The Petrified Garden
Roots have come down through the ceiling here in a hanging curtain, and under them something has been growing for a long time in a shaft of grey light: moss, pale fig, a knee-high ground cover with waxy leaves. It is the first green anything you have seen since you came underground.
There are fourteen people standing in it. A woman with a sack over her shoulder. Two soldiers back to back. A man with his arm up in front of his face. All of them limestone, all of them weathered soft, all of them facing different directions.
Low in the ground cover, something long and dun-coloured shifts its weight to keep the warm patch of light.
DM summary. Two basilisks basking in a root-shaft, and fourteen statues that are both the cover the party wants and the warning they were given. The statues face their killers, and the newest one is pointing.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Thick Scrub — page 5, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Scrubland)
The thick scrub is the petrified garden: the printed bushes are the waxy ground cover, the scattered stones read as fallen statues. Chalk the fourteen standing statues, the root-curtain line across the middle, and the daylight circle at centre.
- Dimensions. 50 ft × 40 ft, ceiling 30 ft at the shaft and 12 ft elsewhere. A root-curtain divides the room roughly in half, north to south.
- Light. A shaft of grey daylight comes down through the roots into the middle of the room — bright light in a 15-ft circle, dim for 20 ft beyond, dark at the edges. The bright circle is the warmest floor in the chamber, which is exactly why the basilisks are in it.
- The ground cover. Waxy, knee-high, and thick. Difficult terrain, and it hides anything lying still — a basilisk in the cover has half cover and is spotted at Perception DC 15 at range, or automatically inside 15 ft.
- Fourteen statues. Limestone, weathered, some fallen. Each one is three-quarters cover and each one can be pushed over (Athletics DC 12) or, if fallen, pushed along the floor as a shield (see Bypass).
- The statues face their killers. Every statue is turned toward the spot the basilisk was in when it caught them, and the party can read that: twelve of the fourteen are weathered and moss-grown; two are clean. The clean ones point into the bright circle and into the north-west corner. That is where the two live basilisks are, and nothing about this is a check — it is available to anyone who looks at the statues before walking into the room.
- Brood-scrapes. Three shallow scrapes at the room's edges with shed skin in them, dry as paper. Four Creepers of the Petrified Garden are coiled in the two furthest from the door.
Bypass Options
The fourteen statues are a map of every angle that has ever been fatal in this room, and the two clean ones say where the live ones are.
- Reading them: no check for the fact that they face different ways; Investigation DC 13 to work out that they face their killers and that two are new. A character who says the idea out loud gets it free.
- The crossing: the room can be crossed at more than 30 ft from the bright circle the whole way, along the south wall, in cover the entire distance. It is group Stealth DC 14 — against the creepers' tremor-sense, not the basilisks' eyes, so armour is the problem and speed is not.
- One failure: one creeper wakes and rustles. The basilisks lift their heads. The party has one round to be behind stone before anything has a sight-line.
- Two failures: the creepers are up and one basilisk is turning. Roll initiative, but note that the party is still in cover and still 40 ft from the gaze — retreating out the door they came in is free this round.
- Cost: the crossing takes four rounds at half speed and passes none of the statues worth looting.
A fallen statue is a hundredweight of limestone with a person's silhouette. Behind one, a gaze has nothing to look at.
- The check: Athletics DC 15 to tip and then shove a fallen statue along the ground cover, 10 ft per round, one character pushing, up to two more in its shadow. While behind it a creature has total cover from the gaze and can move through the bright circle safely.
- Failure: the statue jams in the ground cover or breaks. Loud — the creepers wake — and the pusher is standing in the open in the middle of the room. That is the worst single position in R066 and you should say so as it happens.
- Cost: it is slow (five rounds to cross), it is noisy, and it breaks a statue that was a person. One of the fourteen has a child's height, and if the party chooses that one to push, let somebody at the table say something about it.
- The reverse trick: a statue tipped into the bright circle blocks the sight-line permanently and gives the party a cover corridor. This is the clever play and it deserves to work.
The basilisks are guarding a warm patch of floor, not a door.
- The condition: none. The party may leave the way they came at any point before a basilisk has a sight-line, and after that at the cost of one round of movement in the open. Neither basilisk pursues past the root-curtain and the creepers do not leave the room at all.
- Cost: the time, this room's clue, and the pockets of the two clean statues, which are the only loot here.
- If the party fights anyway: it can end the session for two characters. A ninth-level party will probably win this fight on hit points and still leave R066 carrying somebody who is now furniture. Say the word "petrified" out loud before the first save, so that the choice is made with open eyes — and then hold to the consequence, because the room also contains its own cure and finding it is the reward for engaging honestly.
Encounter
Two basilisks in the light and four creepers in the scrapes. Nobody is hunting; everybody is digesting.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Garden Basilisk | 1,800 |
| 4 | Creeper of the Petrified Garden | 700 |
Base 6,400 XP; ×2 for six bodies = 12,800 adjusted, under the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400 — and this room is still Deadly, because the currency here is not hit points. Two failed Constitution saves and the party has lost two characters for the rest of the session and possibly the campaign. Rate the room by what it can take away, not by what it can bring to zero.
Why they are not already attacking. Basilisks are cold, slow, and mid-meal. There is a half-digested goat in the northern one and it has no interest in anything it would have to chase. They react only to movement inside 30 ft, and their gaze reaches 30 ft and no further — this is stated on the bestiary card and it is the room's whole geometry. The creepers are torpid in the scrapes and wake on noise, not movement.
Round 1, if it starts. The nearer basilisk turns its head, which is the only attack it makes on round 1 — one target, one Constitution save. It does not advance. The creepers take a full round to uncoil and reach anything. Nothing here gets a surprise round, because the statues were the warning and the party had it.
Tactics. The basilisks fight from the warm circle and will not leave the light for more than 20 ft; they cannot be baited out of it and they do not pursue past the root-curtain. The creepers lash and withdraw into the cover to re-coil. If a basilisk drops to half hit points it retreats to the north-west scrape and stops fighting — it is an animal, not a soldier, and it has already eaten today.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
Petrification, and the garden's own answer to it.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| The gaze | Range 30 ft, and only against a creature that can see the basilisk. Constitution save DC 13: fail, and the creature is restrained; fail again at the end of its next turn, and it is petrified |
| Averting eyes | A creature that averts its eyes has advantage on the save and attacks the basilisk at disadvantage. Say this out loud once |
| Total cover | A statue, the root-curtain, or a shield raised at Dexterity (Acrobatics) DC 13 blocks the line entirely |
| The cure, in this room | Basilisk blood, painted on stone flesh within one hour, undoes it. One basilisk yields enough for two statues. A wounded basilisk that escapes takes the cure with it |
| Recognising the cure | Nature DC 14, Arcana DC 13, or History DC 12 from anyone who has heard a hunter's story. If nobody makes it, the two clean statues are still standing there with blood-stains on their feet |
| Solved state | Blood applied: the stone goes warm, then soft, and the creature comes back where it left off, confused, cold, and hungry. It does not remember being stone |
The oldest statues cannot be saved. Twelve of the fourteen are two centuries past the hour. Do not let the party spend twenty minutes painting all of them; say that the moss-grown ones are past it, and let them save the two that are not.
Exits
Conditional — one roll on the loot table. The two clean statues still have what they were carrying: a sack over one shoulder, a purse on the other's belt. Both stand inside 15 ft of the bright circle, which means the roll costs a round in the gaze's reach.
If the party restores a petrified statue instead of robbing it, they get the roll anyway — the woman with the sack hands them something out of it, because she has been standing here holding it for nine days and she is not sentimental about cargo. Tell them that only after they have chosen.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One Garden Basilisk, two creepers. Gaze save DC 11, and the cure works within two hours. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three Garden Basilisks, six creepers, and the bright circle is 25 ft across, so the safe corridor along the south wall is 5 ft wide instead of 15. DCs +1 |
| 15 | An Elder of the Pale Sisters asleep against the north wall with her face wrapped, two basilisks, and six creepers. She wakes on the third round of any fight and her gaze is not a 30-ft cone. DCs +3, and give the party the mirror-bright fallen shield in the ground cover — they will need it |
- Pacing. Ten minutes crossed, thirty-five fought. The crossing is the room: four rounds of moving between statues while two large animals do not quite look up.
- If you are behind schedule, one basilisk, no creepers, and put the exit on the same wall as the door. Six minutes, and keep the statues — the statues are what the room is for.
- Describe three statues individually and name none of them. The woman with the sack, the man with his arm up, the two soldiers back to back. That is enough for players to understand what happens here without a single mechanic being mentioned.
- The cure is the point. A Deadly petrification room without an in-room reversal is a room that steals a player's evening. The blood is not a consolation prize — it is why the party is allowed to make a mistake here.
- Table safety. Petrification is body horror and this room has fourteen frozen people in it, one of them child-sized. If the table would rather, the statues are statues — genuine sculpture, a sculptor's yard, and only the two clean ones were ever alive. The mechanics do not change.
- Clue drip. Two objects: the sack the clean statue is carrying, which holds something nobody would bring into a maze unless they meant to leave by an unusual door (X17 or X16, Trace or Sign — the DM picks the contents to suit), and the root-shaft itself, which is a hole to somewhere with weather in it (X14, Sign — it fixes this room's depth on a map).
- Warband callback. Gorgon Brood (W04) turn terrain into a warning and a warning into terrain. A party who has met them before should walk into this room already counting sight-lines. If they do, let the counting be correct and do not invent a new angle to punish them with.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Gorgon Brood (W04) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The basking behaviour, the 30-ft geometry, and the blood cure are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Garden Basilisk, Creeper of the Petrified Garden. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.