The primary antagonist of this adventure is Ioseff Xarwin, a ghost who has become obsessed with the pursuit of forbidden knowledge and the awful desire to merge the trapped consciousness of his murdered wife and children with his own mind, but there’s more haunting the manor than a mere ghost. The slumbering remains of an ancient evil named Tchekuth, once a man
but now a monstrosity transformed by contact with the Dark Tapestry,
lies deep beneath the manor. The combination of Ioseff Xarwin’s ghost
and Tchekuth’s slowly awakening consciousness has combined to form
a powerful spiritual blight upon the manor and the dungeon below. This
combination of spiritual energy is referred to in this adventure as “the
malevolence.”