Kirke of the Deep Halls
The corridor gives out into warmth. There is a hearth sunk into the floor with a real fire in it, a loom standing half-finished against the far wall, and a long table laid for exactly as many people as you are — cups poured, bread broken, a dish of salt fish that somebody at this table has not eaten since they were a child and has not mentioned to anyone.
Down both sides of the hall, behind bars, things move. They are the size of men. They are not the shape of men. One of them has a signet ring cutting into the flesh of what used to be a hand, and when your light crosses it, it stops pacing and looks at you and makes a sound.
The woman at the loom does not turn round. "Sit down," she says. "You have walked a long way and I have already set your places. We can discuss the door after you have eaten."
DM summary. She is not going to attack anyone. She is going to feed them, and she is going to be right about everything she says, and the last party that sat down is in the pens. The win condition here is freeing the changed, not killing the host — and she cannot be killed.
The Boon
The Taster's KylixOptional item
A cup that drinks for you, so a guest can be seen to empty it and owe nothing
What it is. A shallow two-handled cup, black-glazed, heavier than it looks and dead-sounding when tapped. The Taster's Kylix has a second floor a finger's width under the first, packed with clean sponge, and a gap under the near rim that swallows a whole cup of wine if a wrist turns just so. A king who expected to be poisoned owned it.
Where it comes from. Plant it early, among crockery, where nobody looks twice: a resupply room's shelf of palace ware, a dead steward's kit, any loot roll in a room with a table in it. Hand it over as tableware. Late plant — it is on Kirke's own table, at a place she has already set, because a house like this has always owned one.
What it does here. It answers the third course. A guest who emptied their cup into the sponge has not drunk, and Kirke prices only what a guest actually took: the DC 18 Wisdom saving throw at the payment and her Guest-Debt action's DC 18 Charisma save have nothing to name against them. It holds three cups, and tipping one into the sponge under her eye is a Sleight of Hand check against her passive Insight of 18, with advantage; emptying the sponge is a separate action and wants to be done out of her sight. Once in the encounter it also catches The Cup — the offer goes into the false bottom and the bearer holds it out still full — which is advantage on that one DC 18 Wisdom saving throw and nothing thereafter, because she pours differently afterwards. Being caught is the better outcome: she is delighted, counts the trick as payment, and a bearer she has caught thereafter counts as a guest who has eaten her food — the one condition on Bind her word at Persuasion DC 18.
What it doesn't do. It stops wine, not her. The Cup is not a drink — it does not matter whether the creature takes it — so a bearer who never swallowed still makes that DC 18 Wisdom saving throw, once with advantage and every time after that without. It finds no moly, draws no basin water, learns nobody's name, and frees none of the changed, which is this room's win condition. A party who never found it eats her food, owes her for it, and runs the counter-charm exactly as written.
Card and numbers or jump to the card ↓
Arena
Battle map: The Roadhouse — pages 37 & 38, 110 × 75 ft
The roadhouse full is Kirke's hall: line the taproom's tables into her 30-ft laid table, sink the hearth 10 ft across at the low end, and turn the back rooms into the pens (chalk the bars; her guests are in them). The loom stands at the high end by the yard door.
- Dimensions. 80 ft × 60 ft, ceiling 20 ft with smoke-blackened beams. The party enters at the low end; the loom and the door out are at the high end.
- Light. Bright within 30 ft of the sunken hearth, dim to the walls. The pens are in the dim.
- The hearth. Sunk 2 ft into the floor, 10 ft across, banked and burning. Anything driven into it takes 11 (2d10) fire damage. Under the third hearthstone, in the warm crack where it grows, is the moly — a white flower on a black root. Investigation DC 14 to find it, free to anyone who looks at the hearth after being told to look for a herb.
- The table. 30 ft of it, laid, and solid enough to stand on or overturn for half cover. What is on it is real food and it is not poisoned. That is the problem with it.
- The loom. Upright, warp weighted with drilled stones, a hall's worth of grey cloth on it half-done. Cutting the warp is one action and audibly rude, and it costs her a legendary action per round for the rest of the scene.
- The pens. Eight barred stalls, four a side, running the length of the hall. Four are occupied. The bars are bronze, AC 17, 25 hit points a section, or the gates lift by pin (Thieves' Tools DC 13, or Athletics DC 15 by hand).
- The washing spring. A stone basin at the high end, fed from the rock, with a bronze dipper on a chain. The counter-charm needs its water. She keeps it clean because she is, in every sense that matters here, a good host.
Roster & Budget
One woman who will not fight, and four people who will.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kirke of the Deep Halls | 5,000 |
| 4 | Cage-Broken Hybrid | 1,800 |
The intended encounter is 5,000 XP — Kirke alone, ×1, a bit over a third of the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. That is the honest number and it is meant to look wrong. The rest of the pressure is a skill challenge run under a charm effect against an opponent who never misses socially, and the four bodies in the pens are the cost of failing it.
The slaughter number, for a DM whose party opens every gate and swings: 5,000 + 7,200 = 12,200 base, ×2 for five bodies = 24,400 adjusted, which is seventy per cent over Deadly and will kill somebody. Quote it at the table if you like. Then remember what the hybrids are, and make sure the players do too: each one is a person, each one still has something of theirs on it, and every one the party kills is a person the party killed.
Phases / Clock
Phase one — The Table. She serves. Three courses, roughly one every ten minutes of table time or whenever the conversation lulls. She answers questions honestly, including the ones about the pens, and she is neither coy nor cruel about it: "They were rude. They are less rude now. You are not being rude." Nobody rolls initiative in this phase unless the party starts it.
The third course. At the end of the third course she asks for a payment for the meal — a name, a memory, a year, or one of the party to stay. A guest who has eaten and refuses to pay makes a DC 18 Wisdom saving throw or is caught by Guest-Debt (see the card) until the debt is settled or the moly is used on them. This is the moment the scene turns, and she is not the one who turns it.
If a guest has been using the Taster's Kylix, the payment does not reach them: she cannot name a meal that nobody ate, so there is no save to make and no debt to be caught by, and one character is free to walk the hall while the rest are held to the table. Play her working it out rather than being fooled by it. She looks at the cup, and then at whoever is holding it, and says "Ithaka," and she is smiling when she says it.
Phase two — The Sty. Triggered by a weapon drawn in anger, a pen opened, the loom cut, or the debt refused. She stops being a host in the space of one sentence, and the four gates go up on her word — she does not open them herself, she asks, and they open. Visibly: the fire goes green-edged, the grey cloth on the loom starts weaving itself, and every cup on the table freezes over.
Combat Resolution
Required, and it is the losing branch. Four to six rounds.
- Round 1 of phase two. She takes no attack action. She uses Set Another Place and puts a hybrid into whoever drew first, then walks to the loom and stands there, because that is where her legendary actions are worth the most.
- Tactics. She never targets an unconscious character, never finishes anyone, and never leaves the hall. She fights to change the party, not to kill it — every Cup she throws is an offer to make somebody a guest permanently. The hybrids attack whatever is nearest, ally or enemy, so a party that keeps the table between themselves and the pens spends the whole fight watching the changed maul each other, which is exactly as horrible as it sounds and is the room's argument for the other path.
- "Winning" the fight means dropping her to 0 hit points. She does not die (see Persistence Check). She scatters, reforms at the high end of the hall in one round, and the fight can go on forever this way. What actually ends it is the door: at 0 hit points the second time, she unbars it and turns her back, and the party leaves with whatever they have left and whoever they killed.
- If the party is losing badly, she calls it off. She takes the wounded, puts them on the table, and heals them, and the price for that is the one she was going to ask for anyway. A party can absolutely wake up in the pens and this Resolution can absolutely begin with a jailbreak — but see the safety note.
Alternate Resolution
Skill — the counter-charm, and give them their names back. This is the primary path, and it is a skill challenge run in the open: four successes before three failures, one check per character per round, no character rolling the same skill twice.
| Approach | Check | On a success |
|---|---|---|
| Find the herb | Investigation DC 14 at the hearth, or Nature/Survival DC 15 to know moly by its black root | The party has 1d4 + 1 doses. Without at least one dose, nothing else here works |
| Draw clean water | Athletics DC 12 to work the dipper while something is trying to stop you | The basin water, which the wash needs |
| Learn a name | Investigation DC 13 on the signet ring, the pens' scratched tallies, or the boots still on one of them; History DC 16 if the party has heard of that expedition | One changed man's name, which is the only thing that will reach him |
| Reach him | Animal Handling DC 15 or Persuasion DC 15, spoken to the hybrid, using the name | He stops. He does not attack the person holding the moly |
| Hold Kirke's attention | Deception, Persuasion, or Insight DC 17, or an honest argument she has to answer | She spends her turn answering instead of acting. She is scrupulous about this |
| Bind her word | Persuasion DC 18, only once, and only from someone who has eaten her food | She agrees to terms aloud, and she is bound by them — see Guest-Right on her card |
The counter-charm itself: moly crushed into basin water, pressed to the mouth, and the name said aloud. One action, one dose, one man. He comes back naked, forty pounds lighter, and about nine years older than he should be.
Four successes: the party frees as many as they have doses for, and Kirke watches, and at the end of it she says "That was well done" and means it, because she has never once been beaten this way and she is a collector of new things. She unbars the door herself.
Three failures: the pens open and you are in Combat Resolution. Nothing is lost that cannot be re-earned; the party can still free a changed man mid-fight if they have a dose and a name, and doing so takes a hybrid off the board without killing it.
Persistence Check
She cannot be killed and the party does not need to kill her.
- The non-lethal win condition, plainly: free at least one of the changed and Kirke concedes the hall. One is enough. She does not fight over people who have been won back honestly — that is the whole of her code — and she opens the door on the spot.
- If the party tries to kill her anyway: they cannot. Kirke is a daughter of Helios and a singular icon of this setting (content spec §9); reducing her to 0 hit points scatters her into a hundred grey birds that reassemble at the high end of the hall at the start of the next round with half her hit points.
- And it costs them. Each time she reforms, she takes one of the changed with her. That person is gone — not dead, not in the pens, simply no longer anywhere the party can reach. State this out loud the first time it happens, and let the players decide whether the second time is worth it.
- Nobody at the table loses a character to this room. A PC caught by the Cup is restored by moly, by a friend saying their name, or by an hour passing. A PC taken as payment is in the pens and is recoverable in the Resolution scene, and the Resolution must not begin until they have been got out.
- Table safety. This room is captivity and transformation, and it puts a player's own body in someone else's hands. Check before you run it. The softer framing costs nothing: the changed are enchanted rather than remade, they look like people wearing an animal's shadow rather than a stitched hybrid, and the Cup makes a character feel like a beast without changing what is on the mat. Every mechanic above still works.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | 101 hit points, two hybrids in the pens, and the moly is on the table in a dish. Three successes before three failures. DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | 169 hit points, six hybrids, and she reforms with three-quarters of her hit points rather than half. Five successes before three failures. DCs +1 |
| 15 | 203 hit points, six hybrids and two of them are hers by choice rather than by charm; add a lair action on initiative 20 — the loom weaves one square of grey cloth into difficult, clinging terrain anywhere in the hall. Six successes before three failures. DCs +3 |
Exit to the Resolution
Boon Card
The Taster's Kylix
Wondrous item, uncommon · a poison-taster's cup, sponge-lined under a false floor · optional, and never on the loot table
AC 11 and 2 hit points, because it is a cup | Capacity three cups before it must be emptied | Attunement none
Appearance: black-glazed, two handles, 9 inches across, a hair heavier than it looks and dead-sounding when tapped
Seen to Drink. As part of drinking, the bearer turns a full cup into the sponge instead of down their throat. In front of a host who is watching this is a Sleight of Hand check against that host's passive Insight, made with advantage, because the cup does the work and the bearer only has to keep talking. Against Kirke that is passive Insight 18.
You Have Not Eaten. A creature whose share went into the Kylix has not eaten or drunk, and any effect that prices a meal has nothing to name against it. It succeeds automatically on Kirke's Guest-Debt, on the DC 18 Wisdom saving throw asked at the third course, and on anything else that turns on having accepted a host's food, for as long as it takes nothing else at that table.
The Wine, Not the Word. It stops what is in the cup and nothing else. A charm, curse, or offer that rides on the offering rather than on the drink works normally against a bearer who never swallowed. Once per encounter, catching such an offer in the false bottom and holding the cup out still full grants the bearer advantage on that one saving throw, and thereafter the host pours differently.
When the Host Notices. A host who wins the contest is not automatically insulted, and Kirke is not. She laughs, she says where she has seen the trick before, and she counts it as payment for the meal — so a bearer she has caught out counts thereafter as a guest who has eaten her food, for anything that requires one.
Pour It Away. Empty the sponge. One action, out of the host's sight, and the wine has to go somewhere that will show: a hearth that hisses, a floor that stains, a plant that is dead by morning.
Creature Cards
Kirke is this finale's only inline card. The changed belong to the Chimeric Menagerie (W07) and their numbers live in the bestiary; what they are and whose ring that is stays here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Cage-Broken Hybrid. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.
Kirke of the Deep Halls
Medium humanoid (human), neutral · CR 9 (5,000 XP)
AC 15 (grey feather mantle) | HP 135 (18d8 + 54) | Speed 30 ft.
Saves Wis +8, Cha +10 · Details Deception +10, Insight +8, Medicine +8, Nature +8, Perception +8, Persuasion +10 · Immune to charmed, poisoned · Darkvision 60 ft. · Save DC 18 · Passive Insight 18
Legendary Resistance (3/Day). If she fails a saving throw, she can choose to succeed instead.
Legendary Actions (3/Round). She spends 3 legendary actions each round, one at a time at the end of another creature's turn, and regains them at the start of her own. While the loom's warp is cut she has only 2.
Not to Be Killed Here. She is a singular icon and this encounter has no lethal win condition. When she is reduced to 0 hit points she scatters into grey birds and reforms at the far end of the hall at the start of the next round with half her hit point maximum, taking one of the changed with her permanently. Nothing available to a ninth-level party ends her.
Hospitality First. She takes no hostile action against a creature that has not drawn a weapon on her, opened a pen, cut the loom, or refused a settled debt. She will stand in reach of an armed party for an hour, pouring.
Guest-Right. Terms she agrees to aloud bind her absolutely, and she will not look for the gap in them. She also does not forget terms broken by the other side: a creature that breaks a bargain with her can never bind her again, and she says so, once, quietly.
Knows Your Name. The first time she addresses a given creature by something it has not told her — a mother, a village, a dish it has not eaten in twenty years — that creature makes a DC 18 Wisdom saving throw or is charmed by her for 1 minute, repeating the save at the end of each of its turns and whenever it takes damage.
Multiattack. Two attacks with the rod, or one rod attack and one use of the Cup if it is available.
Rod of the Deep Halls. Ranged spell attack, +10 to hit, range 60 ft, one target. Hit: 22 (4d8 + 4) psychic damage, and the target cannot speak a language it knows until the end of its next turn.
The Cup (recharge 5–6). She offers a cup to one creature within 30 ft, and it does not matter whether the creature takes it. DC 18 Wisdom saving throw. On a failure the creature's shape softens for 1 minute: its speed becomes 40 ft, it cannot speak, hold objects, or cast spells with verbal or somatic components, and it keeps its hit points, mental ability scores, and its turn. It repeats the save at the end of each of its turns. A creature within 5 ft can end the effect with an action by saying the target's true name and pressing moly to its mouth.
Guest-Debt. She names the meal a creature has eaten and asks for payment. That creature makes a DC 18 Charisma saving throw or cannot willingly move more than 30 ft from the table, nor attack her, until the debt is paid or a dose of moly is spent on it.
Set Another Place. One Cage-Broken Hybrid within 60 ft that can hear her uses its reaction to move up to its speed and make one bite attack. She asks rather than commands, and the asking is worse.
Grey Feathers. When she is hit by an attack she can see, she comes apart into birds for an instant: the damage is halved and she reappears in an unoccupied space within 15 ft.
Pour (costs 1). She fills a cup at the table. The next Cup she uses this fight has its save DC increased by 2.
Say a Name (costs 1). She names one creature within 60 ft. That creature has disadvantage on the next saving throw it makes against her before the start of her next turn.
Turn the Rod (costs 2). She makes one rod attack.