Furnace of Falling Coals
The floor of this chamber is a bed of coals. Not lava — coals, a foot deep, banked and grey-skinned and orange underneath, spread wall to wall, with a scatter of clinker on top where nothing has walked for a while.
Above, a bronze chute comes down out of the ceiling and stops eight feet short of the floor, wide as a doorway, and it is glowing at the lip. Something is stacked in it. A chain runs from the chute's gate away up into the dark, and there is a maintenance ladder bolted to the wall beside it.
The gate rattles once, gently, the way a lid rattles on a pot that is about to boil, and the whole room brightens.
DM summary. A coal-chute room that dumps live fuel every third round, with fire-hounds living in the bed and a salamander that will not let anybody near the ladder. The room is a clock and a climb, and there is a cistern in the corner that ends the clock in one action if somebody can reach it.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Honeycomb — page 50, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Fire Floes)
The honeycomb is the furnace floor: the dark flows are the live coal bed, the stone islands are footing (chalk the 3-ft kerb around the walls as the safe rim). Mark the chute mouth centred 8 ft up and the hoist chain across at 12 ft.
- Dimensions. 40 ft × 40 ft, ceiling 22 ft. The chute mouth is centred, 8 ft above the coal bed.
- Light. Bright, orange, from the floor up, and it brightens further one round before each dump. Nobody needs a torch in here and nobody can hide in here.
- The coal bed. One foot of live coals across the whole floor. Difficult terrain, and 1d10 fire damage per 5 ft moved through it — so crossing the room on the floor costs 8d10 and nobody sane does it. Boots do not help and everyone should be told the number before they step in.
- The rim. A 3-ft stone kerb runs round all four walls, level with the top of the coals and clear of them. Standing on the rim is safe. It is the room's only floor and it does not go past the chute.
- The hoist chain. From the chute's gate, across the room at 12 ft, to a winch on the east wall. Hand-over-hand crossing is possible and it is hot — see Bypass.
- The maintenance ladder. Bolted to the north wall, from the rim up 14 ft to a platform beside the chute's counterweight. Whoever is on that ladder is the most important person in the room and everything in the coals knows it.
- The quench cistern. South-west corner, on the rim: a stone tank of black water, 200 gallons, with a plug-chain. It has been here as long as the furnace has, because furnaces need one.
- The chimney. Above the chute, out of the party's reach, the shaft goes up and keeps going, and there is a draught in it that smells of outside. Anyone who looks up and pays attention can tell that this chimney reaches the surface. That is worth more than anything else in the room.
Encounter
Three hounds in the coal bed and a salamander on the rim between the party and the ladder.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Pyre-Hound | 700 |
| 1 | Forge Salamander | 2,300 |
Base 4,400 XP; ×2 for four bodies = 8,800 adjusted, under the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600 — and the chute clock is the rest of it. A party that treats this as a straight fight will take a dump of coals on round three whether they are ready or not, and that is where the missing 800 XP lives.
Round 1. The gate rattles: that is the telegraph, and it happens before initiative, in the read-aloud. The salamander is already standing on the rim beside the ladder and it does not move off it. Two of the hounds come along the rim from opposite directions; the third stays in the coals, where it takes nothing and the party cannot follow.
Tactics. Everything in this room fights to put the party in the coals. The hounds shove and herd, take no damage from the bed, and ignite when killed — a Pyre-Hound dropped on the rim spreads coals across 10 ft of it, and the party's safe floor gets shorter every time they win. The salamander holds the ladder and does not chase; it knows the ladder matters. Nothing here pursues out of the chamber — the heat is what they are, and they will not follow the party into a cold corridor.
Bypass Options
Twelve feet up, over the coals, hand over hand, above everything in the bed.
- The check: Athletics DC 15 to cross the 40 ft, and 1d10 fire damage per round on the chain from the heat rising off the bed — two rounds to cross at a reasonable pace, so 2d10 and one check per character.
- On a failure: you fall into the coal bed. 4d10 fire damage and you are prone in the coals with a hound in there with you; getting to the rim is 10 ft of movement and 2d10 more.
- Chain hazard: the chain runs from the chute's gate. If the chute dumps while somebody is on the chain, they make the Dexterity save DC 15 at disadvantage and take the full 4d10 on a failure.
- Cost: the party crosses one at a time, and whoever is last spends three rounds on the rim with a salamander.
Fourteen feet of bolted iron with a salamander standing at the bottom of it.
- Reaching it: the ladder is 25 ft along the rim from the entrance, and the salamander is on that stretch. Getting past it is Acrobatics DC 14 to slip by on a 3-ft kerb, or a shove, or somebody else buying the round.
- The climb: Athletics DC 12, one round, and the climber is exposed the whole time — anything on the rim below gets an attack as they go.
- Jamming it: as the chute table under Traps / Puzzles / Checks. Thieves' Tools DC 16, Athletics DC 17, or 20 damage to the pawl.
- On a failure: the counterweight slips instead of seating and the chute dumps immediately, out of cadence, with the climber inside the 15-ft radius. That is the worst single outcome in R077 and it is survivable at ninth level.
- Withdrawing instead: the entrance is on the rim and the party can leave the way they came at any point — around the kerb and out, no coal exposure, no pursuit. Cost: the time, the chimney (which is the thing worth having here), and the room's clue.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The chute. This is the room's clock and every number is fixed.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Cadence | Every third round, at the top of the round |
| The telegraph | One full round before, without exception: the gate rattles and the room brightens. A DM who forgets the telegraph has run a different, worse room |
| The dump | 4d10 fire damage in a 15-ft radius of the chute mouth, Dexterity save DC 15 for half, and the coal bed in that radius rises to knee height — 2d10 per 5 ft moved there for the rest of the encounter |
| Detecting it | Automatic. It is a glowing chute stacked with coals and it makes a noise before it fires |
| Jamming the gate | From the ladder platform: Thieves' Tools DC 16 on the counterweight pawl, or Athletics DC 17 to lever the counterweight off its seat, or 20 damage to the pawl (AC 17). Any of these stops the clock permanently |
| Solved state | The chute is dead. The room is a hot floor with a rim round it and four creatures on it, and the party has turned a Hard room into a manageable one by climbing a ladder under fire |
| The quench cistern | One action to pull the plug-chain (Athletics DC 12, from the rim, no coal exposure). 200 gallons across the coals: the bed goes to steam — the whole room is heavily obscured for 2 rounds, coal damage drops to 1d10 per 10 ft for 5 rounds, every Pyre-Hound in the bed takes 2d10 cold-shock and is extinguished (treat as half maximum hit points), and the salamander takes the same and loses its heat aura for 5 rounds |
| Cost of the cistern | The steam blinds the party too, the water is gone, and the coals recover. It is a five-round window bought with one action and it is the best action in the room |
Exits
None. This room has been at working temperature for two centuries. Anything anybody ever dropped in here is clinker, the tools on the platform are the chute's own and are fixed to it, and the cistern water is the only thing in the chamber worth having — which the party should spend rather than carry.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Two Pyre-Hounds, no salamander. Chute every fourth round, dump 2d10, coal bed 1d6 per 5 ft. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Four Pyre-Hounds, two Forge Salamanders, chute every second round, dump 10d10 in a 20-ft radius. The cistern is half empty: the steam window is 3 rounds, not 5. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Four Pyre-Hounds, two Forge Salamanders, and the chute's gate has been wedged open — a continuous fall of coals that raises the bed 6 inches every round, drowning the rim in five rounds. Dump damage does not apply; instead the room becomes uninhabitable on a five-round clock and the party must jam it, quench it, or leave. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Eighteen minutes. The shape is: telegraph, dump, panic, somebody notices the ladder, somebody else notices the cistern. If you are behind schedule, start the chute already jammed and run it as a straight four-body fight on a hot floor — nine minutes.
- Telegraph every single dump. The gate rattles, the room brightens, and you say so out loud a full round before. This trap is in the dangerous band and it fires on a cycle; a party that gets caught should have been caught because they chose to spend the round on something else.
- The cistern is the room's gift and you should not hide it. Describe it in the opening read-through as a stone tank of black water in the corner. Any party that has met Salamander Forge before will understand what it is for immediately, and that is the reward for having met them.
- Do not let the coal bed become a floor. Some player will decide to sprint across it. 8d10 is the honest price and you should quote it before they commit, not after.
- If the party is nearly dead, the salamander does not hold the ladder — it goes to the coals to warm itself, and the room becomes a climb with hounds instead of a fight with a clock. This is the least punishing version and it costs the room nothing.
- Table safety. Fire, burning, and a floor that hurts to stand on. If the table would rather not, the coals can be a bed of hot slag that scalds rather than burns, and every number stays where it is.
- Clue drip. Two objects, and one of them is a whole Resolution's requirement: the chimney above the chute is a shaft that reaches the surface with a draught in it, which is X17's lift (Path tier — X17 names this chimney explicitly, and the vent tally in the Gallery of Unfinished Wings says whether this is the shaft that catches the morning updraft); and the chute's gate mechanism, which is a controllable fall of burning fuel and therefore a means, if somebody wanted to bring a section of maze down (X12, Sign or Proof — X12 names venting this furnace as one of its options).
- Warband callback. Salamander Forge (W13) always herds toward the heat, and here the heat is the entire floor. A party who has met them should be watching their own footing rather than the hounds. Reward that by making the shoves obvious and the rim short.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Salamander Forge (W13) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The chute clock, the rim, and the cistern are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Pyre-Hound, Forge Salamander. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.