# The Deep Cellar — The Old Work *Everyone thinks the cellar is the bottom. It isn't. Orenn and Mags never fully retired — they just moved the work downstairs, past a door that isn't on any map, and told the world they poured drinks for a living.* --- ## Purpose (For the DM) 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. - **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. --- ## Getting In The only entrance is the **concealed iron door** in the Upper Cellar (see [cellar.md — The Concealed Door](../location/cellar.md#the-concealed-door)). Finding it is the first exploration beat: - **DC 15 Investigation** on the north wall behind the barrel racks — the "living rock" there is a cleverly fitted iron door faced with a shell of real stone. A cold draft and a faint drag-scuff on the earth floor give it away. - **DC 15 Perception** — the same cold draft, plus the smell (copper, tallow, something animal underneath). - **Orenn's keys** (on his body) include a heavy, plain black iron key that fits nothing upstairs. It fits here. - **Mags** will only reveal it under the most extreme trust (see [mags.md](../npc/mags.md)) — and even then reluctantly. Players who *find it themselves* rob her of the choice, which is very much the point of this track. The door itself is locked (**Arcane Lock**, DC 20 to force, DC 25 Thieves' Tools; Orenn's black key or *Knock* bypasses it). Behind it: rough steps cut into bedrock, descending. > **Read-Aloud: The Descent** > > *Za falešnou stěnou nejsou sudy. Jsou schody. Vytesané přímo do skály, úzké, nerovné, kluzké vlhkem, které stoupá zdola jako dech. Vzduch je tu ještě chladnější než ve sklepě — a hustší, jako by měl vlastní váhu. Kovová pachuť sílí. A pod ní něco jiného: pižmo, zvířecí, a hluboko vzadu sladká hniloba.* > > *Deset schodů. Patnáct. Ztratíte počet. Světlo shora se scvrkne na bledou skvrnu a pak zmizí úplně. Ať chcete vidět cokoliv, musíte si posvítit — a to světlo tu vypadá menší, než by mělo, jako by ho tma kolem hltala.* > > *A pak, na hranici slyšitelnosti, něco zaškrábe. Daleko. Nebo blízko. Tady dole se to nepozná.* --- ## 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. ``` ┌───────────────────────┐ │ THE OLD WORK │ │ (the rift, deepest) │ │ ▓▓ contained tear ▓▓ │ └───────────┬───────────┘ │ (warded arch) ┌──────────────┐ ┌───────┴────────┐ ┌──────────────┐ │ THE VAULT │ │ │ │ DEEP STORAGE │ │ (arcane- ├──────┤ THE JUNCTION ├──────┤ (trophy hold,│ │ locked) │ │ (hub cave) │ │ haunted) │ └──────────────┘ └──┬──────────┬──┘ └──────────────┘ │ │ ┌───────────┴──┐ ┌───┴───────────┐ │ THE CELLS │ │ THE WORKROOM │ │ [1] Guest │ │ (laboratory) │ │ [2] Long Dead│ └───────────────┘ └──────────────┘ ▲ steps up to UPPER CELLAR ``` **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. **Sound:** Carries strangely (the fault line). A footstep three rooms away can sound close; a scream close by can sound far. Use this — Perception checks to locate a sound are at disadvantage down here. --- ## The Junction (Hub Cave) 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 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).) **Encounter — The Infestation (rats):** The Junction and passages 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). --- ## The Vault (Treasure Room) *"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. > **Read-Aloud: The Vault** > > *Dveře se otevřou s dechem suchého, starého vzduchu. Uvnitř se vaše světlo odrazí od zlata. Ne hromady jako v dračích pohádkách — spíš pořádek. Truhly srovnané u zdi. Police. Zbraně na hácích, naolejované a čekající. A všechno pokryté tenkou vrstvou prachu, kterou léta nikdo nezvedl.* > > *Je to poklad člověka, který nikdy neutrácel — protože nikdy nevěřil, že válka opravdu skončila.* ### Wealth - **1,400 gp** in mixed coin across three locked chests (DC 13 Thieves' Tools each, or the black key). - A velvet roll of **cut gemstones** worth **900 gp** total (six stones, 150 gp each — easy to split, easy to steal a couple unnoticed: a Personal-Goal hook, see [character-secrets](../handouts/character-secrets.md)). - A deed-box: **two more deeds** (a warehouse on Popelová Alley, a shuttered chandlery) and letters of credit with a moneylender — proof the "just a barkeep" story was always a story. > **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: - **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). - 2 vials of **Holy Water**, 1 more vial of **Silversheen**, and a jar of **warding chalk (2 uses)** — stacks with the storage-room supplies for a party that hunts both caches. - A **Potion of Heroism** and a **Potion of Greater Healing** (×2) — the couple's "before the bad jobs" stash. - A **Ring of the Ram** (3 charges) OR a **+1 dagger etched with a fiend-binding sigil** (DM's choice, tuned to the party's gaps) — one modest permanent item as the deep-exploration prize. ### The Trophies (backstory) On a shelf, labeled in Mags's block letters — souvenirs kept the way soldiers keep them: - 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. --- ## The Cells Two cells cut side by side, iron-barred, fitted with the runed nails and a warded lock (DC 15 Thieves' Tools; the warding adds a jolt — 1d4 force to a failed pick). This is the ugliest truth of the level: Orenn and Mags didn't just kill things. Sometimes they *kept* them. ### Cell One — The Guest **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. > **Read-Aloud: Cell One** > > *V cele někdo je. Sedí na kavalci, zády ke zdi, ruce položené na kolenou, docela klidně — jako host, který čeká, až ho konečně někdo přijde obsloužit. Když se do cely opře vaše světlo, ten člověk se usměje. Je to příjemný úsměv. Vřelý. A vy si na zlomek vteřiny nejste jistí, jestli jste ten obličej už někde neviděli — jestli to není někdo, koho znáte.* > > *"No konečně," řekne. "Začínal jsem mít strach, že na mě zapomněli."* ### Cell Two — The Long Dead **Empty of the living.** On the floor at the back, a **desiccated corpse** — humanoid-shaped, but wrong: the bones too long, the jaw unhinged, the skin drawn to grey parchment over a frame that doesn't sit right. It has been dead for years. The manacles are still locked around wrists that shrank out of them. - **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. - **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. --- ## The Workroom (Laboratory) 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*. > **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.* ### What They Made (and still make) This is the other half of "still something going on." The couple never stopped brewing: - **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. ### Loot & Craft - **2 flasks of Alchemist's Fire**, **1 vial of Basic Poison** (×3 applications), **Antitoxin** (×2). - 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. --- ## Deep Storage (The Trophy Hold) The largest room down here, and the worst-kept — because things in it don't like being tidied. Shelves and crates of confiscated, dangerous, or simply *strange* items from twenty years of jobs: things too risky to sell, too valuable to destroy, so they were shelved and warded and left. > **Read-Aloud: Deep Storage** > > *Velká místnost, plná regálů, a na regálech… věci. Maska, která sleduje, jak procházíte kolem. Zrcadlo zabalené v plátně, převázané provazem. Klec, ve které není nic — a přesto se hýbe. Loutka bez nití. Zbraně, které by neměly být tak staré a přitom bez jediného škrábance. Nic tu není v pořádku a všechno je pečlivě popsáno a odloženo, jako důkazy ve skladu, na který se má radši zapomenout.* > > *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. - **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). - **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) Let players earn these by braving the haunting. Suggested shelf (pick to taste): - A **Cloak of Billowing** or **Hat of Disguise** (mundane-ish utility, great for the social/stealth players) — tag: *"Guest's spare — do not issue."* (Ties to the changeling operation.) - A **Bag of Holding** (smaller sibling to Tallow's) — practical for hauling the vault's coin. - **3 runed iron nails** (as upstairs — anti-fiend wards) and a **Driftglobe** (portable light for the dark warren; a small mercy). - A **sealed lead casket, warded, labeled *"DO NOT OPEN — '06"***. Inside (if a player insists): a **Vial of dark ichor** — a bound fiendish essence. Opening it is a bad idea (DM's discretion: a minor fiend or a curse) but it *can* be used as a component to bait/lure Xarrul. A high-risk, high-reward exploration payoff for a bold party. The wards on the casket (DC 15 Arcana) spell out plainly: *whatever is in here wants you to open it.* --- ## 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.* > **Read-Aloud: The Old Work** > > *Za dveřmi je zima, která nemá co dělat s teplotou. Místnost je malá a kulatá a uprostřed podlahy je… trhlina. Ne ve skále. Ve vzduchu. Ve světě. Svislá jizva dlouhá jako člověk, po okrajích roztřepená, a skrze ni prosvítá šeď — plochá, nekonečná, špatná šeď éterické roviny. Kolem trhliny je do podlahy vyryt kruh znaků, stříbrem a solí, a ten kruh svítí slabě a unaveně, jako někdo, kdo drží dveře zavřené už příliš dlouho.* > > *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. - **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 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) If a *single* PC lingers here alone, this is where Xarrul can reach them — a ward-snare pins them, or an **Ethereal Pull** drags them partway into the grey, and the fiend simply *talks*. They rejoin the party changed: genuinely convinced Xarrul should go free, and carrying a shard of its nature. This is **not** a charm — it's a conversation that worked, and it's one of the best engines for [Scenario F](../storylines/the-reckoning.md#scenario-f-the-open-door-joining-xarrul) at a large table. Full scene, the player's note, the boon (the **Grey Step**), and the counterplay: [handouts/the-conversion.md](../handouts/the-conversion.md). ### Encounter — Creatures from the Rift This is where "Xarrul can have some creatures from there" pays off. Xarrul doesn't lair *in* the rift — it lairs in the ethereal cellar (upstairs overlay, per canon) — but it has learned to **loose the scavengers** that gather at the tear, herding them at intruders like dogs. Deploy as a scaled encounter (tune to party size / how hurt they are): - **Baseline:** **3 Shadows** (CR 1/2) that pour out of the tear where the circle's light has thinned, plus **1 Ethereal Filcher** (CR 1) that darts in to *steal a valuable item* off a PC (DC 13 vs. Sleight-of-Hand-style grab) and flee back through the rift — a fantastic reason to chase, and a way to make loss of the vault's prize sting. - **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. > **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.* **Phase Spider "Přástka"** — Large monstrosity, unaligned · **CR 3 (700 XP)** **AC** 13 · **HP** 32 (5d10+5) · **Speed** 30 ft., climb 30 ft. | STR | DEX | CON | INT | WIS | CHA | |-----|-----|-----|-----|-----|-----| | 15 (+2) | 15 (+2) | 12 (+1) | 7 (-2) | 10 (+0) | 6 (-2) | **Skills** Stealth +6 **Senses** darkvision 60 ft., passive Perception 10 **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. **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. **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. --- ## DM Cheat-Sheet — Running the Deep Cellar **Pacing:** This is a 30–60 minute side-track, or the spine of the whole night for an exploration-hungry group. It runs parallel to the lockdown upstairs — while some PCs interrogate patrons, others can be down here. Cut between the two. **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). **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 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. **If the party burns it (the fifth rule):** Orenn's contingency — *"burn the cellar stores and seal the door"* — is a real option. Torching the Workroom and Deep Storage and collapsing the door denies the loot but also **cuts off the rift's bleed into the tavern** (the fire consumes the failing containment and the stores that feed the fault's attraction), giving a partial ward-restoration effect equivalent to repairing the sigils. It's a scorched-earth ending Mags respects. The Guest, if still caged, dies in the fire unless freed first — make the players sit with that.