Cellar of the Wine-Dark Vat
The stair comes down into a cellar with a ceiling you can touch, and the whole of it smells of must and crushed fruit and something sweeter underneath. In the middle, sunk into the floor, is a vat twelve feet across, and it is full — black in this light, moving slightly.
Five women are in the cellar. One is sitting on the vat's rim with her feet in the wine. Two are dancing in a space too small for dancing. One is asleep against the casks with her mouth open. The fifth is standing very still, looking straight at you, and she is smiling, and she has not said anything yet.
Somewhere behind the casks, badly and continuously, somebody is playing the pipes.
DM summary. Six revellers in a low cellar, five of them beyond caring and one of them watching the door. The way onward is behind a wall of stacked casks: the party can drink its way through, or move sixty casks without waking anybody.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Taproom — page 37, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Roadhouse)
The taproom's keg corner is the cellar: wall off 40 × 30 ft around it, draw the 12-ft sunken vat flush with the floor, and stack the cask wall along the east third. Note the 7-ft ceiling out loud.
- Dimensions. 40 ft × 30 ft, ceiling 7 ft.
cramped: no Large creature fits comfortably, reach weapons are awkward, and any area spell centred in here will catch the party too. Say the ceiling height out loud when someone first raises a spear. - Light. Four lamps floating in shallow dishes of oil on the vat's rim, drifting. Dim, warm, and moving — which helps Stealth and hurts anybody trying to count how many people are in the room.
- The vat. 12 ft across, sunk flush with the floor, 5 ft deep, full of unwatered wine. A creature that falls in must Athletics DC 12 to get out, and everything it is carrying is soaked.
- The cask wall. The east third of the cellar is stacked casks — sixty-one of them, five courses high, from floor to that low ceiling. The onward passage is behind them, and there is no way past that does not involve moving casks.
- The four full casks in the third course are marked with a vintner's chalk. They weigh 300 lb each. The rest are empty and weigh 40, and the empties boom when they are moved.
- The drain channel. A stone gutter runs from the vat to the west wall, six inches deep and eighteen wide, for sluicing the floor. A cask laid in the channel rolls quietly. A cask laid on the flags does not.
- The offering shelf. Above the vat's head end: a shelf of small cups, a mask, and a mirror, none of which anybody in this room has touched in weeks.
- The stair-head. A centaur stands at the top of the stair the party came down. He cannot get down it — two turns and a 7-ft ceiling — and he has been up there two hours getting angrier. He is why the maenads are so relaxed: the only thing that wants their wine cannot fit in the room.
Encounter
Six bodies in a room with a seven-foot ceiling.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 5 | Maenad of the Vat | 700 |
| 1 | Satyr Piper | 1,100 |
Base 4,600 XP; ×2 for six bodies = 9,200 adjusted, against the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. The room does the last 400 itself: no cover, no range, no room to spread out, and a twelve-foot hole in the floor full of wine.
Why they are not attacking. They are not guarding, patrolling, or hunting. They are in the middle of a rite that has been going on for days and they are a very long way from sober. Four of the five have not registered the party as anything at all. The fifth has, and she is the room's clock: she watches, she smiles, and she says nothing for three rounds. At the top of the fourth she will ask the party, cheerfully, whether they have come to drink or to steal — and the answer they give is the room.
Round 1, if it goes wrong. All five maenads are on their feet in the same round; they are not slowed by drink and they are not afraid of anything. Two come over the vat rather than around it. The Piper does not move from behind the casks and keeps playing, because the pipes are worth more than his hands are. In a 7-ft cellar with a full party this is a grapple-and-scramble fight — expect people in the vat by round two, and expect the lamps to go in with them.
The centaur is not in that arithmetic. He cannot get into the cellar, he knows it, and he does not fight or block the stair. He has one offer: roll one full cask up to him and he names a route — he knows this quarter at a canter and answers two questions honestly. If the party attacks him on the stair, add 2,300 XP and run it one character at a time, which is a bad idea for everyone including him.
Tactics. Maenads have no armour, no plan, and no fear: they close, grapple, and try to put people in the wine, and they do not stop while the pipes play. Stopping the pipes matters more than killing anybody, and the Piper is behind the casks at the back of a cramped room, which makes reaching him the fight's real problem. Nobody pursues up the stair.
Bypass Options
The correct answer to "have you come to drink or to steal" is the first one, and the cellar becomes friendly the moment it is given honestly.
- Being accepted: Performance DC 13, or Persuasion DC 12, or simply taking a cup off the shelf and filling it — which needs no check at all and is the best version.
- The drink itself. This is unwatered and it is not only wine. Every character who drinks makes a Constitution save DC 14:
- Success: they keep their feet, and for the next hour they have advantage on saves against being frightened. The maenads' fearlessness is real and it is contagious.
- Failure: merry — disadvantage on Dexterity and Intelligence checks and on attack rolls, until the party's next short rest.
- A character may refuse to drink and still be accepted, provided somebody else in the party drinks. Nobody has to poison themselves for the group.
- Success at the room: the maenads move the casks for them, cheerfully and loudly, in about ten minutes. Full passage, both loot rolls, and one of them tags along for a room before getting bored. Cost: twenty minutes, and the party leaves audibly merry, which the next room may notice.
- Failure: two failed checks and the fifth maenad decides they came to steal — that is initiative. The drink offer stays open right up to somebody's first hit, though, and a party that puts down its weapons mid-standoff still gets the good outcome.
Sixty-one casks, five courses, a low ceiling, and five people who are not paying attention. This is a heist against furniture.
- The work: clearing a person-sized gap takes eleven casks moved. That is four rounds of two characters working, or eight rounds of one.
- The checks: Athletics DC 13 to handle a course of empties without dropping one, and group Stealth DC 14 for the operation as a whole. Rolling casks down the drain channel gives advantage on the Stealth, and a party that works that out should be told they have just halved the difficulty of the room.
- One failure: a cask goes over with a boom like a drum. The fifth maenad's three-round patience resets to one round, and she comes to look. A Deception DC 13 — "we are helping" — buys the work another two rounds.
- Two failures: the stack shifts. Everyone within 10 ft makes a Dexterity save DC 14 or takes 2d6 bludgeoning from falling empties, the noise wakes the sleeper, and it is initiative in a room now half full of rolling casks (difficult terrain everywhere).
- Withdrawing instead: the stair behind the party is clear the entire time and nothing in this cellar will follow them up it. The cost of withdrawing is a wandering-threat roll and both loot rolls, and it is a perfectly sound call for a party with no Athletics and no interest in drinking.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
No trap. The hazards are a hole full of wine, a low ceiling, and a stack of barrels that has already fallen on somebody once — there is a broken cask at the bottom of the third course with a very old stain under it. Two checks worth having:
| Check | What it gets |
|---|---|
| Insight DC 12 on the watching maenad | She is not deciding whether to attack. She is deciding whether the party is rude, and that is a much easier test to pass |
| Investigation DC 13 on the chalk marks | The four full casks are marked for delivery, with a destination and a date. See the clue drip |
Exits
Two rolls on the loot table.
- The first is the cellar stock — the four chalk-marked full casks and whatever is wedged behind them: earned by moving the casks, by being welcomed, or by winning the fight. No check.
- The second is the offering shelf above the vat's head end: small cups, a painted mask, and a bronze mirror, untouched in weeks. Sleight of Hand DC 13 while the revel is going, or free if the party has been accepted — though ask a character who takes the mask under the maenads' eyes, once, whether they are sure.
If the party is welcomed, hand over three days of very good wine for free. It is a bargaining chip in a maze that has a whole room of centaurs in it.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Three maenads, no piper. The vat is half empty and the cask wall is nine casks rather than eleven. Constitution save against the wine is DC 12, DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Seven maenads and two pipers, one of them on top of the cask wall where nothing can easily reach him. The wine save is DC 16. DCs +1 |
| 15 | As APL 12, plus the vat itself is the second phase: at the top of round three of any fight, something in it stands up — a maenad who has been under the surface, unharmed, for a day and a night. Treat her as a maenad with +50% hit points who cannot be frightened or charmed by anything. DCs +3 |
- Pacing: fifteen minutes drunk, twenty-five stolen, thirty fought. When you are behind schedule, put the watching maenad's question in her mouth on round one and let the party's answer resolve the room in five minutes.
- The three-round silence is the best tool on this page. Five people, a hole full of wine, one of them watching, and nobody has spoken yet. Let your table sit in that for three rounds of real table time before she asks her question. Most parties will have drawn weapons and put them away again by then.
- Do not make the drink a trap. The save has a real upside on a success and a survivable, funny downside on a failure. A room that poisons a party for accepting hospitality teaches the table never to accept hospitality, and this deck has too many hospitality rooms for that.
- Introduce the centaur on the way out, not on the way in. The read-aloud is what they see going down; he is what they find when somebody looks back. A furious horse-man wedged in a stairwell negotiating for wine costs one minute and pays for itself.
- The pipes, again. Second Revel room in this stretch, same lever. That is a warband tell: if they go straight for the Piper, let it work.
- Clue drip. Two hooks: the four chalk-marked casks, whose delivery destination is a room the party has not seen and whose date is nine years old (X08, X19), and the bronze mirror on the offering shelf, which is polished, undamaged, and the single most useful object in the maze for anyone who has heard what lives in the sunken court (X06, X16).
- Table safety. Drink, altered states, and people who are not in control of themselves are the register here, and
charm-fearflags it. Softer framing: the maenads are simply drunk and hospitable, the wine is only wine, and the Constitution save is a hangover rather than a possession. Nothing mechanical changes. - Callback. Every Revel room can be paid, joined, or quieted. A party that fought its way through the split herd and then drinks its way through this cellar has learned the warband, and the difference in the two outcomes is the lesson.
Creature Cards
All three belong to the Revel of Hoof and Horn (W06) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The tactics above are this room's and stay here — including the centaur, who is stuck on a stair and is a negotiation rather than an encounter.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Maenad of the Vat, Satyr Piper, Centaur of the Split Herd. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.