The spore room, among the mushroom bodies

Something sat down in the spore room and did not get up. This is what grew out of it: a small, pale walker under a cap, about the height of a child.

How it fights It is as weak as a spider, but it casts. Its spores are spells, and a guard does nothing against a spell. It is the first thing on the floor that asks whether you brought a ward.

It grew out of something that sat down here and did not get up. Do not sit down.

Carries Spore Puff · rarely Ember

Wherever something has died

Never one. They come as a carpet, and they eat what the others leave. The bones in the kennel were picked clean by them, not by the hounds. Some down here grow dark grey and heavy, and those are not for eating.

How it fights Many small bites, and a frenzy that makes them bite harder for a turn. Kill them before they spread.

Many small hungers make one large one.

Carries Gnawing Swarm · rarely The Knot

The bone room, in the east wing

The sorted dead do not stay sorted. Someone laid them out with care, straightened the arms and put the hands together. A slate fallen from its nail says it plainly: EAST ROOMS - DO NOT SWEEP. DO NOT COUNT. LEAVE THEM WHERE THEY LIE. Moving a pile is what wakes it, and nothing tells you which pile.

How it fights Fast and brittle. It comes apart easily, but it is something weak enough to ignore that still goes first.

It has been on that floor a long time. Something still told it to get up.

Carries Sharpened Rib · rarely Standing Up Again

Barry's waiting room

The ones the Hollow Man never got round to. They are still sitting on the benches outside his ward, waiting their turn, long past the point where waiting meant anything. Once put down, they do not get up again.

How it fights Weak on purpose: a jab, a kick, a lurch. They are something to grow on before you go through the door at the end of the room.

Barry's. He never finished with them. Finish them for him.

Carries Lurch · rarely Settle

The corridor outside the cell you wake in

Starved, not wild. It had a name once, Duke, and someone on this floor is still looking for him. Whatever the urn did to him, he is guarding a key, and he will not let you past it. Killing him is putting him to rest.

How it fights The urn's first lesson. Watch where it means to bite, guard there, and hit where it is not.

Starved. Like you. It will not forgive you for that.

Carries Hound's Teeth · rarely Famine's Patience

The larder, and every room with silk in it

Long in the leg and slow to commit. It does not hunt so much as wait, and what it wraps, it does not eat. The cocoons heaped in the corners have shapes inside them, and one of the shapes is curled up the way people sleep. They come and go by a way only spiders can use, and they are carrying all of it somewhere.

How it fights A hard bite on a fragile body, and a venom that gets worse the longer you leave it alive.

It has been eating well. Consider what that means, down here.

Carries Spider Silk · rarely Venom

The chapel under the open-eye banners

People who chose to worship the voice as a god. They kneel on their mats and pray to something that is not in the room, so far gone that nothing they say makes sense any more. Only the worship is left. They will not lift a hand unless you lift one first.

How it fights The first thing on the floor that really casts. Its fire goes round any guard, so bring a ward or bring it down fast.

It is still praying. It has not noticed that nobody is listening. Or it has, and that is the prayer.

Carries Ember · rarely Broken Vows

The nests, among broken egg husks

A roach the size of a dog, with a lure growing out of its back. On the end of the lure is a human arm holding a lamp, held out at exactly the height somebody would hold one to see by.

How it fights It barely bites. It lays eggs on you, then waits for them to hatch and heal it. Every turn you spend breaking an egg is a turn you are not killing it, and that is the whole trick.

Do not walk towards the light. There is a hand holding it and there is nothing behind the hand.

Carries Something Worth Saving · rarely The Bait Itself

Among the Warden's tombs, over a chest of solid stone

Half a statue. It stands over a chest cut from one block of grey stone, the same grey as itself, with no seam, no lock and no way in. The chest will not open while it is looking at it.

How it fights Its look turns a card in your hand to stone, and it hurts to be looked at. Behind two high guards it scrapes at your arms and legs.

It stood still too long, and the stillness took the hint.

Carries Scrape · rarely Low Guard

The Warden's gallery, asleep across a door

The wolf is the size of a cart, curled nose to tail across the door. Its ribs rise and fall, slow as a tide. It has not heard you. Yet. You can walk round it. Step inside its circle, and it comes for you.

How it fights It howls, and every howl stays with it. A bite to the nape goes only for the head. A wild maul leaves it open for a turn.

That one has eaten better than you this week.

Carries Wolf's Jaw · rarely Pack Sense

Walking its patrol; and a second, in the south kennel

It kept the graves. One walks the long corridor, and the people up here have learned to be wherever it is not looking. Another stands in the south kennel over a man who is still fighting it. Go to him straight away, before any other fight, and he might live.

How it fights It reads what you guarded last and swings where you did not. The shovel goes for the head.

It kept the graves. Then there were more graves than keeper, and it made a decision about which side of the shovel to be on.

Carries Warden's Shovel · rarely Last Rites

Where the cistern leaks into the Undercroft

Not all the way under. Something went into the water on the floor below and came up here through the cracks.

How it fights A cold grip on your body and arms, and a dirge sung at you that no guard stops. It can skin itself in stone on every part at once, and it dampens your spells before you say them.

It went into the water upstairs and came out down here. Most of it did.

Carries Dampen the Word · rarely Cold Grip

The doorway out of the spore room, the only way through

Half boar, half the fungus growing through it: pale night eyes, a back of quills and grey caps, and small things living in the bristles that do not like being shaken. The caps grow from whatever it eats, and it eats anything. Everyone who goes deeper goes through it.

How it fights The charge. It spends a whole turn winding up, and you can see exactly where it is going. Guard there and all of it stops. Then hit it while it turns.

Watch its head. When that goes down, so do you - unless you are somewhere else.

Carries Tusk Hook · rarely Spines Up

The moths' nest, around a dead campfire

Drawn to the warm, not the light. Four travellers are still sitting round the fire that was meant to protect them, with moths all over them. A man who lived up here once wrote that he went in there for wood and did not take any.

How it fights Dust in the eyes that blunts the hand you were about to swing with, and a mouth like a straw that drinks as it hits. It settles on the dead to heal, and a pale wing goes up in front of its face. On the floor, it flies from you.

It came for the fire. There has not been one here for a long time.

Carries Wing Dust · rarely Pale Wing

One of the piles in the bone room

Most of the bone room gets up as the Rattling Dead. One pile gets up wearing its plate.

How it fights Slower and much harder to open than the dead around it. Its armour does nothing at all against a spell.

It kept its armour on. It must have thought that would make a difference.

Carries Notched Sword · rarely Standing Up Again

Over the locked chest

A mosquito the size of a cat, with a rat's head and a rat's hands. Where a tail should be there is a long mouth, and it drinks through it.

How it fights It engorges, and then everything it lands that turn heals it. It only engorges when it has a hit to follow, so the engorge is your warning. Guard the part it is going for and it drinks nothing. Leave that part open and it heals as fast as you cut.

Mind the back end. That is the end it eats with.

Carries A Taste for It · rarely Tail Needle

A sealed urn on the cult's altar

A candidate who did not make it, kept in a jar. The wax over its mouth is fresh, and pressed with a thumb, and the urn is colder than the room. Break the seal and frost runs across the stones. Then a thin grey shape comes up, folded the way a body is folded to fit in a jar, and unfolds.

How it fights Soft to hit and slow to hurt you. Its touch freezes the card at the front of your hand until you land a blow on it, and its cold fingers hit harder for every card it has frozen.

They kept this one. I would not have. It never had the shoulders for it.

Carries Grave Chill · rarely Cold Fingers