Tailpipe Alley

Table of Contents

Quick Reference

Every stat block in this scenario, resolved for Floor 1 (values printed as X+F have the Floor number folded in). Move keeps its "+ S": S is the relevant movement Skill Rank, added when that Skill applies.

The one rule that matters here: Vine Creepers are plants. Fire damage is doubled against them. Everything else in this neighborhood follows from that, including the reason the party should think twice before lighting anything inside a bar full of gasoline.

Overview

Tailpipe Alley was a rat-kin neighborhood. Low ceilings, oil-stained stone, a gutted repair garage at every third junction, and a warren dug down under the middle of it where the whole clan slept. It worked for a long time.

Six weeks ago the Goblins to the south started clearing ground, and everything living in that ground moved north. Most of it died on the way. The Vine Creepers did not. They came up into Tailpipe Alley, found a neighborhood packed wall to wall with soft, slow, plentiful food, and settled in.

They have been eating rat-kin ever since, and it shows. These Creepers are two levels above spec, thick-stemmed and heavy, and their pods are everywhere: in doorways, in the garage pits, hanging off the ceiling ducts. Each one has something rat-shaped dissolving inside it.

The rat-kin are losing from the edges inward. Their warren, the deep nest at the center of the neighborhood, is now the densest Creeper colony in the zone, because that is where the food was thickest. That is also where the stairwell is.

What the party wants is simple: the stairs down. Everything else in this neighborhood is optional, including the Boss. There are two ways in.

A note on the stairs. Descending early is punished: crawlers who take the stairs well ahead of the collapse are held in stasis until it happens, and the recap show will not feature a crawler viewers cannot tunnel into. The standing recommendation is to descend no earlier than six hours before the floor goes. The goal in Tailpipe Alley is therefore to find and secure the stairwell, not to use it the moment they see it. A party that clears the warren and then walks back out to grind, with a known cleared route at their back, has won this neighborhood outright.

• Over ground. Straight into the warren through the colony. No Boss, no negotiation, pure attrition against Creepers in their own nest.
• Under it. The Last Call, a biker bar on the far side of the neighborhood, has a cellar that drops below the Creeper line and comes up inside the warren past most of the colony. It is a short, clean route. The Bar Render is standing in it, and she is red on sight.

One big fight, or a lot of small ones. That is the whole decision, and the party should understand both options before they commit.

Key NPCs at a Glance

The Bar Render (Neighborhood Boss, Level 8): Nine feet of rat-kin barmaid holding the last dry building in Tailpipe Alley, with two Barflies propped up beside her at all times. She is red on sight and she does not negotiate. She also does not leave: The Last Call is hers and the doorway out is always open behind the party, which makes this the rare Boss fight a party can quit.

Singe (Rat Shaman, Level 5, mini-boss): A knee-high pyromaniac in scorched robes who independently worked out that Creepers burn, and has been methodically torching his own neighborhood one pod at a time ever since. He is winning, locally, at enormous cost. He is not friendly, but he is loud, and a party that watches him for one round learns the single most useful fact in the zone.

Gnash (Rat Brute, non-combatant): A broken Rat Brute sheltering at the Del Taco who watched three of his war band go into a pod. He will not fight. He will, if anyone bothers to sit down with him, explain exactly what is in the warren and exactly why the bar is the only building the Creepers have not touched.

Nacha (Bopca Protector): Caretaker of the Del Taco saferoom. Inherited a fast food restaurant, has strong opinions about the fryer, answers questions in as few words as she can manage.

Prologue: The Edge

Let them look. A crawler who examines a pod (Perception vs 13) sees the shape inside is a rat-kin, mostly intact, and that the fluid around it is actively working on the fur. A crawler who cuts one open gets a faceful of acidic slurry (1d6 Acid, Evade vs 13 to halve) and the attention of whatever owns that pod.

Entry point. From the west they come in through the repair bays from Bogbricks. From the south they come up the slope from Goblin territory, in which case the vines are thickest behind them and thin out ahead: the party is walking the same route the Creepers walked.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That the pods are full of rat-kin and the neighborhood is being actively eaten
• That the stairwell is their goal and it is in the middle of the zone
• That nothing here is going to hand them a quest

When they move deeper in, go to Scene 1: Something in the Pods.

Scene 1: Something in the Pods

One Vine Creeper (Rat Eater), with a second waking one round later if the fight goes long or loud (it always does). They open at range with Vine to Hold and drag a crawler into talon range, which is the entire tactic and it is effective.

Held is the lesson. A crawler caught by a Vine cannot Move or Step and gets pulled closer every round, and the Debuff only breaks when the Creeper dies or the crawler escapes (Str-Opposed Dex Stat Check or Escape Artist). Ranged crawlers will be dragged into melee whether they like it or not. Let one of them find that out.

The pods. Six of them in the bay, five still occupied. Anything that sets a pod on fire learns something valuable one scene early: the pods go up like oiled rags, and a burning pod field deals 1d6 Fire per round to anything in it and spreads 5ft a round. If a crawler improvises this here, reward it, and quietly move the reveal in Scene 4 to be a confirmation instead.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• What Held does and the two ways out of it
• That these Creepers are bigger than standard and why
• That the pods are flammable, if they tried it

The neighborhood opens from here. Move to whichever of Scenes 2, 3, or 4 they head toward.

Scene 2: The Last Ones Out

A Strong group of Pack Rats and one Rat Brute, all fleeing a Creeper that is one junction behind them and closing. The rats will run straight through the party, biting anything in the way out of blind panic. The Brute will fight whatever is in front of him because he has been running for six weeks and is out of better ideas.

The cheap option. These rats are starving, and starving is a mechanic here: any crawler who drops food and does not attack that round watches the entire pack break off and swarm the food instead. It costs a ration and one Action. It also means the Brute, alone, may decide the party is not the enemy today.

The Creeper arrives at the end of round two regardless. If the party has been fighting the rats, they are now fighting the rats and a Creeper. If they let the rats go, the Brute fights the Creeper alongside them and dies doing it, which is a better scene.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That the rat-kin here are prey, not the neighborhood's threat
• That food is leverage with the Pack Rats
• That the Creepers hunt by vibration and noise draws them

Move to whichever of Scene 3 or Scene 4 they have not run.

Scene 3: The Del Taco

The neighborhood's saferoom. Short rests are available, and this is the only place in Tailpipe Alley loot boxes can be opened. Nacha runs the counter.

Gnash is the Rat Brute in the booth, and he is a white dot. He watched three of his war band get taken and he has stopped. He will not go outside, he will not fight, and he will not be talked into either. What he will do is answer questions, in detail, because talking about it is better than sitting in silence:

• The warren is the clan nest, dug down under the center of the neighborhood, three levels deep. The stairwell down to the Second Floor is at the bottom of it. It is where most of the clan died, which means it is where most of the pods are.
• The Last Call is the biker bar on the east side. It is the only building besides this one the Creepers have not touched, and Gnash does not know why, but he can guess: nothing over there is alive to eat, and the whole place reeks of gasoline. Creepers hunt by vibration and appetite. There is nothing in that building either sense wants.
• The cellar. The Last Call has a cellar that connects to the old clan runoff tunnels, and those come up inside the warren, below most of the colony. It is the fast way in. It is also occupied by the largest, angriest rat-kin Gnash has ever personally met, and he would like to stress that he is a Rat Brute saying this.
• Singe is still out there burning pods. Gnash thinks he is insane. Gnash also concedes that Singe is the only one still winning.

Gnash does not ask the party for anything and will refuse if offered rescue. If the party comes back through after the warren, he is still in the booth.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• Where the warren is and that the stairwell is at the bottom of it
• That there are two routes in, and what each one costs
• That loot boxes only open here

Move to Scene 4, or commit to a route (Scene 5 or Scene 6).

Scene 4: The Shaman's Stand

Singe, a Rat Shaman, plus a Weak group of Pack Rats nesting in the rafters who drop in at the end of round one. He fights at range, opens with Firestrike, uses Clap Cloud the moment two or more crawlers are within 20ft of each other, and retreats rather than let anything close to melee.

The burning bay. The fight takes place inside an active pod fire. Any crawler who starts their turn in a burning square takes 1d6 Fire, and the fire spreads 5ft a round in a random direction. Singe is immune to nothing; he just does not care, and will happily stand in flame to keep the range open.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That Fire does double damage to Vine Creepers
• That burning pod fields spread and do not care whose side anyone is on
• That they are now carrying four flasks of something extremely flammable

With that, they have what they need for either route. Move to Scene 5 or Scene 6.

Intermission: Crawler Advancement

Run this at the two-hour mark, wherever the party is. The Del Taco is ideal. Skill Advancement Checks where applicable, Stat points for anyone who leveled, and this is the natural place to resolve grinding for an absent player.

That voice is a Dungeon Admin, not the AI. Read it tired and corporate, and never name her.

Scene 5: The Overrun Warren

Route A. Run this scene if the party goes in over ground. If they take the cellar, they arrive on Level Three of this scene instead and skip most of it (see Scene 6 and the Boss).

Three levels, each one a fight, no rest between them. The party cannot retreat to the Del Taco without losing the ground they took (Creepers reoccupy within the hour).

• Level One, the Commons. Two Vine Creepers in an open chamber hung with pods. Wide ground, plenty of room to use the Vine attack, no cover. The straightforward version of the fight from Scene 1, doubled.
• Level Two, the Nursery. Where the clan kept its young, and where the pods are densest: thirty or more, floor to ceiling. One Vine Creeper plus a new one emerging from a pod every other round, indefinitely, until the party leaves the level or burns it. This is the level that punishes a party with no fire and rewards the four flasks from Singe. Burning the nursery clears it in three rounds and fills the warren with smoke (Disadvantage on Perception below this level, and on any Evade while a crawler is in the smoke).
• Level Three, the Deep Nest. Three Vine Creepers, the oldest and largest, wrapped around the stairwell itself. Low ceiling, close quarters, and the stairwell light is visible the whole fight behind them.

The stairwell is at the back of Level Three, half-swallowed by vine growth that has to be cut away (one Action, or any Fire). Nothing in this neighborhood can follow them onto it: Mobs cannot leave their own floor, and anything that tries to descend dissolves partway down. A party that reaches the stairwell with a Creeper train behind them is safe the moment they set foot on the first step, whether or not they intend to go down yet.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That there was an easier way and they did not take it
• What the Nursery cost them
• That the stairs are right there whenever they want them

Move to the Epilogue, or double back for The Last Call if they want the Boss after all.

Scene 6: The Parking Lot

Route B. Run this if the party goes for the cellar.

Perception vs 12 from the lot confirms what the smell already said: through the open door, along the near wall, a stack of red plastic gas cans. Three of them, full. A crawler who looks longer sees sawdust on the floor and a bar shelf that is mostly high-proof.

They should understand, before they walk in, that this is the most flammable room on the floor. Say it plainly. Then let them carry their four flasks of rat liquor inside if they want to.

The cellar is behind the bar, a steel hatch in the floor. It drops into the old clan runoff tunnels and comes up on Level Three of the warren, past the Commons and the Nursery entirely. The only thing between the party and the hatch is the woman standing on it.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That the bar is full of accelerant, and exactly where it is
• That the hatch is behind the bar and where it comes out
• That they can still walk away and take Route A

When they go through the door, move to the Boss Battle.

The Fire Hazard

This is the whole room. Track it openly, in front of the players.

• Any Fire damage dealt inside The Last Call, from either side, adds one Spark. Her own Fiery Cocktail counts. She does not care and she is not smart about it.
• At three Sparks the room goes up. Everything not behind the bar takes 1d6 Fire at the end of each round, spreading, and the sawdust means there is no safe square.
• Two rounds after the room ignites, the gas cans blow: 4d6 Fire in a 20ft radius from the near wall, Evade vs 15 to halve. This is enough to kill a Level 3 crawler outright.
• If the room burns, the cellar is gone. The hatch warps in the heat and the tunnel below fills with smoke. Route B closes permanently and the party walks to the warren over ground with whatever they have left.

Boss loot is persistent. Her corpse stays where it falls, and anything on it can be picked up by any crawler who wanders through later, the Neighborhood Map included. The Boss Box and the bronze star go only to whoever actually landed the kill. A Neighborhood Boss pays a Bronze Boss Box; the richer tiers belong to Borough Bosses and up.

Moving On

Before moving on, ensure that the players understand:

• That the cellar is theirs, or that they burned it
• What the Sparks system cost them, if anything
• That Level Three of the warren is still between them and the stairs

Move to Scene 5, Level Three for the last fight, then the Epilogue.

Epilogue & Aftermath

The stairwell is at the back of the Deep Nest, and once the last Creeper is down it is a twenty-foot walk and a long way down. Nothing in Tailpipe Alley follows them to it.

• They killed the Bar Render: a Neighborhood Map drops, filling in Tailpipe Alley on the minimap, and The Last Call is theirs to strip. Forty motorcycles worth of parts, a working bar, and a cellar nobody is guarding.
• They burned the bar: she is dead and it counts, star and Bronze Boss Box included, but the cellar is gone and her corpse (with the Neighborhood Map still on it) is inside a building that burns for hours. A column of smoke the party can see from the warren entrance for the rest of the floor.
• They took Route A: no Boss, no map, no star, and the Bar Render is still in there for as long as the floor lasts. She will be exactly as hostile the second time, and the map is still sitting on her, waiting for whoever wants it.
• They burned the Nursery: the colony is functionally broken. Pack Rats start reappearing in the upper thoroughfares within hours, and the neighborhood begins the slow business of being a rat-kin neighborhood again.
• Gnash is in the booth at the Del Taco either way, and stays there.

Whatever they did, the Goblins to the south are still clearing ground, and whatever is left in that ground is still coming north. Tailpipe Alley was the first neighborhood to get hit. It will not be the last.

Items

Rat-Brewed Accelerant (4 flasks, off Singe): Thick, foul, and burns hot. Thrown weapon, Str × 10ft range: 1d6 Fire, 5ft Splash, doubled against Vine Creepers. Inside The Last Call, each one is a Spark.

Singe's Robes: Scorched to the point of structural failure, but the weave is fireproof. Worth Resistance to Fire if you want to reward taking them, or sell them to the first crawler who asks what happened here.

Motorcycle Parts (the parking lot): Chain, sheet metal, brake cable, forty gas tanks that are already empty. Raw material for a crawler with Fabricate or Repair, and the single best source of scrap on the floor.

Three Gas Cans (The Last Call): Full. Portable. A very bad idea to carry and an extremely good idea to leave somewhere specific.

The Bar Render's Bottle: Whatever she was reaching for under the counter. It is not a cocktail: it is a bottle of something older than the dungeon, and the AI declines to identify it. GM's call, ideally a Gold-tier consumable.

Pods (anywhere): Cutting one open yields a partly digested rat-kin and whatever that rat-kin was carrying. Grim, free, and the only loot in the zone that does not require killing something.

Neighborhood Map (Boss drop): Reveals Tailpipe Alley on the minimap and grants 1 bonus hour of credit on any grind of 5+ hours. Persistent loot: it sits on her corpse until somebody takes it, and that somebody does not have to be whoever killed her.

Adapting This Adventure

Sandbox and Pacing

Scenes 1 through 4 are order-free and Scene 4 is the one not to cut, because it teaches the fire rule that makes both routes survivable. Scenes 5 and 6 are the fork. A party that beelines can be at the warren entrance in ninety minutes, which is fine: they will arrive without accelerant and the Nursery will teach them what that means. If you are running long, fold Scene 2 into a travel beat and let the Brute die in one round.

The Two Routes

Route A is five Creeper fights and no Boss. Route B is one Boss fight and one Creeper fight. Neither is correct. Route B is shorter and more dangerous per minute; Route A is longer and grinds resources. A party can also start one and switch: backing out of the Nursery and walking to the bar is a legitimate and satisfying mid-session pivot, and backing out of the Boss fight through the propped door is the same move in reverse.

Scaling

Written for three to five crawlers at Level 3 to 5, arriving from a first neighborhood, with values resolved at F = 1. For a weaker party, drop the Rat Eater variant back to its standard Level 2 stat line and cut the Deep Nest to two Creepers. For a stronger one, leave the Creepers and give the Bar Render a third attack: a thrown barstool, 15 to hit, 2d6+4 Bludgeoning, 20ft, Take Down on a Major Fail.

Whose Is What

Tailpipe Alley, its premise, layout, routes, NPCs, achievements, the Spark system, and the Rat Eater variant are original to this scenario. The Vine Creeper, Pack Rat, Rat Brute, Rat Shaman, Barflie, and Bar Render stat lines are adapted from the Game Master's Campaign Toolkit; the Bar Render is re-skinned here as rat-kin rather than her published form, and the Shaman, Barflie, and Bar Render examine text are original rewrites. Fire doubling against Vine Creepers, the pod-field spread, the starving Pack Rat behavior, and every check Difficulty are GM additions.

Tone

The neighborhood is an ecological collapse played straight, with jokes layered on top rather than instead. The rat-kin are not villains and they are not a quest: they are the food, and the party is walking through the middle of their extinction to reach a staircase. Nobody asks the party for help. Nobody is saved. If a player decides to care anyway, that is theirs, and Scene 2 exists so that decision costs exactly one ration and means something.

Open Decisions

• Whether the Bar Render knows what the cellar connects to. Playing her as simply territorial is cleaner; playing her as the last rat-kin who understood the tunnels were an escape route is sadder.
• Box contents for the achievements are the GM's, rolled when they open at the Del Taco.
• Whether burning the Nursery has a longer-term effect on the floor. It is the single most consequential thing the party can do here and currently only pays off in the Epilogue.
• Whether the Goblin neighborhood to the south is reachable this floor, or just a pressure the party hears about.

Canon Alignment Notes

Checked against Book 1. That edition is an epub with no fixed page numbers, so references are by rule rather than page.

Saferoom doors will not open with Mobs outside. Stated flatly in Book 1 and used here as a live mechanic at the Del Taco rather than a footnote. It is the reason the dead ground around the restaurant matters.

Mobs can enter a safe area, they just cannot fight in one. Mordecai is asked this directly and says they will wander in if the door is left open, that you should always close it, and that a Mob teleports away the moment it attacks. Separately he notes the AI negates all attacks inside safe areas. That is why Gnash can sit in the Del Taco and why nobody, on either side, can do anything about it.

No violence or stealing between crawlers, three strikes. Roughly a hundred-second freeze plus an automated lecture, then an hour, then stripped of gear and teleported into a mob nest. The text frames this as crawler conduct; whether swinging at a Mob inside a safe area also trips the counter is not stated, so it is a GM call. This scenario assumes it does not.

A Neighborhood Boss pays a Bronze Boss Box. Corrected from an earlier draft that paid Gold. Bronze for Neighborhood, Silver for Borough, and up from there. The kill also adds a bronze star after the crawler's name.

Boss loot is persistent. The corpse stays put and any crawler can take what is on it, the Neighborhood Map included. Only the crawler who landed the kill gets the Box and the star. This is why Route A leaves the map sitting in the bar rather than removing it from the floor.

Killing a Boss with an explosion counts. Carl takes out a Neighborhood Boss with a boiler blast and still gets the notifications and the star, with no fanfare. That is the precedent the burn-the-bar option rests on, and it is why that route now pays the Box instead of nothing.

Mobs cannot leave their floor. A goblin NPC explains that anything descending the stairs dissolves partway down. The stairwell is therefore a hard safe line at the bottom of the warren.

Descending early is punished. Stairs are populated partway through the floor, early descent means stasis until the collapse, and the recap will not feature a crawler viewers cannot tunnel into. The guidance is to go down within about six hours of the collapse. This is why the objective here is securing the route, not using it.

Plant infestations are Floor 1 canon. A survivor in Book 1 describes an entire block overrun by thorny creeping plants that eat people whole, which is close enough to this neighborhood to be a precedent rather than an invention.

Plot Threads Seeded

• The Goblins are still clearing ground to the south. Everything they displace goes somewhere.
• Gnash survives unless the party gets him killed. A broken Rat Brute who owes nobody anything is a useful face later.
• A Washed crawler who dies without a Potion of Clarity comes back as a Barflie with all their Skills and Spells. If that happens to a party member, it happens on camera.
• Whatever the Bar Render was reaching for under the counter.

Compatible with the Dungeon Crawler Carl Roleplaying Game by Renegade Game Studios; requires the core rules to play. Unofficial Dungeon Crawler Carl RPG (Renegade Game Studios) Fan Material. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the publisher. Not for resale. Intellectual story belongs to CritsNThings.com.