Down Down Down

The party returns to the Friendly Arm Inn expecting beds, food, and a locked door. Before dawn, fire opens a secret gate beneath the keep and drags them into a hidden murder shrine built over an older ring of sacred flame.

A Four-Hour Adventure for Tier 1 Characters. Optimized for APL 4.

Adventure Background

The party reaches the Friendly Arm Inn at the end of All Along the Clocktower. The road out of the Cloakwood has left them filthy, sore, and eager for walls. They know the inn. They know its rules. They know the relief that comes with crossing its yard and hearing the gate bar drop into place behind them.

This time, Bentley Mirrorshade meets them with a small surprise. If the party remembers "Bentley" from an earlier stop at the inn and this man looks sharper, smaller, and more alive than expected, that is not their memory failing. Bentley sometimes uses one of the Friendly Arm's illusion-shrouded iron golems to wear his face in the common room when trouble, bookkeeping, or private business keeps him elsewhere. Their earlier meeting was with that iron stand-in. Tonight they meet the real innkeeper. Their room and board have already been paid for. The note bears only a single initial, Q, and one dry line in Quentin Lorekeeper's hand:

You have earned a bed. Try not to test the walls. - Q

Bentley accepts Quentin's coin, though he does not love Quentin's timing. He knows the scholar has a habit of placing other people one step ahead of danger he suspects and cannot yet name. Bentley has lived too long with old secrets under his own floorboards to mistake that sort of courtesy for kindness.

The Friendly Arm was raised from tainted stone. Long before it became a neutral refuge on the Coast Way, the keep belonged to a priest of Bhaal who used its lower vaults for fear, murder, and hidden traffic. Bentley and his companions destroyed that priest in undeath and reclaimed the hold years ago. They rebuilt the visible place into something clean, bright, and hard to frighten. Guests see the walls, the kitchens, the gardens, the temple, and the rule of peace. Few see the older bones under it.

Those older bones do not belong to Bhaal alone.

Deep below the keep lies a sealed circular chamber that predates the murder cult by many generations. Its oldest stone was cut for a rite of passage through living flame. The builders shaped ringed floors, vent shafts, and black channels that carried heat without smoke. Their purpose has faded from memory, though traces remain in the geometry, in the sootless stone, and in the old belief that fire could reveal, bind, and carry without always destroying.

The Bhaalites found that place and did what Bhaalites do. They carved murder over meaning. They cut drains into the old floor. They pinned knives and hooks into ritual columns. They turned a place of ordeal into a place of execution. At the center of it all, they linked the old ring below the keep to a hidden shrine nearby. The gate served their priest as a private road between the Friendly Arm's buried chambers and the murder site where he practiced the worst parts of his faith.

Bentley learned enough of that truth when he took the keep. Gellana learned more. Between Bentley's caution, Gellana's wards from the Temple of Wisdom, and help called in from trusted allies, they sealed the chamber, concealed the passage, and let rumor do the rest. Bentley had solid reasons to bury the matter. If word spread that the Friendly Arm sat atop a still-reachable Bhaalite road, treasure hunters, cult scavengers, and zealots would come digging under guest rooms and kitchen floors. Trade would collapse. Fear would do what fire and brigands had failed to do. Worse, the rumor that a Bhaalite temple lay below the inn was only half false. No full temple sat under the keep, but a receiving chamber, sacrificial holding room, and gate nexus did. Bentley could live with rumor. He could not risk anyone proving how close rumor stood to truth.

Recent events have strained those old seals from both sides at once. The clocktower in the Cloakwood woke dead mechanisms and dead bones, and its repeated necromantic pulses rattled grave-iron anchors buried under the Friendly Arm by the old Bhaalite priest. On the far side of the gate, Seraphel Vane had already begun feeding blood, heat, and prayer into the hidden shrine in an attempt to reopen the murder road described in fragmentary cult records. Quentin pieced together enough of that pattern to worry. He knew one disturbed death-bound site could jar another. He did not know Seraphel had already begun the answering rite below, nor that the party's return from the clocktower would coincide with the last failure of the seal.

It comes in the kitchen before dawn.

An alarm bell splits the night. Smoke rolls through the lower halls. In the kitchen, fire burns in a perfect ring across the flagstones. Pans blacken. Tables catch. Yet the flames move with intention rather than hunger. They curl around old marks under the floor. They spit sparks upward. They widen a circle instead of racing along beams. Beneath that circle, a buried gate answers.

The fire is not a house blaze. It is a breach.

If the party cannot force that breach back, the hidden shrine beyond will keep feeding it until the Friendly Arm loses more than a kitchen. The inn can survive scorch marks, smoke, and broken stone. It cannot survive the full return of the murder road buried under its own heart.

Overview

Down Down Down has a call to adventure, four primary parts, and an epilogue.

Call to Adventure: Home for a Few Hours (20-30 minutes)

Features: roleplay, continuity, rescue, urgent action

The party returns from the Cloakwood and reaches the Friendly Arm Inn. Bentley Mirrorshade greets them, tells them Quentin Lorekeeper has already paid for their room and board, and gives them a brief chance to enjoy warmth, food, and familiarity. That peace breaks in the night when an alarm sounds and the kitchen catches fire. The party must save lives, hold panic in check, and descend beneath the keep once Bentley admits the blaze is feeding on an old secret.

Part 1: The First Ring (45 minutes)

Features: hazard, investigation, minor combat, revelation

The party fights through smoke and heat into the large old cellar below the kitchen, where the breach has already burned through the center of the room. There they face fire-born scavengers and animated tools pulled into motion by the breach. Bentley's sealed history becomes visible in broken stone, old wards, and a ring of fire whose center is the open portal to a nearby shrine. The party learns that the rumors under the inn were never wholly wrong.

Part 2: The Temple Approach (45 minutes)

Features: movement pressure, skill challenge, light combat, hostile architecture

The party passes through the gate into the temple approach, a chain of circular halls, vent shafts, moving stone bands, and murder-work cut over older ritual rings. Heat surges through the passage in timed bursts. Fire mephits and cult lookouts drive the party forward rather than hold ground. This section should feel like a place built to keep bodies moving toward a single end.

Part 3: The Burning Work (45-60 minutes)

Features: tactical combat, lore discovery, vertical terrain, environmental threat

The shrine opens into deeper labor chambers where the Bhaalites built altars, drains, hooks, and drop pits on top of the old fire-ring works. The party fights shrine guardians across suspended walks and black stone platforms above furnace vents. Clues in murals, scratched prayers, and carved rings reveal the shrine's double history and the way murder twisted an older rite of trial into one of sacrifice.

Part 4: The Heart Below (45-60 minutes)

Features: social tension, final combat, temptation, ritual disruption

At the bottom waits the source of the breach, a fire-marked cult heir named Seraphel Vane who believes the ring can burn grief into purity through chosen death. Seraphel keeps the old fire alive inside a Bhaalite frame of blood and surrender. The party can speak with him, reject the ring's promises, and fight to break the rite before the Friendly Arm above is consumed.

Epilogue: Morning Ash (10-15 minutes)

Features: aftermath, reward, continuity, scar

If the party breaks the rite, the fire folds inward and the breach dies. The Friendly Arm survives, though the kitchen and lower cellars bear the mark of the night. Bentley and Gellana take stock of the wounded and the damage. Quentin arrives after the danger has passed, worried in the way of someone who guessed the shape of the problem but not the hour of it. The inn stands. It does not stand untouched.

Adventure Hooks

Use one or more of the following hooks to begin the adventure

Direct Sequel. The party comes straight from All Along the Clocktower and heads for the Friendly Arm Inn with whatever they chose to keep from the tower. They want rest and safety.

Paid Lodgings. Quentin Lorekeeper has already arranged a room, supper, and breakfast at the Friendly Arm. Bentley confirms the payment was real and complete.

Known Haven. The party has stayed at the Friendly Arm before. They know the gates, the guards, the common room, and the sense that trouble usually stops at the walls.

Old Rumors. Travelers still trade stories about Bentley's adventuring days, Gellana's sharp eye, illusion-guarded servants, and a secret gate somewhere in the old keep. The party can hear those rumors over supper before the alarm proves one of them true.

Estimated Duration: 20-30 minutes.

The opening should make the Friendly Arm feel lived in, useful, and worth saving. Give the party a short return to warmth before the fire tears through the night.

Story Objectives

• Reintroduce the Friendly Arm Inn as a familiar refuge.
• Reestablish Bentley Mirrorshade and Gellana as active anchors of the place.
• Deliver Quentin's prepaid lodging through Bentley.
• Let the party breathe, speak, and settle for a short stretch.
• Start the fire in a way that feels sudden, urgent, and personal.
• Push the party from rescue into pursuit of the breach below the kitchen.

1.1 Arrival at the Friendly Arm

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By the time the Friendly Arm rises ahead, your legs feel made of bark and road dust. The walls stand where they always stand, square and patient above the Coast Way, lanterns warm against the dark. The gate opens, the yard beyond glows, and for the first time since the Cloakwood you hear sounds that belong to ordinary life: stable hands arguing over a mule, mugs striking wood, someone laughing too loud at a joke that should have died two lines ago.

Inside the wall, the place still smells like itself. Cookfires, wet leather, horse pond water, rosemary from the herb beds, lamp oil, and bread.

Setting

Left to right. To the left stand the stables, wagon sheds, and horse pond, all busy with late arrivals. In the middle, a stone walk leads to the keep doors beneath torchlight and painted shutters. To the right sits the gem-bright Temple of Wisdom, low and solid, with warm window light catching on nuggets set into the walls.

If the party looks toward the temple, read the following:

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The Temple of Wisdom sits low against the inner wall, more jewel box than fortress. To the left of its front path, herb beds breathe mint, sage, and damp earth into the evening air. Straight ahead, the temple's broad doorway stands open under carved lintels set with flakes of quartz and river-smoothed amber. To the right, narrow windows throw warm gold light across the yard. Inside, every wall gleams. Tiny gems, gold flecks, and polished stones catch lamplight in hundreds of soft points, so the whole room seems to hold a patient indoor dawn. Incense of cedar and sweetroot drifts through the doorway, and somewhere within, someone laughs once in the quiet way of people who trust the place they stand.

Security. The Friendly Arm remains orderly. Guards know their work and do not relax it for tired faces.

Continuity. If the party stayed here in Got Your Goat, let them recognize one guard, server, or traveler from that earlier visit.

Bentley's Welcome

Bentley should greet the party in person if he can. He knows faces. He knows useful people. He knows Quentin's coin has meaning.

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Inside the keep, warmth hits first. Then noise. The common room glows with hearthlight and lamp smoke, and the smell of roast onions, brown bread, ale, and drippings settles on you like a blanket.

A man behind the bar looks up before any server can intercept you. Curly-haired, quick-eyed, and already moving, Bentley Mirrorshade wipes his hands once on a towel and comes around the counter with the pace of a man who has counted every body in the room without seeming to.

"Back in one piece," he says, giving each of you a look that feels like inventory and welcome at once. "That puts you ahead of many predictions. Good. Your room and board are covered. A scholar paid in advance. Signed the note with a Q and the sort of confidence that makes other people's roofs nervous."

He produces a folded note, already opened and read:

You have earned a bed. Try not to test the walls. - Q

If the party previously dealt with "Bentley" at the inn, allow an immediate moment of recognition. This Bentley is no disguised server and no illusion-backed decoy. He blinks, scratches the side of his nose, and watches for reaction in a way the iron stand-in never did.

If asked, Bentley answers plainly:

• "You met one of my house guards wearing my face."
• "Useful trick in a crowded inn."
• "Less charming once everyone knows it."

1.2 Gellana at the Temple

If you want to place Gellana Mirrorshade onstage before the fire starts, have her cross the yard, check on a traveler, or speak with Bentley near the common room door.

Supper and Breathing Room

Give the party ten to fifteen minutes of table time to settle in, eat, ask questions, and enjoy the feeling of being back somewhere protected.

Possible details to drop:

• A server mentions that the kitchen ovens have been running strangely hot all night.
• A guard jokes that nothing short of a dragon could burn Bentley out of his own keep.
• A traveling merchant repeats the old rumor that some kind of gate lies in the cellars.
• A temple acolyte says the lower stones hummed during evening prayer.
  A drover or caravan guard mentions a recent roadside death on the Coast Way: a woman named Maelin Vane, found murdered in the mud after a brigand attack. The story has enough local detail that the name can stick with the party before they hear Seraphel cry it below.

1.3 The Alarm

Strike the alarm after the party has time to enjoy the place. Read the following:

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The night breaks with a bell and a scream.

For one stunned heartbeat, the common room does not understand what it heard. Then the second bell hammers through the keep. Someone below shouts for water. Another voice yells that the kitchen is on fire. Smoke pushes under the stair door in a fast gray line. A serving girl drops a tray. Bentley is already moving before the cups stop rolling.

Immediate Priorities

Run the first moments as urgent free play or a short skill challenge. The party can:

• Lead guests away from smoke
• Break open a stuck pantry or room door
• Carry water, blankets, or children
• Fight a small fire-born threat
• Reach the kitchen with Bentley or Gellana

On two group successes before two failures, the party gets everyone in the kitchen wing clear before the breach widens. On a failed challenge, one staff member suffers serious burns and the fire reaches deeper into the pantry before the party acts below.

1.4 The Burning Kitchen

Read the following when the party reaches the kitchen:

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The kitchen looks wrong before it looks ruined.To the left, a long prep table burns at one end and stands untouched at the other, knives and onions still laid out in order. Straight ahead, hanging pans sway in heat that moves in pulses instead of waves. To the right, the brick ovens roar far past cooking heat, their iron doors glowing red at the seams. Across the floor, cutting through spilled broth, broken crockery, and overturned stools, a perfect ring of fire spins in place. Sparks climb upward from it as if the room has forgotten which way ash should fall.

The flames lick at the flagstones, not the timber beams. They widen the circle. They are opening something.

Fire Scene Complications

• Smoke heavily obscures the upper half of the room.
• The ovens vent blasts of heat on initiative count 20. Each creature within 10 feet of an oven must make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or take 5 (1d10) fire damage.
• A creature that enters the ring takes 7 (2d6) fire damage and must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be pulled 10 feet downward when the floor gives way.

Bentley's Admission

Bentley reaches the ring, stops dead, and speaks through his teeth:

• "Damn it. I was afraid of this one."
• If pressed, he says the following in clipped bursts:
• "There is a cellar below. Bigger than the kitchen. Older too."
• "It should have stayed sealed."
• "This is no kitchen fire."
• "If that gate opens all the way, the inn keeps burning until whatever is feeding it is stopped at the far end."
• "The stories about a Bhaalite temple under the inn are close enough to dangerous. The temple is nearby. The road to it starts here."

Gellana can add:

• "The wards are breaking from below."
• "Go now. We hold the keep. You stop the breach."

Estimated Duration: 45 minutes.

This section starts under pressure. The party descends from a place they know into one Bentley has kept hidden for years.

Story Objectives

• Show the breach under the kitchen as deliberate magic, not accident.
• Reveal Bentley's concealed gate chamber.
• Deliver the first clear signs of the site's two histories.
• Fight a small encounter under environmental pressure.
• Send the party through the gate.

2.1 The Great Cellar

The kitchen floor can crack open into the cellar, or Bentley can yank open a concealed stair behind pantry shelving once the party gets the room under enough control.

Read AloudCopy

The stair drops into one vast cellar under the kitchen, broad enough to have served as stores, mustering room, and killing floor in different ages.

To the left, smashed casks and split crates lie against thick square pillars blackened by heat. Straight ahead, the middle of the room has been burned clean into a wide circle of exposed older stone. A ring of living fire turns there without fuel, bright enough to throw hard shadows across the ceiling beams. In its center hangs not flame but depth: a vertical hole of red-black light that shows carved stone moving far below. To the right, collapsed shelves, old butcher hooks, and newer pantry racks have been thrown into a jagged barricade by the blast that opened the breach.

The whole room smells of scorched grain, old soot, hot metal, and the bitter trace of something ancient waking badly.

Features

The floor is slick with spilled ale, oil, ash, and broken crockery. Areas around ruined stores count as difficult terrain.

Heavy smoke gives lightly obscured conditions through the outer edges of the room.

The burning ring occupies a 15-foot-radius circle in the center of the cellar.

A creature that enters the burning ring takes 7 (2d6) fire damage.

A creature that starts its turn in the exact center of the ring must succeed on a DC 13 Strength saving throw or be pulled 10 feet downward into the open portal.

2.2 Encounter: Ash-Driven Scavengers

Use one of the following encounter groups:

• 2 magmins and 2 animated armors made from kitchen racks and hanging iron
• 3 steam mephits and 2 flying swords
• 4 animated utensils using flying sword statistics and 2 magmins

These creatures are not random. The breach animates nearby metal and births small fire things from pressurized vents under the floor.

Enemy Tactics

Magmins rush clustered targets and try to die near the largest group.

Animated objects shove intruders toward the burning ring or back up the stairs.

Mephits target eyes and hands, trying to blind cooks, servants, or anyone carrying water.

Environmental Hazard: Vent Bursts

On initiative count 20 each round, one cracked seam in the floor bursts. Choose a 10-foot square. Creatures in that area must make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or take 4 (1d8) fire damage and be pushed 5 feet.

2.3 The Cellar’s Truth

Once the encounter settles, the party can inspect the room in full.

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The cellar's older shape becomes clear once the fighting breaks around it.

To the left, the bases of the great square pillars give way to older round collars of black stone cut with spiral channels. Straight ahead, the burning ring sits inside a carved dais older than the inn, its lines smooth and sootless beneath the newer scars of Bhaalite hooks, drains, and restraint staples hammered into the same stone. To the right, one section of wall still bears Bentley and Gellana's sealing work: silver-gold ward nails, temple script in Gnomish, and a cracked charm of smoky quartz that the flames have refused to touch.

The cellar is not the full hidden temple. It is the mouth of it.

The Untouched Charm

This ward charm was part of the last sealing work beneath the keep. It survived the breach.

If the party recovers the charm, it can later be used in Part 4 to weaken the final rite.

2.4 Bentley Tells the Truth

If Bentley came below, or if he joins the party before they enter the gate, use the following:

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"This keep belonged to a Bhaal priest before I took it," Bentley says, looking everywhere but at you for one beat too long. "We found chambers under chambers. This room was the worst of the ones that touched the inn itself. Not a whole temple. A receiving room. A holding room. A road down."

He gives the bare truth fast:

• The gate links the Friendly Arm to a hidden shrine nearby.
• The shrine was already old when the Bhaalites found it.
• He and Gellana sealed the chamber years ago and covered it up to keep scavengers, cultists, and frightened traders from tearing the inn apart in search of it.
• The rumor of a Bhaalite temple below the inn is only partly true. The temple lies beyond. The gate room lies here.
• The seal failed from both sides. The clocktower's necromantic pounding shook the dead anchors under the keep, and someone below has been working to answer that weakness.
• The fire above will not stop until the far side is broken or sealed.

Bentley does not apologize in that moment. He gives the party what they need and trusts them to act.

2.5 Through the Gate

When the party steps onto the central dais, the circular fire tightens and drops.

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The ring contracts with a sound like a forge drawing breath. Fire folds down the carved channels, not up. The center of the dais gives way to dark, heat, and a rush that feels less like falling than being claimed by a road that always ran straight down.

Estimated Duration: 45 minutes.

This section should feel fast, hot, and hostile. The architecture itself presses the party onward.

Story Objectives

Make movement the main pressure.

Show the older fire-ring design under later murder-work.

Run a dangerous approach with real cost for hesitation.

Use light combat to herd the party deeper.

3.1 The Ring Corridor

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You land on hot stone inside a circular passage cut from black rock.

To the left, a narrow ledge curves along the wall above a slit vent that breathes orange light and dry heat. Ahead, the corridor widens into rings of fitted stone that rotate against each other with a slow grinding pulse. To the right, later carvings deface the old work. Knives, open eyes, and weeping mouths have been hacked over graceful lines meant to guide flame, and iron spikes have been driven into channels that once stood clean.

The whole place smells of hot dust, old blood, and mineral smoke.

Pressure Rule: Keep Moving

• The passage is meant to move bodies toward the core.
• Any creature that ends its turn in the same space it started in must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or take 3 (1d6) fire damage from rising heat.
• Any creature knocked prone in a rotating section must spend 10 feet of movement to avoid being dragged 5 feet toward the next drop or vent.

3.2 Skill Challenge: The Tightening Rings

Run this as a challenge requiring 4 successes before 3 failures. Treat it as a moving set piece rather than a single check at a doorway. The party is crossing a machine of stone rings built to sort bodies by speed, balance, and nerve.

Running the Rings

The approach is made of four distinct rings set one inside the next. Each one tests a different response. You can run them in order, asking for one or two checks per ring, or cut between party members as they help each other across.

The old builders shaped these rings as a controlled trial by heat. The Bhaalites altered them into a pressure path that punishes hesitation and rewards surrender to the center.

Ring One: The Outer Track

This broad outer ring hugs the wall and turns slowly underfoot. The stones here are the oldest in the approach.

Description for the DM:

• The track is 10 feet wide and lined with worn black stone.
• Thin silver inlays mark the original safe line, though many have been hacked apart.
• Heat vents in the wall exhale every few seconds, drying the air and driving sweat into the eyes.
• The Bhaalites added iron spikes at ankle height along the inside lip to force rushed movement.

Primary challenge: reading the turn of the ring and staying off the trapped inner edge.

Good checks:

Failure on this ring usually means a stumble, a scorched hand on the wall, or a foot raked across iron teeth.

Ring Two: The Broken Teeth

The second ring is narrower and interrupted by gaps that open and close as stone segments rotate past each other.

Description for the DM:

• The path narrows to 5 feet in places.
• Three wedge-shaped gaps open in sequence, each wide enough to drop a person into a lower chute.
• Old carved channels in the floor still carry white-orange light.
• Bhaalite knife glyphs have been cut across those channels, turning parts of the floor into false safe spots.

Primary challenge: timing movement across the gaps without trusting the wrong markings.

Good checks:

Failure on this ring should feel sharp and immediate. A character may scrape across the lip, lose a weapon, or end hanging by one arm over the chute.

Ring Three: The Breath Ring

The third ring does not turn as fast, but it is cut with vents that release heat in circular bursts. This is where staying still becomes the real threat.

Description for the DM:

• The floor is etched with concentric channels that glow a dull orange before each burst.
• The air here tastes metallic and dry, as if the party has stepped inside a kiln.
• Narrow standing stones rise from the ring at irregular intervals. The old rite likely used them as stations of vigil.
• The Bhaalites chained wrists and throats to these stones, then cut drains beneath them.

Primary challenge: keeping ahead of the heat and recognizing which standing stones can block the blast.

Good checks:

Failure on this ring should cost heat and panic. Clothing smolders. Hair singes. Someone may drop prone and need help moving again.

Ring Four: The Surrender Gate

The innermost ring is the smallest and most corrupted. It no longer tests balance alone. It tries to deliver bodies inward.

Description for the DM:

• The floor slopes gently toward a narrow central opening.
• Iron staples and restraint hooks have been driven into the original ritual grooves.
• Old script around the edge speaks of passage through living flame.
• Newer scratched prayers speak of giving oneself cleanly to the center.

Primary challenge: resisting the inward pull and crossing the last turn without being forced into the chute that leads deeper into the shrine.

Good checks:

Failure on this ring should move the character physically toward the center. Even a small mistake feels like the architecture wants the fall.

Suggested Checks

Use these checks across the full sequence:

Let players propose other reasonable skills if the fiction supports them. The point is movement under pressure, not a locked skill list.

Failure Costs

Each failure should have a visible cost. Pick one that fits the ring the party is crossing:

• 5 (1d10) fire damage from a vent burst
• a 10-foot slide toward a lower level
• separation from the party by one rotating band
• dropped gear that lands on the far side of a seam
• a character left hanging from a ledge and needing immediate help

If you want more tension, have the third failure place one character on a lower ledge just as the enemies in 2.3 arrive.

Pacing Guidance

Keep the challenge moving. Ask each player what they do as the next ring shifts into place.

Describe the warning signs before each hazard triggers. Glowing channels, grinding stone, sudden heat, and falling grit all give the party something to react to.

Reward teamwork. A strong rescue or clever use of rope, pitons, or magic should count as a success if it gets the party across in a believable way.

Make the old and new layers visible in every ring. The original site used fire with discipline. The Bhaalites changed that discipline into coercion.

On success, the party reaches the end of the approach in good order and finds a short moment to regroup. On failure, they arrive split, singed, and under immediate attack.

Estimated Duration: 45-60 minutes.

This level reveals the shrine at full scale. Here the party sees labor, ritual, and murder piled on top of each other.

Story Objectives

• Deliver a full tactical fight with vertical pressure.
• Show the shrine as a working site, more than a chapel.
• Reveal the philosophy of obsession that feeds the ring.
• Prepare the party for the final rite below.

4.1 Furnace Gallery

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The passage opens into a vast chamber built around a shaft of rising heat.

To the left, black walkways cling to the wall above a red-lit drop, their undersides webbed with chains, pulleys, and iron baskets. Ahead, a broad ring platform circles the shaft, carved with old flame lines that glow dull orange under soot and grime. To the right, the Bhaalites stamped their own meaning onto the place. A murder altar of dark veined stone juts from the wall beside three narrow drains. Above it hang hooks, masks, and iron cages sized for kneeling bodies, all bolted into columns far older and finer than the cruelty fastened to them.

The air tastes of cinders and old copper. Every sound comes back with heat in it.

Features

Walkways are 5 feet wide in most places.

The central shaft drops 30 feet to a lower ring of broken stone and active vents.

Chains can be climbed with a DC 10 Strength (Athletics) check.

A creature shoved from a walkway takes 10 (3d6) bludgeoning damage from the fall plus any hazard below.

4.2 Encounter: Shrine Guardians

Use one of the following encounter groups:

• 2 azers and 2 cult fanatics
• 1 azer, 1 berserker reskinned as a fire-marked executioner, and 2 cultists
• 2 cult fanatics and 4 cultists for a more mortal shrine presence

Enemy Tactics

Azers hold chokepoints and use their bodies to block movement on narrow walks.

Cult fanatics use command or hold person on targets near edges.

Fanatics focus on anyone carrying the ward charm from Part 1.

Shrine defenders fight to drive intruders down the shaft or onto the murder altar platform.

If forced off the central ring, they retreat toward the final stair rather than die in place.

Environmental Hazards

On initiative count 20, choose or roll one:

1. Vent Burst. One 10-foot square on a lower ring erupts. Creatures there make a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or take 7 (2d6) fire damage.

2. Chain Swing. A loosened chain lashes across a walkway. Creatures on that walkway make a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or fall prone.

3. Heat Surge. The whole chamber flashes hot. Every creature not behind cover makes a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or has disadvantage on its next attack roll.

4.3 The Murder Archive

After the fight, the party can search side cells, altar drawers, or scratched wall panels.

They find proof of the shrine's layered purpose:

• Older carved lines describe ordeal, endurance, confession, and return through flame.
• Later Bhaalite notes praise "the clean gift of chosen death" and "the ring that takes desire and leaves obedience."
• A surviving journal page says the priest under the Friendly Arm used the gate above to bring victims down unseen.
• A final set of newer notes belongs to Seraphel Vane, who writes of grief, surrender, and a belief that the ring can reunite the lost if enough is offered to it.

4.4 Descent to the Heart

The final stair spirals down inside the heat shaft. Set the tone before Part 4.

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The stair hugs the inner wall of the shaft in a tight spiral.

To the left, the drop glows with rising light and drifting ash that never reaches the ground. Ahead, the stone steps bear older smooth wear under fresher gouges from boots, knees, and dragged chains. To the right, the wall carries two kinds of marks at once. The first are old and careful, rings within rings, cut to guide the eye inward. The second are later, jagged prayers scratched by hands that wanted pain to mean devotion.

At the bottom, the fire hums like a living throat.

Estimated Duration: 45-60 minutes.

This chamber must show the shrine's full corruption. The party confronts both the old rite and the Bhaalite lie built over it.

Story Objectives

Reveal the corrupted meaning of the fire-ring.

Give Seraphel Vane room to speak before the fight.

Force the party to manage temptation, forced movement, and ritual hazards.

End the breach to the Friendly Arm.

5.1 The Heart Chamber

Read AloudCopy

The final chamber is perfect in shape and ruined in purpose.

To the left, an older ring of polished black stone sits unbroken, its carved channels filled with white-gold fire that rises upward in narrow ribbons. Ahead, the chamber floor descends in three circular steps to a central pit where a suspended iron ring hangs over a column of flame. The iron came later. It is ugly work, studded with hooks, blades, and chains that drip old soot and older blood. To the right, six kneeling stones face the fire. Each one was once a place of vigil. Each one now bears wrist-rings and drain cuts hacked into its sides. Three of those kneeling stones are already occupied by the disappeared: bound, gagged, smoke-eyed, and shaking, each marked for sacrifice but still alive.

The air smells clean at first breath, like a forge at dawn. Then the copper smell beneath it arrives. You hear a low voice speaking to the fire and, as you enter, you hear:

“MAELIN!”

The Rite at a Glance

Seraphel is in the last stage of a ritual he believes will bring his wife back from death.

The old rite used this chamber as a passage through sacred fire. Petitioners would descend, kneel on the outer stones, cross the marked rings in order, and stand before the central flame to be judged, purified, or changed. The Bhaalites twisted that structure into a murder engine. They kept the rings, the stations, and the living fire, then added shackles, drains, and the iron suspension frame above the pit.

Seraphel has combined both traditions into one blasphemous act. In his mind, love justifies what murder makes possible.

The rite has three parts:

Name the lost. Seraphel speaks Maelin's name into the fire and binds her memory to the hanging iron ring.

Claim the faltering. Any character who failed one or more obstacle checks in the approach or lower shrine arrives spiritually marked by the chamber. At the start of the final combat, Seraphel's rite seizes one such marked character per open kneeling stone and forces them to begin bound and kneeling there instead of in their chosen space.

A bound character can escape with an action and a successful DC 13 Strength (Athletics) or Dexterity (Acrobatics) check, or if another creature uses an action to cut or break the bindings.

Feed the center. Blood shed on the marked rings is drawn through the old channels and down into the pit.

Call the return. At the last moment, enough death gathered in the chamber is meant to force the fire to shape a body for the one called back.

Seraphel has already completed the first part. The second is underway when the party arrives. He means for the party to complete the third.

Why He Lured the Party Here

Seraphel did not open the gate at random. He wanted capable intruders, not sleepers and kitchen staff.

He studied old records from the priest beneath the Friendly Arm and learned that the gate answered strength, heat, and disturbance. He knew the inn had recently sheltered people who had passed through another death-marked site in the Cloakwood. He expected such survivors to react fast, descend, and come through the breach instead of fleeing the inn.

In Seraphel's doctrine, ordinary victims do not provide enough force for the return he wants. He believes the ring must be fed by lives tempered through danger, choice, and struggle. The party are not accidents in his eyes. They are the offering he has been waiting for.

5.2 Seraphel Vane

Seraphel Vane is the last active heir of the shrine's recent cult, though "heir" fits better than "priest." He found the place through records left by the dead Bhaalite master under the Friendly Arm. Years ago his wife, Maelin Vane, was murdered on the Coast Way by brigands who left her in a ditch and him alive with that failure. He found in this shrine a lie strong enough to live inside. The ring promised ordeal, return, and cleansing. Bhaalite doctrine gave that promise teeth. Seraphel now believes enough chosen death gathered in the chamber can bring Maelin back through fire.

Read AloudCopy

A thin man in ash-gray robes stands on the middle ring with one hand resting on the hanging iron circle. Fire has marked him. The skin along his arms shines like old scar tissue, and his shaved scalp bears a lattice of pale burns that frame a face gone gentle in all the wrong ways.

He turns at your approach with calm eyes and an expression closer to relief than anger.

"You came through alive," he says. "Good. It still chooses the strong first. Maelin deserves more than weak blood."

5.3 Talking Before Steel

Give the party a short chance to speak. Good angles include:

Exposing the difference between the old rite and Bhaalite murder

Offering proof that the ring is consuming him, not restoring Maelin

Using Bentley's ward charm as evidence of another path

Turning his grief against the cult that used it

Forcing him to say what sort of return he is really asking for

What Seraphel Says if the Party Listens

Use or adapt the following lines:

"She died in mud, alone, with wagon ruts full of rain beside her. I will not leave her there."

"This place was built to carry the worthy through fire. The Bhaalites merely understood what price truth asks."

"You are here because you are strong enough to finish what lesser souls could not."

"I do not need your consent. I only hoped one of you might understand love well enough to kneel."

If the party succeeds on two strong social checks before one failure, Seraphel hesitates and the rite weakens.

Suggested checks:

• DC 14 Charisma (Persuasion): Separate grief from sacrifice.

• DC 14 Intelligence (Religion): Identify the rite as corrupted from its original purpose.

• DC 13 Wisdom (Insight): Target his need, guilt, or fear with the right words.

On success, Seraphel loses access to one legendary effect of the chamber listed below, or starts the fight at half hit points if you want a lighter climax.

5.4 Final Encounter

Use Seraphel Vane with 2 cult fanatics or 4 cultists, or pair him with 1 flameskull reskinned as a bound ring-spirit for a harder group.

Chamber Hazards

The room itself fights for Seraphel.

Running the Ritual During Combat

The fight should feel like the ritual is still happening, not paused for initiative.

Seraphel begins on the middle ring with blood already drying in the channels.
Three recently disappeared victims begin the encounter bound and kneeling on separate stones.

Any character claimed by the chamber because of an earlier obstacle failure also begins the fight bound and kneeling on an open stone.

Any unoccupied kneeling stone still bears fresh bindings cut loose just before the party arrived, showing he prepared more stations than he had bodies to fill.

At the end of each round that at least one creature takes damage from a ring hazard, the hanging iron circle glows brighter and a vague human outline appears in the fire below for an instant.

If a creature is reduced to 0 hit points on a marked ring, Seraphel gains 10 temporary hit points and immediately triggers a Ring Pulse.

Describe the chamber responding to spilled blood, spoken names, and panic. Seraphel should call Maelin's name more than once during the fight. He is trying to finish a resurrection through murder, not merely defend himself.

Seraphel's Tactics

He starts with words, then moves to forced movement and fire.

He targets isolated characters with commands to kneel, come closer, or drop weapons.

He uses cult allies to pin targets on lit rings.

If the party carries the ward charm, he focuses on that character at once.

If defeat looks certain, he tries to throw himself into the pit to complete the rite through his own death.

5.5 Ending the Rite

The party can win by reducing Seraphel to 0 hit points, throwing the ward charm into the suspended iron ring and succeeding on a DC 14 Intelligence (Arcana or Religion) check, or shattering the hanging ring with 20 points of damage dealt in a single round.

If the DM wants a stronger ritual focus, require one extra step before the rite fully breaks:

A character on one of the kneeling stones can use an action to speak Maelin's name aloud and reject the chamber's claim on it. A successful DC 13 Charisma check of any kind that fits the moment weakens the fire and gives the next attempt to end the rite advantage.

When the rite ends, read the following:

Read AloudCopy

The fire does not explode. It recoils.

White-gold lines race backward through the old channels. Red light tears free from the ironwork and dies in the air. The hanging ring shrieks once, folds inward like soft metal in a furnace, and drops into the pit without a splash or a sound.

Then the chamber takes one long breath and goes dark enough to show the stars of old soot on the ceiling.

Treasure

If the party searches the area, they find:

Silver funeral masks stacked in a side alcove, valuable but eerie worth 150 gp.

A lockbox of old trade bars and stamped temple silver hidden behind a loose altar stone worth 275gp.

Fire-blackened jewelry taken from victims and never melted down worth 50gp.

A Bhaalite officiant’s chain of office made of dark gold and obsidian.

Old censers, incense braziers, and ritual vessels worth money to collectors or temples that want them destroyed worth 150gp

Magic Items

1 potion of fire resistance

A small pouch of dust of disappearance reflavored as ash that hides the wearer in drifting soot for a moment

Ledger of the Condemned

Estimated Duration: 10-15 minutes.

The return to the Friendly Arm should feel like survival, cost, and uneasy truth.

Read AloudCopy

You come back to the Friendly Arm through smoke, broken stone, and the stink of soaked ash.

To the left, the kitchen stands open to the dawn through a split floor and shattered pantry wall. Ahead, inn servants and temple acolytes carry buckets, blankets, and ledgers with the grim focus of people who know panic wastes time. To the right, the Temple of Wisdom has become a place for the burned, the shaken, and those who need to sit still long enough to believe the walls still stand.

Bentley looks older in the morning light. Gellana looks tired in the way of someone who will not rest for hours yet.

6.1 Aftermath

The Friendly Arm survives.

The kitchen is badly damaged and the lower cellar must be rebuilt.

Smoke stains climb the keep walls for months.

Rumors about the gate under the inn spread farther than Bentley likes.

Bentley accepts that one secret has passed beyond silence.

6.2 Bentley in the Aftermath

Bentley thanks the party in direct terms. He does not make a speech.

Possible lines:

• "You saved my inn."
• "You saved more than my inn."
• "I should have dug deeper years ago."

If the party presses him, he admits he chose peace over full excavation and trusted seals to hold.

Gellana in the Aftermath

Gellana organizes triage, directs repairs, and reworks the surviving wards at once.

Possible lines:

• "The walls held. That matters."
• "Now we mend what truth burned through."
• "Bentley kept people safe. That was not nothing. It just was not enough."

6.3 Quentin Arrives

Quentin Lorekeeper reaches the Friendly Arm after the breach has closed. He should arrive looking composed enough to be irritating and worried enough to matter.

Read the following:

Near full morning, a familiar figure strides through the gate with dust on his cuffs, metallic bronze hair in revolt, and the expression of a man who dislikes arriving at the exact moment his fears become facts.

Quentin stops at the edge of the ruined kitchen, takes in the cracked floor, the smoke, the exhausted faces, and the smell of quenched fire.

"I knew this place sat on an old answer," he says quietly. "I did not know it would answer tonight."

Roleplaying Quentin Lorekeeper

Quentin remains eccentric, quick-minded, and careful with his own risk.

He speaks fast when ideas outrun restraint.

He uses wit to mask guilt.

He shares enough truth to keep the party useful, not enough to satisfy them.

He worries about patterns in ancient sites and pays other people to stand where those patterns might strike.

What Quentin Admits

He suspected the clocktower disturbance might wake another linked site.

He paid for the party's rooms to place capable people at the Friendly Arm.

He did not know the breach would come that night.

He has been tracking hidden places where older ritual works were repurposed by later, crueler hands.

Rewards

Quentin pays the party for stopping the breach. Bentley adds free room and board for as long as repairs take or the party wishes to stay.

Suggested reward:

Standard treasure for a Tier 1 four-hour adventure

Story Award: Ash Below the Arm

Story Award: Ash Below the Arm

The party has seen one of the Friendly Arm's hidden gates open and close. Bentley, Gellana, and Quentin treat them as trusted witnesses to a truth few people know. They gain advantage on Charisma checks made to secure aid, shelter, or honest answers from Friendly Arm staff in later modules.

Appendix 1: NPC Information

Bentley Mirrorshade

Bentley Mirrorshade is the quick-eyed innkeeper of the Friendly Arm and one of the adventurers who reclaimed it from a Bhaalite past.

Appearance: Bentley is a curly-haired gnome with a broad nose, watchful eyes, and the brisk movement of a man who hates wasted steps. He dresses plainly for work, keeps clean cuffs longer than seems possible in an inn, and carries himself with the confidence of someone who has won fights in stranger rooms than this one.

Roleplaying Bentley: Bentley is dry, kind in practical ways, and always alert. He prefers competence over drama. He notices trouble in its first draft. He does not frighten easily, though he does dislike being forced to share old failures.

Motivations: Keep the Friendly Arm safe, preserve its peace, protect Gellana and the staff, and stop old buried evils from reclaiming ground under his roof.

What He Will Do: Organize evacuations, hand the party the truth once secrecy loses value, and fight to save guests over property.

What He Will Not Do: Abandon the inn, lie once lives depend on the truth, or let shame stop him from asking for help.

Gellana Mirrorshade

Gellana Mirrorshade is the observant priestess of Garl Glittergold who runs the Temple of Wisdom and acts as the deeper mind behind the Friendly Arm's security.

Appearance: Gellana wears a gem-set circlet, practical robes, and a calm expression that can pass for softness until work begins. Her hands often smell of lamp oil, clean water, herbs, or polished stone from the temple.

Roleplaying Gellana: Gellana is composed, direct, and patient. She thinks in terms of people, systems, and what the next failure might cost. She does not waste comfort, though she gives it when it helps.

Motivations: Protect the Friendly Arm, preserve the Temple of Wisdom, keep Bentley honest, and make certain that hidden dangers are contained before they reach innocents.

What She Will Do: Stabilize the wounded, reinforce wards, tell the party what they need, and take command when panic spreads.

What She Will Not Do: Pretend a broken seal is a small matter, indulge self-pity, or let Bentley take the full burden of blame alone.

Quentin Lorekeeper

Quentin Lorekeeper is an eccentric scholar with a sharp eye for old mechanisms, dangerous sites, and other people doing the hard part first.

Appearance: Quentin, in his human guise, looks like a young scholar with metallic bronze hair that refuses discipline, bright eyes, fine clothes chosen in haste, and a satchel full of notes he should not trust to weather or bandits.

Roleplaying Quentin: Quentin speaks quickly, thinks faster, and treats danger like a problem to be framed before it is felt. He can sound amused, guilty, and deeply interested in the same breath. He hides his full nature and keeps his own body out of immediate risk when he can.

Motivations: Track dangerous traces of old magic, recover knowledge before fools or killers do, and place capable agents where trouble is about to crest.

What He Will Do: Pay the party, reward initiative, follow patterns across linked sites, and admit partial guilt once events prove him right for the wrong reasons.

What He Will Not Do: Reveal his true nature, stand in the first rank of a fight he can delegate, or explain every suspicion before he has proof.

Seraphel Vane

Seraphel Vane is a grief-struck cult heir who mistook an old fire rite for a promise that loss can be made holy through chosen death.

Appearance: Seraphel is a lean human in soot-dark robes marked by careful mending and careless burns. Old scar tissue shines across his forearms, scalp, and collarbone. His face is gentle in repose and frightening in conviction.

Roleplaying Seraphel: Seraphel speaks softly and with perfect certainty. He treats sacrifice as intimacy and pain as honesty. He is most dangerous when calm.

Motivations: Complete the rite, justify his grief, and transform the Friendly Arm from sealed refuge into acknowledged wound.

What He Will Do: Talk first, test the party's weakness, command cult servants with quiet authority, and offer the fire as revelation.

What He Will Not Do: Admit he was used by Bhaalite doctrine, accept the ring as corrupted, or leave the chamber alive if he can die into the rite instead.

Appendix 2: Stat Blocks

Seraphel Vane

Medium humanoid, lawful evil

Armor Class 16 (ash-hardened robes)
Hit Points 135 (18d8 + 54)
Speed 30 ft.

STR10 (+0)

DEX14 (+2)

CON16 (+3)

INT14 (+2)

WIS18 (+4)

CHA12 (+1)

Saving Throws Dex +1, Con +6, Int +2, Wis +7, Cha +1
Skills Deception +5, Insight +4, Religion +3
Damage Resistances fire
Senses passive Perception 12
Languages Common
Challenge 8 (3,900 XP)

Abilities

Ring-Fed Conviction. If Seraphel starts his turn within 20 feet of an active ritual ring, he gains 5 temporary hit points.

Quiet Authority. Allied cultists within 30 feet of Seraphel have advantage on saving throws against being frightened.

Death for Meaning. When Seraphel is reduced to 0 hit points, he can make one final movement up to his speed toward the central pit. If he reaches it, the chamber triggers one last Ring Pulse before the rite ends.

Actions

Multiattack. The cultist makes three attacks, using Elemental Flail or Elemental Claw in any combination.

Elemental Flail. Melee Attack Roll: +7, reach 5 ft. Hit: 25 (6d6 + 4) damage of a type chosen by the cultist: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder.

Elemental Claw. Ranged Attack Roll: +7, range 120 ft. Hit: 22 (4d10) damage of a type chosen by the cultist: Acid, Cold, Fire, Lightning, or Thunder. If the target is a Medium or smaller creature, the cultist moves the target up to 10 feet straight toward or away from itself.

Spellcasting. The cultist casts one of the following spells, using Wisdom as the spellcasting ability (spell save DC 15): At Will: Elementalism, Mage Hand.

Commanding Flame. Ranged Spell Attack: +5 to hit, range 60 ft., one target. Hit: 10 (2d8 + 1) fire damage. If the target is standing on a ring line or within 10 feet of a hazard, it must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or use its reaction to move up to 10 feet in a direction Seraphel chooses.

Voice of Surrender (Recharge 5–6). Seraphel speaks a calm command to each creature of his choice within 20 feet that can hear him. Each target must succeed on a DC 13 Wisdom saving throw or be charmed by Seraphel until the end of its next turn. A charmed creature has its speed reduced to 0 and cannot take reactions.

Reactions

Shared Pain. When Seraphel takes damage from a creature within 30 feet, one allied cultist within 30 feet can move up to its speed toward that creature.

Ledger of the Condemned