Behind the bar, through a heavy door reinforced with iron bands, lie the working areas of the Burnt Tongue.
Behind the bar, through a heavy door reinforced with iron bands, lie the working areas of the Nether Inn.
## Kitchen
@@ -26,7 +26,7 @@ A cramped room off the kitchen. Barrels of ale, crates of root vegetables, hangi
- **Hidden compartment (DC 15 Investigation):** Behind a false barrel-back, a narrow shelf contains:
- 4 vials of **Holy Water**
- 1 vial of **Silversheen** (coat a weapon, treat it as silvered for 1 hour)
- A leather roll containing **Orenn's cleaner tools** — a set of specialized instruments somewhere between thieves' tools and a surgeon's kit. Grants advantage on Investigation checks related to fiends or extraplanar entities if the user is proficient in either thieves' tools or arcana. These are old, well-used, and irreplaceable.
- A leather roll of **fine instruments** — the summoners' old diagnostic kit, kept and well-used by Orenn: something between thieves' tools and a surgeon's set. Grants advantage on Investigation checks related to the arcane or extraplanar if the user is proficient in either thieves' tools or arcana. Old, irreplaceable, and not originally theirs.
- A **warding chalk** (3 uses) — can draw a 5-foot circle that functions as a Magic Circle against fiends for 10 minutes per use. Faster and cheaper than the spell, but the duration is limited.
- **Floor trapdoor:** Leads to the cellar. Not hidden — just heavy and stiff. DC 12 Athletics to open quietly, or just yank it (noisy, everyone in the kitchen hears).
@@ -37,9 +37,9 @@ A small room with a lockable door, a table, two benches, and a single candle sco
### Details
- **The table** has knife marks scratched into it — tally marks, initials, crude maps. Layers of history from hundreds of clandestine meetings.
- **One set of marks (DC 14 Investigation):** Recent — within the last week. A diagram of the Burnt Tongue's layout with X marks at the foundation stones. These are the ward-sigil locations. Someone was mapping them. The scratches are fresh enough to have wood dust still in the grooves.
- **One set of marks (DC 14 Investigation):** Recent — within the last week. A diagram of the Nether Inn's layout with X marks at the foundation stones — the old summoner-sigils. Someone was mapping the house's occult bones. The scratches are fresh enough to have wood dust still in the grooves.
- **DC 16 Arcana:** The diagram also notes the **angles of resonance** between sigils — this is the work of someone who understood how to *break* the wards, not just locate them. This was done by someone working for the cultists (or the fiend itself, through manipulation).
- **Under the left bench (DC 13 Perception):** A dropped cultist pin — a small bronze disc with the Lambent Order's symbol (an open eye wreathed in flame). Haddon will deny knowledge. Essek will look terrified if shown this. The pin belongs to a member not present tonight — evidence that the cult has been using the private room for meetings.
- **Under the left bench (DC 13 Perception):** A dropped cultist pin — a small bronze disc with the Order of Mending's symbol (an open eye wreathed in flame). Haddon will deny knowledge. Essek will look terrified if shown this. The pin belongs to a member not present tonight — evidence that the cult has been using the private room for meetings.
### Read-Aloud: The Private Room
@@ -58,6 +58,6 @@ A small room with a lockable door, a table, two benches, and a single candle sco
A modest room. A bed, a wardrobe, a desk. Everything is clean and ordered. Two people who learned to live in small spaces together.
- **Desk:** Contains correspondence with a contact in the city watch — Orenn was feeding them information about the cult's activities, slowly and carefully. He suspected the Lambent Order was more than scholars. He didn't know about the fiend.
- **Desk:** Contains correspondence with a contact in the city watch — Orenn was feeding them information about the cult's activities, slowly and carefully. He suspected the Order of Mending was more than scholars. He didn't know about the fiend.
- **Wardrobe:** Behind a false back (DC 14 Investigation), a small arsenal: 2 silvered daggers, a vial of **Oil of Etherealness** (1 dose — allows the user to enter the Ethereal Plane for 1 hour, as per the spell), and a **leather-bound bestiary** focused on fiends. Bookmarked pages describe entities matching Xarrul's type — Orenn was doing research. He was worried but hadn't figured out what was coming.
- **Under the bed:** A lockbox (DC 16 Thieves' Tools). Contains 150 gp (their savings), a deed to the tavern, and two silver rings — simple, unadorned. Mags will quietly close the box if she sees this. It's not relevant to the investigation. It's just a life.
Beneath the Burnt Tongue, 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.
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, Orenn's binding circle, and the ward-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.
> **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
@@ -39,7 +41,7 @@ The cellar is a single irregular space carved into bedrock, roughly 10 meters by
### 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 cleaner days)
- 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.
@@ -49,9 +51,10 @@ What looks like raw bedrock behind the barrel racks is a **shell of stone facing
- **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.
-If **Přástka**, the household [phase spider](deep-cellar.md#encounter--the-guardian), is roaming, sharp-eared PCs may hear dry clicking beyond the door before they open it.
-**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.
@@ -59,21 +62,22 @@ See **[deep-cellar.md](deep-cellar.md)** for the full lower level.
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.
### Orenn's Circle (South)
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)).
Hidden behind the crates. A permanent **Magic Circle against fiends** etched into the bedrock with silver inlay. This is master-level work — DC 16 Arcana identifies it as designed for both binding and interrogation. Orenn and Mags used this during their cleaner years to hold captured fiends for questioning.
### 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 need to force Xarrul fully into the Material Plane first (Fiendbane Manacles, the bell upstairs, or the dual-plane kill).
### Foundation Stones & Ward-Sigils (Center, North)
### Foundation Stones & the Old Sigils (Center, North)
The exposed foundation stones of the tavern above. Carved into them are **ward-sigils** — Orenn and Mags's work from fifteen years ago. These wards created a barrier on the Ethereal Plane, preventing fiends from entering the tavern's footprint while ethereal.
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 sigils are **cracked**. Thin fracture lines run through the carved symbols, and the stone around them is warm to the touch despite the cellar's cold. DC 13 Arcana reveals the wards have been deliberately weakened — someone (or something) has been working on them for weeks. DC 16 Arcana identifies the method as consistent with fiendish influence applied from the Ethereal Plane side.
**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 thereal damage downstairs. It is *not* a broken barrier; it's a breadcrumb pointing the players **down.**)
-The cracking explains how Xarrul was able to enter the tavern's ethereal footprint and kill Orenn.
- **Repairing the wards** requires warding chalk (found in storage) and a DC 15 Arcana check. Success restores partial function — Xarrul has disadvantage on its Ethereal Jaunt when within the tavern. Failure expends the chalk.
-**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)
@@ -89,10 +93,10 @@ The air here is wrong. Not cold, not warm — *thin*. Characters standing here f
## 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 broken sigils appear as dark, weeping wounds in the light. 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.
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 ward-sigils (this is how it weakened them)
- 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)
This level is the **exploration spine** of the module — the track for players who came to *do* things, not talk. It rewards sneaking, searching, lockpicking, and picking fights carefully. Everything here is optional. A party can solve the murder without ever finding the concealed door. But a party that goes down here finds:
- **Useful things** — a fiend-hunter's arsenal, alchemy, coin, and one or two items that make the Reckoning easier.
- **Useful things** — a scavenged anti-fiend kit, alchemy, coin, and one or two items that make the Reckoning easier.
- **Backstory, told by the room** — the truth about who Orenn and Mags really were, discovered through what they kept, caged, and buried, without a single NPC having to explain it.
- **A fight, on the party's terms** — a guardian, an infestation, a haunting, and a caged thing that might not stay caged.
**This does NOT relocate the endgame.** The Reckoning still happens in the **[Upper Cellar](../location/cellar.md)** — the thin point, Orenn's binding circle, and the ward-sigils are all up there and unchanged. The Deep Cellar is a *second, lower level* reached through a concealed door. Its own rift (the Old Work, below) is the same planar fault seen deeper and worse; it is a source of dread, backstory, and monsters — **not** the dual-plane-kill site. If in doubt, keep binding and killing Xarrul upstairs where the circle is.
**This does NOT relocate the endgame.** The Reckoning still happens in the **[Upper Cellar](../location/cellar.md)** — the thin point, the summoners' binding circle, and the old foundation sigils are all up there and unchanged. The Deep Cellar is a *second, lower level* reached through a concealed door. Its own rift (the Old Work, below) is the same planar fault seen deeper and worse; it is a source of dread, backstory, and monsters — **not** the dual-plane-kill site. If in doubt, keep binding and killing Xarrul upstairs where the circle is.
---
@@ -39,29 +39,43 @@ The door itself is locked (**Arcane Lock**, DC 20 to force, DC 25 Thieves' Tools
## Layout
The Deep Cellar is a warren carved over years, not a planned dungeon. Roughly 25m across at its widest, on a single sloping level that descends toward the Old Work.
Less a warren than a **single spine**: one central corridor — the **Long Cut** — carved over years, with the work-chambers opening off it and the floor sloping *down* the whole way toward the rift, roughly 40m from the stair-foot to the Old Work. It matters that **the level is a dead end.** The only way in or out is the concealed stair at the top; the deepest chamber is a sealed cul-de-sac. That one fact is the level's engine — see [The Guardian](#encounter--the-guardian).
│THE VAULT│(arcane-locked — herded past it, you can't loot on
││the run; note it, come back)
└──────┬───────┘
│
═════╪═════ WARDED ARCH — the couple's old quarantine line.
│ ►► TWINKLE WILL NOT CROSS ◄◄
▼
┌──────────────┐
│ DEEP STORAGE │ Poltergeist — DORMANT; does NOT strike on sight.
│(false refuge)│ Breathing room to plan… until it isn't. THIS is what
└──────┬───────┘ the spider wouldn't follow you into.
│ barred, runed door (barred from the storage side)
▼
┌──────────────┐
│ THE OLD WORK │ The rift. Dead end. Only way out is back up the Cut.
└──────────────┘
```
**Light:** None. Utterly dark. Bring your own — and note that the darkness here feels *thick* (flavor; no mechanical penalty beyond normal). Some rooms have sconces the players can light.
@@ -70,24 +84,22 @@ The Deep Cellar is a warren carved over years, not a planned dungeon. Roughly 25
---
## The Junction (Hub Cave)
## The Long Cut (Central Corridor)
An irregular chamber where the passages meet. This was Orenn and Mags's working floor — a scarred wooden table, two chairs, a rack of tools (mundane: shovels, a mallet, coils of rope, iron stakes), and a **whitewashed wall covered in chalk**.
The spine of the level: a rough corridor running from the stair-foot down to the warded arch, with the work-chambers opening off it. Midway it widens into what was Orenn and Mags's **working floor** — a scarred wooden table, two chairs, a rack of tools (mundane: shovels, a mallet, coils of rope, iron stakes), and a **whitewashed wall covered in chalk** running the length of the stone. The far end narrows to a **warded arch** — the couple's old quarantine line — beyond which the air goes wrong and [Deep Storage](#deep-storage-the-trophy-hold) begins. That arch is where [Twinkle](#encounter--the-guardian) stops; see there.
**The Chalk Wall (DC 12 Investigation to read it properly):** Years of case-notes in Orenn's shorthand and Mags's blunt block letters. Most is smudged over. What survives, read together, is the backstory of the whole level, delivered by the room:
- Columns of dates and single words: *"bound," "burned," "sold," "returned," "kept."*
- A crude regional map with a dozen X's — jobs. Three are circled and struck through hard enough to tear the whitewash.
- A newer hand (last few weeks), hurried: *"wards thinning again. Faster than '09. G. felt it too — won't say what it saw. Watch the Order. If it comes through, seal below and burn."* — This is Orenn's, and it matches the letter Mags carries and the hidden fifth rule upstairs. It confirms Orenn knew something was coming.
- **DC 15 Investigation:** One struck-through X on the map is annotated *"Lambent — Vyre?"* — Orenn had been circling the cult for months. (Threads the exploration back into the murder mystery. See [Lambent Order](../storylines/lambent-order.md).)
- A newer hand (last few weeks), hurried and pinned over the old case-map — Orenn's, and *not* about this room at all: *"Order moving again. Meetings up. Vyre? Three dead in the quarter this month — no marks I know. Something in the district's gone wrong. Watch it."* This is his [surveillance](../npc/orenn.md#what-he-knew-for-dm-reference) spilling into his old workspace: he was chasing a *city* problem and never once turned to look at the sealed rift twenty feet behind him. The tragedy of the whole level is written right here — his case board on the Order, hung on the wall of the tomb the Order's own fiend is clawing its way out of.
- **DC 15 Investigation:** One struck-through X on the map is annotated *"Mending — Vyre?"* — Orenn had been circling the cult for months. (Threads the exploration back into the murder mystery. See [Order of Mending](../storylines/order-of-mending.md).)
**Encounter — The Infestation (rats):** The Junction and passages are infested. This is the low-stakes "you are not alone down here" beat.
**Encounter — The Infestation (rats):** The Cut and its chambers are infested. This is the low-stakes "you are not alone down here" beat.
- **1 Swarm of Rats** (CR 1/4) per passage the party lingers in noisily; up to 3 total. They boil out of cracks, drawn by warmth. They're a nuisance, not a threat — but they can force a retreat from a room, knock over a lantern (darkness!), or gnaw a dropped item.
- **Flavor near the Old Work:** rats down there are *wrong* — some flicker, half-there, ethereal-touched. They pass through a closed door once and vanish. (Pure atmosphere; treat as normal rats mechanically, or reskin one swarm as taking only force/radiant/magical damage if you want the rift's influence to bite.)
- **Stealth option:** A party moving quietly (group DC 12 Stealth) crosses the Junction without waking the swarms. Rewarding caution is the point.
**The barred inner door (to the Old Work):** A heavy door reinforced with the same runed iron nails from upstairs, barred from *this* side. Cold radiates from it. See [The Old Work](#the-old-work).
- **1 Swarm of Rats** (CR 1/4) per stretch of the Cut the party lingers in noisily; up to 3 total. They boil out of cracks, drawn by warmth. They're a nuisance, not a threat — but they can force a retreat from a room, knock over a lantern (darkness!), or gnaw a dropped item.
- **Flavor near the warded arch:** rats at the wrong end are *wrong* — some flicker, half-there, ethereal-touched. They pass through a closed door once and vanish. (Pure atmosphere; treat as normal rats mechanically, or reskin one swarm as taking only force/radiant/magical damage if you want the rift's influence to bite.)
- **Stealth option:** A party moving quietly (group DC 12 Stealth) works down the Cut without waking the swarms. Rewarding caution is the point.
---
@@ -95,7 +107,7 @@ An irregular chamber where the passages meet. This was Orenn and Mags's working
*"You told me we were poor," Mags said once, "so I'd stop worrying." Orenn just smiled. They were never poor. They were careful.*
A low chamber sealed by a banded door under a permanent **Arcane Lock** (Orenn's black key, *Knock*, or *Dispel Magic* vs. DC 17; brute force is DC 25 Strength, and the door is designed to scream — a shriek-ward alerts the [phase spider](#encounter--the-guardian) and anyone in the Junction). This is where twenty years of "expensive, reliable, discreet" went.
A low chamber sealed by a banded door under a permanent **Arcane Lock** (Orenn's black key, *Knock*, or *Dispel Magic* vs. DC 17; brute force is DC 25 Strength, and the door is designed to scream — a shriek-ward alerts **[Twinkle](#encounter--the-guardian)** (denned in the Workroom at the stair-foot, up the Cut) and anyone on the Cut). This is where twenty years of "expensive, reliable, discreet" went.
> **Read-Aloud: The Vault**
>
@@ -110,8 +122,8 @@ A low chamber sealed by a banded door under a permanent **Arcane Lock** (Orenn's
> **DM note — preserve the upstairs beat.** The modest lockbox in Orenn & Mags's bedroom (150 gp, the deed, the two silver rings, *"It's just a life"*) still stands. The contrast **is** the character work: the sentimental front upstairs, the buried fortune down here. Don't collapse one into the other. Mags never spent the vault. It was for a war she never stopped expecting.
### The Cleaner's Arsenal (the useful stuff)
Rewards for going deep — none of it breaks the Reckoning, most of it *helps* it:
### The Fixers' Arsenal
Rewards for going deep — none of it breaks the Reckoning, most of it *helps* it. Most of this is the **summoners' leftover safety kit** (you stock silver and holy water when you call up fiends for a living), topped up by the couple's own reactive buys from the handful of jobs that turned out not to be human:
- **Fiendbane Salt (4 doses).** A pinch thrown at a fiend within 10 ft. forces a DC 14 Charisma save; on a failure the fiend is anchored to its current plane (can't use Ethereal Jaunt / Slip Between) until the end of its next turn. *This is the exploration reward that makes pinning Xarrul possible without buying Tallow's manacles* — cheaper in gold, dearer in danger.
- A **quiver of 10 silvered crossbow bolts** and a **matched silvered hand crossbow** (well-kept, +0 but silvered).
@@ -124,7 +136,7 @@ On a shelf, labeled in Mags's block letters — souvenirs kept the way soldiers
- A **shattered summoning horn**, scorched. Label: *"the sewer thing, '01. never again."*
- A **child's shoe**, clean, kept apart from everything else. **No label.** (Say nothing. Let it sit. Insight tells a player this is the one thing in the room that hurt them.)
- A row of small glass jars, each holding a **pinch of grey ash** and a slip of paper with a name and a date. Fiends they burned. The most recent jar is **empty, waiting, labeled only with a question mark** — Orenn expected one more.
- **DC 14 Investigation:** one trophy — a guild-style garrote with a jade bead — matches the [House of Scales](../storylines/house-of-scales.md); another, a bronze pin, is a **Lambent Order** eye-in-flame (like the one in the private room). The couple's "problems we solved" included people from *both* factions currently sitting upstairs. If that ever comes out, the lockdown gets much more dangerous.
- **DC 14 Investigation:** one trophy — a guild-style garrote with a jade bead — matches the [House of Scales](../storylines/house-of-scales.md); another, a bronze pin, belongs to the **Order of Mending** (like the one in the private room). The couple's "problems we solved" included people from *both* factions currently sitting upstairs. If that ever comes out, the lockdown gets much more dangerous.
---
@@ -136,7 +148,7 @@ Two cells cut side by side, iron-barred, fitted with the runed nails and a warde
**Occupied.** A changeling the couple has held for years and used as an off-book asset. Full write-up, stat block, leverage, and dialogue in **[npc/the-guest.md](../npc/the-guest.md)**.
Short version for the DM: the Guest is the beating heart of "they still have something going on." It's alive, lucid, a fluent liar, and it knows more about Orenn, Mags, *and the Lambent Order* than anyone the players have met — because Orenn used it to spy on the cult. Freeing it, using it, or leaving it is a genuine moral choice, and it can end in a fight ([doppelganger](../npc/the-guest.md), CR 3) or a very memorable escape. Read its file before running this room.
Short version for the DM: the Guest is the beating heart of "they still have something going on." It's alive, lucid, a fluent liar, and it knows more about Orenn, Mags, *and the Order of Mending* than anyone the players have met — because Orenn used it to spy on the cult. Freeing it, using it, or leaving it is a genuine moral choice, and it can end in a fight ([doppelganger](../npc/the-guest.md), CR 3) or a very memorable escape. Read its file before running this room.
> **Read-Aloud: Cell One**
>
@@ -150,7 +162,7 @@ Short version for the DM: the Guest is the beating heart of "they still have som
- **DC 12 Medicine/Investigation:** it starved, or was left to. No violence killed it. Someone stopped bringing food.
- **DC 15 Investigation:** the bone structure is a **shapeshifter's** — a changeling or doppelganger, caught mid-collapse when it died, unable to hold a face. *This is the Guest's predecessor.* (If players have met the Guest, this lands like a stone. If they see it first, meeting the Guest afterward is dread.)
- **Around its neck**, a corroded token — a **guild bead***or* a **Lambent eye-pin** (match to whichever faction subplot your table has leaned into). Whatever this thing once impersonated, it was placed among a faction the players are dealing with tonight. It knew things. Then it stopped being useful.
- **Around its neck**, a corroded token — a **guild bead***or* an**Order of Mending pin** (match to whichever faction subplot your table has leaned into). Whatever this thing once impersonated, it was placed among a faction the players are dealing with tonight. It knew things. Then it stopped being useful.
- **The scratch-marks:** the inside of the cell door, low down, is covered in tally-scratches — years of them — and one phrase gouged over and over in a dozen borrowed handwritings: *"I was real."*
This room explains, without a word, exactly what the Guest is afraid of, and exactly what kind of people ran this tavern.
@@ -161,6 +173,8 @@ This room explains, without a word, exactly what the Guest is afraid of, and exa
A long, low chamber that smells of vinegar, sulphur, crushed herbs, and cold ash. A stone bench runs the length of one wall: alembics, a small athanor (cold), racks of labeled vials, a mortar, a ledger, and dried plants hung from the ceiling in careful bundles. Mags's herb rack upstairs is the kitchen branch of *this*.
**Twinkle's den.** This is also where the couple's pet holes up (see [The Guardian](#encounter--the-guardian)) — and it's the room the party enters first if they came down the concealed stairs, which arrive just outside. The back corner of the ceiling is thick with greyed web and a clutch of leathery egg-sacs; the floor beneath is a midden of rat-husks and beetle shells. They didn't merely shelter it here — they *worked* it: a padded muzzle-strap hangs on a peg, a clamp is bolted to the bench end, and a rack of empty stoppered vials sits ready. This is where Orenn and Mags **milked its venom** for the trade below.
> **Read-Aloud: The Workroom**
>
> *Dílna. Jinak se to nazvat nedá. Podél zdi kamenný stůl, na něm sklo — baňky, křivule, chladič — všechno pečlivě umyté a srovnané. Ze stropu visí svazky sušených bylin. Ve vzduchu se drží ostrý pach octa a síry a pod ním něco sladkého, co vám z nějakého důvodu naskočí husí kůži. Na stěně visí police plná lahviček, každá popsaná úhledným písmem. A uprostřed toho všeho leží otevřená kniha, do které někdo psal ještě nedávno.*
@@ -170,10 +184,11 @@ This is the other half of "still something going on." The couple never stopped b
- **Fiend-hunting alchemicals** — the source of the holy water, silversheen, alchemist's fire, and warding chalk found throughout the tavern. They supplied *themselves*.
- **Veil Dust research.** A locked drawer (DC 14) holds **3 doses of Veil Dust** plus a notebook studying it — *not* as a drug but as a *tool* for watching the thin point. **This connects to the [ethereal-trip](../storylines/ethereal-trip.md) subplot**: Orenn and Mags used Veil Dust to monitor the fault for years. It does **not** contradict Tallow's supplier being Mother Vyre — the couple brewed their own small batch for work; they were never in the trade. (If a player is hunting the source of Vetch's addiction, this is a red herring that *feels* hot and cools on inspection — DC 13 Investigation on the ledger shows they never sold a gram.)
- **The Ledger (DC 12 to read):** entries for materia, ward maintenance, and — chillingly — line items for "the Guest": *"fed," "used — Order, 3 nights," "compliant," "trim dose"* (a suppressant they keep the Guest on; see [the-guest.md](../npc/the-guest.md)). If the players read this before meeting the Guest, they'll know it's been drugged into cooperation for years.
- **The Ledger (DC 12 to read):** entries for materia, ward maintenance, and — chillingly — line items for "the Guest": *"fed," "used — Order, 3 nights," "compliant," "trim dose"* (a suppressant they keep the Guest on; see [the-guest.md](../npc/the-guest.md)). If the players read this before meeting the Guest, they'll know it's been drugged into cooperation for years. A separate running column headed *"T."* tracks the pet as a resource: *"milked, 2 doses," "webbing spent — new batch," "bit M. again — she laughed."*
### Loot & Craft
- **2 flasks of Alchemist's Fire**, **1 vial of Basic Poison** (×3 applications), **Antitoxin** (×2).
- **2 doses of harvested feyspitter venom** in stoppered vials on the milking rack — and more can be drawn from Twinkle (DC 13 with a poisoner's kit; safely from the living spider only if it's calmed or restrained, freely from a dead one). A proficient character can brew a dose during the lockdown (1 hour, DC 13) into **either**: a single-use **Blink Draught** (as a reaction when you take damage, teleport up to 15 ft. to a space you can see), **or** an **injury poison** (DC 14 CON save or 2d8 poison damage and the target is shunted 15 ft. to a random open space — the spider's own lurching venom, bottled).
- A partially-finished batch of **warding chalk (1 use)** and enough materia for a proficient character (Herbalism Kit / Alchemist's Supplies / Poisoner's Kit) to brew **one more dose of any of the above during the lockdown** (1 hour, DC 13 with the right tools). Rewards a crafter PC with something to *do*.
- **Silvervein root** (the ward-herb, ×4 sprigs) — matters for weakening [Skein](../storylines/possession.md) and helping Bren. A direct bridge from the exploration track into the possession subplot.
- **Trap:** the drawer of finished poisons is needle-trapped (DC 13 Investigation to spot, DC 12 Thieves' Tools to disarm; 1d6 poison + DC 12 CON or poisoned 1 hour). Orenn and Mags didn't want their own stock lifted.
@@ -190,11 +205,12 @@ The largest room down here, and the worst-kept — because things in it don't li
>
> *A vzduch je tu studenější. Ne fyzicky. Jinak.*
### The Haunting — Encounter
The room is **haunted** by a **Poltergeist** (specter variant, CR 2) — the untethered remnant of a job the couple could contain but never fully cleanse (say so on the chalk wall in the Junction: a struck-through X labeled*"the Vresk house — never left"*). It's bound to the room by the wards, furious, and territorial.
### The Haunting — The False Refuge
A party herded down the Cut spills through the warded arch into this room and, for a moment, believes it's safe: the spider won't follow, the air is still, nothing moves. It is haunted by a **Poltergeist** (specter variant, CR 2) — the untethered remnant of a job the couple could contain but never cleanse (it's on the chalk wall: a struck-through X,*"the Vresk house — never left"*) — and the crucial thing is that **it does not strike on sight.** It watches. It lets the living catch their breath. Give the party a real beat here to stop, argue, bind wounds, and work the problem: *how do we get back past the spider — and is this the only way out?* (It is. Dead end.)
- **It hides** among the trophies and strikes when the party disturbs the shelves or lingers >2 rounds. Invisible (DC understood: needs *See Invisibility* / Veil Dust / a lucky Perception vs its Stealth to pin down); it hurls objects (Telekinetic Thrust) and drops the lights.
- **Non-combat outs:** it calms if the party *leaves the shelves alone* and simply passes through, or if someone re-lights the room's warding sconces (DC 13 Arcana to relight the ward-candles bolted to the walls — doing so pins the poltergeist and lets the party loot in peace). A cleric can turn or lay it to rest (backstory: it just wants the room quiet again).
- **Then it turns.** Spring it when the tension peaks — a trophy is disturbed, someone reaches for the loot, the party commits to moving, or they've simply lingered too long in its domain. The cold deepens, the lights gutter, and the shelves come alive. **This is the answer to the riddle Twinkle set:** the party learns, viscerally, why an animal that can blink through walls will not put one leg past that arch. It's invisible (needs *See Invisibility* / Veil Dust / a lucky Perception vs. its Stealth to pin down), hurls objects (Telekinetic Thrust), and drops the lights.
- **The pincer.** Now the trap's shape is clear — the haunt in here, the spider up the Cut, and no third exit. This is the moment the party *chooses* its fight: push back up and deal with Twinkle, or settle the haunt first and loot in peace.
- **Outs (once it's active):** it calms if the party stops disturbing the shelves and holds still, or if someone re-lights the room's **warding sconces** (DC 13 Arcana on the ward-candles bolted to the walls — this pins the poltergeist *and* firms the arch's quarantine). A cleric can turn or lay it to rest (it just wants the room quiet again).
- **Scaling:** for 5 PCs, add **2 Shadows** (CR 1/2) that peel off the walls where the ward-light has failed — a bridge to the rift's influence.
### Loot (weird, useful, cursed-adjacent)
@@ -208,7 +224,7 @@ Let players earn these by braving the haunting. Suggested shelf (pick to taste):
## The Old Work (The Rift)
The deepest chamber, behind the barred and runed door off the Junction. This is why Orenn and Mags really live here — and the thing the hidden fifth rule means when it says *burn below and seal the door.*
The deepest chamber, a sealed cul-de-sac at the very bottom of the Cut — reached through [Deep Storage](#deep-storage-the-trophy-hold) and a heavy **barred, runed door** (the same runed iron nails as upstairs, barred from the storage side; cold radiates off it). This sealed rift is the closed case Orenn and Mags built their quiet life on top of — and the thing the hidden fifth rule means when it says *burn below and seal the door.* They believed it dead. It isn't.
> **Read-Aloud: The Old Work**
>
@@ -217,9 +233,9 @@ The deepest chamber, behind the barred and runed door off the Junction. This is
> *Něco se na druhé straně pohne. A pak ještě něco. Trhlina je čím dál větší — a poprvé za patnáct let ji nikdo nehlídá.*
### What It Is
The planar fault beneath the tavern surfaces as the **thin point** upstairs; down here, at the lowest point, it has torn into an actual **rift** — a hand-thin tear the couple contained decades ago with a **silver-and-salt containment circle** (distinct from Orenn's*binding* circle upstairs). The circle is failing in step with the ward-sigils Xarrul has been cracking. This is the **source** of the ethereal bleed everyone's been feeling.
The planar fault beneath the tavern surfaces as the **thin point** upstairs; down here, at the lowest point, it has torn into an actual **rift** — a hand-thin tear that **was contained decades ago** with a **silver-and-salt containment circle** (the summoners' work, or the specialist who closed their mess; distinct from the*binding* circle upstairs). Orenn and Mags inherited it sealed and left it alone, re-tracing the chalk by rote without ever understanding it. The circle is **failing now** — Xarrul has spent weeks prying it open from the Ethereal side. This is the **source** of the ethereal bleed everyone's been feeling, and the reason the whole district around the house has felt *wrong.*
- **DC 14 Arcana:** the containment circle is the same craft as the upstairs work but older, and it's being eroded from the ethereal side — the same claw-marks that cracked the wards.
- **DC 14 Arcana:** the containment circle is the same craft as the upstairs work but older, and it's being eroded from the ethereal side — the same claw-marks that are siphoning the sigils upstairs.
- **DC 16 Arcana:** the rift and the upstairs thin point are one fault. Widening or "using" this rift would be catastrophically less controllable than the upstairs thin point. **This is not where you do the dual-plane kill.** (Explicit, so a clever party doesn't try to run the Reckoning down here and derail it.)
### The Conversion (Optional — a lone explorer)
@@ -234,32 +250,45 @@ Deploy as a scaled encounter (tune to party size / how hurt they are):
- **Harder:** add a **Specter** (CR 1) or upgrade to a lone **ethereal-touched horror** of the DM's making. If Xarrul is *actively present* on the ethereal side (late game), it can spend a turn "opening the gate" as a lair-flavored action, adding 1 Shadow per round until the circle is restored.
### Encounter — The Guardian (the pet)
Roaming the whole Deep Cellar — but denning near the rift, because it can hunt across the boundary — is **the couple's pet**, a bound **Phase Spider** the players may meet anywhere down here. Full tactical block below. It's the "fight a bit" the party will remember.
Denned in the **[Workroom](#the-workroom-laboratory)** at the stair-foot and prowling the length of the **Long Cut** — the Cells, the Vault, the working floor — is **the couple's pet**, a **feyspitter spider** they called **Twinkle**. It is *not* found past the warded arch: it won't set foot in [Deep Storage](#deep-storage-the-trophy-hold) (the poltergeist's ground) and it *can't* follow anything into [the Old Work](#the-old-work-the-rift). Its blink is a fey twitch *across* the Material Plane, never *out* of it — so when Xarrul's scavengers phase away at the tear, the pet is left snapping at empty air. That boundary is the one place in its home it fears.
Full tactical block below — it's the "fight a bit" the party will remember. Its range is also a quiet barometer: it used to have the run of the whole level, and it's pulled tight into the Workroom now. The rift has been taking ground from it, the same way it's been taking the wards.
**The chokepoint & the herd (how first contact works).** Twinkle holds the one thing that matters on a dead-end level: the stair-foot. A party that comes down noisy or hostile meets it here, and its instinct is to put itself **between them and the stairs** and drive them off its ground — which, on a spine, means **deeper**. It doesn't press to kill; it *herds* — a gob of spat venom to lurch someone along, a blink to cut off a retreat, clicking them down the Cut, past the locked Vault, until they spill through the warded arch into [Deep Storage](#deep-storage-the-trophy-hold). There it stops and withdraws to hold its turf. The party is now in the false refuge with the only exit behind the spider, and **they will have to choose the fight on the way back** — which is the whole point. (A calm, quiet, or Orenn-scented party is never herded at all; the herd is the *panic* branch. See below.)
> **Read-Aloud: The Guardian**
>
> *Slyšíte to dřív, než to uvidíte — suché klepání, jako když někdo poklepává kostěnými prsty na kámen. Pak zmizí. A pak, z místa, kde před vteřinou nic nebylo, se to vynoří: pavouk velký jako lovecký pes, tělo lesklé a temné, a nohy, které se dotýkají země jen napůl — jako by si nebyl úplně jistý, na které straně světa vlastně je.*
> *Slyšíte to dřív, než to uvidíte — suché, trhané klepání, jako když někdo poklepává kostěnými prsty na kámen. Pak ticho. A pak je to najednou blíž — ne že by to přišlo, spíš to mezi dvěma mrknutími přeskočilo kus tmy, jako by vzdálenost byla jen návrh, který nemusí přijmout. Pavouk velký jako lovecký pes, tělo lesklé a temné, klouby na koncích dlouhých nohou svítí slabou, jedovatě zelenou. A když se do něj opře vaše světlo, osm očí se rozzáří jako korálky — možná právě proto mu říkali Twinkle. Nespěchá. Zatím ne. Jen vás sleduje ze stropu a čeká, co uděláte.*
**Ethereal Jaunt.** As a bonus action, the spider can shift from the Material Plane to the Ethereal Plane, or vice versa. (This is why it can guard a household on a thin point — no wall, and no plane, keeps it out.)
**Spider Climb / Web Walker.** Climbs difficult surfaces, including upside down, and ignores webbing movement restrictions.
**Web-Dweller.** Climbs difficult surfaces, including upside down on ceilings and across webs, without penalty. While in contact with a web, the spider knows the exact location of any other creature in contact with the same web.
**Material Blink***(flavor).* Its short teleports are a fey twitch *across* the Material Plane, never *out* of it. It has no ethereal access — it cannot enter the rift or follow a creature that goes ethereal.
**Actions**
**Bite.***Melee Weapon Attack:* +4 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 7 (1d10+2) piercing damage, and the target must make a DC 11 Constitution save, taking 18 (4d8) poison damage on a fail, half on a success. If the poison reduces the target to 0 HP, it's stable but poisoned and paralyzed for 1 hour.
**Multiattack.** The spider makes two attacks, only one of which can be a Lurchvenom Bite.
**Lurchvenom Bite.***Melee Weapon Attack:* +6 to hit, reach 5 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 8 (1d8+4) piercing damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 14 Constitution save or be poisoned for 1 minute (save ends at end of turn). While poisoned this way, at the start of each of its turns the target takes 9 (2d8) poison damage and then teleports up to 15 ft. to an unoccupied space the spider can see.
**Spit Venom.***Ranged Weapon Attack:* +6 to hit, range 30/60 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 9 (2d8) poison damage, and the target teleports up to 15 ft. to an unoccupied space the spider can see.
**Grasping Legs.***Melee Weapon Attack:* +6 to hit, reach 10 ft., one creature. *Hit:* 7 (1d6+4) bludgeoning damage, and the target is grappled (escape DC 14).
**Reactions**
**Anticipatory Strike.** When a creature teleports to a space within 5 ft. of the spider, it can make a Grasping Legs attack with advantage against that creature.
**Vanishing Dodge.** When a creature hits it with an attack, the spider makes a Dexterity check against a DC equal to the attack roll; on a success it teleports up to 15 ft. and the attack misses.
**Running it well:**
- **It's a guard dog, not a monster.** It was *raised* by Orenn and Mags. It will **not** attack a creature that (a) carries Orenn's scent — anyone who handled his keys/body/clothes — or (b) speaks the household command word Mags knows, or (c) simply doesn't threaten the Vault or the Cells. A quiet, respectful party can pass it entirely (great stealth payoff). Present this: it *tracks* them, clicks, phases, watches — and holds fire until provoked.
- **Provoke it** (force the Vault, harm the Guest, attack it) and it fights like an ambush predator: bite, phase out (safe on the Ethereal Plane where non-ethereal weapons can't reach), reposition, phase back for another strike. Players need force damage, ethereal reach (Veil Dust!), or to catch it on the Material Plane to pin it.
- **After Orenn's death** it's agitated and grieving in its animal way — more skittish, more likely to lash out from fear. A druid/beast-handler (DC 14 Animal Handling) can calm it; killing it upsets Mags deeply if she learns of it.
- **Scaling:** for 5 PCs or a combat-hungry table, add **2 Giant Spiders** (CR 1, its brood) nesting in the passages. For a lighter table, run Přástka purely as an avoidable stealth obstacle.
- **It's a guard dog, not a monster.** It was *raised* by Orenn and Mags. It will **not** attack a creature that (a) carries Orenn's scent — anyone who handled his keys/body/clothes — or (b) speaks the household command word Mags knows, or (c) simply doesn't threaten the Vault or the Cells. A quiet, respectful party can pass it entirely (great stealth payoff). Present this: it *tracks* them — clicks, blinks a few feet, watches from the ceiling — and holds fire until provoked.
- **Trained to detain, not kill.** Against provokers it leads with **Grasping Legs** to pin and hold — the couple wanted intruders *caught*, not eaten. A grabbed, downed PC is wrapped in web for the masters, not finished off; run captures, not TPKs, unless the party escalates hard.
- **Provoke it in earnest** (force the Vault, harm the Guest, keep hitting it) and it fights like the blink-ambusher itis: bite or spit to lurch a target out of formation, **Vanishing Dodge** away from the first solid hit, then **Anticipatory Strike** whoever the venom teleports next to it. It splits a party up and picks off the isolated one — but it **cannot** flee to the Ethereal Plane. Corner it on the Material Plane and it has nowhere left to phase.
- **After Orenn's death** it's agitated and grieving in its animal way — more skittish, more likely to lash out from fear, and pulled tight into the Workroom. A druid/beast-handler (DC 14 Animal Handling) can calm it; killing it upsets Mags deeply if she learns of it.
- **The return is theirs to shape.** Coming back up the Cut, the party fights (or sneaks, or calms) on *their* terms — they pick the ground, they've had a beat in Deep Storage to plan, and they may now hold Orenn's key/scent, the command word, silvered gear, or bottled venom. Don't spring it on them again from nowhere; it's holding the stair-foot and they know it. The dead end means the reckoning with Twinkle is a *when*, not an *if* — let them arrange the terms.
- **Tuning (CR 4 is a real fight).** For a lighter table, drop **Spit Venom** and **Vanishing Dodge** and run it as an avoidable stealth obstacle. For 5 PCs or a combat-hungry table, add **2 Giant Spiders** (CR 1, its brood — the source of the silk throughout the warren, and the strands upstairs) nesting in the passages.
---
@@ -270,10 +299,10 @@ Roaming the whole Deep Cellar — but denning near the rift, because it can hunt
**The three payoffs, guaranteed:**
1.**Loot** — the Vault + Workroom + Deep Storage give gear that makes the Reckoning easier (Fiendbane Salt, silvered weapons, alchemy, silvervein root for Bren).
2.**Backstory** — the chalk wall, the trophies, the child's shoe, Cell Two, the Guest, and the ledger tell the whole truth about Orenn and Mags with almost no exposition.
3.**A fight on their terms** — rats (trivial), the poltergeist (medium), the phase spider (avoidable or hard), rift creatures (scalable), and optionally the Guest (CR 3).
3.**A fight on their terms** — rats (trivial), the poltergeist (medium), Twinkle the feyspitter spider (avoidable, or a hard CR 4), rift creatures (scalable), and optionally the Guest (CR 3).
**Threads back into the main game — surface at least one:**
- The chalk wall / Guest / trophies reveal Orenn was investigating the **Lambent Order** → feeds the murder mystery and the [Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md).
- The chalk wall / Guest / trophies reveal Orenn was investigating the **Order of Mending** → feeds the murder mystery and the [Reckoning](../storylines/the-reckoning.md).
- The Workroom's **silvervein root** and Veil Dust → the [Possession](../storylines/possession.md) and [ethereal-trip](../storylines/ethereal-trip.md) subplots.
- The **Fiendbane Salt** and silvered gear → the means to pin Xarrul without paying Tallow.
- The vault **trophies** implicating both factions → a lit fuse if it ever reaches the main hall.
The heart of the Burnt Tongue. A single large room with a low ceiling, stone floor, and the permanent smell of smoke and regret.
The heart of the Nether Inn. A single large room with a low ceiling, stone floor, and the permanent smell of smoke and regret.
## Key Features
@@ -8,7 +8,7 @@ The heart of the Burnt Tongue. A single large room with a low ceiling, stone flo
A massive slab of darkwood, scarred by decades of knife marks, spilled drinks, and at least one axe blow that's been sanded down but never quite disappeared. Behind it: shelves of unlabeled bottles, a few labeled ones nobody orders, and a collection of confiscated weapons mounted on the wall like trophies.
**Orenn's body** lies behind the bar on the stone floor. He fell backward — whatever killed him came from the front, but nobody in the brawl was close enough. See [Murder Mystery](../storylines/murder-mystery.md) for details.
**Orenn's body** lies behind the bar on the stone floor. He fell backward — whatever killed him came from the front, but nobody in the brawl was close enough, and the hall was black when it happened (Rennt's Thunderwave had just snuffed the candles). He's bruised and bleeding from a knock taken wading into the brawl — a **decoy**; that wound didn't kill him. See [Murder Mystery](../storylines/murder-mystery.md) for details.
**Hidden:** Under the bar is a recessed shelf with:
- A loaded hand crossbow (Orenn's insurance, DC 13 Investigation)
@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ A massive slab of darkwood, scarred by decades of knife marks, spilled drinks, a
### The Fireplace
Large stone hearth, fire burning low. The mantle holds a single iron bell that has never been rung — a relic from the tavern's founding. **Mags knows:** ringing the bell activates the ward-sigils in the foundation. It was a last resort, meant to seal the building against ethereal intrusion. The wards are cracked now, so the effect would be partial at best (disadvantage on Xarrul's Ethereal Jaunt saves rather than preventing it outright).
Large stone hearth, fire burning low. The mantle holds a single iron bell that has never been rung — a relic left from the tavern's summoner days. **Mags knows the trick to ring it** (never what it truly does): the toll wakes the old foundation sigils. It was the summoners' last resort, meant to seal the building against ethereal intrusion. The sigils are half-dormant and being siphoned now, so the effect is partial at best (disadvantage on Xarrul's Ethereal Jaunt saves rather than preventing it outright).
### Assassin Table (North-West)
@@ -33,7 +33,7 @@ A round table covered in papers, open books, and half-empty inkwells — maintai
**After the murder:** Haddon immediately begins constructing an alibi — "we were all engaged in discussion, none of us left the table." This is technically true but irrelevant (the fiend killed from the Ethereal Plane). Rennt is agitated and defensive. Dalla doesn't seem to care about the investigation at all — she's thinking about her child.
**On the table (DC 12 Investigation):** Among the scholarly papers, one diagram shows planar boundaries with annotations about "thinning points." Haddon will claim it's theoretical research. It's actually a map of potential Opening sites, and the Burnt Tongue is marked.
**On the table (DC 12 Investigation):** Among the scholarly papers, one diagram shows planar boundaries with annotations about "thinning points." Haddon will claim it's theoretical research. It's actually a map of potential Opening sites, and the Nether Inn is marked.
### Tallow's Booth (South, near wall)
@@ -77,8 +77,10 @@ After the brawl, the center of the room is a mess:
>
> *Klapnutí závory na hlavních dveřích zní jako rozsudek.*
*(DM: this is only her entrance. The full set-piece that follows — the forced heal, the failed* Revivify *with the diamond from her necklace, the shattered ward-crystal that seals the tavern until midnight, and the ultimatum — is scripted in [Mags — Act 2: The Reveal](../npc/mags.md#act-2--the-reveal-dm). The "bolt" the players hear is the ward-crystal discharging into every exit, not a simple latch.)*
## Lighting & Atmosphere
- **Before the brawl:** Dim candlelight, warm in a grimy way. Shadows dance.
- **During the brawl:** Candles knocked over, intermittent darkness. Fire in the fireplace flickers wildly.
- **After the murder:** Mags lights every candle and lantern she can find. The room is brighter than it's ever been and somehow that makes it worse — you can see every stain, every scar, every face that doesn't want to be seen.
- **During the brawl:** Candles knocked over, intermittent darkness — then, on cue a few rounds in, **Rennt's Thunderwave snuffs every flame at once** and the hall goes pitch black. That blackout is the murder window. (Darkvision PCs/NPCs still see in it — use a glimpsed shape or cold spot near the bar as an early fiend clue, or make the dark linger unnaturally long as a "someone reinforced this" tell.)
- **After the murder:** Mags relights every candle and lantern at once with a brass **ward-focus** behind the bar. The room is brighter than it's ever been and somehow that makes it worse — you can see every stain, every scar, every face that doesn't want to be seen.
The Burnt Tongue has stood on the corner of Žlutá Street and Popelová Alley for over forty years. It started as a safehouse, became a flophouse, and eventually settled into what it is today: neutral ground. The name comes from the unwritten rule — what happens here stays here, or you lose the tongue that spoke of it.
The Nether Inn has stood on the corner of Žlutá Street and Popelová Alley for over forty years. It started as a safehouse, became a flophouse, and eventually settled into what it is today: neutral ground. The name comes from where it sits — half-sunk below the street, so you step *down* into it, into the nether dark beneath the city's notice. What happens here stays here; talk of it elsewhere and you may lose the tongue that spoke of it.
Fifteen years ago, **Orenn** and **Mags** took ownership. Before that, they were *cleaners* — the people the city's underworld called when something crawled out of the sewers, when a summoning went sideways, when a gang war threatened to spill into the merchant quarter. Not heroes. Fixers. They retired here because they were tired of fixing other people's messes, and because running the most dangerous bar in the city was, somehow, the quieter life.
Fifteen years ago, **Orenn** and **Mags** took ownership — not by buying it, but by *earning* it. They were **fixers**: the people the city's underworld called when a problem needed to stop existing — a rival crew, a blackmailer with the wrong ledger, a gang war about to spill into the merchant quarter. Not heroes. The last job of their working lives was this very building: a den of summoners had been operating out of it, calling things up through the fault in its cellar, and it had gone bad enough that someone paid well to have it cleaned out. Orenn and Mags did the cleaning and took the house as their fee. They told the world they'd retired. Running the most dangerous bar in the city was, somehow, the quieter life — and the summoners' leftover work, sealed and silent in the dark below, was a closed case they never expected to reopen.
Under Orenn's rule, the Burnt Tongue became sacred ground. Assassins could drink next to their marks. Cultists could study next to inquisitors. The rule was simple: **no killing**. Orenn enforced it not with threats but with the calm certainty of a man who had killed worse things than you, and everyone in the room knew it.
Under Orenn's rule, the Nether Inn became sacred ground. Assassins could drink next to their marks. Cultists could study next to inquisitors. The rule was simple: **no killing**. Orenn enforced it not with threats but with the calm certainty of a man who had killed worse things than you, and everyone in the room knew it.
## The Rules of the House
@@ -19,6 +19,30 @@ Carved into a wooden plaque above the bar in Common and Thieves' Cant:
The first rule has just been broken — and the barkeep who enforced it is the victim.
## The Enchanted Door
The only public way in is the heavy front door at the bottom of the entry steps. It is **enchanted and password-warded** — Orenn's first line of control over who shares his neutral ground.
**Getting in.** The door opens from outside only for someone who speaks the current password (Orenn changed it often; regulars are told, Mags knows it). To a stranger it simply won't budge, and if pressed it answers — in Orenn's own recorded voice — *"State your business. Or step back up the stairs."* After his death, that voice is quietly horrible. The PCs begin the night already inside; they never had to deal with the door, and that's deliberate.
**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:
- 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.
Beating the lock early — or simply surviving until midnight — is a genuine Act 3 problem, not a formality.
> **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.**
>
> 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 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)).
## Atmosphere
The tavern is larger than it looks from outside. The building is old stone and dark wood, sunk slightly below street level so you step *down* into it. The air is thick with pipe smoke, tallow candle smell, and the sweet-sour tang of cheap spirits. Everything is dimly lit — not for ambiance, but because the clientele prefers it that way.
@@ -78,7 +102,7 @@ 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 knew this. It's one reason they chose this location — they could monitor it. It also means Veil Dust is more potent here, and ethereal entities find it easier to manifest.
- 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 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 contains **old ward-sigils**carved by Orenn and Mags when they moved in. These wards kept fiends from crossing the threshold in the Ethereal Plane. Xarrul broke them during the brawl — a character examining the foundation stones (DC 15 Investigation or Arcana) can find the cracked sigils.
- 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.
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