The Cool Cellar
The air changes before the room does — colder, and wet, and smelling of brine and cheese rind instead of dust. Down five steps there is a low vaulted cellar with jars along both walls, sunk to their shoulders in the floor, and a slow drip somewhere out of sight keeping time.
The door at the bottom of the steps is oak faced with bronze, and it has a drop-bar on the inside. Nothing has broken it. Nothing has tried.
DM summary. The second of the deck's two long-rest rooms, and the only one that is genuinely defensible: a food cellar with a door the party can bar from their side. There is no catch. Give them the rest, take their lamp oil, and let them decide when to open the door again.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 35 × 20 ft vaulted cellar of sunken jars — sketch the jar circles and the door; the terrain is a pantry. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 35 ft × 20 ft, ceiling 8 ft at the crown of the vault. Low enough that a tall PC stoops under the ribs.
- Light. None, and this is the room's only real cost. There is no lamp here, no bracket, no oil for burning — the oil in this cellar is for eating. Whatever the party wants to see by, they burn out of their own supplies, and a long rest here is eight hours of somebody's torches or eight hours in the pitch dark. Make them say which.
- The door. Oak, bronze-faced, hung to swing inward, with an oak drop-bar in iron brackets on the inside. Barred, it is AC 17, 60 HP, and forcing it is Athletics DC 20. Nothing in the deck that wanders will get through it in a night. Say that plainly when the party bars it — the point of a sanctuary is that the players believe in it.
- The sunken jars. Eleven pithoi set into the floor: four of olives in brine, two of oil, one of honey (crystallised, still good), one of barley, one of salt fish, one cracked and empty, one full of rainwater that came in from somewhere and is clean.
- The cold seep. A finger of spring water runs out of the north wall into a stone basin and away through a slot in the floor. It is drinkable, it is very cold, and it is why the cellar keeps.
- The tally. Charcoal marks on the vault above the door, in four hands. The most recent set is thirty-one strokes. Somebody else has done exactly what the party is about to do, and did it for a month.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
There is no trap here. The checks in this room are all for how much the party gets, not whether they survive it.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Barring the door | No check. Anyone can lift the bar |
| Finding the honey and the barley | Automatic. They are in the open |
| Finding the good jar | Investigation DC 13 — one pithos was somebody's private stash and it is not food |
| Reading the tallies | Investigation DC 12 for the count, Survival DC 14 to work out that the strokes are days and the hands are four different people, none of whom left together |
| Judging the water | Nature or Medicine DC 10. It is fine. Let a paranoid party spend the check and get a real answer |
The rest. A party that bars the door may take a long rest here, one per session, and it is not interrupted. No wandering roll, no dream, no twist. Rooms that say they are safe must be safe or the deck's other 99 rooms stop meaning anything.
Resupply. Rations for six for three days, oil for cooking, salt, and as much clean water as anyone can carry. Not lamp oil. Not torches. Not arrows.
Exits
One roll on the loot table. The private stash: a small crock buried in the barley pithos, found with Investigation DC 13. Somebody hid it from the other three sets of tally marks, which tells you something about how the month went.
The food itself is not the roll. Rations are rations, they are free, and a party that carries out forty pounds of olives has earned the right to describe how.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | The stash is in the open — no check — and the tallies are recent enough that the last occupant left a note naming which exit they took. DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | The seep has slowed and the water needs boiling: fuel becomes the constraint as well as light. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Something has been at the door from the outside, recently and patiently: four inches of the bronze facing is scored through to the oak. Nothing comes tonight. DCs +3, and the party will not sleep well, which is free and costs you nothing to run |
- Pacing. Twenty minutes if the party takes the rest, three if they do not. This is a room to let run long — it is the session's exhale, and the table will use it to plan, argue, and say the quiet parts out loud. Behind schedule: offer a short rest instead of a long one, hand them the loot roll unasked, and move.
- Rest economy. The maze allows one long rest per session and only in the two rooms that say so. If your party has already used theirs, this room becomes a short rest plus full resupply, and you should say why out loud: they are not tired, they are hunted, and the cellar cannot fix the second thing twice.
- The darkness is the price. Track light honestly here for once. A party that long-rests in the dark is fine; a party that burns eight hours of torches has spent something real, and the next dark room will remind them.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the four sets of tallies, which are four people who came in and did not come out together and suit X14 (A Thread of Your Own Making) or X03 (The Way You Came); and the crystallised honey, sealed and unspoiled, which suits X17 (The Wings of Icarus) for a DM who wants the wax-and-sweetness note before the wax shows up.
- Table safety. None needed. This is the room you point at when someone asks whether the whole session is going to be grim.
- The cat, if you want one. The deck's other quiet kitchen has a cat. If your table met it and liked it, there are fresh paw prints in the flour dust here and no cat. Let them wonder.