A threshing floor, circular, forty feet across, ringed by a low wall — the kind of thing that belongs on a hilltop in the wind, not four hundred feet under a palace. A post stands at the centre with a chain running from it to a flint-toothed sledge, and the sledge is moving: dragged in a slow circle by something under the floor, grinding as it goes.
What is spread out to be threshed is not grain. Two spearmen stand at the rim with their backs to you, and four thin figures kneel beside them, nocking.
DM summary. A threshing floor that turns bone into teeth and teeth into soldiers, which means every skeleton the party breaks on the floor comes back. The fight is a straightforward Medium. Where you kill things is the whole room.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Silo Warren — page 28, 55 × 75 ft (one half of The Grey Warrens)
The round silo chamber is the threshing disc: its wall is the knee-high ring (redraw it at the 40-ft mark if you want the full margin), with the sown rim shaded between ring and page edge. Draw the central post, the sledge on its chain, and the chaff-chute slot at the south.
- Dimensions. A round chamber 60 ft across, ceiling 18 ft. The threshing floor itself is a raised stone disc 40 ft across in the middle, ringed by a knee-high wall and a 10-ft margin of ordinary floor.
- Light. Four tallow lamps on the ring wall at the compass points, lit. The whole room is visible, which matters — this room is a puzzle of position and it does not work in the dark.
- The sledge. A flint-toothed drag-board on a chain from the central post, hauled in an endless circle by a windlass in a pit beneath. It sweeps a 10-ft-wide arc from post to rim, and it advances one quarter-turn per round. Draw the disc as four quadrants and put a token on one; move it clockwise at the top of every round. Everything about this room becomes obvious to the players the moment you do that.
- The sown rim. The margin between the disc and the ring wall is packed earth and it is full of teeth. This is where new bodies come up.
- The chaff-chute. A slot in the ring wall at the south, where threshed material is swept out. Big enough to crawl into.
- The post. Stone, waist-thick, with the chain's swivel at its top and a square hole at its base where a chock would go, if anyone had a chock.
Encounter
Two spearmen holding the rim and four archers who will not leave them.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Bronze-Tooth Hoplite | 700 |
| 4 | Bone Archer of the Sown Field | 450 |
Base 3,200 XP; ×2 for six bodies = 6,400 adjusted, against the APL 9 Medium budget of 6,600. A true Medium — right up until the party starts killing things in the wrong place, at which point it is whatever they have made it.
Round 1. The archers shoot from behind the hoplites. The hoplites do not advance; they hold the rim and let the party come to them, because their job is to be something the archers can stand behind.
Tactics, and the lever. Each Bone Archer will not move more than 5 ft from the nearest Bronze-Tooth Hoplite, and if no hoplite is within 15 ft at the start of its turn it spends the whole turn walking to one instead of shooting. Kill a hoplite and two archers stop shooting. That is the tactical answer to this room and it is discoverable in one round of watching them shuffle.
The archers also count their arrows — twenty each, then they stoop to gather, and they do not shoot while they stoop. A party that keeps hard cover for two rounds gets a free round afterwards.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The sledge, and the re-sowing. This is the room.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Cadence | One quarter-turn per round, clockwise, at the top of the round. Announce the quadrant out loud before anyone acts |
| Being swept | Any creature standing in the swept quadrant makes a Dexterity save DC 14: failure is 2d10 bludgeoning and prone, success is half and no prone |
| Prone in the quadrant | Automatic failure, and you are dragged 10 ft along the arc |
| Detect | Perception DC 10 — it is a moving sledge in a lit room. Investigation DC 13 on the rim earth is the check that matters: the teeth in it are fresh, and the floor is not threshing grain |
| The re-sowing | Any destroyed skeleton whose remains lie on the disc when the sledge passes over them is threshed into teeth, scattered into the sown rim, and rises as a new Bronze-Tooth Hoplite two rounds later. There is no cap while the sledge turns |
| Preventing it | Kill things on the margin, not the disc; or drag a body off the disc (an action, Athletics DC 11); or destroy the remains with fire, acid, or a shattering effect before the sledge reaches them |
| Stopping the sledge — chock the post | Athletics DC 14 to drive a spear, crowbar, or shield-rim into the square hole. The implement is destroyed |
| Stopping the sledge — cut the chain | AC 15, 15 damage at the swivel. Loud, permanent, and the freed sledge slides to the rim, which is difficult terrain and half cover wherever it stops |
| Stopping the sledge — the drive pit | The windlass is under the floor, through the hatch (exit C). Thieves' Tools DC 15 on the pawl, from below, in the dark, with the drive turning past your hands |
| Solved state | The sledge stops. Nothing further rises, whatever is already up keeps fighting, and the disc is an ordinary stone floor with a lot of bone dust on it |
Say the rule out loud the first time it happens. When the first destroyed skeleton is threshed, describe the sledge going over it, the sound, and the teeth going into the rim. Then, two rounds later, describe the hand coming up out of the earth. The players will work out the rest and they should not need a lecture to do it.
Exits
One roll on the loot table. The winnowing basket at the north rim: a half-bushel of teeth, and mixed through them the metal that would not thresh — rings, buckles, a fibula, coin, and one thing worth having.
- Earned with Investigation DC 13 to sort it, which takes a minute and cannot be done while the sledge is turning without somebody keeping watch.
- The teeth themselves are not loot. A player who pockets a handful has pocketed a problem, and this deck has already made that joke once, which is why the second time should cost them something.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One hoplite, three archers, and the sledge advances every other round. Trap damage 2d10, DCs −2. Re-sown bodies take three rounds |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three hoplites, five archers, and a second sledge on the same chain, opposite the first — two quadrants swept per round, always across the disc from each other. Trap damage 4d10, DCs +1 |
| 15 | As APL 12, plus a Dragon-Tooth Serjeant at the post who chocks the sledge back in if the party stops it, and re-sown bodies come up in one round. Trap damage 4d10, DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Twelve to fifteen minutes. Behind schedule: start the sledge already chocked — the party finds a broken spear jammed in the post hole — and run it as a straight six-body Medium on a circular floor. Seven minutes.
- Draw the four quadrants. A circle, a cross through it, and a coin for the sledge. Move the coin clockwise at the top of each round in full view. This one prop does more work than three paragraphs of description.
- This is not the deck's other sowing room. There, the mechanism makes soldiers out of nothing and the answer is to break the mechanism. Here the mechanism makes soldiers out of the party's own kills, and the answer is to choose where you fight. If your table has seen the other one, lean into the difference: let them try to break the machine first, and let that be the slower option.
- If the party is grinding, have the archers run dry. Six bodies with no ranged output is a room that is over, and you should call it over.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the winnowing basket itself, a farm tool four hundred feet underground, which suits X12 (Bring It Down Behind You) or X14 (A Thread of Your Own Making); and the tallow lamps, refilled recently by somebody with hands, which suits X10 (Ariadne's Thread) — there is red wool wound round the third lamp's bracket.
- Table safety. Bones being processed by farm machinery. It is grim in an agricultural rather than a gory register, which most tables find easier. If not, the sledge threshes armour and the teeth are bronze castings, and nothing mechanical changes.
- Warband callback. Sown Bones always come back from the ground and always fight in ranks. Here both facts are true at once and the party is standing on the reason.
Creature Cards
Both belong to Sown Bones (W01) 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: Bronze-Tooth Hoplite, Bone Archer of the Sown Field. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.