Atmosphere

Pristine glass cases display "folk objects" too perfect to be real: shepherds' crooks that never touched sheep, butter churns that never knew cream. The cases hum with preservation magic—touching them spawns glass-shard wraiths.

Encounters

• Display Case Guardians: Glass-shard constructs that attack anyone attempting to handle the "authentic" objects
• Idealization Field: Reality slowly shifts to match the sanitized displays, making the mundane world fade

Environmental Hazards

• Untouchable Tradition: Interacting with displayed objects without proper "authentication" triggers defensive magic
• Pastoral Overlay: The space gradually transforms into an impossibly clean rural idyll, disconnecting players from messy reality

Prisoner: Dorothy Hartley

Location: Endlessly sketching rural scenes that dissolve when she blinks, trapped in a cycle of idealized representation Liberation Condition: Help her capture something real and imperfect—the stains, wear, and lived-in quality that make objects authentic Rescue Mechanic: Players must introduce deliberate imperfection or demonstrate the gap between display and reality

Reward Ability: Everyday Detail

Exposes Sharp's illusions, lowering his defenses and revealing messy realities

Wing Four: The Occult Attic

Atmosphere

Tarot cards flutter through the air like razor-edged birds. Rider-Waite illustrations twist into prison bars and constraining frames. The very air shimmers with mystical imagery turned oppressive.

Encounters

• Weaponized Tarot: Pixie's own artistic creations attack as flying blade-cards
• Rider-Waite Wardens: Animated tarot figures (Death, The Tower, etc.) that demand "authenticity" from all magical working

Environmental Hazards

• Artistic Imprisonment: Creative attempts risk being literally framed—trapped within illustrated borders
• Symbolic Overload: The space threatens to reduce all complex reality to simple mystical correspondences

Prisoner: Pamela Colman Smith ("Pixie")

Location: Suspended within a giant tarot card frame, her own art turned against her Liberation Condition: Restore the subversive, visionary quality to her work—break the commercial framing that has constrained her artistic vision Rescue Mechanic: Players must either reclaim her artistic agency (ELECTRIC) or demonstrate the deeper traditional roots of her work (EDEN)

Reward Ability: Occult Illustration

Reshapes battlefield terrain and inflicts psychic damage when Sharp enforces canon

Wing Five: The Bedchamber of Lore

Atmosphere

Storms of letters, tales, and testimonies swirl through the air, creating a suffocating paperstorm. Spoken words are muffled and distorted. The room feels cramped despite its size, as if weighed down by accumulated stories.

Encounters

• Narrative Cyclones: Whirlwinds of unorganized stories that disorient and potentially trap players in recursive tale-loops
• Silence Wraiths: Spectral entities that steal voices, leaving players temporarily mute

Environmental Hazards

• Overwhelm Effect: The sheer volume of unprocessed folklore threatens to drown players in narrative chaos
• Voice Theft: Speaking too loudly or too often risks having your voice stolen by the swirling papers

Prisoner: Nellie Sloggett

Location: Bedridden in the center, surrounded by agitated piskies, witches, and river-spirits that circle protectively but can't break her bonds Liberation Condition: Navigate the chaos to reach her while respecting both her physical limitations and the supernatural allies that guard her Rescue Mechanic: Success requires either calming the narrative storm (EDEN) or amplifying her voice above it (ELECTRIC)

Reward Ability: Tales from the Top Room

Summons folklore allies (piskies, witches, river-spirits) to confuse Sharp's add waves

Wing Six: The Oral History Crypt

Atmosphere

Voices trapped in glass jars line endless shelves, their testimonies barely audible as whispered echoes. Ghostly figures mouth words no one can hear, desperate for attribution and acknowledgment.

Encounters

• Testimony Wraiths: Spirits of unrecorded voices that demand their stories be heard before allowing passage
• Archive Golems: Constructs built from filing cabinets and index cards that attack "unauthorized" researchers

Environmental Hazards

• Attribution Requirement: Every voice demands proper credit; failure to acknowledge sources properly triggers haunting effects
• Silence Fields: Areas where all sound is deadened, making communication impossible

Prisoner: Enid Porter

Location: Crushed beneath towering piles of unfiled transcripts and unattributed recordings Liberation Condition: Help organize and properly credit the oral histories, giving voice to the silenced testimonies Rescue Mechanic: Players must either systematically organize the archive (EDEN) or broadcast all voices simultaneously (ELECTRIC)

Reward Ability: Community Voices

Amplifies party buffs, counters Sharp's "Collector's Monopoly," and prevents raid silence

Final Wing: The Great Hall of Canon

The Arena

A grand hall lined with portraits of "respectable" folk dancers who animate to defend their curator. The ceiling displays an ever-shifting projection of "approved" variants, while Sharp himself stands at a massive podium lined with recording equipment.

Boss: Cecil Sharp, The Gatekeeper of Folknet

Stats: Use a number from 2-5 like player characters, but with access to multiple approachesAbilities:

• Sanitize: Strips bawdy or unruly elements from player actions, halving effectiveness
• Bowdlerization Beam: AoE shame attack requiring morale checks from all players
• Canon Lock: Freezes one party member into an NPC role each round (they can only speak in ballad meter)
• Tradition Snapback: When close to defeat, unleashes "Authenticity Wave" threatening to crystallize all players into Child Ballads

Portrait Adds: The wall portraits animate as backup dancers/enforcers. Each freed collector's ability neutralizes different add types.

Raid Mechanics

Essential Rule: Each freed NPC ally cancels one of Sharp's abilities. Without all six, the fight approaches impossibility.

Ability Interactions:

• Mary Neal's Fun Aura prevents Bowdlerization Beam
• Lois Blake's Dance Revival counters Canon Lock
• Dorothy Hartley's Everyday Detail exposes Sharp's illusions, reducing his stat effectiveness
• Pamela Colman Smith's Occult Illustration disrupts the arena, forcing Sharp to reposition
• Nellie Sloggett's Tales from the Top Room neutralizes portrait adds
• Enid Porter's Community Voices prevents the raid-wipe Tradition Snapback

Victory Conditions

• Total Victory: All collectors freed, Sharp defeated → Folk tradition escapes its curated constraints
• Partial Victory: Some collectors freed → Sharp retreats but the archive remains partially locked
• Defeat: Sharp wins → Players risk becoming permanent NPCs in his collection

Session Generator

For each wing, roll 1d6 to add complications:

1: Folknet Agent appears (use table from core rules)2: Weather turns folkloric (unnatural mists, cursed winds)3: NPCs begin speaking only in ballad meter4: Hidden verse revealed—changes wing's narrative logic5: Verse Bloat—extra encounters pad the run6: Sharp himself appears briefly, taunting players and increasing Canon Weight

Designer Notes

This module takes the Electric Eden framework and applies it to the actual historical tensions in folk preservation. Cecil Sharp really was a gatekeeper figure, and the collectors mentioned really were marginalized by his institutional approach.

The "raid boss" structure inverts typical dungeon logic: instead of defeating enemies, you're building coalitions. Each rescue mission reflects how these overlooked figures offered different approaches to tradition—more inclusive, more vital, more rooted in actual community practice.

The module works whether players approach it as pure satire or as genuine engagement with folk history. Sharp isn't purely villainous—his preservation work was real and valuable—but his methods created hierarchies that constrained tradition's natural evolution.

Most importantly, the module embodies Electric Eden's core insight: every attempt to preserve tradition also transforms it. Players aren't just raiding an archive; they're participating in the ongoing folk process, complete with its contradictions and unintended consequences.

Remember: The real folk tradition is the allies we freed along the way.

A Personal Note

Depending on one's views, Cecil Sharp can be a foundational or a problematic figure in the documentation of British folk music tradition. As an American blessed with both a jaundiced eye and a playful ear, I humbly acknowledge both.

I've visited Cecil Sharp House on a number of occasions, having seen a performance of The Ukulele Orchestra Of Great Britain on my first trip to London, and I can't overemphasize its institutional footprint on the cultural landscape

Lally MacBeth's The Lost Folk dutifully reminds us that the flip side of curation is what's left on the cutting room floor, and this whimsical parody is my attempt at celebrating those who were shut out of the House.