This room appears to be some sort of museum display. Engravings on the wall describe all manner of ancient battle. Nearest the door are a desk and a chair with a vase and a flower sitting on top. Hanging from a hook on the wall next to that is an expensive-looking cloak on it. The veneer of civilization disappears near the far end of the room, however, where a mossy growth creates a sort of wilderness display. Near the far wall is a small stuffed rabbit looking at you through glassy eyes while perched atop an old tree stump.

If this was a standard room in a typical dungeon adventure, the first question the adventurers would be asking themselves is, “Where’s the trap? What’s going to kill me when I step into this room?”

This is the Room of Death. The answer is: everything.

The Ceiling

Clinging to the ceiling is a lurker above. This giant manta ray-shaped thing blends in perfectly with the ceiling, and then drops down to devour unsuspecting prey.

The lurker above waits as long as it can to make sure that all potential morsels have entered the room. However, it also feels some pressure to attack quickly before its meal gets stolen by the ground…

The Floor

Concealed on the floor is a trapper. A trapper looks very similar to a lurker above, but lurks below instead. When someone walks over it, it folds itself up and devours them. The trapper may come into conflict with the lurker above as they both rush in to devour the adventurers as quickly as possible.

When the ceiling and floor start to fight over who gets the first meal, adventurers might go for the edges of the room where they can avoid the two ray-like monsters. This, however, leads to another peril…

The Walls

The walls are covered in stunjelly, a translucent carnivorous ooze. It paralyzes on touch, dissolves the body of its prey, and then devours them.

While the stunjelly tends to kill fewer people than the lurker or trapper, it does get its share of victims from the handful of people who detect the floor and ceiling hazards but fail to pay ample attention to the walls as well.

The Walls

The history engraved on the wall is actually a series of several well-concealed symbols of death. Anyone reading the runes must make a Fortitude save or take 10d10 necrotic damage (half as much on a successful save).

In older editions, you just died outright if you failed to save against a symbol of death. I suppose time has made the Room of Death just a little softer.

The Furnishings

The desk, chair, and vase are actually three mimics that coat anyone nearby in glue and then attack.

The water in the vase is a young water elemental, which leaves the vase and attacks when the mimics drop their disguise. The flower seems harmless, but is actually plucked from the bush of a vampire rose. Anyone picking it up is pricked by the thorns and drained of their blood.

The Cloak

The cloak is actually a cloaker. Indistinguishable from a normal black cloak, this creature reveals itself to have an 8-foot long wingspan and a taste for adventurer flesh should anyone try to put it on.

The cloaker has above-average intelligence and can speak Deep Speech and Undercommon. This provides some chance that adventurers who act quickly might be able to negotiate with the predator. Of course, if the cloaker has to choose between a hapless band of adventurers and a room designed to kill them, it’s probably going to take the side that it thinks will win.

The Moss

The moss isn’t actually lethal, but it is a danger, particularly to spellcasters. It is a patch of memory moss, which drains the last 24 hours of memories from anyone who comes into contact with it. This is particularly dangerous, as the first memories it usually takes are of how deadly the Room of Death is.

The Bunny on a Stump

The bunny on a stump is actually a monster called a wolf in sheep’s clothing.

When someone gets close to the cute bunny, a pair of tentacles lash out from the stump, grappling anyone who comes near it and dragging them to the fang-filled mouth that appears at the center of the stump.

The Air

Finally, the air the adventurers breathe contains several aerial servants – invisible creatures from the elemental plane of air. These aerial servants don’t appreciate being breathed in all that much, and eventually get irritated enough to attack the intruders, completing the gauntlet of dangers from seemingly mundane objects that make up the Room of Death.

So there you have the Room of Death. Like it or not, it’s going to kill your PC.

_{Images: Wizards of the Coast}