Rebuilding Tresendar Manor

Tresendar Manor

Tresendar Manor is a ruined home and dungeon in the town of Phandalin. Early in "Lost Mine of Phandalin", the players are tasked with clearing out a group of bandits known as the Redbrand from the basement. Here's how the adventure describes it:

Which isnt saying much really other than "its a basement dungeon only". The adventure moves along quickly, and I believe much later it mentions the idea of giving the deed to a player as a reward, but no other lore or guidance is given.

In my game, one of the players had aspirations to become the mayor of Phandalin, and he immediately was interested in trying to own and rebuild the place. It went pretty swell, so the rest of this blog post is going to be dedicated to Rebuilding Tresendar Manor. (like the title says).

Manor Lore

LMoP doesnt give a DM much to work with, but some google searching can lead you to the wiki where it lays out some additional details:

The Tresendar Family was a royal family that used to live in a manor in Phandalin before the orc raids of Uruth Ukrypt wiped out the town and laid waste to the settlement in 951 DR. The manor, along with the whole town was abandoned during that time. Most of the members of the Tresendar Family were buried in the crypt below the manor. Sometime after the Spellplague, some members of the family had risen as undead defending the cellars of Tresendar Manor. (From https://forgottenrealms.fandom.com/wiki/Tresendar)

TLDR: The Tresendar family abandoned the place when orcs raided the whole area and its been abandoned since. Presumably, the surface building is complete gone and rotted away; all that remains is the basement.

There is some more lore (go read that wiki) about a member of the family fighting orcs and losing his cool sword down there.

Thats about all the lore given in official dnd stuff, but there is some homebrew that touches further on the manor: (Note: I haven't read either of the below adventures, but include them for reference)

• Trouble at Tresendar Manor is a very highly rated adventure set in the manor.
• Ghosts of Tresendar Manor is some more homebrew set in the manor.

What is a Manor? A miserable pile of...

Historically, manors are not just houses, but generally a large plot of land gifted to a nobleperson for use by a king. Traditionally, this land is then developed into a small agricultural estate where indentured farmers live and work alongside the manor owners house. They usually develop to be little self-sufficient hubs of economic and social activity, often specializing in something like cheese or wine production.
Google is great for this kind of inspiration, so I made a little list of what might be in the manor.

• Homes for peasants
• A blacksmith
• A carpenter or ferrier (horse shoes)
• Various fields for farming

Eventually, I view the manor as both a home and a small community that will earn the noble (player) some money every X time.

Rebuilding

I made the rebuilding of Tresendar mostly a Money + Time kind of thing. I'm not sure if there is a way to integrate active player participation here, but I'd be interested to hear about it.

In my campaign, the players quickly got to be friends with Halia over mimosas (both in-game and out!). After helping Halia with the Redbrand, she gave the manor deed to a player name Pheonix. 

I then used that hook to introduce the 5e faction "The Zhentarim", of which Halia was a member. I invited the player to join, hinting that a loan could likely be acquired to help rebuild the manor.

Later in the campaign, the loan was obtained. I set the price to rebuild the manor at 3000 gold, and used that target to scale my gold rewards throughout the adventure. I wanted the players to have to pool their money to pay it off eventually. Every time Pheonix came to town, a member of the Zhentarim shows up and asks for some payment, bit-by-bit.

I gave progress status to the player as the adventure continued, and asked for input multiple times as to what the player would like in the completed manor, but they never responded much and considered the Manor to be helpful for the upcoming election.

Repairs Complete!

Once sufficient time has passed in-game (or when it fits the narrative), the manor will be repaired! This is coming up soon in my session, so I will update things as they go. My plans are are follows:

1. Give the player a map of both the new manor interior as well as the dilapidated manor grounds.
2. Let them pick what the rooms are for, go around the table asking for suggestions as to what to put in the house.
3. Explain that the place could now likely be turned into a profitable venture, creating new adventure hooks and downtime activities.

I will update this after the session occurs.