B19. Bavlorna’s Hoard
The door to this room is locked, and Bavlorna has the key on her person. The characters might have a key as well, if they acquired one from the awakened tree on Telemy Hill or Bavlorna. As an action, a character using thieves’ tools can try to pick the door’s lock, doing so with a successful DC 20 Dexterity check. Alternatively, a character can use an action to try to break down the door, doing so with a successful DC 17 Strength (Athletics) check.
This musty room looks like a miser’s attic. Lying in tall heaps are discarded blankets, quilts, cushions, and clothing of all shapes and sizes, not to mention musical instruments, toys, dolls, jewelry boxes, flower vases, child-sized caskets, and broken furniture.
Among the heaps of junk are a few oddities, including a stag’s skull hanging on one wall, a white porcelain jar with chicken legs standing on a table, a fancy helmet placed on the faceless head of a wooden mannequin, and a five-foot-long bronze statue of a giant frog squatting in a corner, its mouth agape and filled with impenetrable darkness. A weak croaking sound calls your attention to a tiny, shriveled figure lying on the floor. It lets out one final gasp before dying.
The tiny figure is one of Bavlorna’s lornlings. It was killed by the shadow of the darkling elder in area B10. The shadow has detached from the darkling and roams freely. If the characters arrive here while Bavlorna is entertaining the darkling elder, they interrupt a heist being carried out by the shadow:
A shape moves in the gloom—a dark humanoid figure lurking among the junk. It clutches a large spool of thread in one hand as it heads for the door.
The shadow is a Fey, not an Undead. It tries to slip past the characters into area B18, using its Amorphous trait to slip underneath the door if a character closes it. It then moves onto the balcony in that area and jumps in the lake, where it waits to rejoin the darkling elder. The shadow doesn’t attack, and it drops the spool of thread if it can’t escape with it. The spool, unlike the shadow, is too wide to fit under the door.
Bavlorna’s sister, Endelyn Moongrave, covets the spool of thread and has sent Charm to steal it. The thread is the color of frustration and self-doubt, as perceived by the beholder (meaning that each creature sees the thread’s color as the hue it associates most with such emotions), and it confers these feelings on anyone who wears garments sewn with it. Even touching the thread evokes these negative emotions.
Junk. Bavlorna’s “treasure hoard” consists of worthless junk and the following special objects:
A stag’s skull hangs on a wall hook 5 feet above the floor. This skull is Clapperclaw’s missing head (see area D5 for details).
A porcelain jar made of varnished white clay rests on a wooden table. The jar has legs that have been painted to look like the legs of a chicken. Inside the jar are two broken pieces of a wishbone. If the characters touch the two pieces together, they hear Bavlorna’s voice in their heads say, “Skabatha forgets the first creature she sees when she wakes up, although her memory of it returns each night when she sleeps. A creature forgotten by Skabatha in this manner is invisible to her.”
A wooden mannequin wears a helm of telepathy. If the helm is removed from the mannequin, the mannequin animates and tries to get the helm back by attacking whoever has it. The mannequin uses the animated armor stat block but has AC 15. If it reacquires the helm, the mannequin dons the helm and reverts to its inanimate state until the helm is removed again. Placing a different piece of headgear on its bare head has the effect of rendering the mannequin inanimate permanently.
Bronze Frog Statue. Magical darkness fills the inside of this statue’s gaping mouth, allowing no light to enter. The mouth leads to an extradimensional space. If a character reaches into the statue’s mouth, read the following boxed text, addressing that character’s player:
Your limb disappears into the darkness, and it feels as though your fingers were pushing through cool mud with eels swimming through it.
To grab hold of something and pull it from the statue’s mouth, a character must say the name of what they desire. If the desired thing is in the extradimensional space, it materializes in the character’s hand. If you’re using the “Lost Things” adventure hook and Bavlorna has turned one or more of the characters’ long-lost possessions into magic items, these items can be retrieved from the statue’s extradimensional space.
The bronze frog statue weighs 750 pounds and is a Medium object with AC 19, 32 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. If the statue is destroyed, the extradimensional space collapses, and everything once contained there becomes lost in the Astral Plane.
Development. If the characters follow Charm’s shadow on its escape attempt, it leads them to the stairs under Bavlorna’s cottage, where it waits briefly. When Charm leaves Bavlorna’s cottage, the darkling elder and her shadow make a beeline to their balloon (area D10) and depart Downfall with all haste, whether the shadow’s heist succeeded or not.
If Charm escapes with the spool of thread, the characters can use it as an enticement in their negotiations with Bavlorna, offering to retrieve it and trade it to her for something in return.
If the characters thwart Charm’s shadow and prevent the darkling elder’s escape, Bavlorna attacks the darkling elder and tries to swallow her. Then, adhering to the rule of reciprocity (see “Rules of Conduct” earlier in the chapter), Bavlorna agrees to negotiate with the characters even if they have not yet performed any chores for her.