L4. Workshop
The doors to areas L3 and L7 are closed but not locked. The door to area L5 is locked, and Granny Nightshade has the only key (see “Skabatha’s Ring of Keys” earlier in the chapter).
Flickering lanterns illuminate a cluttered workshop filled with soft, ambient music produced by bells and chimes. Parts of toys are heaped on the tables—leering doll’s heads, half-built rocking horses, unpainted wooden balls, and the stuffed limbs of soft toys. A stove at the back of the room holds a saucepan of smelting metal. Three doors exit the workshop, and two storefront windows overlook the market outside.
The ambient music is a permanent magical effect that can’t be heard outside the workshop. If the characters enter quietly, add:
Three young children are gathered around a wooden worktable. The eldest, a drow boy, prances on the tabletop with a bar of soap in one hand, while a halfling girl and a human girl giggle at his audacity.
Granny Nightshade makes captured children craft nightmarish toys in this workshop. Three children are present when the characters arrive: Naal (an 11-year-old male drow), Sung (a 9-year-old female human), and Philomena (an 8-year-old female lightfoot halfling). They’ve been the hag’s prisoners for longer than any of them can remember and are wary of grown-ups. If the characters barge into the room, Philomena panics and runs to get help from the tin soldiers in area L7. All three children want to escape the hag’s clutches, although Philomena weeps if she’s forced to leave without her beloved piglet, Oink, who is kept in the pigpen (area L5).
Naal recently stole the kitchen key from Pincushion (see area L9) and took an impression of it using a bar of soap before fastening the key back onto Pincushion’s belt. When the characters arrive, Naal is recounting his heroic tale to the two girls. He wants to create a copy of the key and then sneak into the kitchen to steal milk. Naal gives characters the bar of soap if they give him something in return, such as fresh milk or some other tasty treat. (“It’s the rule of recip— … recip— … give-and-get,” he says.)
Boggles. Three boggles lurk in the shadows, intending to play pranks on the visitors. Characters who spend a minute or so inside the workshop notice unsettling changes; dolls’ heads turn to face them when they’re not looking, balls bounce suddenly out of dark corners, or molten tin from the smelting pot splashes on the floor nearby. A character can use an action to try to detect hidden creatures, spotting all three boggles with a successful DC 16 Wisdom (Perception) check. If they are spotted, the boggles flee to the box in area L7 and turn its crank, hoping Cradlefall will pop out of the box and defend them. The boggles avoid combat themselves.
If Squirt is with the party, it encourages the characters to acquire as much boggle oil as they can. Only slippery boggle oil will do (see “Boggle Oil”). Captured boggles provide the oil freely, hoping to earn their freedom.
Treasure. Characters who ransack the workshop uncover the following valuables:
A jar of iridescent glass eyes (10 gp)
A silver hammer and chisel in a green leather tool belt (15 gp for the set)
Iron metalworking tongs shaped like the jaws of a snapping dragon (15 gp)
Window Displays. The following creepy toys are displayed in the workshop windows:
A set of nesting dolls in which each doll looks more frightened than the next larger one
A stuffed lion with needles for teeth and real bloodstains around its jaws
A toy windmill with a crank on one side that turns the vanes and the millstone
A set of playing cards depicting weeping children
A wind-up drunkard doll that totters a few paces and then falls over
Four finger puppets depicting an arguing family
A 1-foot-tall wooden guillotine
A tiny wooden box containing eight sticks of black chalk
L5. Granny Nightshade’s Garden
This outdoor garden extends almost the entire length of Loomlurch. The doors to areas L4 and L9 are locked, and Granny Nightshade has the only key that unlocks them (see “Skabatha’s Ring of Keys” earlier in the chapter). Three balconies overlooking the garden connect to areas L8, L9, and L12, respectively. The balcony outside area L9 is only 5 feet above the ground; the others are 20 feet high.
A woodland basin filled with plants and fungi stretches out along one side of the fallen tree. A pumpkin patch is at one end of the garden, next to a steaming compost heap, with ramshackle pens for pigs and goats at the opposite end. Bedraggled scarecrows hang from tall wooden stakes in the basin’s wooded slope. Two ground-level doors and three balconies provide entry to the hag’s lair.
Skabatha Nightshade uses the garden to cultivate ingredients for her potions and candies. The hag spends a few hours here each day tending to her plants (see “Where’s Skabatha?” earlier in the chapter). Characters who won the game of hide-and-seek in the Witchlight Carnival’s Pixie Kingdom have advantage on any Dexterity (Stealth) checks made to hide in the garden.
Animal Pens. The pens contain seven goats, five adult pigs (use the boar stat block), and a Small piglet (noncombatant) named Oink, who is beloved by Philomena (see area L4).
Compost Heap. The compost heap is a shambling mound that remains motionless until it is disturbed or until it rises to attack. If the mound is motionless at the start of combat, it has advantage on its initiative roll. Moreover, if a creature hasn’t observed the mound moving or acting, that creature must succeed on a DC 15 Wisdom (Perception) check to discern that the mound is animate.
Granny Nightshade earlier took a cutting from the shambling mound’s root stem, binding it to her service. If a character uses a speak with plants spell to communicate with the shambling mound, it tells the character that the creature must obey the hag until its stolen root is returned to it. If a character promises to return the root to it, the shambling mound stops attacking and waits here for the characters to come back. If the root is brought back and given to it, the shambling mound goes on a rampage through the garden, destroying and devouring everything it can while leaving the characters and their allies unmolested, then shambles into the forest, never to return. The cutting can be found inside one of the cookbooks in area L13.
Mushrooms and Toadstools. Granny Nightshade grows many kinds of Feywild fungi, five of which have useful (and in some cases magical) properties. Roll 3d8 to determine how many of each mushroom can be harvested from this location. A character who examines a certain kind of mushroom can, with a successful DC 15 Intelligence (Nature) check, ascertain its properties:
Butterfly Saddle. Each of these bright yellow toadstools has a ruffled, saddle-shaped cap properly sized for a pixie or sprite to sit on. They taste like butter and can be used as a substitute for that ingredient in recipes.
Eldercap. Eating one of these white and gray mushrooms causes the eater to look much older for 1 hour. This magical effect is an illusion that can be ended with a dispel magic spell.
Executioner’s Hood. Each of these mushrooms has a black, hood-shaped cap. Any creature that consumes an executioner’s hood must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or fall into a cataleptic state that is indistinguishable from death. This magical effect is identical to that of the feign death spell (including its duration).
Hummingbrella. A hummingbrella is a colorful mushroom with a frilly, parasol-shaped cap that drips sweet nectar and attracts hummingbirds. Eating one has the same effect as drinking antitoxin.
Pricklenoggin. Each of these mushrooms has short, prickly spines growing out of its red cap. Hats made from pricklenoggin caps are popular in the fey courts and considered very fashionable. Most tiny Fey would be grateful to receive one as a gift.
Plant Beds. Many plants grow in Granny Nightshade’s garden—licorice, sugarcane, marshmallow, and more. Characters who examine the plant beds discover a dark secret: each bed is nourished by the buried remains of a Humanoid. Mud-encrusted skulls protrude from the soil, with vegetation sprouting from their open jaws and eye sockets. As an action once per day, Granny Nightshade can raise eight skeletons from the earth, but she must be within 30 feet of the plant beds to use this power.
Pumpkin Patch and Staircase. Several large pumpkins grow in one spot amid thick, leafy vines. A wooden staircase on the edge of the pumpkin patch ascends to a 20-foot-high wooden balcony outside area L8.
If a creature other than Granny Nightshade or a Small Humanoid (such as a human child or a halfling) enters the pumpkin patch, three fat pumpkins burst open, and a giant poisonous snake slithers out of each of them. Granny Nightshade has cast an awaken spell on each of these snakes, giving it an Intelligence score of 10 and the ability to speak Common. Their names are Essaveth, Jahassi, and Sinius. They act as watchdogs, but they won’t climb stairs. If one of these snakes is wounded, it slithers into the pumpkin patch on its next turn, gaining total cover. On subsequent turns, it tries to hide and has advantage on Dexterity (Stealth) checks as long as the pumpkin patch provides cover.
Screaming Scarecrows. Five scarecrows are staked in a line near the pumpkin patch, and a detect magic spell reveals an aura of abjuration magic around each one. If an intruder moves within 50 feet of any of them, all five scarecrows scream loudly enough to alert everyone inside Loomlurch. Each scarecrow is a Medium object with AC 11, 5 hit points, vulnerability to fire damage, and immunity to poison and psychic damage.