M7. Oracular Library
This magnificent hall is lined with stone bookshelves housing a library of leather-bound tomes. Three elderly, bespectacled goblins climb ladders to fetch books for three slender, cloaked figures who are reading while seated in overstuffed armchairs.
The three goblins (neutral) are unarmed noncombatants who keep this library clean and organized. The cloaked figures seated in the armchairs are three darkling elders who read to pass the time. Endelyn recently informed them that she’s expecting visitors, so the elders aren’t surprised to see the characters and are initially indifferent toward them. That indifference turns to hostility if the characters attack the elders.
Tales from the Gloaming Court, Vol. 3. Characters who examine the bookshelves spot one book that looks out of place among the others. It is a hefty, green-covered tome with a withered frog stitched into its spine. Kissing the frog or stroking it with a moistened finger causes the frog to croak the book’s title in Elvish. This book is volume 3 of an eleven-book series titled Tales from the Gloaming Court.
Endelyn stole this book and its companion (in area M17) from her sister Skabatha’s private library (see area L14 in chapter 3). The hag has tucked a thin, wax-stoppered vial inside the spine of the book. A character who examines the book before opening it spots the vial with a successful DC 12 Wisdom (Perception) check and can use an action to try to remove it, doing so with a successful DC 10 Dexterity check.
On a check that fails by 5 or more or if a character opens the book without first removing the vial, the container shatters, releasing a cloud of mummy dust that fills a 10-foot-radius sphere centered on the book. The dust spreads around corners and settles quickly. Any creature in the dust cloud must succeed on a DC 12 Constitution saving throw or be cursed with mummy rot. A creature cursed in this way can’t regain hit points, and its hit point maximum decreases by 10 (3d6) for every 24 hours that elapse. If the curse reduces the target’s hit point maximum to 0, the target dies, and its body turns to dust. The curse lasts until removed by a remove curse spell or similar magic.
Endelyn’s Black Books. The remaining books, of which there are hundreds, are of similar manufacture. Each one is 8 inches tall, 3 inches wide, and spineless, its black wooden covers and yellow pages held together with copper wire. The image of an hourglass is burned into the front cover of each book, and carved into the wood above it is a smaller symbol that resembles a chicken’s foot.
These thin books contain handwritten accounts of every terrible future that Endelyn has glimpsed using the Orrery of Tragedies in area M14. These accounts are written by Endelyn herself as rhymes in the Elvish script. Throughout these records, Endelyn acknowledges that not every future she glimpses comes to pass, for any possible future can be negated by another. The black books are arranged on the shelves in the order in which Endelyn has written them. No book mentions the characters or anyone closely associated with them; most of the accounts speak of individuals who are long dead, many of them victims of tragedies of their own making. Endelyn foreshadows her own doom quite often, noting that it will occur during an eclipse.
Characters who spend at least 1 hour perusing these texts find the following three verses that pertain to Endelyn, Iggwilv, and the Hourglass Coven:
All I’ve wrought shall come undone
When the moon blots out the sun.
The sweet treachery we three have wrought—
Would Iggwilv forgive us? Ha! I think not.
Time was our ally, standing beside us,
Giving us that which Mummy denied us.
But now, I feel its hands turn cold
And see its second sight unfold:
The hourglass broken, the sisters three
Meeting our hellish destiny.
Bav and Skab will never know
That Time has always been our foe.
Skabatha’s Secret. Endelyn knows that her sister, Skabatha, is cursed to forget the first creature she sees when she wakes each morning. In the event of Endelyn’s death, she wants this secret to be known, so Endelyn wrote it on a scrap of invisible paper and placed it atop the highest shelf in the library. The paper becomes visible and blows off the shelf if Endelyn dies, which can happen only during an eclipse. If the characters enter this room after Endelyn has died, the paper is lying on the floor in plain view. Written in the Elvish script, it reads:
Every morn when Skabatha rises,
The one first seen by her waking eyeses
Is swiftly forgotten like some fleeting swain
And shan’t be remembered ’til she sleeps again.
M8. Endelyn’s Mask Collection
The walls of this room are adorned with wooden masks, most of which look like shocked goblin faces. Dozens of masks hang neatly from hooks on the walls, and several more are stowed haphazardly on the shelves of an old bookcase.
Two padlocked cages stand in a far corner; one is occupied by a panic-stricken goblin, and the other is empty.
In the middle of the room, two copper poles ten feet apart descend from the eight-foot ceiling. Each pole has a one-foot-diameter copper sphere at the end of it, three feet off the floor. Between the poles, a struggling goblin is shackled to a thin, tall chair, so that the spheres are level with the goblin’s head.
A tall, thin, cloaked figure stands in the shadows. A rictus grin forms beneath the cowl as the figure pulls a lever that juts from a wall. An instant later, golden lightning leaps between the spheres, catching the shackled goblin in its path. Before you can react, the goblin transforms into a wooden mask that falls to the floor. “Binky!” shrieks the caged goblin.
Endelyn uses the lightning-powered arcane device in this room to punish those who irritate her. The device has 3 charges and regains all expended charges after 8 hours. Pulling the lever expends 1 charge and causes a line of golden lightning, 10 feet long and 5 feet wide, to flash between the two copper spheres. Any creature in this line must succeed on a DC 16 Wisdom saving throw or be magically transformed into an inanimate wooden mask, along with whatever it is wearing or carrying. The mask bears a striking resemblance to the creature’s visage, and the transformation lasts until the mask is targeted by a successful dispel magic spell (DC 19). Every mask created in this fashion is a Tiny wooden object with AC 15, 5 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. A mask that is reduced to 0 hit points is destroyed and can’t be transformed back into the creature it once was.
Each copper rod is a Medium object with AC 15, 18 hit points, and immunity to lightning, poison, and psychic damage. The lever is a Small object with AC 15, 10 hit points, and immunity to poison and psychic damage. Destroying the lever or either rod renders the device inoperable until it is repaired.
The creature holding the lever is a darkling elder who takes sadistic pleasure in turning other creatures into masks. A female goblin (neutral) named Vig is locked in one of the cages and is doomed to suffer the same fate as her friend, Binky, unless the characters intervene on her behalf. Both goblins worked the cranes in area M2 until they accidentally dropped a backdrop in the middle of a performance, ruining the show and angering Endelyn. If the characters attack the darkling elder, it fights back. At the same time, Vig shouts in Common, “Leave me to my fate! Bitter End can do worse than turn me into a mask!”
As an action, a character using thieves’ tools can try to pick the lock on either cage or the shackles on the chair, doing so with a successful DC 12 Dexterity check. The darkling carries a ring of three keys, two of which open the padlocks on the cages; the third key unlocks the chair’s shackles.
Endelyn’s poor treatment of her notwithstanding, Vig wants to please the hag. The goblin enjoys working at Motherhorn, though she dislikes Stagefright, the goblin master of ceremonies. Vig knows her way around Motherhorn and shares the following information with her rescuers:
Bitter End has a pair of magic scissors that she uses to snip off other creatures’ shadows. These detached shadows congregate in the shadow theater (area M10).
To enter the prison (area M17), one needs the fool’s scepter that belongs to Endelyn’s master of ceremonies, Stagefright.
The hag has a special guest—a hateful woman named Charmay, who claims to get her magic from a pact she made with Baba Yaga. Charmay has powerful friends and belongs to a group called the League of Something-or-Other. She doesn’t like goblins and mistreats them every chance she gets. (Vig can’t remember the name of the League of Malevolence, but she can lead characters to “Charmay” in area M11.)