fixing plotholes, streamlining

location/tavern-overview.md

@@ -27,21 +27,27 @@ The only public way in is the heavy front door at the bottom of the entry steps.
 
 **If a PC leaves before the lockdown.** Nothing stops them physically — but Broath Got at night is not friendly, they forfeit whatever they came for (Orenn's references, their dossier goals), and the door **won't let them back in** without the password they don't have. Use it to *inconvenience*, not to trap: banging, bargaining through the door, or finding a regular to vouch gets them back. This is a soft social lock — the game's way of saying *take the hook.* Worst case, a player insists on walking their character out for good; hand them the pre-made **[Boarder](../npc/the-boarder.md)** — "Wick," a resident with a room upstairs, already inside, wired into the plot with local knowledge and a hook of their own — and carry on.
 
-**The midnight lockdown (Act 2).** When Orenn dies, Mags shatters a fist-sized **ward-crystal** kept on the shelf above the bar. It discharges the tavern's stored wards into every opening at once — front door, cellar trapdoor, shutters — all sealed under an **Arcane Lock until midnight**, when the charge lapses on its own:
+**The midnight lockdown (Act 2).** When Orenn dies, Mags shatters a fist-sized **ward-crystal** kept on the shelf above the bar. It discharges the tavern's stored wards into every exterior opening at once — front door, shutters and any other route outside — until midnight, when the charge lapses on its own.
 
-- Force a sealed exit: **DC 25 Strength**, or **DC 20 Thieves' Tools**; *Knock* or *Dispel Magic* vs. the ward's **DC 17** bypasses one opening.
-- Breaking the crystal is **one-way**. No password lifts it, and Mags herself cannot reopen the doors early — she's locked in with everyone else, on purpose.
-- The wards **bite**: anyone forcing a breach takes **2d6 force** and the discharge is loud enough that every NPC in the hall turns to look.
+- The mundane door can still be picked (**DC 20 Thieves' Tools**), forced (**DC 25 Strength**) or destroyed. Doing so only exposes the smooth, translucent planar shell behind it. *Knock* opens the physical lock; *Dispel Magic* suppresses the visible surface for a heartbeat. Neither permits passage.
+- The shell cannot be punctured or dispelled during the session. It blocks physical escape, Ethereal travel across the exterior, teleportation, and Astral projection alike. It is scenery, pressure and a deadline—not an alternate anti-Xarrul ending.
+- Breaking the crystal is **one-way**. No password lifts it, and Mags herself cannot reopen the Inn early. She is locked in with everyone else, on purpose.
+- The **cellar trapdoor remains physically locked but is not part of the exterior shell**. Mags intended to confine people to the building, not bar herself from her own cellar.
 
-Beating the lock early — or simply surviving until midnight — is a genuine Act 3 problem, not a formality.
+The party may spend resources proving that the physical exits are irrelevant, but resolving the night means dealing with what is inside.
 
-> **DM — what the crystal really is.** The "stored wards" are not Orenn and Mags's work; they are the **summoners' emergency containment device**, left with the building — an *oh-shit button.* If a calling ever punched a hole to a lower plane, breaking the crystal sealed the house in a resilient shell **on every plane at once** (it plane-shifts and lays a *resilient-sphere*-like seal over each plane's version of the building — sealing *within* a plane being far easier than sealing *between* them). Its purpose: contain a breach so that **only what is already inside the house, on some plane, can come through the hole — never the whole plane behind it.**
+### Room-Bound Area Wards
+
+The Inn's old containment craft treats every enclosed chamber as a separate ward-cell. An area spell that establishes a sustained magical boundary—most importantly *Mordenkainen's Private Sanctum*—cannot extend across a doorway, open arch, stair, trapdoor, concealed door, wall, floor or ceiling inside the building. Its caster may use the spell's full permitted dimensions, but only within the room where the casting is completed.
+
+The Main Hall is one room. The kitchen, storage room, private room, upper cellar, each chamber of the Deep Cellar and the Old Work are separate rooms; the Long Cut is one continuous corridor-cell. This restriction does not weaken the spell inside its chosen room. It prevents a single cube from blanketing the entire vertical complex.
+
+> **DM — what the crystal really is.** The "stored wards" are not Orenn and Mags's work; they are the **summoners' emergency containment device**, left with the building — an *oh-shit button.* If a calling ever punched a hole to another plane, breaking the crystal withdrew power from the internal seals and threw it into a resilient shell **around every planar version of the building at once**. The design deliberately trades a cork for a bottle: an intruder already at the fault may cross inside, but neither it nor the plane behind it can spread beyond the house.
 >
 > Mags knows none of this. To her it's the panic button that bolts the doors. In truth, shattering it is **the last thing [Xarrul](../npc/xarrul.md#the-nights-clock--presence--escalation) needed**, and it engineered Orenn's murder precisely to make her do it:
-> - **It builds the closed vessel Xarrul must have.** While the house bled freely across planes, the fiend's crossing dissipated — it could only jaunt *partway* (enough to kill Orenn, no more). Sealed, the house is a closed cross-planar vessel: Xarrul, already inside on the ethereal side, can now finish crossing through the tear, and the summoners' "limit the breach to one entity" safeguard *guarantees* that entity is *it*. The button built to protect the city is a bespoke door for exactly one guest.
+> - **It trades the inner barrier for an outer cage.** Before activation, Xarrul is held on the Ethereal side and can manage only one three-round **Stored Incursion** after a full night charging at the tear. It spends that charge killing Orenn. When Mags breaks the crystal, the internal planar seals lose their power; Xarrul crosses fully into the Material interior and regains Ethereal Jaunt, but the new exterior shell traps it on both planes with everyone else.
 > - **It cuts the diffusion.** Nothing bleeds out to the district anymore, nothing bleeds in. The wrongness that used to spread thin across the quarter — the reason Orenn never localized it — is now trapped and concentrated *inside*, with its source. From tonight, the players can finally trace it home.
-> - **The inversion (a real player lever).** The same breach rules above become an *anti-Xarrul* tactic once understood: puncturing the shell on a plane re-opens the boundary, the vessel goes leaky again, and the crossing destabilizes — Xarrul can't complete tonight (at worst it slips away ethereally to try later). The thing the party wanted to escape becomes the thing they smash on purpose.
-> - **The seal lapses at midnight**, and the lockdown timer *is* the night's clock (see [The Reckoning — The Clock](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#the-clock)).
+> - **The seal lapses at midnight.** Until then no creature or projected spirit can leave, so the Guest cannot be delivered to the Astral Plane and the Vacancy cannot begin. As the exterior shell falls, power returns to the internal containment and creates one three-round transfer window before the tear reseals. Xarrul's old tether still confines it to the Inn's footprint after the exterior opens; only embodiment lets it leave. The lockdown timer *is* the night's clock (see [The Reckoning — The Clock](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#the-clock)).
 
 ## Atmosphere
 
@@ -69,7 +75,7 @@ The noise level before the brawl is a low murmur punctuated by occasional harsh
 │   Table]       [Center tables,                  │            │
 │                 stools, debris]        ┌────────┴────────┐   │
 │  [Curtained                            │ Door to Kitchen │   │
-│   Booth]       [Vetch, near stairs]    └────────┬────────┘   │
+│   Booth]       [Cellar stairs]         └────────┬────────┘   │
 │                                                 │            │
 │  ┌──────┐                              ┌────────┴────────┐   │
 │  │ENTRY │                              │   BACK ROOMS    │   │
@@ -102,7 +108,7 @@ The noise level before the brawl is a low murmur punctuated by occasional harsh
 
 ## Secrets
 
-- The tavern is built on a **natural thin point** between the Material and Ethereal planes. Orenn and Mags know this — they cleaned a den of summoners off this fault years ago and believe they sealed what those summoners tore open. They do *not* monitor it; to them the danger is fifteen years dead. It also means Veil Dust is more potent here, and ethereal entities find it easier to manifest.
+- The tavern is built over a **natural thin point** between the Material and Ethereal planes: the same single place as the sealed tear in the Deep Cellar's [Old Work](deep-cellar.md#the-old-work). Orenn and Mags know this — they cleaned a den of summoners off the fault years ago and believe they sealed it. They do *not* monitor it; to them the danger is fifteen years dead. Ethereal entities nevertheless find the sealed house broadly easier to haunt.
 - The wooden plaque with the house rules has a **hidden fifth rule** on the back, in Orenn's handwriting: *"If the veil tears, burn the cellar stores and seal the door. We'll handle the rest."* — Mags can reveal this if pressed, but it will shake her.
 - The building's stone foundation carries **old sigils** — not Orenn and Mags's work, but the **summoners'** who ran this place before them: the upstairs remnant of the binding-and-containment craft that runs down into the [cellar](cellar.md). A character examining the foundation stones (DC 15 Investigation or Arcana) reads them as long-inert summoning-and-warding work and clocks that whoever built this house was working the thin point on purpose. It's a breadcrumb toward the house's occult past — *not* a barrier anyone maintained. The thing actively being torn open is far below, at the [Old Work](deep-cellar.md#the-old-work).
 - Behind the barrel racks in the cellar, a **[concealed door](cellar.md#the-concealed-door)** leads down to the **[Deep Cellar](deep-cellar.md)** — a hidden warren that is Orenn and Mags's real, ongoing workplace: a vault, a laboratory, two cells (one occupied), a trophy-hold, and a widening rift to the Ethereal Plane. "Retired" was always a story. This lower level is the module's optional exploration track — sneaking, looting, environmental backstory, and a fight or two — for players who'd rather *do* than talk. The fifth rule on the plaque (*"burn the cellar stores and seal the door"*) refers to it.