# Cellar (Upper Level)

Beneath the Nether Inn, accessed through the trapdoor in the storage room. The air changes immediately — colder, damper, and carrying a faint metallic tang that doesn't come from the pipes.

> **DM note — this is the *upper* cellar.** Its occult centerpiece is the summoners' **binding circle**, supported by old foundation sigils. There is no thin point or tear in this room: both names refer to the single breach in the [Old Work](deep-cellar.md#the-old-work), far below. Behind the barrel racks is a **[concealed door](#the-concealed-door)** down to the [Deep Cellar](deep-cellar.md) — the vast, hidden warren where Orenn and Mags kept the real secrets (their fortune, their prisoners, their laboratory, and the breach). Casual visitors to the cellar see only this room.

## Read-Aloud: Descending

> *Žebřík skřípe pod vaší vahou. Vzduch je tu jiný — chladný a vlhký, s kovovou pachutí, jako by někdo olízl starou minci. Vaše nohy dopadnou na holou hlínu. Strop je nízký, sotva metr osmdesát, a stěny jsou nahý kámen — ne stavební, ale živá skála, do které byl sklep vytesán. Svíčky tu nejsou. Cokoliv chcete vidět, musíte si posvítit sami.*
>
> *Ve světle se v koutech u stropu zaleskne pavučina — hustá, šedá, mnohem víc, než by si tak malý sklep zasloužil. Táhne se podél západní stěny až k regálům se sudy — a tam náhle končí, jako by ji tam někdo pravidelně strhával.*

## Layout

The cellar is a single irregular space carved into bedrock, roughly 10 meters by 8 meters. No natural light. The floor is packed earth. The ceiling is raw stone. It is uncomfortably cold regardless of the season.

```
┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│         CELLAR (UPPER)          │
│                                  │
│ ╔══════╗     ┌──────────┐       │
│ ║Conceal║    │Foundation│       │
│ ║ door →║    │  Stone   │       │
│ ║(Deep  ║    │(ward-    │       │
│ ║ Cellar║    │ sigils)  │       │
│ ╚══════╝     └──────────┘       │
│  [Barrel                         │
│   Racks]                         │
│  [Old                            │
│   Crates]                        │
│  [Orenn's                        │
│   Circle]    ┌────┐              │
│              │Trap│              │
│              │door│ (up to       │
│              └────┘  storage)    │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
```

## Key Features

### Barrel Racks (West Wall)

Wine and spirits too good for the upstairs crowd. A few barrels are marked with chalk symbols — DC 13 Investigation reveals these are Orenn's personal inventory codes. One barrel is not a barrel — it's a hollow shell containing:
- A **Cloak of Elvenkind** (Orenn's, from his fixer days)
- A stoppered clay jug of **Alchemist's Fire** (3 flasks worth)
- A bundle of **iron nails inscribed with tiny runes** (10 nails). Hammering one into a surface creates a minor ward — any fiend crossing within 5 feet of it takes 1d4 radiant damage and the nail glows white-hot for 1 round, alerting anyone nearby. Single use per nail.

### The Concealed Door

What looks like raw bedrock behind the barrel racks is a **shell of stone facing an iron door**. This is the entrance to the [Deep Cellar](deep-cellar.md) — the hidden lower level, and the module's exploration track.

- **DC 15 Investigation** (behind the racks) reveals the seam, the fitted stone, a drag-scuff on the earth floor, and a cold draft that shouldn't be there.
- **DC 15 Perception** catches the same draft plus the smell rising through it — copper, tallow, and something animal and sweet-rotten beneath.
- **The cobweb tell:** everything in this corner is draped in thick silk *except* the barrel racks, which are conspicuously clean — they get moved. A few fresh threads trail from the seam itself, where finger-sized spiderlings squeeze through the gaps (the same gaps that carry the draft and the smell). A PC who clocks the clean patch has **advantage** on the Investigation check to find the door.
- The door is under a permanent **Arcane Lock** (DC 20 to force, DC 25 Thieves' Tools). It opens for **Orenn's black iron key** (on his body — the plain heavy key that fits nothing upstairs) or *Knock*.
- Mags carries a **matching black iron key** beneath her apron. The two-key arrangement is deliberate: neither partner intended the survivor of a bad night to be locked out of their own lower rooms.
- **Mags** knows what's down there and expects no one to find it. She reveals the door only under the most extreme trust — see [mags.md](../npc/mags.md). Players who find it themselves take that choice out of her hands, which is exactly the point.
- **Twinkle**, the household [feyspitter spider](deep-cellar.md#encounter--the-guardian), dens just inside — in the Workroom at the foot of the descent — so sharp-eared PCs may hear dry clicking and the skitter of web beyond the door before they open it.

See **[deep-cellar.md](deep-cellar.md)** for the full lower level.

### Old Crates (South-West)

Genuinely old supplies: moth-eaten cloth, rusted tools, empty bottles. Nothing useful — but the crates themselves are positioned to obscure the circle on the floor behind them. Someone (Orenn) arranged them this way deliberately.

The crates and the whole west corner are furred with thick, greyed spider-silk — far more than a damp cellar earns. **(Foreshadowing:** something big webs the dark below; see [Twinkle](deep-cellar.md#encounter--the-guardian).) The silk thins to nothing at the barrel racks, which are swept clean by regular handling — a tell in its own right (see the [Concealed Door](#the-concealed-door)).

### The Binding Circle (South)

Hidden behind the crates. A permanent **Magic Circle against fiends** etched into the bedrock with silver inlay packed with fine black salt — **master-level work, and not Orenn's.** The packing is the stable, geometric form of [Veilhook Salt](deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal): silver carries the prohibition while the circle sustains it, preventing a captured creature from escaping between planes. It belonged to the summoners who ran this house before them: DC 16 Arcana identifies it as a **summoning-and-binding circle**, the kind a warlock calls a fiend *into* so the thing can't reach them while they bargain and bind it. Orenn and Mags left it where they found it and never had cause — or the craft — to use it. (This is exactly why the cult's own Haddon can work it in the [rebinding](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-b-the-rebinding): it's a summoner's tool, and he's a summoner.)

- The circle is **intact and functional**. If Material Xarrul enters it, the circle activates automatically — the fiend must succeed on a DC 17 Charisma saving throw or be contained. On a failure, it cannot willingly cross the circle or change planes while the circle remains intact.
- **Rebinding adaptation:** After the first four knots are prepared with the coffer, Dalla's blood and Xarrul's true name, a failed DC 17 save closes a stronger salt-and-name matrix. It suppresses Xarrul's movement and fresh hostile effects across the boundary while the final three knots are spoken. Existing Brand links remain live, and Xarrul can still speak, steal voices and bargain. See [The Rebinding](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-b-the-rebinding).
- **Limitation:** By itself, the circle cannot perceive or catch an Ethereal creature in the corresponding space. Portable [Veilhook Salt](deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal), *Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum* or comparable magic must first keep Xarrul Material. The coffer's [Litany of the Averted Step](../prints/litanie-odvraceneho-kroku.md) then limits where it can retreat while the party supplies forced movement. Bell, restored sigils and circle instead close around both planar states and remove the need to anchor it first.

### Foundation Stones & the Old Sigils (Center, North)

The exposed foundation stones of the tavern above. Carved into them are **sigils** — but they are **the summoners' work, not Orenn and Mags's**: the upstairs end of the binding-and-containment craft that runs down into the [Deep Cellar](deep-cellar.md). For fifteen years they've sat inert; no one living in the house understood them well enough to do more than leave them alone.

**Current state:** the stone around a few of the sigils is **warm to the touch** despite the cellar's cold. **DC 13 Arcana** reveals the old work is being *drawn on* — something has been feeding on it from the Ethereal side for weeks. **DC 16 Arcana** identifies the influence as fiendish. (This is Xarrul, siphoning the leftover craft to help pry open the [Old Work](deep-cellar.md#the-old-work) far below — the upstairs symptom of the real damage downstairs. It is *not* a broken barrier; it's a breadcrumb pointing the players **down.**)

- **Restoring the lattice.** A character with the right knowledge (a summoner book, Haddon's help or the [Guest's](../npc/the-guest.md) coaching), one use of **warding chalk**, and a **DC 16 Arcana** check can reconnect the surviving sigils. Failure expends the chalk. Restored sigils glow but do nothing alone. While the [iron bell](main-hall.md#the-fireplace) is ringing, they prevent Xarrul from using Ethereal Jaunt while it is inside the binding circle. If Xarrul is driven into that circle while both effects are active, bell, sigils and circle seal it consciously between planes. This is the players *doing* the craft the owners never could.

## Ethereal Plane Overlay

For the DM: in the Ethereal Plane, the stone walls glow faintly with the ghost-light of old wards. The foundation sigils continue as thin silver lines through the floor and down into the hidden level. Most are dark or flickering; the surviving light is being drawn downward toward the Old Work.

The **binding circle** blazes with clean silver light. It is a cage, not a breach: there is no rip, window, nest, or thin place inside it. Xarrul may pass through this room while working elsewhere in the house, but it does not rest here and leaves no lair behind.
