Gorgon's Waiting Room
Stone benches run the length of both walls, the way they do outside a magistrate's room, and every place on them is taken. Twenty-two people sit waiting with their offerings in their laps: a bowl, a hen, a folded cloth, a child's sandal. All of them are grey. All of them are looking at the door at the far end, which is shut, and which has been shut for a very long time.
Something moves in one of the laps. Then in another. Then the nearest figure's arm comes loose at the shoulder and slides off, and what is coiled inside it lifts its head.
DM summary. A queue that never got seen, and the brood that has been nesting in it since. The creepers cannot perceive anything that holds still, which means this room can be crossed by a party willing to be patient in the most uncomfortable circumstances the deck offers.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Taproom — page 37, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Roadhouse)
The taproom seats the petrified: its printed tables and chairs are the benches — chalk the twenty-two seated stone petitioners at them, three more standing. Keep the 9-ft aisle clear down the middle and wall to 60 × 25 ft; the counter is the offering point with the salver.
- Dimensions. 60 ft × 25 ft, ceiling 14 ft. Long and narrow, entrance at one short end, the shut door at the other.
- Light. Two oil sconces still burning, one at each end, leaving the middle third dim. Bright light exists only within 10 ft of a sconce — remember that, because one of the bypasses needs bright light.
- The seated dead. Twenty-two petrified petitioners on the benches, plus three standing against the wall. They are three-quarters cover for anyone crouched behind them and half cover standing. Toppling one is a shove against DC 12; a toppled statue breaks and stops being cover, and makes a great deal of noise.
- The aisle. 9 ft of open floor down the middle. Anything crossing this room in a hurry crosses in the aisle, in the open, which is exactly what the room wants.
- The offering tray. A bronze salver, 2 ft across, in the lap of the fourth figure on the left. It was polished for a temple and it has stayed polished. This is the room's weapon; see the second bypass.
- The shut door. Bronze, sealed, and it does not open. It is not an exit. It is a statement about how long these people have been waiting, and a player who spends ten minutes on it should be told so kindly.
- The drain. A 3-ft grate under the last bench on the right, where the brood comes and goes. Loose in its frame.
Encounter
A slow lizard in the middle of the aisle and four fast things in the laps.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Garden Basilisk | 1,800 |
| 4 | Creeper of the Petrified Garden | 700 |
Base 4,600 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 9,200 adjusted, against the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. On budget, and the arithmetic understates it — an unlucky pair of Constitution saves turns this into the worst kind of Hard, which is the kind that costs a party member permanently.
Round 1. Two creepers come out of the laps at whoever is furthest into the room; the other two stay wound around bench-legs and columns, striking from behind stone. The basilisk does not hurry. It comes up the aisle at 20 ft a round, in a straight line, at whichever PC it picked first, and it will keep doing that until that PC is stone, gone, or it is dead.
Tactics. The creepers cannot sense anything that has not moved since the end of its own last turn, and cannot see petrified creatures at all. A party standing absolutely still is not attacked — the creepers glide between them feeling for something that twitches. They will not leave the benches for long; struck in the open, they retreat to a statue and coil.
The basilisk's gaze reaches 10 ft and no further. Beyond that it is a slow, ugly lizard with a bad bite. Every real danger in this room is a decision to close with it.
Petrification, and what to do about it. State the rule before anybody rolls: a PC who fails twice is stone. The cure is in the room. Each creeper weeps one dose of pale sap from its cut stems, harvested from the dead vine with Medicine DC 13, and one dose frees a creature petrified within the last minute. That is a real time limit and it should be run as one — the party has about six rounds to kill a creeper and get the dose into their friend. Beyond that window it is greater restoration or nothing, and the twenty-two on the benches are past all of it.
Bypass Options
The room's own logic, used against it. The brood hunts movement; the party can stop being movement.
- The rule: on any round a PC neither moves nor takes an action that shifts their body — no attacks, no gestures, no drawing a weapon — the creepers cannot perceive them at all. Speaking is fine. Breathing is fine. Blinking is fine.
- Crossing: 60 ft in four beats. On a move beat a PC may cross up to 15 ft and must make Stealth DC 13; on a hold beat they do nothing at all and cannot be found. A party alternating move and hold crosses in eight rounds and is never attacked.
- One failure: one creeper finds one PC. That PC alone is attacked for two rounds; if the rest of the party holds still through it, the creeper breaks off and returns to the benches. Whether they hold still while a friend is bitten is the best decision this room offers.
- Two failures: the brood is up. Full encounter.
- The basilisk is not fooled — it is slow, not blind. It will still walk up the aisle. The crossing works because it walks at 20 ft and the party does not have to be in front of it.
The salver is polished and the sconces are bright, and a basilisk does not know what it is looking at.
- Getting the tray: it is in a statue's lap 15 ft into the room. Sleight of Hand DC 12 to lift it without toppling the figure, or just take it and accept the noise.
- The angle: the basilisk must see itself in the tray, in bright light, within 30 ft — which means doing it within 10 ft of a sconce, or by torchlight held by a second PC. Holding the angle is an attack roll against AC 12, or Dexterity (Sleight of Hand) DC 13, made from outside the 10-ft gaze radius by anyone averting their eyes.
- Success: it makes its own DC 14 Constitution save, twice, and it cannot avert its eyes because it does not understand what it is seeing. A petrified basilisk is a statue, permanently, and the brood loses its centre — the creepers scatter to the drain within two rounds.
- Failure: the tray catches the wrong angle and the holder is inside the gaze radius. They save instead, at DC 14, and drop the tray.
- Cost of withdrawing instead: the party may leave by the door they came in at any point. Nothing here pursues past the threshold — the brood will not leave the statues and the basilisk will not hurry. They lose the loot and this room's clue drip, and anyone already turned to stone stays here on a bench, which is the price of that decision and you should name it out loud.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
Reading the queue is worth doing and costs nothing but a moment. Investigation DC 13: the petitioners were petrified where they sat, one at a time, over what must have been days — the ones nearest the shut door are more weathered than the ones nearest the entrance. Nobody ran. Insight or History DC 15 on that: they were queuing to see something, they believed it would see them, and they kept their places.
The drain grate under the last bench: Perception DC 12 to notice the polished channel where the brood slides in and out. Lifting it is no check. What comes up it, if the party makes enough noise, is your call and should be a creeper rather than anything new.
Exits
One roll on the loot table. The offerings in the petitioners' laps: a good bowl, a coil of temple silver, someone's brooch, a purse that has been in a stone hand for a century.
- Earned by taking it, which means breaking a stone hand or finding the one figure that has already fallen and broken (Investigation DC 13, and it is the merciful option).
- Do not put a curse on this. Robbing them is grim and it is not punished. If a player hesitates, let the hesitation be the whole moment.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Three creepers, no basilisk — a creepers lairs at the far end instead. All DCs −2, gaze save DC 12 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Two basilisks, one at each end of the aisle, and six creepers. DCs +1, gaze save DC 15, and the sap dose frees a creature petrified within the last 30 seconds |
| 15 | An Elder of the Pale Sisters is asleep behind the shut bronze door and wakes on round 4 of any fight loud enough to matter. The door opens from her side. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Twelve to eighteen minutes. Behind schedule: drop to two creepers and no basilisk, put the tray in plain sight, and run it as a four-minute crossing with one good scare when the arm falls off.
- The arm falling off the statue is the opening image and it is worth rehearsing. Say the room is a queue, let the players understand what a queue of stone people means, and only then have something move.
- Run the hold-still crossing physically. Ask each player, each round, "move or hold?" and go round the table. It takes ninety seconds and it generates more tension than any roll in this room.
- Petrification is the deck's most permanent bad outcome, so be scrupulous: announce the 10-ft radius, announce the two-failure rule, announce that the cure is in the room and where. A party that loses somebody to this should lose them to a decision, not to information they did not have.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the child's sandal in the eleventh petitioner's lap, one of a pair, which suits X05 (Carry Them Out) or X10 (Ariadne's Thread); and the shut bronze door itself, whose hinges are the same casting as the great gate's, which suits X08 (The King's Writ) or X19 (The Bull-Gate Mechanism).
- Table safety. Petrified people including a child's belongings, bodies used as cover, and a permanent-loss mechanic. Offer the softer framing: the petitioners can be unfinished statuary that the brood nests in rather than people, and the sandal can be a votive rather than a possession.
- Warband callback. Gorgon Brood rooms are always statues-as-terrain, and the statues are always somebody. A party that has met the brood before will start counting exits and looking for a mirror before you finish the read-aloud, which is exactly the reward they have earned.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Gorgon Brood (W04) 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: Garden Basilisk, Creeper of the Petrified Garden. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.