The passage narrows to a stone gullet ten feet wide and a hundred long, and there is a slot cut down the middle of the floor with a rail in it, greased. The walls are polished smooth at hip height on both sides, all the way along, the way a doorframe goes shiny where hands touch it — except that this is bronze polish, and it is at the height of a bull's shoulder.
Somewhere at the far end a ratchet begins to turn, slowly, and men start laughing on the catwalk above you.
DM summary. A hundred feet of corridor with a mechanical stampede running down it on a four-round clock, four one-man refuges for a six-person party, and Bull-Kin on the catwalk enjoying themselves. The fight is small; the chute is the encounter, and the question is arithmetic — who is standing where when the train comes.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 100 × 10 ft charge chute — one line of squares, four alcove ticks, and the catwalk noted overhead. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 100 ft × 10 ft, ceiling 12 ft to the catwalk grating. Straight, because a hundred feet of unobstructed charge lane is the room. Cramped in every direction that matters: no flanking, no fireballs without hitting your own line, no room to fall back except along the axis.
- Light. Torches in brackets on the catwalk above, so the floor is lit from overhead and everything at floor level is standing in its own shadow. Anyone on the catwalk can see the whole chute; anyone in the chute sees perhaps 30 ft.
- The rail and the train. A bronze rail down the floor's centre slot carries twelve life-size bronze cattle on trucks, nose to tail, held at the far end by a windlass and a pawl. They are not creatures. They are a hundredweight apiece of cast bull on greased wheels, and they are why the walls are polished.
- The refuges. Four alcoves cut into the walls — at 20 ft, 45 ft, 65 ft, and 85 ft — each 3 ft deep and wide enough for one person. Four alcoves. Six PCs. That is the room.
- The catwalk. A grated walkway 2 ft wide at 10 ft, running the full length down one side, reached by iron rungs at both ends. Athletics DC 13 to climb. Falling off it puts you on the rail.
- The windlass. At the far end, past the gate: a drum, a pawl, and a drive-chain. Whoever is working it is out of sight and will not come out.
Encounter
Four drovers above, one brute below, and neither of them is the problem.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Bull-Masked Cultist | 450 |
| 1 | Taurine Brute | 1,800 |
Base 3,600 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 7,200 adjusted, against the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. It is deliberately under budget by a quarter, because the chute is worth far more than 2,400 XP and a party that gets caught flat-footed in the open on a pass round will tell you so.
Round 1. The pawl drops on the ratchet and the train runs — see the clock below. The cultists do not come down; they walk the catwalk keeping pace, jabbing with 10-ft goads at anyone below them and throwing sling stones at anyone who climbs. The Taurine Brute walks out of the far gate and puts itself in the chute, because the chute is a hundred feet of unobstructed charge lane and it has been waiting all its life for one.
Tactics. The brute charges the length of the chute, gores, and if it misses it cannot stop — it runs on to the end of its movement, and if the train is running, it runs into the train. Let that happen. It is the best thing in this room and it costs the party nothing but the sense to step aside.
The cultists are brave only in company: the moment the last other Bull-Kin within 30 ft is down, the survivors run for the catwalk's far stair and will surrender if cornered. They also will not strike the brute or anything wearing a bull mask — and there are two spare masks hanging on a peg at the near rungs, which is either a bypass or the funniest thing your party will do this session.
Bypass Options
Ten feet up, the whole trap simply does not apply.
- Getting up: Athletics DC 13 at the rungs, at either end. A PC on the rungs when a pass comes is fine; the train is a floor-level problem.
- What it costs: the catwalk is 2 ft wide, grated, and occupied by four men with goads whose entire tactic is shoving people off it. Being shoved off is a Dexterity save DC 13 or a fall of 10 ft onto the rail — 1d6, prone, and on the wrong side of the next pass.
- Success: the party walks the length of the chute above the trap and comes out at the far stair-head. The brute cannot follow; it cannot climb.
- Failure: each PC who falls is in the chute floor, alone, with the count running. Give them the refuge distances out loud when it happens.
The windlass end is reachable without walking the chute, if the party thinks of it in the first thirty seconds.
- Getting there: along the catwalk (above) or by sprinting the hundred feet on a non-pass round, which is exactly three rounds of running with the count in everyone's ears.
- Wedging it: Thieves' Tools DC 15, Athletics DC 16, or any spell that holds, freezes, or fouls a mechanism, no check.
- Success: the train never runs again. The room drops to a Medium fight in a corridor and the party has earned that.
- Failure: the pawl skips and the next pass comes one round early. Say so the moment it happens, and let the party recount.
- Cost of withdrawing instead: the entrance is behind them and the cultists will not follow past it — the brute will, for two or three rooms, because it can follow a scent and it holds a grudge. Withdrawing here is genuinely more expensive than usual and the party should be told that before they choose it.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The stampede. This is the room's actual encounter and it runs on a clock.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Trigger | The windlass, released on round 1 and reset by the unseen drover afterwards |
| Cadence | The train runs on rounds 1, 5, 9, 13 — every fourth round. Say the count out loud each round: "Two. Three. Four — the ratchet stops." |
| The pass | On a pass round the train covers the whole hundred feet in one round, on initiative count 0 |
| Effect | Every creature standing on the chute floor makes a Dexterity save DC 15. Failure: 4d10 bludgeoning, prone, and shoved 20 ft toward the far gate. Success: half damage and no shove |
| In a refuge | No save, no damage. Four refuges, one body each |
| Braced flat against a wall | Athletics DC 14 as a reaction to press yourself into the polish line: treat as a success on the save, and no shove |
| Detect | Perception DC 13 at the entrance: the rail, the grease, the polish at shoulder height. Investigation DC 12 on the polish gives its height, which tells the party what runs here |
| Disarm — the pawl | Thieves' Tools DC 15 or Athletics DC 16 to wedge the pawl or a spear through the drive-chain, at the windlass end. The spear is destroyed. The train stops for good |
| Disarm — derail it | 30 damage to one truck's wheel (AC 15) while the train is at rest jams the whole string in the slot. Loud, permanent, and it also blocks the floor at that point with a bronze wreck that is difficult terrain and half cover |
| Solved state | The train at rest. The chute becomes an ordinary, unpleasant, narrow corridor and the fight above it resolves in two rounds |
Exits
None. This corridor is swept by a hundredweight of bronze every four rounds and has been for years. There is nothing on the floor of it, there has not been for a long time, and anything a previous visitor dropped here is a smear.
The two spare bull masks on the peg are not loot and are worth more than loot; let a player take one and see what happens.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Six refuges, a pass every fifth round, and no Taurine Brute — a fifth cultist instead. Trap damage 2d10, DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three refuges, a pass every third round, and two brutes entering from opposite ends. Trap damage 10d10, DCs +1 |
| 15 | Two refuges, a pass every third round in alternating directions, and a Minotaur Champion working the windlass who comes down the chute on round 6. Trap damage 10d10, DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Twelve to fifteen minutes and it is all clock. Behind schedule: start the train already jammed — a wrecked truck halfway down — and run it as a four-minute corridor fight with a hazard the party has to climb over. Six minutes.
- Count out loud, every round, without fail. "Two." "Three." "Four — you hear the pawl come off." The four-refuge, six-PC arithmetic only bites if the players can do the arithmetic, and they can only do it if you give them the number.
- Let the brute kill itself. Its Cannot Stop trait plus a hundred feet of charge lane plus a pass round is a set-up the room has arranged deliberately. If the players engineer it — stepping aside, goading it into the lane — give it to them immediately and describe the bronze on bronze.
- Do not let this become a slog. Once the pawl is wedged or the train is derailed, the room is over. Have the surviving cultists run rather than fight to the last, and move on.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the drovers' route-board by the windlass, a scratched plank listing the day's runs in order, which suits X14 (A Thread of Your Own Making) or X19 (The Bull-Gate Mechanism); and the grease-pot hanging at the near rungs, tallow mixed with something paler and sweeter, which suits X17 (The Wings of Icarus) for a DM who wants the wax note early.
- Table safety. Crushing, confinement, and being run down in a space with nowhere to go. This is one of the deck's more claustrophobic rooms. The softer framing: the chute is 20 ft wide instead of 10, the refuges hold two each, and the train sounds its ratchet a full round before it moves.
- Warband callback. Bull-Kin do not ambush and they do not flank; they build a straight line and put something heavy on it. A party that has met them before should look at this corridor and immediately ask what runs down it.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Bull-Kin (W02) 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: Bull-Masked Cultist, Taurine Brute. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.