Nest of Rustling Feathers
The floor gives under your boots like wet straw, and it is not straw. It is feathers and small bones, knee-deep, packed and turned and packed again, and it goes on for the width of the chamber.
Far above, a shaft opens in the ceiling and bends away out of sight, and on a ledge two-thirds of the way up sits a nest the size of a cart, woven of bronze wire, rope, and rib. Something in it is very large and is not asleep. Something smaller in it is making a thin, wet, hopeful noise.
The noise stops. The big one turns its head.
DM summary. A brooding harpy matriarch who will not leave her nest and four chicks who are the alarm system. The room is a crossing, not a fight, and the feathers heaped on the floor are worth more to the party than anything they could kill here.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 40 × 40 ft midden floor under a 60-ft kinked shaft — sketch the footprint and the three ledge heights beside it. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 40 ft × 40 ft floor, and a shaft that rises 60 ft before it kinks west and narrows to a foot-wide crack. The shaft is not a way out — the harpies leave by a vent the party cannot fit through, and if a player asks, the crack is visible and obviously too small.
- Light. Dark. A grey wash of daylight comes down the shaft as far as the nest ledge and no further, which means Aello can see the floor and the party cannot see her.
- The midden. The whole floor is two feet of packed feather and bone. Difficult terrain, and it crunches: moving at full speed across it is disadvantage on Stealth, moving at half speed is not. Anything dropped in it is lost until someone spends a minute digging.
- Three ledges. At 10 ft (a broken cornice, 3 ft deep, running the north wall), at 25 ft (the nest ledge, 8 ft deep), and at 45 ft (a bare shelf with the old vent mouth, which is the harpies' door and is 14 inches across).
- The nest cup. Woven bronze wire and rope over a frame of ribs. Four chicks, blind, hungry, and loud. They are not combatants and have no stat block; they are a tripwire with a mouth.
- The wind. The shaft draws air upward in slow pulses, roughly every four rounds. On a pulse, loose feathers lift off the midden and the room fills with drifting down — everything in the chamber has disadvantage on ranged attack rolls and on sight-based Perception until the start of the next round. It helps the party more than it helps her.
Bypass Options
The midden is quiet under a slow foot and the up-draught takes your scent away from the cup.
- The check: group Stealth DC 15, at half speed (so the crossing takes three rounds, not one). Starting the move on a wind pulse gives advantage — reading the pulse is Perception DC 12 or one round spent watching.
- One failure: one chick shrieks. Aello stands. The party has one round before the harpies drop; anyone who reaches the south wall or a ledge in that round is out of the snatch lanes.
- Two or more failures: all four chicks go off and the alarm clock runs in full. Roll initiative.
- Cost of the slow crossing: three rounds in the open with nothing to hide behind, and no chance to grab anything from the midden on the way.
Four hungry mouths, and a matriarch who has not managed to leave them to hunt.
- The check: any 5 lb of meat, rations, or fresh kill thrown into the cup from below (Athletics DC 13 to make the 25-ft throw), followed by Animal Handling DC 15 to pitch your voice like the mother's.
- Success: the chicks eat instead of screaming and Aello settles to watch them do it. Four rounds of complete indifference — enough to cross, climb the cornice, and go, and the DM should let it feel like a trade rather than a trick.
- Failure: the food lands short, in the midden, and the chicks scream about it. Alarm clock, one failure's worth.
- Cost: the rations are gone. If the party has none, they have nothing to buy her with, and you should say so out loud rather than let them roll.
Nothing in this room wants to leave it.
- The condition: none. Turn around and go. The party can always withdraw from R061 — Aello will not follow past the door and the harpies will not follow past the midden.
- Cost: the time, this room's Resolution clue, and the feathers, which are a genuine loss if the party is building wings.
- If the party fights anyway: it can kill them. Three flyers with reach and a drop, a floor that is difficult terrain, and a matriarch who throws femurs from a ledge nobody can reach without both hands. Twenty-three thousand XP of adjusted encounter against six ninth-level characters is not a challenge, it is an answer, and if they insist you should honour it. Warn once, in character — she screams first, every time, and the scream is the warning.
Encounter
One matriarch who will not leave her ledge, two harpies who will, and four chicks who are the reason any of it starts.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Aello, Mother of the Nest | 3,900 |
| 2 | Bronze-Beak Harpy | 1,800 |
| 4 | Storm-Crow (arrive on the alarm) | 450 |
Base 7,500 XP for the three harpies; ×2 for three bodies = 15,000 adjusted, against the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. With the storm-crows down the shaft the base is 9,300 and seven bodies push the multiplier to ×2.5 — 23,250, which is not a fight, it is a consequence.
Why she is not already attacking. She is brooding. There are four chicks in the cup and she has not left them in nine days; she is hungry, irritable, and absolutely unwilling to be twenty feet from that nest. A party that stays out of the cup's reach and off her ledge is, to her, weather.
The alarm clock. The chicks shriek when they hear or smell something they think might be food. Group Stealth DC 15 to cross the midden without setting them off, at half speed; the crunch of full speed is automatic failure. On a shriek: Aello stands and screams back, the two harpies drop from the cornice at the end of that round, and the four storm-crows come down the shaft two rounds later.
Round 1, if it starts. The harpies do not close. They take the highest air they can and sing — each picks the character standing nearest a drop or a ledge edge and pulls. Aello does not move off the ledge. She throws bones, and she throws them hard, and she waits for someone to climb.
Tactics. Aello's whole behaviour is a radius. She will not pursue past 20 ft from the cup for any reason except one: touch the chicks and she abandons every other target permanently and comes down. The harpies snatch and carry — they want a character 30 ft up and then not carrying them. Nothing here follows the party out of the chamber, because nothing here will leave the nest unattended.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
Harvesting feathers (this is what the room is actually for).
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| From the midden, without the fight | Survival DC 13, ten minutes of digging, half of them broken — enough for one wing-frame |
| From the nest cup | Automatic if the cup is reached; whole primaries, enough for two frames |
| From a dead harpy | Automatic; two pounds a body |
| Noise cost | Digging the midden is noise: one extra group Stealth DC 15 check per ten minutes |
Climbing. The 10-ft cornice is Athletics DC 12. The nest ledge at 25 ft is Athletics DC 15 on the wire and rope of the nest itself, and anyone who touches the nest to climb it has touched the chicks' home — see Tactics, and mean it.
Exits
Conditional — one roll on the loot table, earned by reaching the nest cup (the 25-ft climb, or flight) and taking a handful of what is woven into the rim. Harpies build with anything bright: wire, buckles, coin, a signet, a mirror-back.
The feathers are not loot. Two pounds of bronze-beak primaries are a Resolution requirement, not a d100 slot — if the party is building the Wings (X17), this room is one of two places in the deck that can supply the feathers, and X17 says what they are worth. Give them the feathers, not a roll.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Drop the two Bronze-Beak Harpies; Aello alone, at −25% HP, and two chicks instead of four. Storm-crows do not come. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three Bronze-Beak Harpies, six storm-crows, and Aello's Carry Off has no range limit inside the shaft. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Two matriarchs sharing the ledge (the second is a Bronze-Beak Harpy at +50% HP with Aello's Mother's Answer), four harpies, and the wind pulse becomes a hazard: on a pulse, anything airborne can move a grappled creature 30 ft up for free. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Twelve minutes if they cross it, forty if they fight it. The crossing is three rounds of held breath and it is the good version.
- If you are behind schedule, put the matriarch asleep — nine days without rest, and she has finally gone under. Run the chicks and the group Stealth check only, six minutes, and skip the harpies entirely.
- If the party is strong and looking for a fight, do not upgrade the room. Let them win it, and then let them notice on the way out that the nest is now four blind chicks that will starve, and say nothing about it. That is the room's actual weight.
- Do not let the drop mechanic kill someone by surprise. Say out loud, the first time a harpy grapples anybody, that it is climbing and that it intends to let go. Then let it.
- Table safety. Nesting chicks, and a party that may decide to kill them. This is the room's ugliest available beat, and it should not arrive as a surprise ruling. If the table would rather not, the chicks are eggs — the alarm works identically, because the mother is the alarm's other half.
- Clue drip. Two objects here carry a clue well: a single long grey primary standing upright in the midden where the draught holds it (X17, Whisper or Trace tier — this is the room X17 names for feathers), and the bright things in the nest rim, one of which is a woman's signet ring far too fine for this depth (X10, Trace or Sign).
- Warband callback. Harpy Squall (W05) fights the Z axis and nothing else. A party who met them in the aviary shaft should recognise the snatch-and-drop immediately and should already be arguing about who stands away from the ledges. Reward that argument by making it correct.
Creature Cards
The two Bronze-Beak Harpies and the storm-crows recur across the deck and their numbers live in the bestiary. Aello is this room's and no other's, so she is printed here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Bronze-Beak Harpy, Storm-Crow. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.
Aello, Mother of the Nest
Large monstrosity, chaotic evil · CR 8 (3,900 XP)
AC 15 (bronze quills) | HP 127 (17d8 + 51) | Speed 20 ft., fly 60 ft.
Saves Dex +6, Wis +5 · Skills Perception +5, Athletics +7 · Darkvision 60 ft.
Brooding. She will not willingly move more than 20 ft from the nest cup. If a creature touches the cup or a chick, this trait ends for the rest of the encounter and she attacks that creature in preference to all others.
Rustling Quills. Any creature that starts its turn within 10 ft of her has disadvantage on ranged attack rolls until the start of its next turn.
Multiattack. One Bronze Beak attack and two Talon attacks.
Bronze Beak. Melee, +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., 2d8 + 4 piercing damage.
Talon. Melee, +7 to hit, reach 5 ft., 1d8 + 4 slashing damage. If both Talon attacks hit one Medium or smaller creature, it is grappled (escape DC 14).
Thrown Bone. Ranged, +7 to hit, range 30/90 ft., 2d6 + 4 bludgeoning damage, and the target must succeed on a DC 14 Strength save or be knocked prone.
Carry Off. With a creature grappled, she flies up to 30 ft without provoking opportunity attacks, carrying it. She may release it at any point in that movement.
Mother's Answer. When a creature she can see touches the nest cup, she moves up to her speed toward it and makes one Bronze Beak attack.