B12. Meat Locker
The door to this room is closed and cold to the touch.
This room is freezing. Chunks of frozen meat dangle from the ceiling on hooks and chains. Along the walls, more meat is stacked in piles on metal racks.
A small, frost-covered wooden coffer sits in the middle of the floor. The cold seems to be radiating from it.
The cold isn’t likely to harm the characters unless they spend an hour or more in the room, in which case the rules for extreme cold apply.
The wooden coffer is frozen shut but can be pried open with a successful DC 10 Strength (Athletics) check. This check is made with advantage if a crowbar or similar tool is used. The coffer contains the still-beating heart of an elf named Octavian Meliamne (see area D14). If the heart is removed from the coffer or the room, the spell that cools the room is broken, and everything in the room begins to thaw as the room slowly warms up.
B13. Kitchen
Any character who listens at one of the doors hears a loud ruckus coming from inside.
In this gore-spattered kitchen, a stout figure with a stained apron, iron boots, a crimson cap, and a bloody meat cleaver chases a pair of vultures around a butcher’s block while the squawking birds fight over a scrap of meat.
The butcher’s block is a slab of blood-encrusted wood that occupies the middle of the kitchen. Dirty cutlery and mismatched plates and pots balance in precarious piles in and around a wooden wash basin.
The small figure is a female redcap named Bloody Toes. She was carving up some meat when two vultures flew in through the door to the balcony (area B14). The characters’ presence doesn’t alarm or bother her. In fact, she asks the characters for help in getting rid of the vultures.
Bloody Toes serves Bavlorna as a chef and butcher. The hag has forbidden the redcap from attacking or murdering guests, so Bloody Toes fights only in self-defense. The redcap despises everyone and everything, but she hates Bavlorna most of all. If the characters claim to be at odds with Bavlorna, the redcap reveals that Bavlorna has a weakness: she is allergic to seeing anyone run widdershins (in tight counterclockwise circles) near her. Such a sight causes the hag to sneeze uncontrollably.
B14. Cages
If the characters are offered to Bavlorna as prisoners, they are locked up here.
Three large iron cages hang from wooden beams that extend out from this balcony over the lake below. Trapped inside one of the cages is a smiling satyr. “Hello there!” he says.
These iron cages are used to store soon-to-be-butchered meat. Each cage can hold up to two Medium creatures, and each beam can be hoisted up over the balcony using a crank that is attached to the railing. A character can use an action to try to bend the bars of a cage, doing so with a successful DC 25 Strength (Athletics) check, or use thieves’ tools to try to pick a cage’s lock, doing so with a successful DC 15 Dexterity check.
The satyr, Vansel, is not wearing any clothes. Harengon brigands stole his clothes while he was bathing. When he chased them, he ended up trapped in a net and was brought to Bavlorna. He’s in good spirits despite his current situation, believing everything will work out and he’ll have quite a story to tell afterward. If the characters release him, he searches the kitchen (area B13) for something to wear and finds a grease-stained tablecloth he can use as a robe. He also finds a bottle of wine and guzzles it down. Additional roleplaying notes can be found in the bio for Vansel.
Treasure. Vansel stays close to his rescuers until he’s clear of Bavlorna’s cottage, at which point he thanks the characters and bids them adieu. Then, suddenly remembering the rule of reciprocity (see “Rules of Conduct” earlier in the chapter), he picks up a stick, whispers to it, and hands it to one of the characters. If a character accepts the gift, a tiny flower blooms at one end of the stick. Until this flower wilts and falls off 24 hours later, the stick has the properties of a stone of good luck that doesn’t require attunement.
B15. Pantry
This room contains dozens of pickling jars on wooden racks. Most of the jars are filled with pig snouts, toads, small birds, onions, mushrooms, and other cooking ingredients. One of the jars contains a campestri that bursts into song if released.
B16. Dining Room
This room has two exits. Above each door, mounted on a wooden plaque, is a severed goblin head with its mouth agape. Other furnishings include a sideboard, two cupboards with doors made of wood-framed glass, and a large banquet table covered with plates of half-eaten food and a swarm of feasting flies. A chandelier hangs above the table, its tallow candles filling the room with dim, flickering light. Six mismatched chairs flank the table—three chairs per side.
Two of Bavlorna’s lornlings (use the quickling stat block) hide in the mouths of the severed goblin heads mounted above the doors. Any character who peers into one of these gaping mouths spots the lornling hidden in it. The lornling stares back at the character but doesn’t attack.
These lornlings know that Bavlorna has a magic mirror (in area B1) that can transport creatures to the Witchlight Carnival, and they trade this information in exchange for their lives. Each of them has overheard Bavlorna speak the mirror’s command word (“bandersnatch”), but they can’t remember or pronounce the word accurately. Instead, they say phrases such as, “blunder scratch,” “bangle stash,” “banter catch,” “bandy crasher,” “bumble snatch,” and “babble scrabble.”
B17. Hooch Distillery
A contraption made of entangled copper tubes connects to a pot-bellied boiler and a dozen cylindrical containers, which in turn sprout even more tubes that feed into buckets. Barrels are clustered in the southeast corner, and a worktable in one corner of the room has bits of copper and metalworking tools strewn across it. Light filters in through the green, diamond-shaped panes of glass set into the window.
Bavlorna distills her supply of mushroom-based alcohol here. The complex network of copper tubes takes up much of the room. Six buckets collect the stinking alcohol. The barrels are filled with this homemade brew, and each one weighs 250 pounds.
The still’s structural integrity is on the brink of failure. Any creature that disturbs the distillery must succeed on a DC 12 Dexterity saving throw or knock something loose or out of alignment. On a failed save, roll a d8. On a 1, the still explodes, blowing out the glass window but leaving the barrels intact. When the explosion occurs, each creature in the room must make a DC 15 Dexterity saving throw, taking 10 (3d6) fire damage on a failed save, or half as much damage on a successful one.
B18. Bavlorna’s Bedroom
The stairs in area B10 lead up into this room.
A ball of light bobs above the rafters, casting shadows over this room, in which the owner’s messy habits are on full display. Rumpled and moldering rugs share floor space with food scraps, stacks of dirty dishes, and tipped-over clay pots whose plants have long since died.
A bed that occupies one corner of the room has a pile of straw in place of a mattress. In the opposite corner stands a squat chest of drawers with a watering can resting atop it. The only other furnishing of note is a stocky wooden chest with a sturdy iron padlock. It sits in another corner between two closed doors.
The ball of light floating near the 20-foot-high ceiling is a will-o’-wisp, which drifts down toward the characters if they move into the room. It attacks only if they try to remove the chest or any of its contents from the room without first opening the chest using the proper key (see “Thirsty Plants” and “Treasure” below). If reduced to 10 hit points or fewer, the will-o’-wisp turns invisible and tries to flee; if it escapes, it flies to Bavlorna and warns her about the intruders in her bedchamber.
Chest of Drawers. This chest contains folded dresses and other garments that Bavlorna wears occasionally. None of them were made for her, but she has adjusted them to fit her toadish form. All of the garments are discolored from age and neglect.
The watering can on the chest is rusty and contains a gallon of water.
East Door. This door leads to Bavlorna’s trove of greater goodies (area B19), where she keeps her most prized items.
South Door. This door leads to a small, empty balcony that looks out over Murky Lake (area D7).
Thirsty Plants. There are four dead plants in tipped-over pots. Each one is a twig blight with a speed of 0 feet because it is rooted to its pot. The twig blights are thirsty but unable to reach the watering can resting on the chest of drawers. If the characters help the twig blights by standing them upright and watering them, one of them pulls a black-enameled iron key out of the dirt in its pot and gives it to the characters. This key unlocks the wooden chest in this room (see “Treasure” below).
Treasure. The padlocked chest has clawed iron feet and the initials B.B. crudely carved into its lid. It takes 1 minute and a successful DC 15 Dexterity check using thieves’ tools to pick the padlock. On a check that fails by 5 or more, or if the lock is smashed off, the chest transforms into a Small animated object and attacks whoever tried to open it (see the animate objects spell for its statistics).
The chest contains the following items:
A 12-inch-tall marionette that Bavlorna stole from her sister, Endelyn. It has faces on opposite sides of its head. One face is a moon, and the other is a sun. As an art object, the marionette is worth 25 gp.
An unpunched ticket from the Witchlight Carnival. The ticket is signed by Isolde, the carnival’s original owner.
Three spell scrolls of identify tied together with a lute string.