The following locations are keyed to the map of Bavlorna’s cottage.
B1. Preservation Pool
This location is accessible through the cottage’s trapdoor entrance that leads up from Murky Lake.
A recessed pool lined with moldy clay tiles takes up most of this large square room. Stagnant water fills the depression to a depth of one foot. Rising from the pool’s center is the head of a stone well that gives off an unpleasant, pungent odor. In one corner of the pool stands a tall, dirty, freestanding mirror in an oval frame, and floating on the water is a large lily pad.
Creaky wooden floorboards are arranged in a ten-foot-wide raised walkway around the pool. This walkway is crowded with shelves, tables, and stools in all shapes and styles. Almost every available surface is littered with stacks of dirty plates, scraps of food, and old junk. Dressing dummies are pushed together in one corner, and a wooden staircase spirals up from another corner. Five closed doors lead from the room.
Dress Dummies. Seven humanoid-shaped dressing dummies stand in the corner—four of Medium size and three of Small size. Six of them are adorned with Bavlorna’s shoddy, home-stitched garments. The other one is bare except for an ugly, black pointed hat that is, in fact, a darkmantle. It attacks anyone other than Bavlorna who touches it. If it makes a successful melee attack against a creature that happens to be wearing a helm, a hat, or some other kind of headwear, the darkmantle grabs and removes the headwear and flees with it rather than dealing damage to the target or enveloping its head.
Magic Mirror. A detect magic spell reveals an aura of conjuration magic around the freestanding mirror, which acts as a portal. Touching the reflective surface of the mirror while speaking the command word, “bandersnatch,” causes the surface to become a swirling vortex of mist. A creature that steps into this vortex is instantly transported to the Hall of Illusions in the Witchlight Carnival (see chapter 1). In the Hall of Illusions, the portal resembles an oval doorway of swirling mist that remains active for 1 minute. While the portal is active, a creature in the Hall of Illusions can pass through it and reappear in front of the mirror or in the nearest unoccupied space. Once the portal closes, it can’t be reopened except by touching the mirror’s surface and speaking the password again.
Breaking the mirror renders it nonmagical and closes the portal instantly. The mirror is a Medium object with AC 13, 4 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage.
Pool. Stairs lead down into the pool from one corner of the surrounding walkway. Bavlorna tries to bathe in the pool once a day to keep her skin from drying out and cracking, but the well that supplies the water has stopped working. Characters who peer into the well can see that it is filled with calm water almost to the brim. Bavlorna doesn’t know it, but the cause of the faulty well is a 10-foot-high gelatinous cylinder (use the gelatinous cube stat block) that’s blocking the normal flow of water. The creature’s presence has also contaminated the water above it, rendering it mildly acidic—not enough to cause damage, but enough to make one’s skin tingle uncomfortably. A character who experiences this tingling can, with a successful DC 15 Intelligence (Nature) check, ascertain that something akin to a gelatinous cube has lodged itself in the well.
The gelatinous cylinder lurks 10 feet down inside the well and is invisible in the water. It attacks any creature and dissolves any organic material that comes in contact with it. If a creature lowers itself into the water, attacks the ooze from above, and then exits the well, the gelatinous cylinder squirms up the shaft in pursuit, emerging from the well and thus unplugging it. The cylinder is 10 feet high and 10 feet in diameter. When it is lured out of the well or killed, the flow of water resumes in a torrent, filling the pool to a depth of 3 feet in 1 minute.
Treasure. The lily pad floating on the water is a magic item called a bobbing lily pad. Bavlorna is attuned to it currently.
B2. Taxidermy Workshop
A horse’s head leers at you with glossy eyes, its lips drawn back from pointed yellow teeth. The head is affixed to a large, eight-limbed armature made of wicker and wire, situated so that it faces the doorway where you entered. Near it is a wooden crate.
Flies buzz about this disordered room, landing occasionally on animal carcasses that lie strewn in small piles. On a low table rests an assortment of tools—saws, knives, scrapers, a hand-cranked drill, sewing thread and needles, and awls—around several taxidermic subjects in various stages of completion. A shelf that looks on the verge of collapse leans against the wall between two windows and bears the weight of dozens of stuffed horrors. Each one is an artless combination of two or more animals.
This area is where Bavlorna stuffs dead creatures and stitches them together to create chimeric horrors.
Crate. Bavlorna’s name is scrawled on one side of the crate. Lifting the lid releases a harmless swarm of flies. The crate contains the carcass of a curled-up, eight-legged reptile with spikes running down its back. With a successful DC 15 Intelligence (Nature) check, a character can determine that it’s the carcass of a basilisk.
Worktable. Along with the tools and specimens, the table has a small box with drawers that contain glass eyes. One of the eyes is made of wood, and it belongs to Bavlorna’s sister, Skabatha Nightshade (see chapter 4).
B3. Fabric Storage Room
Scraps of cloth and bundles of yarn are piled throughout this small room.
This is Bavlorna’s fabric storage closet, where she takes lost and forgotten garments and cuts them into lengths of cloth from which she creates her own clothes. Characters who search the room find two 1-foot-tall pincushions sewn into humanoid shapes. One of the pincushions is mounted on a tiny wooden rocking horse; the other has a pair of wooden wings. The pincushions represent Bavlorna’s sisters, Skabatha and Endelyn.
B4. Rickety Stairs
A flight of stairs runs along the outside wall of the cottage, with wooden doors at the top and bottom of it. A rickety railing hugs the edge of the staircase, which looms above the foggy lake. A steady droning sound comes from a shadowed corner above the door at the top of the stairs.
This outdoor stairway connects area B1 on the first floor with area B13 on the second floor, but the steps are in bad shape. A character who examines the stairs and succeeds on a DC 10 Wisdom (Perception) check discovers that the second and third steps from the bottom are rotted and incapable of supporting much weight. If more than 40 pounds of weight is applied to either one, both steps give way. When that happens, any creature standing on them must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw. On a successful save, the creature stops short of falling through the gap. On a failed save, the creature plunges 35 feet into the 20-foot-deep lake surrounding the cottage, taking no damage. A character who falls into the lake while wearing heavy armor sinks to the bottom but can, on their turn, swim to the surface with a successful DC 10 Strength (Athletics) check.
Wasp Nest. A 7-foot-long, 5-foot-wide wasp nest clings to a shadowy corner above the door at the top of the stairs, outside area B13. The nest is a Medium object with AC 11, 12 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. It holds a swarm of insects (wasps) that is incapacitated and remains so until the nest is disturbed or damaged. Part of the nest overlaps the door, and opening the door disturbs the nest.
While the wasps are in the nest, any damage dealt to the nest applies to the swarm as well. Once it emerges from the nest, the swarm is hostile toward all other creatures on the stairs. The swarm pursues creatures that flee into the cottage, but not creatures that jump or fall into the lake.
B5. Trove of Lesser Goodies
The door to this room creaks loudly when opened.
A large cupboard stands alone in this dark room. Fine scrollwork frames the cupboard’s two doors, which are bridged by a circular panel of dark wood. The panel is inlaid with a silver hourglass sigil.
If Sir Talavar the faerie dragon was recaptured and brought here, he remains trapped in his cage, which hangs from a hook protruding from a wall next to the cupboard.
The cupboard is locked but can be unlocked by rotating the circular panel so that the hourglass sigil is turned upside down. Characters who examine the sigil can ascertain, with a successful DC 10 Intelligence (Investigation) check, that it can be manipulated safely.
The inside of the cupboard is divided into rows of small compartments, each one stuffed with pouches or other tiny containers. One of the containers is a teacup-sized ceramic cauldron, inside which is a scrap of paper with the word “spittlespew” written on it in Common. (This is the password to open the cauldron in area D18.)
Bavlorna keeps various mementos and trinkets in the cupboard, including:
Loose buttons of various shapes, colors, and materials
Stray cutlery (all from different sets)
Unopened love letters (not written or addressed to Bavlorna, but to long-dead people with whom Bavlorna has had dealings)
Old, frayed, coiled-up belts
Pressed flowers and loose dried petals
A horseshoe
Feathers from various birds
A chipped teacup