Forge of the One-Eyed
Heat first, then the smell: charcoal, scale, scorched grease. A cyclops the size of a doorway stands at an anvil with his back to you, and he is not hurrying. Tap. Tap. Tap-tap. He turns a strip of bronze a quarter turn between each pair of blows.
Around him, on hooks and racks and driven into the wall in rows, hang perhaps two hundred repaired things: greaves, spearheads, a helmet with a mended crest, a child's bronze cup with a new handle. Every one of them mended well.
DM summary. Ankos works. He will fix what you bring him and he will not be hurried, cheated, or robbed, and his price is real. This is the deck's clearest lesson that a Deadly-shaped body can be a shopkeeper if the party behaves.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Guildhall Floor — page 35, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Hall and the Sanctum)
The guildhall floor is the forge hall: draw the forge and anvil at the centre with the 10-ft heat ring, the quench trough beside them, and hatch the north wall as the rack of two hundred mended things.
- Dimensions. 45 ft × 45 ft, ceiling 30 ft with a smoke-hole at the apex that glows red on the underside. The party enters by the south door.
- Light. Bright within 25 ft of the forge, dim to the walls. The forge is the only light and Ankos banks it when he is angry, which is a warning worth giving.
- Heat. The 10-ft ring around the forge and anvil is hazardous ground: a creature that ends its turn there takes 2d10 fire damage, or half on a Constitution save DC 13. Ankos does not notice it. Neither do his people.
- The quench trough. A stone trough of black water, 10 ft long, beside the anvil. Full immersion ends the heat effect for a round and is the single best piece of terrain in the room for anyone who ends up fighting.
- The rack wall. Two hundred mended objects on the north wall — full cover, and it comes down in an avalanche of bronze if pulled (Athletics DC 15; everyone within 10 ft makes a Dexterity save DC 14 or takes 2d10 and is prone under it, Ankos included).
- The slag door. A low arch in the west wall where the crucible waste goes out. Hot, cramped, and the reason the room has a back way.
- The bellows. A double bag-bellows worked by a pole, needing two people or one very committed one. Working it is loud enough to cover a conversation.
Encounter
Only if the party robs him, lies to him twice, or draws first. Nothing here starts a fight, and the room is written on the assumption it never happens.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Forge-Thrall Cyclops | 3,900 |
| 1 | Gang Slinger | 1,100 |
Base 5,000 XP; ×1.5 for two bodies = 7,500 adjusted, under the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. It is rated Hard anyway, and the missing 2,100 XP is the room: the heat ring, the rack wall, and a 45-ft space in which a grappler with reach can put someone in a forge. Say that out loud to yourself before you run it and you will run it correctly.
Round 1. Ankos does not charge. He puts the work down — carefully, because it is somebody's — picks up the tongs, and tells the party to leave, once. The slinger, who was asleep behind the charcoal, starts throwing from 40 ft and keeps the trough between himself and the party.
Tactics. Ankos grapples and crushes, and he moves toward the forge with what he is holding, which is the most frightening thing about him. He is blinded by a solid hit to the eye and everyone at the table will try it; let them, and give it a called shot at −5 to hit, or a Dexterity save DC 15 against a thrown flask of anything. He will not follow the party through the slag door — he does not fit. He will not destroy the racks; those are other people's things.
He stops. Ankos accepts a surrender at any point and takes payment for the insult (see Loot). He does not pursue and he does not hold a grudge past the door, which makes him one of the few things in the maze a party can meet twice.
Bypass Options
The intended path and the reason the room exists. Ankos will repair or improve one item per visitor, and he takes exactly three currencies.
- Metal. An equal weight of worked bronze or iron, surrendered permanently — a spare weapon, a shield, a mail shirt. No check. This is the cheapest price and the party will feel it.
- Fire. A spell slot of 3rd level or higher of any fire, lightning, or radiant spell poured into the coals. No check. It buys one repair.
- Labour. Two hours on the bellows pole. No check, but it costs the party time: roll the wandering-threat die once, and any short rest they were saving is spent here.
- Haggling. Persuasion DC 15 knocks one currency down a step (half weight, a 1st-level slot, one hour). Persuasion DC 20 gets a repair free, once, for a party that brings him something interesting to mend rather than something broken. Failure on either: he sets the price back where it was and will not hear it moved again this visit. He is not offended. He is a professional.
- Intimidation does not work and should be allowed to fail loudly. He is eight feet of forge-thrall and he has heard it.
For a party with nothing to trade and no interest in the conversation. The bellows pole is on the near side of the forge. One character works it (Athletics DC 12 to keep it moving), and under that roar the rest cross to the slag arch on group Stealth DC 16.
- Success: the party is through into the west passage and Ankos never turns around. He notices the pole stopping and assumes a draught.
- One failure: he turns. No fight yet — he asks what they are doing, and a Deception DC 14 or a straight apology puts the room back to a parley.
- Two failures, or anything taken off the racks: initiative. The racks are not his and stealing from them is the one thing that makes him genuinely angry.
- Withdrawing instead: the south door is open the entire time and he will let the party leave the way they came without comment. They lose the repair and this room's item.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The eye. Ankos's single eye is the room's mechanical lever, in a fight or out of one. A character who spots the milky scarring across it (Perception DC 13) learns he has been half-blind for years and works by sound and feel — which is why he mends by touch, why he hates shouting, and why the slag-door bypass works at all.
What he will not do, stated so you can say it without hedging: he will not make a weapon, will not unmake one, will not repair anything belonging to the Cult of the Thread, and will not tell the party where anything is. He is a smith, not a guide, and he says so.
Exits
Room-specific — Ankos's Mark. Not on the loot table and it does not consume a d100 slot. One item repaired or improved by Ankos takes a small punched sigil of a closed eye on its tang, boss, or heel.
- The marked item cannot be broken, sundered, corroded, or disarmed by any effect that does not first reduce its wielder to 0 hit points.
- Once per short rest, its wielder may reroll one damage die and take the second result.
- One item per character, and Ankos will only mark a thing he has worked with his own hands — so the party pays his price for each one.
If the party fights him and wins, they get the forge instead: tools, a half-barrel of charcoal, the trough, and no one who knows how to use any of it. Let a character with smith's tools spend an hour and take one roll on the loot table from the racks, and let the loss of the mark sit there quietly.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Ankos alone, no slinger, and the heat ring is 5 ft rather than 10. DCs −2, and his prices are one step cheaper across the board |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Add a second Gang Slinger on the charcoal pile. Heat ring 15 ft. DCs +1, and Ankos throws a heated billet as an opening attack rather than talking twice |
| 15 | Two Forge-Thrall Cyclopes — Ankos and his brother, who does not talk — plus two slingers. The forge itself vents on a three-round cycle, filling the room's upper 15 ft with flame. DCs +3 |
- Pacing: ten minutes if they trade, twenty-five if they fight, and the fight is the worse room. Play the tapping. Let him finish the strip of bronze before he turns round. The whole character is in the fact that he does not stop working when armed strangers walk in.
- Behind schedule? Skip the haggle. He names the metal price, takes it, marks one item, and goes back to work. Six minutes.
- If the party is nearly dead when they arrive, he notices, and he will point at the trough and say the water is clean. That is the entire kindness on offer and it is worth more than it sounds.
- If a player insists on stealing from the racks, let them see the child's cup with the mended handle first. Then let them decide.
- Clue drip. Two objects: the wing-frame bracket on the rack wall, a bronze spar bent to a curve no armour has (X17 — he mended it for a customer and did not ask what it was for), and the bronze gate-key blank in his scrap tray, half-filed, which he will say was ordered and never collected (X19).
- Callback. The Cyclopean Gang (W11) throws things and crushes single targets, and in this room the party sees the crush and never has to eat it. If they meet W11 later in a worse mood, the memory of Ankos's tongs should do half your work.
Creature Cards
Both belong to the Cyclopean Gang (W11) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. Ankos is a Forge-Thrall Cyclops with a name, a trade, and no statistical difference; his prices and his manners are this room's.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Forge-Thrall Cyclops, Gang Slinger. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.