Hall of the Sunken Kraken
The hall has drowned. Water fills it wall to wall and goes down out of sight, black and perfectly still, and a colonnade that used to hold a roof up now stands in it — twelve broken column stumps, their tops just above the surface, stepping away from you into the dark.
Forty feet out, something under the water is the wrong colour. It is very large, and it is arranged the way a cat is arranged when it sleeps, and one arm of it lies along the bottom and disappears past the reach of your light.
DM summary. A black pool with a gorged young kraken asleep in it and a line of column stumps crossing it. The party can walk over the top of the worst thing in this batch if they keep their weight off the water — and if they do not get greedy about what is in the votive shelf below the surface.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Broken Galleries — pages 15 & 16, 110 × 75 ft
The full cave is the kraken hall at 90 × 60 ft: shade everything past the first 10 ft as water, let the printed pit read as the 30-ft drop mid-pool (wipe the bridge), and chalk the twelve column stumps in their crooked line.
- Dimensions. 90 ft × 60 ft, ceiling 35 ft, the far third lost in the dark. The water begins 10 ft inside the entrance and reaches the far wall.
- Light. Dark. The party's light reaches 30–40 ft over water and the pool swallows the rest. Bright light on the water surface is a wake trigger — say so through the fiction: the first torch held over the pool makes the shape below shift.
- The pool. 4 ft deep at the near shelf, then a shelving drop to 30 ft in the middle and no measured bottom past that. Anything entering water deeper than 4 ft is a wake trigger.
- The column stumps. Twelve of them, tops 6 in to 1 ft above the surface, spaced 8 to 10 ft apart in a crooked line from the near shore to the far landing. Three of them are cracked and will tip under weight.
- The north shelf. A submerged ledge along the north wall, waist-to-chest deep the whole way across, offering a slow wade that never enters deep water. It passes within 20 ft of the sleeper.
- The votive shelf. Under the water at the third column, a niche of drowned offerings — coin, a bronze mirror, small figures. Visible from above with a light (Perception DC 13) and reachable on one held breath.
- The carcass. Half a whale, or something with a whale's ribs, wedged against the south columns. It is why the kraken is asleep and it is the party's best tool.
Bypass Options
The intended route, and it is a real climb-and-jump sequence rather than one roll. Twelve stumps, eight to ten feet apart. Each gap is Acrobatics DC 13 to jump dry-shod, or DC 10 for anyone who takes the extra round to set a plank, a spear, or a rope line first.
- Success: the party crosses in six to eight rounds and never touches the water. The Scyllan Horror pace them the whole way, visible as a shadow, and does nothing.
- The three cracked stumps are the fourth, seventh, and eleventh. Perception DC 14 from the previous stump spots the fracture line; unspotted, the stump tips and the jumper makes Acrobatics DC 13 or goes in — one wake mark, and the Horror is right there.
- Failure on a jump: into the water. One wake mark. Getting back onto a stump from deep water is Athletics DC 13 and costs a round, during which the Horror may grapple and drag.
- Cost of withdrawing instead: the party may withdraw to the entrance at any point below three marks and nothing pursues them onto dry stone — the Horror will not leave the water and the spawn is asleep. They lose the votive shelf and this room's clue.
The kraken is asleep because it is full. Make it fuller. The whale carcass is wedged and half-eaten; cutting it free is Athletics DC 15 with any blade, or Strength (Athletics) DC 13 for two characters working together, done from the south shore without entering deep water.
- Success: the carcass drifts free and settles slowly toward the sleeper. The spawn stirs, gathers it in without waking properly, and shifts 20 ft deeper and south — which takes its reach off the column line entirely for the rest of the scene, and takes the Scyllan Horror with it, because the Horror wants the scraps.
- This is the best answer in the room and it costs one Athletics check and four rounds of work. Reward it plainly.
- Failure: the carcass rolls the wrong way against the columns with a boom that carries. One wake mark, and the second attempt is at DC 17 because the angle is worse.
For a party that cannot jump — heavy armour, an injured character, a rope short. The submerged shelf along the north wall is never deeper than chest height. Group Stealth DC 15, at half speed, five rounds, with disadvantage for anyone in metal armour who has not muffled it.
- Success: the party crosses without ever entering deep water, passing within 20 ft of the sleeper. It takes twice as long as the stumps and it is considerably more frightening, which is a fair trade.
- One failure: a wake mark. Give the table the sound — a scabbard on stone, a gasp — and let them decide whether to keep going or back up.
- Two failures: two wake marks, and the Scyllan Horror has decided the wading party is fair game; it attacks from below at the next character in line. That fight, in the water, is a third mark within two rounds. Get out.
Encounter
One young kraken in torpor, and a many-armed thing awake in the shallows that does not want to wake it either.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kraken Spawn | 8,400 |
| 1 | Scyllan Horror | 3,900 |
Base 12,300 XP; ×1.5 for two bodies = 18,450 adjusted, against the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. Four thousand over, in water, in the dark, against things that live in it.
Why it is not attacking. The kraken spawn is young, it has eaten most of a whale in the last day, and it is in cold-water torpor with its arms folded under it. It is not guarding the hall and it is not waiting for the party; it is digesting. The Scyllan Horror is awake, wedged in the flooded colonnade on the south side, and it is the room's cleverest problem: it will not attack the party while they are on the stumps, because reaching up out of the water for them means thrashing, and thrashing wakes the thing it shares a pool with. It watches. It follows along under the water. If the party goes into the water, it stops caring about the noise.
The wake clock. Track it in front of the players. The kraken wakes at three marks, and these are the things that earn them:
| Marks earned | Cause |
|---|---|
| +1 | Anything entering water deeper than 4 ft, or a light held low over the surface for more than a round |
| +1 | A failed jump between stumps — the splash, not the fall |
| +1 | Any weapon or spell striking the water, including a missed shot |
| +2 | Attacking the Scyllan Horror in the water, which thrashes |
| Wakes | Anything that would damage the kraken itself. It wakes immediately, whatever the count says |
If the party fights anyway. Say it out loud: this can kill the party, and that is the honest cost of poking it. The spawn's reach covers the whole colonnade from where it lies; it grapples, drags, and eats, and the party's casters will be standing on 3-ft column tops in the dark. There is no terrain answer once it is awake, only distance. It does not leave the water, which is the single mercy on offer, and both shores are dry ground.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The votive shelf. One held breath, reached from the third column: dive, take, surface. Athletics DC 13 to make the dive and return in one round; one wake mark either way, because a dive is deep water. A character who goes down and does not come up in one round makes the standard breath-holding rules apply and the whole table will feel every second of it.
Reading the sleeper (Nature DC 14, from a stump, with a light): it is young — perhaps a tenth of the size the adults reach — it fed recently, and it is in torpor rather than sleep, which means it wakes slowly, over a full round, and that round is the party's warning.
Exits
One roll on the loot table, conditional: the party must take the votive shelf (the dive above) and leave the hall without the kraken waking. A dive that costs them the room does not pay.
The whale carcass is not loot, the columns are not loot, and if a player asks whether kraken ink is valuable, the answer is yes and getting it is a different session.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Replace the Kraken Spawn with a Scyllan Horror asleep in the deep end and put two Drowned Hoplites on the far landing. Wake clock four marks. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | The spawn is awake but incurious — it watches the party cross and does nothing unless a mark lands, and two marks is enough. Add a Siren of the Sunken Court on the far landing whose song pulls jumpers off the stumps. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Two marks to wake, no carcass to feed it with (it has finished), and the water level rises 1 ft every third round, which submerges the stumps one by one from the near end. DCs +3 |
- Pacing: eighteen minutes, and it is a crossing, not a puzzle. Run the stumps as a sequence of small decisions with the wake count in front of the players at all times. Write the marks on a card where they can see them. Behind schedule? Eight stumps, no cracked ones, no votive shelf, and the carcass already drifting. Seven minutes.
- Never hide the wake clock. Deadly rooms in this deck run on informed consent: the party must be able to count their own risk. Say "that is one" every single time.
- The Scyllan Horror is the room's best trick and it must be visible. Describe the shadow keeping pace under the water. Let a player ask why it is not attacking and let another player work out the answer. That beat is worth more than the kraken.
- If someone goes in the water, resolve it fast: grapple, drag, one round to cut free or be pulled to the drop. Do not let it become a five-round swimming fight; the room's tension is a countdown, not a slugging match.
- Table safety: drowning and being taken from below. This is the sharpest drowning imagery in the batch. If it is on your table's veil list, keep the crossing and cut the dive: no votive shelf, no held breath, and the Horror shoves rather than drags.
- Clue drip. Two objects: the drowned side-door on the north wall, whose sill is scoured smooth by moving water — this pool drains somewhere and the scouring says which way (X11, and X16 if your table has met the salt wind), and the bronze mirror in the votive shelf, still bright, which is exactly the sort of thing somebody would need if they had to look at something without looking at it (X06).
- Callback. Deep Water Kin (W14) always fight from water and always want the party in it. A party that has met them before should already know not to swim, and this room rewards that knowledge with a route across the top.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Deep Water Kin (W14) and both recur, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The Kraken Spawn is this room's centrepiece, and R098 fields it again in its upper scaling row. The wake clock, the stumps, and the carcass are this room's.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Kraken Spawn, Scyllan Horror. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.