Adventures in Milmar #30 - The Cellars of Blackstone Bridge

over 1 year ago

Welcome to the next part of the continuing tale of an adventure I ran in Dungeons & Dragons a while ago.

In the last post, Adventures in Milmar #29 - Blackstone Bridge I told of the players' arrival in the ruined town of Blackstone Bridge as they crossed the devastated wasteland known as the Warmark.

There, the ghost of the last mayor, Darballan, possessed one of the characters and persuaded the party to retrieve his mattock from the cellars of Bridge House in order to bring the broken bridge into the material plane from the ethereal one.

The Cellars

After quite a few sessions of slogging across desolate and dangerous wasteland, I decided it would be good for everyone to have a change of scenery for a little while. So it was time for a bit of a dungeon-bash !

The goal was simple; go in, find Darballan's mattock, retrieve it and get out. You've probably guessed right - the mattock is a McGuffin, a thing that's vaguely useful but mostly just there as a thing to be sought after.

The cellar is brick-built and has a pervasive ammonia-like stench (seepage from the acid river nearby). The walls are damp, and sting slightly to the touch. The floors are also of aged brick, laid in a herringbone pattern.

1. The chamber of the Mattock.

This is actually the key chamber, and is at the far end of the dungeon.

The mattock hangs in mid-air in the centre of the room, suspended by no chain or cord.

When the last member of the party enters the room, there is an audible clunk as the door locks, and another door slides down in the entrance arch. The inside of the doors are bound with brass and steel; they are too strong to beat down with physical force, and are additionally fortified with Wall of Force spells (Detect Magic spells shows them as magical).

The mattock is surrounded by a feint swirl of motion, as if the air was taking form or there was some kind of nearly-invisible force around it. The swirly area has a diameter of 15 feet.

Around the edge of the swirl are 24 pedestals of clear crystal, 2.5 feet apart in a circle. Each is about 10 inches in diameter and three feet tall. In the angled flat top of each is an indentation in the shape of an open hand.

After 6 seconds, one of the pedestals will turn transparent orange. The energy surrounding the mattock will darken slightly and become angrier and more agitated. 6 seconds later, the same happens again. This will repeat every 6 seconds until all 24 have changed.

Placing a hand into the top of a pedestal will make it change colour, from clear to orange or vice versa. However, this will make the energy angrier, delivering a jolt of energy doing D6 damage (passing a DC 15 dexterity save will reduce this to half damage).

The damage type of this energy cycles – radiant, lightning, force, fire.

Trying to just grab the mattock is possible but will reveal that it is frozen in place. anyone touching it will receive a 4D8 jolt of the next energy type. This requires a constitution save for half (not dexterity, as they’ll be holding onto it).

This room is a bit of a trick. The energy getting angrier is just a red herring to increase the sense of anxiety. The actual goal is to get all the pedestals to be orange.

This can be done either by touching each of the pedestals and soaking up the damage or just being patient. It takes 24 rounds, just over two and a half minutes, for all the pedestals to naturally turn orange.

At this point the energy field dissipates, the doors unlock and the mattock can be safely collected. As soon as the party have all left the dungeon, the whole thing resets, waiting for the mattock to return to it's resting place.

Image created by AI in NightCafe Studio

2. The coal cellar.

Heaps of damp coal still lie in the corners and the centre of the room. Hidden within the coal are 6 swarms of rats (from page 339 of the Monster Manual).

Also hiding in the coal cellar is an invisible Rust Monster. This has a homebrewed mix of Greater Invisibility plus Permanency. Apart from this, it is straight from page 262 of the Monster Manual. The only saving grace of this particularly nasty encounter is that the Rust Monster won't leave the coal cellar.

In our game, the combination ambush by rat swarms and rust monster gave the players a really hard time for a few rounds. After losing a few iron and steel weapons, they pulled out of the chamber and incinerated everything from a distance with fire spells and alchemists' fire.

3. The Wine Cellar

Within this cellar are the smashed remnants of many bottles of wine. The floor is strewn with broken glass, rendering it difficult terrain and inflicting D3 damage on anyone falling prone on it.

The two doors into the “U” shaped corridor do two different things. The north door releases a Fireball into the cellar, 20’ radius (20 feet from door), 8D6 fire damage (DC15 Dex save for half). The south door releases a lightning bolt – DC15 Dex save for half, 8D6 damage.

At the very far end of the “U” is a small crate containing a bottle of vintage Chrumensaft (a dwarven liqueur made from fermented mushroom juice) worth 500gp and a bottle of Sidhiaran Starflower Wine worth 1000gp, packed in straw.

Corridor

The corridor from chamber 3 (the wine cellar) to chamber 5 has an interesting trap;

An ear, sprouting from the wall. This can be at any point the DM chooses. Pulling on it disarms the trap; walking past without pulling it releases a 6D6 Lightning Bolt straight down the corridor.

4. General Cellar

This cellar is empty of goods, but contains the spirits of a Blackstone Bridge family slain by Sidhiarans.

The family consists of three Wraiths (Monster Manual p.302), and one Deathlock Wight (from Mordenkainen's Tome of Foes page 129). They are a bit special – there are hollows within the walls they can occupy. Once spurred into activity by the passage of living beings, they have free rein to go anywhere in the cellars except chambers 1 & 5.

If damaged or destroyed, they’ll reform and keep coming until placated. The teddy bear in room 5 will do the job nicely…..