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# Back Rooms
Behind the bar, through a heavy door reinforced with iron bands, lie the working areas of the Burnt Tongue.
## Kitchen
A surprisingly clean workspace, considering the establishment. Mags runs a tight kitchen. Stone counters, iron pots, a wood-burning stove that heats the wall shared with the main hall.
### Read-Aloud: Entering the Kitchen
> *Kuchyně je překvapivě čistá. Ne sterilní — ale udržovaná s péčí, kterou byste v tomhle podniku nečekali. Na kamenné lince leží nůž, kterým někdo krájel cibuli. Hrnec na plotně tiše bublá. Na zdi visí řada kuchyňských nástrojů uspořádaných s téměř vojenskou přesností — a mezi nimi, nenápadně ale nepřehlédnutelně, krátký meč v koženém pouzdře.*
### Details
- **Mags's short sword** hangs among the kitchen implements. It's well-oiled and recently sharpened despite "retirement." This is a **+1 short sword** — Mags won't give it up willingly but might lend it if she trusts the players and believes they're hunting the real killer.
- **Herb rack** — Among cooking herbs, DC 14 Nature or Herbalism Kit check identifies **dried nightwhisper** (a component in Veil Dust preparation) and **silvervein root** (a mild ward against fiendish influence — chewing it grants advantage on one saving throw against a fiend's ability within the next hour).
- **Mags's apron pocket** — She carries a small iron key (opens the storage room's hidden compartment) and a folded piece of parchment: a letter from Orenn dated three months ago. *"If something happens to me in the bar, it came from between. Check the cellar wards. Don't trust what you see. Trust the bell."* — Mags hasn't read it yet. She will during the session if given time alone, or players can find it if she's incapacitated or if they pickpocket her (DC 19 Sleight of Hand — she's alert).
## Storage Room
A cramped room off the kitchen. Barrels of ale, crates of root vegetables, hanging dried meats. It smells like vinegar and damp wood.
### Details
- **Surface level:** Mundane supplies. Enough food and drink to sustain the lockdown for days.
- **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 **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).
## Private Room
A small room with a lockable door, a table, two benches, and a single candle sconce. Used for negotiations that require more privacy than the main hall provides. The walls are thick stone — conversations here don't carry.
### 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.
- **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.
### Read-Aloud: The Private Room
> *Malá místnost. Kamenné zdi, dřevěný stůl, dvě lavice. Svíčka ve výklenku, momentálně zhasnutá. Vzduch tu stojí — vlhký a zatuchlý, jako v místnosti, která dýchá jen tehdy, když ji někdo otevře. Stůl je pokrytý vrstvami vrytých značek — čárky, iniciály, nečitelné symboly. Příběhy, které tady nikdy neměly být vyprávěny a jejichž svědky jsou jen ty studené kameny kolem.*
## Connecting Passages
- Kitchen → Main Hall: Through the reinforced door (normally unlocked, Mags can bar it)
- Kitchen → Storage: Open archway
- Storage → Cellar: Floor trapdoor
- Kitchen → Upper Floor: A narrow staircase, barely wide enough for one person. Locked door at the top. This leads to Orenn and Mags's private quarters (see note below).
### Upper Floor (Orenn & Mags's Quarters)
**Locked.** Mags has the key but won't open it for strangers. If players earn her trust or convince her the investigation requires it (DC 17 Persuasion, DC 14 if they've shown her real evidence of fiendish involvement):
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.
- **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.

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# Cellar
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.
## 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.*
## 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 │
│ │
│ [Barrel ┌──────────┐ │
│ Racks] │Foundation│ │
│ │ Stone │ │
│ [Old │(ward- │ │
│ Crates] │ sigils) │ │
│ └──────────┘ │
│ │
│ [Orenn's │
│ Circle] [Thin Point] │
│ │
│ ┌────┐ │
│ │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 cleaner 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.
### 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.
### Orenn's Circle (South)
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 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)
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.
**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.
- 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.
### 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 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.
**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)
- 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.*

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# 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.
## Key Features
### The Bar
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.
**Hidden:** Under the bar is a recessed shelf with:
- A loaded hand crossbow (Orenn's insurance, DC 13 Investigation)
- A flask of **Sovereign Glue** (for situations that needed permanent solutions)
- A small leather journal in coded shorthand (DC 16 Intelligence to decode — contains names and debts owed to the house, including entries for both Sevra and Haddon)
### 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).
### Assassin Table (North-West)
A long table pushed against the wall. **Sevra** sits at the head with her back to the corner — she can see both the entrance and the cultist table. **Dace** is to her right, nursing a drink and making easy conversation with anyone nearby. **Kael** is standing, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed, glaring at the cultist table.
Three other unnamed guild members fill the rest of the table. They defer to Sevra completely.
**After the murder:** Kael wants to search the cultists by force. Sevra is holding him back — barely. Dace is being "helpful" to whoever is investigating, subtly steering suspicion toward the cultists.
### Cultist Table (South-West)
A round table covered in papers, open books, and half-empty inkwells — maintaining the scholar facade. **Haddon** sits at the center, composed. **Dalla** is on his left, distracted and pale. **Rennt** is on his right, leaning forward with intense energy. **Essek** sits slightly apart, saying nothing.
**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.
### Tallow's Booth (South, near wall)
A small booth with high-backed wooden seats that create a natural privacy screen. **Tallow** has claimed this spot as his office. His bag of holding sits under the table between his feet — he never lets it out of reach.
He has a clear sightline to the bar, the entrance, and both faction tables. He sees everything and pretends to see nothing.
**Under the table (DC 18 Perception or Sleight of Hand while Tallow is distracted):** A lockbox bolted to the underside of the seat. Contains 3 doses of Veil Dust, 80 gp in mixed coin, and a sealed letter addressed to "V." — it's a message from Tallow's supplier about a new, more potent formulation of the dust. The supplier is unnamed but the handwriting matches Mother Vyre's (DC 17 Investigation to match, requires seeing another sample of her writing from cultist documents).
### Bren's Corner (North-East, near bar)
Not a seat — a spot on the floor between the bar and the wall. **Bren** sits here with his knees drawn up, rocking slightly, muttering to the air beside him. A wooden bowl with a few copper coins sits in front of him — the regulars toss him change out of habit or superstition.
The space beside him where he talks to is **occupied** in the Ethereal Plane by **Skein**, a translucent, spider-like entity made of knotted threads. It's visible only via Veil Dust, See Invisibility, or similar effects.
### Vetch's Spot (South-East, near cellar stairs)
**Vetch** sits on a stool near the stairs that lead down to the cellar. He's not here by accident — he knows Tallow keeps extra product and he's been trying to figure out how to get to it all night.
He's jittery, sweating, picking at the skin on his forearms. He flinches when spoken to but warms up quickly if shown even basic kindness.
### Center Floor (Post-Brawl)
After the brawl, the center of the room is a mess:
- Overturned tables and stools
- Broken glass and pottery
- A few blood spatters (non-lethal injuries from the brawl — DC 12 Medicine confirms these are from fists and thrown objects, nothing matches how Orenn died)
- One cultist's book, kicked under a table, open to a page about **binding circles** (DC 14 Arcana reveals it's specifically about binding fiends)
## Read-Aloud: After the Brawl
> *Ticho. Po minutách chaosu je to ticho skoro bolestivé. Stoly leží převrácené, střepy pokrývají podlahu jako skleněný koberec a ve vzduchu visí prach a těžký dech tuctu lidí, kteří se právě mlátili. Někdo kašle. Někdo nadává polohlasem.*
>
> *A pak to někdo uvidí.*
>
> *Orenn leží za barem na zádech. Jeho oči jsou otevřené, ale nic nevidí. Na jeho tváři je výraz čirého, upřímného překvapení — jako by smrt byla to poslední, co v tomhle místě čekal. Na hrudi má spáleninu ve tvaru, který nedává smysl. Žádná krev. Žádná rána. Jen ta podivná, černá značka a muž, který před chvílí stál za barem klidný jako jezero za bezvětří.*
>
> *Ze dveří kuchyně vyjde žena. Zastaví se. Podívá se dolů. Její tvář projde něčím — ne pláčem, ne křikem. Něčím horším. Něčím tichým a tvrdým jako led, kterému trvalo celý život, než zamrzl.*
>
> *"Nikdo," řekne Mags hlasem, který nepřipouští námitky, "nikam neodejde."*
>
> *Klapnutí závory na hlavních dveřích zní jako rozsudek.*
## 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.

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# U Spáleného Jazyka — The Burnt Tongue
## History
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.
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.
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.
## The Rules of the House
Carved into a wooden plaque above the bar in Common and Thieves' Cant:
1. **No killing.** Brawling is permitted. Death is not.
2. **No magic that harms.** Cantrips for comfort, fine. Anything with intent, take it outside.
3. **Debts are honored.** If you owe the house, you pay the house.
4. **The barkeep's word is final.**
The first rule has just been broken — and the barkeep who enforced it is the victim.
## 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.
The noise level before the brawl is a low murmur punctuated by occasional harsh laughter from the assassin table and quiet scholarly debate from the cultists. After the murder, it's oppressive silence broken by whispers.
## General Layout
```
┌──────────────────────────────────┐
│ UPPER FLOOR │
│ (Orenn & Mags quarters) │
│ [locked, private] │
└──────────────────────────────────┘
┌──────────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ MAIN HALL │
│ │
│ [Assassin ┌─────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │
│ Table] │Fireplace│ │ BAR │ │
│ └─────────┘ [Bren's │ (Orenn's │ │
│ Corner] │ domain) │ │
│ [Cultist └──────┬───────┘ │
│ Table] [Center tables, │ │
│ stools, debris] ┌────────┴────────┐ │
│ [Tallow's │ Door to Kitchen │ │
│ Booth] [Vetch, near stairs] └────────┬────────┘ │
│ │ │
│ ┌──────┐ ┌────────┴────────┐ │
│ │ENTRY │ │ BACK ROOMS │ │
│ │(down │ │ Kitchen/Storage/ │ │
│ │steps)│ │ Private Room │ │
│ └──────┘ └────────┬────────┘ │
│ │ │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┼────────────┘
┌───────┴───────┐
│ CELLAR │
│ (trapdoor in │
│ storage) │
└───────────────┘
```
## Read-Aloud: Entering the Tavern
> *Schody vedou dolů. Tři kamenné stupně, vyšlapané generacemi bot, které sem raději nechtěly být viděny vcházet. Těžké dveře se za vámi zavřou s tupým úderem, který zní nepříjemně definitivně.*
>
> *Vzduch uvnitř je hustý — směs tabákového kouře, levné kořalky a starého dřeva nasyceného desítkami let rozlitého piva. Místnost je větší, než jste čekali. Nízký strop podpírají masivní dubové trámy, zčernalé od sazí. Svíčky v železných držácích vrhají neklidné stíny po zdech pokrytých starými výčepními tabulemi, kde některá jména byla záměrně vyškrábnuta.*
>
> *Zvuk se změní, když vstoupíte — ten sotva znatelný pokles hlasitosti, když místnost plná nebezpečných lidí zaregistruje někoho nového. Několik párů očí vás změří. Většina se vrátí ke svému. Jeden pár — ten za barem — ne.*
## 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 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.