The Vintner's Trap
You come down three steps into a shallow stone tank and the floor gives slightly underfoot — it is ankle-deep in crushed grapes and it is warm. The whole room smells like a festival. Above you, filling the ceiling, hangs a beam of black oak the length of a ship's mast, hung on a screw, with a stone block the size of a cart lashed to its far end.
Three women are dancing at the edge of the tank with their arms up and their eyes shut. A goat-legged man sitting on the screw-housing takes the reed out of his mouth long enough to grin at you, and says: "Oh, good. We were short."
DM summary. A working wine press with the party standing in the fruit. The maenads are not the danger and the piper is not the danger; the beam coming down one foot a round is the danger, and the funniest correct answer to this room is to lie down in the grapes.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Basin Court — page 25, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Temple Approach)
The sunken basin is the pressing tank: its ring is the walkway, 18 inches up. Shade the ankle-deep must across the tank floor, draw the beam and screw at the west end with the counterweight block, and mark the pawl at head height.
- Dimensions. 40 ft × 30 ft. The pressing tank is a sunken stone floor 30 ft × 20 ft and 18 inches below the walkway that runs round it. Ceiling 14 ft to the beam's underside, at rest.
- Light. Six lamps in the wall niches, all lit, plus a brazier under the screw-housing. Bright. This is a working room and someone has been working in it.
- The must. Ankle-deep crushed grape across the whole tank floor. Difficult terrain for anyone moving more than half speed, and any creature that Dashes in it makes a Dexterity save DC 12 or goes down. It is also slippery, sweet, sticky, and it ruins bowstrings.
- The beam and the screw. A press beam on a wooden screw at the west end, counterweighted with a stone block at the east. It descends when the pawl is released. Underneath the beam is a bronze-shod pressing plate 20 ft × 12 ft — everything under that plate is in the press.
- The pawl and the release. A bronze ratchet dog on the screw-housing, at head height, with a wooden lever beside it. The piper is sitting next to it.
- The pomace chute. A knee-high arch in the east wall at floor level where the pressed skins are shovelled out. It goes somewhere. It is under the plate.
- The vat wall. The walkway around the tank is out of the press's reach and three steps up. Standing on it is safe from the beam entirely, and it is 5 ft wide, which is not much room to fight in.
Encounter
Three drunk women who will not hit you if you are down, and a piper who thinks this is the best day he has had in years.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 3 | Maenad of the Vat | 700 |
| 1 | Satyr Piper | 1,100 |
Base 3,200 XP; ×2 for four bodies = 6,400 adjusted, against the APL 9 Medium budget of 6,600. On budget as a fight, and the fight is the smaller half of the room — the press carries the rest, and a party that ignores the press to win the fight will win the fight underneath a descending beam.
Round 1. The piper pulls the lever, laughing, and starts playing. The three maenads come off the walkway into the tank, dancing rather than charging, and they do not go for the nearest PC — they go for whoever is standing tallest and still holding something.
Tactics. The maenads will not touch a creature that is prone, unconscious, or empty-handed; they step over it and go to the next one on their feet. They are not trying to kill anybody. They are trying to include everybody. While the pipes play they are fast and hard to knock down; the moment the tune stops they are three unarmoured women who have been drinking since yesterday.
The piper never fights, never leaves the housing while he is winning, and will happily negotiate mid-tune if offered anything interesting.
What this room is not. It is not a kill-the-room encounter, and a maenad dropped to 0 hit points is unconscious and stable, not dead. A party that executes them will be remembered for it by every satyr in this maze, and you should say so once, quietly, at the table.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The press. This is the encounter.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Trigger | The lever, pulled by the piper on round 1 — or by anyone, at any time, including a PC who has not thought it through |
| Detect | Perception DC 12 to see the pawl and lever from the steps before entering; Investigation DC 13 to understand what the plate is for |
| Cadence | The beam descends 1 ft at the end of every round, from 14 ft. State the height out loud every single round: "Eleven feet." "Ten." |
| At 6 ft | Anyone standing in the tank must crouch or go prone. Standing costs a Dexterity save DC 13 or 2d10 bludgeoning and knocked prone |
| At 3 ft | The plate stops. Anything under it that is not lying flat takes 4d10 bludgeoning and is restrained until the beam is raised or it wins a DC 15 Athletics check to drag itself clear |
| Anyone lying flat in the must | Takes nothing. The tank is 18 inches deep and the plate stops at 3 ft. This is the answer and it is findable: Investigation DC 13 on the pressing plate's stops, or by any player who thinks about how a press works |
| Disarm — the pawl | Thieves' Tools DC 15 at the housing. Re-seats the dog and stops the descent where it is |
| Disarm — jam the screw | Athletics DC 16 with a spear, crowbar, or javelin, which is destroyed |
| Disarm — cut the withy | The rope to the counterweight: AC 13, 12 damage. The beam drops immediately and all at once. Everything in the tank not lying flat takes the 4d10 with no save. Afterwards the press is spent and the room is safe |
| Solved state | Beam stopped or spent. The tank is walkable, the chute is clear if the beam is up, and the maenads lose interest within a round because the fun part is over |
The social route, at any point. A PC who spends an action drinking with a maenad or matching her dance (Performance DC 13) becomes a reveller in her eyes and is not attacked by her again. A PC who offers the piper wine, a boast, or a song the maze has not heard (Persuasion DC 14) gets a verse of silence and a price named out loud. His price is always small and always specific: the party's best wineskin, someone's boots, a promise to say his name at the next festival they attend.
Exits
None. There is a great deal of wine here and none of it is a loot roll: the tank is unfermented must, the amphorae on the walkway are empty and stacked, and the good stuff is wherever the piper hid it, which is not in this room. A party that carries out a skin of must has carried out a skin of grape juice that will be vinegar by tomorrow, and they are welcome to it.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Two maenads, no piper. The beam descends every other round. All DCs −2, trap damage 2d10 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Four maenads and a Centaur of the Split Herd on the walkway with a bow, shooting anyone who reaches for the pawl. Beam damage 10d10. DCs +1 |
| 15 | As APL 12, plus the tank floor is a second press: a grate in the floor drops 6 inches at the same cadence, so lying flat is no longer free. Anyone prone in the must at the end of round 4 makes a Dexterity save DC 17 or is pinned between plate and grate. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Ten to fifteen minutes. It is a clock room and clocks run themselves. Behind schedule: cut the maenads to one, start the beam at 8 ft, and give the party four rounds. Six minutes and it is still the room everyone remembers.
- Say the height every round. "Twelve." "Eleven." No other tool in this book generates as much table noise for as little effort.
- Let them lie down. The moment a player says "I get flat in the grapes," give it to them immediately and completely. The best trap rooms have a solution that feels like cheating, and this one's is also very funny, because the maenads will not touch them while they are down there.
- If the party is too strong, do not add maenads — pull the lever a second time. A press that has already been beaten once and starts again is worth more than two more bodies.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the stacked amphorae with their shipping marks still on the shoulders, naming a harbour, which suits X16 (The Salt Door); and the beam's screw, a piece of joinery nobody in Knossos could cut, which suits X19 (The Bull-Gate Mechanism) or X20 (The Bronze Bird) — the same hand made all three.
- Table safety. Crushing, confinement under a descending weight. It is played broad and funny here on purpose, but if crushing is a hard line for anyone the press can jam at 6 ft with a shriek of wood and become a pure fight in a low-ceilinged room.
- Warband callback. The Revel is never actually trying to kill the party, in any room in this deck, and that is exactly what makes it dangerous — they will cheerfully do something fatal in the course of including you. A party that has met them before should be reaching for a wineskin before they reach for a weapon.
Creature Cards
Both belong to the Revel of Hoof and Horn (W06) 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: Maenad of the Vat, Satyr Piper. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.