# 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.** Everything the endgame needs is here: the thin point, the summoners' binding circle, and the old foundation sigils. The [Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md) still plays out in this room, unchanged. But 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 a widening rift). The Deep Cellar is the module's exploration track and is entirely optional. 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        [Thin Point]        │
│   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 (Behind the Barrel Racks, North Wall)

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** 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-behind-the-barrel-racks-north-wall)).

### The Binding Circle (South)

Hidden behind the crates. A permanent **Magic Circle against fiends** etched into the bedrock with silver inlay — **master-level work, and not Orenn's.** 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 Xarrul can be lured here and trapped, the circle activates automatically — the fiend must succeed on a DC 17 Charisma saving throw or be contained.
- **Limitation:** The circle only works on the Material Plane. If Xarrul is in the Ethereal Plane, it has no effect. Players must first drag Xarrul fully across with [Veilhook Salt](deep-cellar.md#the-fixers-arsenal), catch it during a voluntary manifestation, or pursue the dual-plane kill.

### 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.**)

- **Rekindling a sigil.** A character with the right knowledge (a book from the house, or the [Guest's](../npc/the-guest.md) coaching) plus **warding chalk** (from storage) and a **DC 15 Arcana** check can wake one sigil into a genuine local ward, drawing on the thin point: while it holds, **Xarrul has disadvantage on Ethereal Jaunt within the tavern.** Failure expends the chalk. This is the players *doing* the craft the owners never could.

### The Thin Point (East)

The air here is wrong. Not cold, not warm — *thin*. Characters standing here feel a sensation like vertigo even on solid ground. Hair stands on end. Sounds seem to come from slightly wrong directions.

**DC 12 Arcana or Perception:** The boundary between the Material Plane and the Ethereal Plane is naturally weak at this exact spot. This isn't artificial — the tavern was built on top of it.

**DC 15 Arcana:** This thin point is why the tavern attracted the clientele it did. Subconsciously, people attuned to the arcane or the extraplanar gravitate toward places like this. The cultists didn't choose this tavern randomly. The fiend didn't target it randomly. Everything leads back here.

**If a player takes Veil Dust here:** The effect is *doubled*. Instead of 1 minute, the trip lasts 10 minutes, and the visions are vivid and controllable rather than hallucinatory. The user can interact with ethereal entities directly (including Skein and Xarrul) for the duration. This is the ideal location for the dual-plane kill.

**If the warding chalk circle is drawn here:** It functions as a full Magic Circle (as the spell, 1 hour duration) rather than the reduced 10-minute version, powered by the thin point's natural energy.

## Ethereal Plane Overlay

For the DM: in the Ethereal Plane, the cellar looks different. The stone walls glow faintly with the ghost-light of old wards. The summoners' sigils appear as faint lines being *drained* — thin threads of light bleeding away toward the thin point. The thin point is a *tear* — not metaphorical, a visible rip in the grey fabric of the Ethereal Plane, showing the Material Plane through it in muted color.

**Xarrul** uses the cellar as its lair when resting. Ethereal-plane observers might find:
- Claw marks on the ethereal stone near the sigils (this is where it's been siphoning the old work)
- A nest of sorts — shadows coiled into a shape suggesting something sleeps here
- The faint, acrid smell of the Brand of Spite (the ability that killed Orenn)

## Read-Aloud: The Thin Point

> *Něco tu nesedí. Ne nebezpečného — nebo ne zjevně — ale prostě špatného. Vzduch je tu jiný. Není studený ani teplý, je tenký, jako by tu bylo o jednu vrstvu reality míň, než by mělo být. Cítíte lehké závratě, přestože stojíte na pevné zemi. Vlasy na rukou se vám zvedají. A zvuky — kroky, kapání vody, váš vlastní dech — přicházejí z lehce špatných směrů, jako ozvěny v místnosti, která by neměla mít ozvěnu.*
