# General No floor plan image yet. The temple spans two sprawling levels carved into Mount Ghakis; the full room-by-room key (areas X1-X42) lives in the CLI reference chapter linked in GM Notes below — add a `leaflet` map block here (see [[2-World/Hubs/Village of Barovia.md|Village of Barovia]] for the format) once you have a floor plan image to drop in. More than two thousand years ago, a secret society of good-aligned wizards carved the Amber Temple into the Balinok Mountains as a vault for evil vestiges — the malevolent remnants of dead gods — and the hoard of forbidden lore they had wrested away from the world. The vestiges corrupted their keepers in turn, and the temple's original defenders are long dead. Its doors, statues, and walls are sheathed in translucent amber throughout, and the whole complex sits at a lethal −10°F: anyone without cold protection suffers the effects of extreme cold described in the *Dungeon Master's Guide*. #### Layout The temple is organized into an upper level built around a great central sanctuary, and a lower level of catacombs and sealed vaults, keyed X1-X42 in the source material: - **Facade & Entrance** (X1-X4) — the carved mountainside entrance flanked by six faceless amber statues, guard rooms, empty barracks, and a shattered overlook balcony above the main temple. - **Temple of Lost Secrets** (X5) — the temple's heart: a sixty-foot vault dominated by a forty-foot faceless god-statue. The arcanaloth Neferon lairs inside the statue's hollow head (X5a), disguised as a confused old wizard, while flameskulls snipe from arrow slits in the galleries above. Locked amber doors here (X5c) lead down to the catacombs. - **Upper East Wing** (X6-X14) — annexes, a scroll repository, and the Lecture Hall (X9), where Vilnius, a wounded and treacherous mage, hides from the amber golem patrolling the halls outside. - **Upper West Wing** (X15-X26) — the Southwest Annex (X15), currently squatted by mountain-folk raiders and a dire wolf loyal to Strahd, shrines to the temple's nameless god, and a secret ossuary (X26) hiding an empty, disintegration-trapped chest. - **Lich's Lair** (X27-X28) and **Preserved Library** (X29-X30) — Exethanter's decayed throne room and his hidden phylactery, plus a vault of magically preserved, self-destructing spellbooks that only he can unlock. - **Central Catacombs & Amber Vaults** (X31-X33f) — the desecrated tombs of the temple's original wizard-guardians, surrounded by **amber sarcophagi** containing evil vestiges that offer dark gifts, each vault guarded by something different (flameskulls, hungry ghasts, nothics, a death slaad). - **Lower West Wing & Treasuries** (X34-X41) — bedchambers, a haunted room, and the temple's plundered and sealed treasuries (X39-X40), the latter guarded by a second amber golem. - **Amber Vault** (X42) — a final sarcophagus chamber holding six crated vampire spawn and the sarcophagi offering the darkest gifts in the temple: vampirism, lichdom, and true resurrection. Full room-by-room chapter: Chapter 13: The Amber Temple (CLI reference) # Travel hrs per day Travel Calculator / Exhaustion Level: | Destination | Travel Days | | --- | --- | | Tsolenka Pass | 🕓: A gravel road climbs north from the pass directly to the temple facade — the source gives no fixed mileage; treat as a half-day's climb on foot. | # Scene Summary A snow-choked road climbs the mountainside from Tsolenka Pass and simply fades away beneath drifting snow — but it carries the party far enough to see the temple itself: a fifty-foot facade cut into the sheer rock, six twenty-foot amber statues of faceless, hooded figures standing in silent prayer, and a dark archway between the two innermost statues leading down into the mountain. The cold here is bone-deep and unnatural, and something about the statues makes it hard to look at them for long. ### The Temple of Lost Secrets Beyond the icy entrance hall, the passage opens onto a shattered balcony overlooking a vast, amber-glazed sanctuary. Four black marble columns hold up a sixty-foot vaulted ceiling, and at the far end a forty-foot statue of a cowled, faceless god stands with its hands outstretched as if casting a spell — its face a pit of utter blackness. Toppled white marble wizard statues line the side alcoves. The whole room radiates a presence that feels aware of the party the moment they enter. ### The Upper Halls Long amber-sheathed corridors radiate east and west from the temple, lined with old barracks, forgotten shrines to the nameless god, and annexes where the temple's few living inhabitants shelter — mountain raiders squatting in an old dormitory, a burned and broken mage hiding from a patrolling amber golem, three flameskulls still holding their post in a scorched hallway. ### The Lich's Court and Library Deeper in, a once-opulent chamber thick with dust and cobwebs holds a robed skeleton with dim red embers for eyes — the temple's ancient master, who no longer remembers his own name. Beyond it, a soaring library of blank, magically hidden books climbs thirty feet to a fresco of angels burning in hell. ### The Catacombs and Amber Vaults A lower level of collapsed halls and desecrated tombs holds the temple's true danger: chamber after chamber sealed behind arcane locks, each containing rough blocks of solid amber with a sliver of living darkness trapped inside — vestiges of dead, hateful gods, each one offering whoever touches it a gift beyond mortal reach, and a price to match.