Two bulls' heads in cast bronze flank a bronze door, life-size, mouths open, horns curving out over the threshold — four horns, two to a head, each one seated in a socket you could get both hands round.
Three men in bull-masks are already here, and they are arguing. One of them has a horn in his hands, unseated, and is trying it in a socket it does not fit. He looks up at you with the particular expression of a man caught doing something he was told not to do, by people he was not expecting.
DM summary. A four-horn lock with two false horns in it, and three cultists at the same puzzle who got here first and are doing it wrong. The party's competition is the encounter; the gate is the room.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Service Rooms — page 24, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Tiled Halls)
Use a plain chamber as the 35 × 30 ft gate hall: draw the bronze door and its two 4-ft bull heads filling the east wall, and keep the printed corridor off the south-west corner as the cattle-race chute.
- Dimensions. 35 ft × 30 ft, ceiling 16 ft. The bronze door and its bull-heads fill the east wall. A cattle-race — a stone-walled chute 5 ft wide — runs out of the south-west corner.
- Light. Two tallow lamps the cultists brought, on the floor, casting up. Bright within 20 ft of the door, dim beyond, and if the lamps get kicked over in the fight the room goes to dim everywhere — track that, it matters more than it sounds.
- The two heads. Each is a bronze bull's head 4 ft across, keyed into the wall, with a horn socketed left and right. Behind each socket, audible when a horn is turned, a chain runs up into the wall.
- The counterweight. A stone block hangs in a slot above the door, held by the gate chain. Turning a false horn drops it (see Traps / Puzzles / Checks). The slot is visible and the block is visible in it, from anywhere in the room, to anyone who looks up.
- The fresco. North wall, badly spalled: a procession driving bulls through this gate. The lead bull's left horn points down and its right points up, and the artist was pedantic about which. It is the answer, and it is at eye height.
- The cattle-race. A cramped chute out of the room, ankle-deep in two hundred years of dry dung and straw. It is the obvious exit and nobody wants to take it.
Encounter
Three cultists who were here first, and a brute asleep in the chute who wakes on the second loud noise.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Bull-Masked Cultist | 450 |
| 1 | Taurine Brute | 1,800 |
Base 3,150 XP; ×2 for four bodies = 6,300 adjusted, just under the APL 9 Medium budget of 6,600. The gate is the rest of the pressure: the party is solving a lock with people hitting them.
The brute is asleep in the cattle-race, 30 ft down it, and it is not a subtle sleeper — a character who looks into the race sees a bull-headed shape breathing. It wakes on the second loud noise in the room: the first round of any fight is the first, and the counterweight dropping is the second. Once awake it takes one round to come up the chute, and it arrives with a charge lane 30 ft long already lined up.
Round 1. The cultists do not want this fight. They want the gate, and they are three men in masks who have already worked out that the party is better armed than they are. Give the party one round of talk before initiative: the cultists will trade the horn they are holding for safe passage, will lie about which horn it is, and will fight the moment they think they are losing the conversation. If the party opens with violence, the nearest cultist screams — noise one.
Tactics. Bull-Masked Cultists are brave in a crowd and cowards alone. When two of the three are down, the third throws the horn at somebody and runs for the race, which wakes the brute if it is not awake already. The Taurine Brute wants a straight line and a wall to shove people into; the bronze door is the hardest surface in the room and it will use it.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The four-horn lock. Two of the four horns are true and two are false, and the gate opens when both true horns are turned at the same time — which needs two characters, one at each head, acting on the same count.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| The tell — weight | A true horn is solid cast and dead in the hand; a false one is hollow and rings when struck. No check — anyone who taps them notices |
| The tell — flats | A true horn has three filed flats where it meets the socket. A false one has two, badly cut. Investigation DC 13 |
| The tell — the fresco | The lead bull's left horn points down, right points up. The true horns are the two seated in that orientation: left head's left horn, right head's right horn. Perception DC 12 to notice the fresco is precise about it |
| Turning a true horn | Quarter-turn, two hands, no check. Both together and the gate lifts |
| Turning a false horn | The counterweight drops. 4d10 bludgeoning in a 10-ft line out from the door, Dexterity save DC 15 for half, and the block then sits on the threshold as difficult terrain. This is loud — it is noise for the brute |
| Fallback — the chain | Thieves' Tools DC 17 at the left head's socket seam, or Athletics DC 18 as a two-person haul on the exposed chain, or any spell that opens or shapes metal. Ten minutes, and it is loud the whole time |
| Solved state | The bronze door grinds up four feet and stays up. It does not come down again, and nothing in this deck closes it |
The horn the cultist is holding is false. He unseated it from the left head's right socket, which is why nothing has happened yet, and he will insist it is the true one because he has spent an hour on it.
Exits
None. The horns stay with the gate.
The false horn is worth taking anyway and it is not loot — a hollow bronze bull's horn with two badly filed flats is a near-miss copy of the horn-key that works the Labyrinth's front gate, which is X19's business, not the loot table's. If X19 is live, this room is where the party learns that such a key exists and what three filed flats mean; the working key is found where X19 says. A party that walks out with the false horn has a lockpick that fits one socket in the maze and not the important one, and that is a good thing to be carrying.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Two cultists, no brute in the race. Three horns instead of four, one false. All DCs −2, counterweight 2d10 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Five cultists and the brute is awake and on the door when the party arrives — the cultists have already paid it to guard them. All four horns are re-cut so weight is the only tell. DCs +1, counterweight 10d10 |
| 15 | Five cultists, two Taurine Brutes, and a Minotaur Champion in the race that wakes on the counterweight and nothing else. The lock is six horns, three false, and turning any false horn re-seats one true horn at random. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Eighteen minutes: three of conversation, six of fight, and the rest on the lock. If you are behind schedule, drop the cultists to two, have the brute stay asleep entirely, and let the fresco be read without a check — nine minutes.
- Give the cultists their round of talk. This warband is the only one in the deck with a human face on it, and three frightened men in bull-masks negotiating badly is better than a fourth Medium fight. If the party talks them down, they leave down the race, and they take the false horn with them out of spite.
- The lock must be solvable without the fight. All three tells are available from the doorway. If your players get to the door and freeze, tap a horn for them and let them hear that one of the four rings.
- When the counterweight drops, describe the slot first. A trap that can put a character on 0 must telegraph — the block is visible in its slot from the moment they walk in, and the chain groans a full round before it goes.
- Clue drip. Two objects: the false horn itself (X19, Proof tier — the party is now holding a bad copy of the thing they need), and the fresco's procession, which shows the gate being used from the outside in and therefore shows what the outside looks like (X08 or X03, Sign).
- Warband callback. Bull-Kin (W02) drive beasts and shove people; the cultists are handlers, not warriors. A party who has met them should expect the shove into the hardest surface available and should be watching the chute before you mention it.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Bull-Kin (W02) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The talk-first behaviour and the sleeping brute are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Bull-Masked Cultist, Taurine Brute. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.