Location
The Friendly Arm's Buried Gate
A concealed, long-sealed gate beneath the Friendly Arm's kitchen that links the occupied keep to older underground sacred works.
General description
The buried gate sits below the Friendly Arm's working kitchen and cellar spaces, hidden behind later construction and generations of ordinary use. Its stonework is older than the current inn and does not match the patched masonry around it. When exposed, the gate looks less like a forgotten cellar door than a deliberately sealed threshold: broad stone blocks, heat-darkened joints, and remnants of ritual or warding marks partly obscured by soot, mortar, and later repairs.
Reference details
- Settlement
- Friendly Arm
- Position
- Below the kitchen and cellar
- Establishment Type
- Sealed underground threshold
Key facts
- The gate predates Bentley and Gellana Mirrorshade's occupation of the keep.
- Later builders concealed rather than incorporated the threshold, suggesting either ignorance of its purpose or a deliberate decision to leave it sealed.
- In the fire-shrine breach, supernatural heat and activity around the older complex force the forgotten threshold back into the current story.
- The gate should not be treated as proof that Bentley or Gellana knowingly maintained a secret cult site beneath the inn.
Appearance
The visible threshold is heavy, old, and inconveniently placed beneath practical inn infrastructure. Kitchen drains, cellar shelving, patched floor stone, and newer supports crowd around architecture that was clearly meant to be approached from a different direction. That mismatch is a clue: the Friendly Arm grew over the site rather than from it.
What the gate implies
The threshold connects at least three periods of occupation: the unknown builders of the oldest fire-ring complex, the later Bhaalite presence associated with Mericor's keep, and the modern Friendly Arm. The DM does not need to answer every question at once. The gate is useful precisely because each new discovery can reveal another layer without rewriting the layers already established.
Using the buried gate
Use the gate as a transition from familiar safety into buried history. The kitchen above should remain recognizable through smells, dripping water, muffled footsteps, or falling ash even while the party investigates the ancient space below. That contrast makes any underground threat feel like it is intruding directly into a place the characters know.
Also known as
- buried gate
- sealed gate