Session 5 — the doors
The warehouse main floor · on the way out, with the Cold Kiss
At a glance
- Who
- The Five Fingers: Fetch (an illusionist) and Greave (an abjurer) and two bruisers (×2) — the crew that lost the ledger to the party in the alley in session 2, rebuilt. Casks can add specters. Four characters at 4th level.
- How long
- ~30 minutes. Everyone is on the floor from round 1.
- How it ends
- On the Cold Kiss. Either the crew is broken and it stays, or a caster Pulls it and gets out of the doors with it.
- The one rule
- The party know what is in the casks and the crew do not. The stacks are half cover to one side and a mistake to the other.
This page holds the fight’s numbers. The session 5 sheet links here. No read-alouds are written yet.
Why this crew
They are the four the party beat in the alley in session 2, and the party will recognise them. Dita hired them then and hired them again, to do the job the party refused her 500 gp for. They went in to clear the warehouse, found the party had already done it, and are now standing between them and the doors. What they want is the thing the party are carrying, and the Pull is how they take it.
Why Dita wants it cleared (Jack, 2026-10-01). The warehouse is her responsibility, and it has been going badly: men dead in the cellar and two hired groups that never came out. She has kept all of it from Losam and wants it cleared and quiet before he finds out. If anyone asks, she says her father asked her to deal with it. That is half true (Jack, 2026-10-10): Losam made the warehouse hers and did not want details, but he never knew about the dead men or the crews. Haxami’s leverage is what she hid from him. She posted Biggs and Wedge to keep people out.
She wants the Cold Kiss. She knows it is something and does not know how powerful it is.
They call themselves the Five Fingers. There are four of them. None of them will explain it, and Hobb takes it badly if anyone counts out loud.
If Marellius calls Dita
If Dita stays out of the fight, Marellius can reach her on the Sweet Nothing. It casts message, so each exchange is one short whisper each way. Her lines are yours to write; this is what she does (Jack, 2026-10-01).
- She wants two things: the Cold Kiss, and Losam hearing none of this.
- She calls off Fetch and Greave. She gives Marellius a word to say to Fetch, and the two casters step back. Ned Hobb does not. He wants whoever put him in the cell, and he fights with the other bruiser.
- She slips. She says something she could not know, such as that he is still under the floor. That is the Sweet Nothing’s tracking showing. Nobody has to explain it.
- If Marellius tells her about the souls, she goes quiet. She did not know. What she hears now goes up her chain through Silas, to the people paying for the casks.
The word for Fetch is my addition, so she has a way to call them off through Marellius. With the casters gone the fight is two Thugs: 200 raw × 1.5 = 300 adjusted, under Easy for four at 4th. That is the brake after the cellar.
The roster
Named here for the first time. They went unnamed all through session 2, so nothing on the alley page contradicts this.
Fitch and Greave
Fetch
Reskin of the Illusionist (Volo’s) · Medium humanoid · one house action, below
Spellcasting. 7th-level caster, Intelligence, DC 13, +5 to hit. Wizard spells prepared:
Cantrips (at will): dancing lights, mage hand, minor illusion, poison spray
1st level (4 slots): color spray*, disguise self*, mage armor, magic missile
2nd level (3 slots): invisibility*, mirror image*, phantasmal force*
3rd level (3 slots): major image*, phantom steed*
4th level (1 slot): phantasmal killer* or greater invisibility*, picked at the table
*An illusion spell of 1st level or higher; casting one recharges Displacement.
Displacement (recharges after an illusion spell of 1st level or higher). Bonus action: the caster projects an illusion so it seems to stand a few inches from where it really is. Attacks against it have disadvantage. Ends if it takes damage, is incapacitated, or its speed becomes 0.
House action — The Pull. One object a creature is holding, within 30 ft. The holder makes a DC 13 Dexterity save. On a failure the object tears loose and lands in the caster’s hand. On a success it hits the floor between them. Unchanged from the alley, and the party have seen it work.
Actions
Dagger. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft or range 20/60 ft, one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage.
Greave
House build on the Illusionist (Volo’s) chassis, as an abjurer · Medium humanoid · same numbers as Fetch; spells, ward and one house action below
Spellcasting. 7th-level caster, Intelligence, DC 13, +5 to hit. Wizard spells prepared:
Cantrips (at will): blade ward*, mage hand, message, ray of frost
1st level (4 slots): mage armor*, protection from evil and good*, shield*, thunderwave
2nd level (3 slots): arcane lock*, hold person, misty step
3rd level (3 slots): counterspell*, dispel magic*
4th level (1 slot): banishment* or dimension door, picked at the table
*An abjuration spell; casting one of 1st level or higher restores the Arcane Ward.
Arcane Ward (17 hit points). Damage she takes hits the ward first; anything left over carries through to her. When she casts an abjuration spell of 1st level or higher, the ward regains hit points equal to twice the spell’s level. The printed Abjurer’s ward is 30 at CR 9; 17 is the class formula at 7th level (twice the level plus Intelligence).
Nothing on her list is fire. Thunderwave splits a cask rather than bursting it.
House action — The Pull. One object a creature is holding, within 30 ft. The holder makes a DC 13 Dexterity save. On a failure the object tears loose and lands in the caster’s hand. On a success it hits the floor between them. Unchanged from the alley, and the party have seen it work.
Actions
Dagger. Melee or Ranged Weapon Attack: +4 to hit, reach 5 ft or range 20/60 ft, one target. Hit: 4 (1d4 + 2) piercing damage.
- Who they go for: whoever is carrying the Cold Kiss. They knew what they were coming for before they opened the doors.
- Fetch’s spells: mirror image and invisibility keep him alive to the doors; color spray opens; if he holds the Cold Kiss, the 4th-level slot is greater invisibility to get out.
- Greave’s spells: she holds the doorway. Shield and her ward keep her standing; hold person and counterspell keep the party off Fetch. If she ends up with the Cold Kiss, the 4th-level slot is dimension door out of the building.
- Opening move: Greave holds the doorway. Fetch Pulls, in round 1, before the party have spread out. The moniker is the job.
- When they stop: the moment one of them has the Cold Kiss. That caster leaves and does not fight again. The other covers the doorway and follows.
- If Fetch goes down before he has it, Greave takes over the Pull. It is the crew’s whole plan and both of them can do it.
- Morale: a caster with nothing to carry out leaves when the bruisers are down. They are not paid to die here, and they did not die in the alley either.
The bruisers
Bruiser (×2)
Thug (MM), as printed · Medium humanoid · no house tweaks
Pack Tactics. Advantage on an attack roll against a creature if at least one ally is within 5 ft of it and not incapacitated.
Actions
Multiattack. Two mace attacks: +4 to hit, 5 (1d6 + 2) bludgeoning damage.
- Ned Hobb (Six Weeks). The Gendarme took him out of the alley and he sat in the cell that long before Dita bought him out. He goes for whoever put him down there, and he is the reason this crew does not fold where the last one did.
- Who they go for: whoever is between the casters and the Cold Kiss.
- When they stop: not where the alley pair stopped. The first one down does not fold the second. He goes to none.
The casks
The main floor is stacked with returned casks, the same rule as the cellar. About three in every dozen hold a soul, and the party learned to tell them apart on the way in. The crew have no idea.
- Broken with fire: it bursts. Each creature within 10 ft makes a DC 13 Dexterity save, taking 2d6 fire and 2d6 necrotic damage on a failure or half on a success. The soul is destroyed, never reborn.
- Broken with slashing, or any other way: a hostile specter comes out, and it is hostile to everyone in the room.
- An empty grey cask does nothing when broken.
- Nothing in this crew fights with fire. They carry daggers and maces, so the casks split rather than burst unless somebody in the party lights one.
Alert state: one variable, whether a cask has split yet. Before the first one, this is a fight between two crews. After it, there is a third side in the room that neither of them controls.
Scaling
The written roster: 1,600 raw XP × 2 for four creatures = 3,200 adjusted. Deadly for four at 4th is 2,000, so this is 160% of Deadly, and Deadly under both the DMG and Improved Initiative. Enemy damage is about 30 a round if both bruisers connect and the casters throw daggers, against a roster holding 140 hit points. The casters are a delay, not a threat: the danger in this fight is the Pull and the doors.
It runs after the cellar. Neither model sees that. The party come up this stair spent, and the 220% downstairs is what makes 160% here bite. If they take a short rest first, the crew find them at the end of it and the fight runs as written. If they do not, it runs the same and it is harder, which is the price of walking straight out.
More or fewer characters. Bruisers at #PCs − 2, floor 1, ceiling 3. The casters are always two, because one of them has to leave with something.
The ceiling. Two split casks make six creatures at 2,000 raw and 4,000 adjusted, 200%. Past that the specters are fighting both sides and the fight stops being about the Cold Kiss.
Environment
- Light. The crew bring lanterns in at the doors, so the door end is lit and the back of the floor is not. The party’s own light is whatever they carried out of the cellar.
- Sound. The tide on the mud outside, and the doors. Nothing in this building muffles anything.
- Footing. Plank floor over the cellar, wet from whatever the party tracked up.
- Cover. The cask stacks, half cover. Both sides use them and only one side knows what is in them.
- Verticality. The trapdoor is open behind the party. Anyone who goes through it lands in the cellar, in whatever the tide has left down there.
- The way out. The doors, at the far end from the trapdoor. The crew came in through them and that is the way the Cold Kiss leaves if it leaves.
- Outside. Biggs and Wedge. Dita posted them, so they let her crew in.
Environment prompt
Generate an image that is a D&D battle map in 16-bit pixel art, in the style of Chrono Trigger. A wide, zoomed-out overhead view of the plank floor of a long rectangular waterfront warehouse shed at night. Big double cargo doors at one end, an open trapdoor with a wooden stair going down at the other, timber posts in two long rows, a work bench along one wall, stacked casks and crates around the walls. Out on the floor, six or seven separate clumps of cargo — stacked casks, a crate stack, a pile of timber, a handcart, a tarp over a low stack — each only two or three casks across, with clear straight aisles at least four casks wide between them. Keep the floor just inside the doors open, the floor around the trapdoor open and the front of the bench clear; about a third of the floor is bare planking. No people. No grid lines, no text.
How it ends — the Cold Kiss stays, or it goes out the doors
Dropping the crew is not the only way this ends, and it is not the only good one. The Pull works on a bad save, and the fight resolves on where the Cold Kiss is standing when it does.
- They win. The crew is broken and the Cold Kiss stays. Hobb taken alive is a link back to Dita and knows what she paid for. Fitch and Greave run rather than be taken, the same as the alley.
- They half-win. A caster Pulls the Cold Kiss and gets out of the doors with it. The party spent a night and a 220% fight to hand Dita the thing they came for. Thor is still waiting in a room at the Long Crossing, and the next session opens going after it.
- They refuse. They hand it over, or walk out past the crew and let them have the cellar. They keep their casks, their lives and whatever else they carried up, and they break Thor’s ask themselves rather than losing it in a fight.
- Nobody made it. Not decided.