Colonnade of the Furies' Vigil
Two rows of fluted columns run the length of this hall, and the floor between them is an inch deep in soft grey ash that takes your footprints. At the far end a man kneels with a bronze collar round his neck and the collar's chain bolted into the plinth behind him. He has been kneeling a long time.
Something is standing over him with its back to you, and the smell in here is burnt hair and old iron. It has not turned around. It says, without turning around: "Nine days. Say the second name."
DM summary. A trial in progress. Nothing here attacks anyone who does not interfere — the Erinyes are mid-vigil and the vigil has rules — but interference of any kind makes the party parties to the case, and the case is being tried by something that outclasses them three to one.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Processional — page 26, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Temple Approach)
The processional is the vigil colonnade at 70 × 30 ft: shade the nave's ash floor between the printed column lines, keep the side strips as the bare-stone ambulatories, and draw the plinth, ring, and chain at the far end.
- Dimensions. 70 ft × 30 ft, ceiling 25 ft. The party enters at one short end; the vigil is at the other.
- Light. Six bronze lamps on the columns, burning low and blue. The lamps do not gutter and cannot be blown out; a PC who tries learns something.
- The ash floor. An even inch of grey ash across the whole nave. It is silent to walk on and it keeps every footprint perfectly. Anything crossing the nave is tracked — the Erinys can read exactly where the party went and what they touched, after the fact.
- The ambulatory. A 5-ft walkway runs behind each colonnade, floored in bare stone rather than ash, ending at both exits. This is the aisle for people with no business here, and it is the room's whole design.
- The plinth and the chain. A limestone block with a bronze ring set in it. The chain is four feet long. The man on the end of it is Herakleides of Amnisos, who sold his brother's two children into the tribute and kept the money. He is alive, lucid, thirsty, and not innocent.
- The ledger box. A tax-farmer's strongbox sits open at the plinth's foot, its tallies spread out and weighted with pebbles. This is the evidence. It is also, incidentally, full of coin.
Bypass Options
The bare-stone aisles behind the columns are for people passing through. Anyone who stays on the stone, touches nothing, and says nothing crosses freely.
- The one question. As each PC draws level with the plinth, the Erinys asks without looking up: "Have you business with this man?" A truthful no is free passage, no check.
- Lying: the Erinys has passive Insight 19. A Deception check under 19 means the charge turns to the liar for the length of one scourging — one Ash-Winged Fury takes them, 4d10 lashing damage over two rounds, and lets them go. That is a cost, not a fight, and you should run it as two grim sentences rather than combat rounds.
- Silence works. A PC who says nothing at all is treated as answering no.
- Failure state: touching the chain, the man, the box, or the ash counts as business. See below.
The vigil has a role for an advocate and no one has taken it. A PC who says so plainly is invited to the plinth, and the Erinys will hear them.
- Reading the case first: Investigation DC 14 on the spread tallies shows the money went to a physician in Amnisos, not to Herakleides. It does not make him innocent. It makes the sentence arguable.
- The argument: Persuasion or Insight DC 17, at advantage with the tallies, at disadvantage if the advocate has lied in this room already.
- Success: the sentence is commuted to blinding rather than the pit. The furies take him away alive. The party may take the ledger box, and the Erinys tells them one true thing about what lies deeper (see DM Notes).
- Failure: the advocate shares one lash — 2d10 and one level of exhaustion — and the sentence proceeds. No fight.
- What you may not do: free him. Cutting the chain is interference and starts the encounter above, full stop.
For a party that wants nothing to do with any of this.
- Getting across: the columns are 6 ft thick and the lamplight is low. Group Stealth DC 15, at advantage if someone shutters or smothers the party lamps first.
- One failure: the ash keeps the print. The Erinys says, conversationally, "You are in the record now," and asks the one question from the first bypass — the party gets one honest answer to give.
- Two failures: the vigil pauses. Roll initiative, and give the party one round in which surrender or confession still works.
- Cost of withdrawing instead: back out the door they came in. No pursuit, no penalty except the clock, and this room's clue drip does not happen.
Encounter
One judge, two scourges, and a defendant who has already been convicted.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Erinys of the Vigil | 8,400 |
| 2 | Ash-Winged Fury | 3,900 |
Base 16,200 XP; ×2 for three bodies = 32,400 adjusted, against the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. That is not a typo and it is not a mistake. This room is more than twice a Deadly encounter and the arithmetic is printed here so you can tell your players the truth with a straight face if they ask.
Why it is not attacking. The Erinys of the Vigil is conducting a trial. It states charges aloud, it waits for answers, and it will not begin a second proceeding while the first is open. The two Ash-Winged Furies are scourges, not guards; they act only on the judge's word. Everything in this hall is busy, and that is the entire margin the party has.
Round 1, if it starts. The Erinys names the party's own worst deed — pick the most concrete thing in the session so far, or ask each player what their character did that they would not want said out loud — and the two furies take whoever is named first. The Erinys itself does not move from the plinth until the verdict is spoken. It does not have to.
If the party fights anyway. They can lose the whole party here, and they will have picked the fight. Say so out loud before initiative: "You understand that you are about to interrupt a trial." The furies fly, the ash blinds, the lamps do not go out, and the Erinys honours a confession offered at any point, including from a dying PC — that mercy is the only reason this is survivable. If the party breaks and runs, nothing here pursues them past the doorway; the vigil is more important than they are. They may withdraw mid-fight and the room lets them.
Two things the party can find and use. A poured line of salt or funeral ash stops both Ash-Winged Furies dead — they cannot cross it and they will stand at it and wait, which is a real answer for a party with a salt ration and a doorway to hold. It binds the Erinys as well, which buys less than it sounds: she was never going to follow them, and the line does nothing about the charge she has already read. The second is the name she is keeping this vigil for, which she will not say aloud; see the checks below.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The lamps. Blue-burning, cold to the hand, and unquenchable. Any PC who studies one: Arcana or Religion DC 13 — they are not lamps, they are the duration of the trial, and there were nine of them when this started. Three are already out. This is your on-screen clock if you want one: one lamp gutters out every ten minutes of table time, and when the last goes the verdict is spoken and the room empties on its own.
The name she will not say. The column drums in this hall were robbed out of somebody's tomb and re-set here, and two of them still carry the epitaph across the joint. History DC 17 reads it, and the name in it is the person this vigil is being kept for. Speaking it aloud stops her for a round and strips her resistances — it is the room's hidden weapon and the only thing here that resembles an equaliser. It is also, for what it is worth, unkind.
The chain. Bronze, AC 19, 25 HP, or Thieves' Tools DC 19 at the collar. Both are trivially detectable by everything in the room. There is no stealthy way to do this and you should say so before a player commits.
Exits
Conditional — one roll on the loot table. The ledger box is a tax-farmer's box and the coin in it is real.
- Earned if the party leaves the vigil intact: taken openly after a successful advocacy, or lifted from the ambulatory side with Sleight of Hand DC 15 while nobody is being asked a question.
- Not earned if the party interferes. Whatever is in the box burns with everything else the furies leave behind, and you should describe the ash.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One Ash-Winged Fury instead of two, and the Erinys asks its question in a way that all but hands the party the right answer. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | A second Erinys of the Vigil arrives on the third round of any fight, and the advocacy DC rises to 18. Other DCs +1 |
| 15 | Two Erinyes and four scourges; the trial is nearly over, so the lamp clock runs at one per five minutes; and a PC who confesses is taken at their word and put in the second collar. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Twelve to fifteen minutes if the party engages with the trial, four if they take the ambulatory and keep their mouths shut. Behind schedule: open with the verdict already spoken and only one Ash-Winged Fury left, coiling the chain — the party walks through a room that has just finished being terrible, which is faster and lands almost as hard.
- The one true thing. If the party earns it through advocacy, the Erinys answers one question about what is deeper in the maze honestly and briefly. Use it to hand them the next clue tier straight, especially if they have missed the last two.
- Clue drip. Two objects here carry a clue well: the bronze judgment tablet the Erinys holds, which is a contract in the shape of a verdict and suits X06 (The Oracle's Bargain); and the ledger's gate-toll column, which lists what the great bronze gate cost to open from the inside and when, which suits X08 (The King's Writ).
- Table safety. A chained, thirsty prisoner and an on-screen scourging. Offer the softer framing without being asked: the collar is symbolic and comes off at the verdict, the scourging happens off-stage behind the columns, and nobody's children need to be named. Herakleides is guilty; he does not need to be pitiable for the room to work.
- Do not let a player free him to be clever. They can absolutely try. Charge the honest price, which is the encounter above, and do not soften it — this room is one of the deck's clearest statements that some things are running their own business and the party is not the protagonist of it.
- Warband callback. Erinyes & Ash state the charge before they act, every time, in every room they hold. A party that has met them before should already know that answering is safer than running.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Erinyes & Ash (W19) and recur across the deck, so the numbers live in the bestiary. The tactics above are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Erinys of the Vigil, Ash-Winged Fury. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.