The King's Commission

BeginningImplies X08

parley-viablelore-checkclue-rich

Illustration: Beginning 2 — The King's Commission

Illustration: Threads — Thread III — The clue

The gate is bronze, twice the height of a man, and it has no handle on this side — you can see that from thirty feet away, because the hinges are on the inside. A steward in a saffron himation reads the terms aloud in a voice pitched for a courtyard, and behind him eight spearmen stand at ease, and behind them the whole city of Knossos goes on with its afternoon as though nothing much is happening here.

He hands you a folded writ, still warm from the seal. Then he steps back, and the gate goes up.

Premise. The party is being paid, publicly and legally, to go into the maze and come back with proof of the beast. This is the "we chose this" Beginning: no captivity, no amnesia, full kit, and a clean chain of accountability that will matter enormously when they want the gate opened again.

Starting State

Full kit, plus what a royal commission buys: six torches, 100 ft of rope, ten days' rations, and one healer's kit, all stamped with the palace bull.
The writ. A folded vellum sheet with Minos's own seal in green wax. It names the party, the commission, and the promise of the gate. It is the maguffin for X08 and it must survive the maze — the party does not know that yet.
What "proof" means. The steward is specific, and you should be too: a horn, a hide, or the great bronze bell from the beast's own chamber. Any of the three. Write it down; players forget commissions.

Opening Scene

A 60 ft × 30 ft entry hall inside the gate, floored in worn blue-and-white tesserae, with an offering niche at each corner and a channel of running water down the centre. Bright light for the ten rounds it takes the gate to grind shut behind them, then dim.

No fight here, and no check the party can fail into a disaster. This is a briefing scene with a set for it. Give them the following, and let them ask questions until they run out.

The steward, Aikaros, speaks through the closing gate. He is a professional, neither cruel nor warm, and he answers three questions honestly before the gate seals. Good answers to have ready:

"How do we get out?" — "The gate opens from within to the seal, if the seal is intact." He does not explain further. This is the Whisper clue.
"What happened to the last ones?" — "Four went in under the same terms in the spring. Two came out." He does not say which two, and he is not lying.
"What's in there?" — "The beast. Its keepers. The keepers' god, and I am told they disagree with one another about which is which."

Things to find in the hall, all of them optional, none of them gated behind a hard check.

Feature	Check	What it gives
The offering niches	Religion DC 12	Three are for Poseidon and one has been rededicated, scraped and recut. Someone in here worships something else
The water channel	Nature or Survival DC 13	It runs in, not out. There is a bigger water somewhere below
The tesserae	Investigation DC 14	The pattern is a maze figure, and it is not the maze figure stamped on the writ. One of the two is a lie
The tally by the gate	Automatic	Fifty-one scratches. Nineteen have been crossed through

First Clue (Whisper tier)

Aikaros's line about the seal, delivered through a closing gate so it sounds like a formality rather than an instruction: "The gate opens from within to the seal, if the seal is intact."

That is X08's Whisper tier, and it does three jobs at once — it plants the Resolution, it tells the party the writ is precious without saying so, and it gives you licence to threaten the writ later. Water, fire, and thieves all want that piece of vellum.

Exits

AObviousThe processional arch at the far end of the hall, directly ahead. No check.

BObviousA low keepers' door beside the third niche, standing open, worn smooth at shoulder height. No check.Rider: you go in stooped and single file — the first creature to notice you catches the party strung out in a line, and the party's front rank is alone for one round.

CConditionalThe water channel itself, which a Small creature or anyone willing to swim can follow upstream against the flow. Opens only once someone has looked at where the water goes (Nature or Survival DC 13).Rider: you arrive wet — resistance to fire damage for one round, disadvantage on Stealth for one room.

Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15

APL	Adjustment
6	All DCs −2. Aikaros answers a fourth question
9	As written
12	DCs +1. The commission is stingier: three torches, 50 ft of rope, no healer's kit
15	DCs +3. The writ is countersigned by a priest of the Cult of the Thread (W18), which the party can discover and which makes the Cult's rooms treat them as inspectors rather than intruders — until someone reads the small print

Table-Safety Note

The gentlest Beginning in the deck: nobody is captive, nothing is taken, and the party walks in on purpose. If a table has bounced off the harsher premises, start here.

DM Notes

This is the Beginning to hand a new table, or a party that hates being railroaded. They took a job. Everything that follows is their own fault, which is the most comfortable kind.
Protect the writ with threats, not confiscation. Never simply destroy it. Let the flooded room soak it, let a lamia offer to "keep it safe," let a fire lick the corner — and let the party decide how much they care. If it is destroyed, X08's fallback is written for exactly that.
Ten rounds of gate. Narrate the gate closing in stages during the scene. It costs nothing and it makes the last question the players ask feel expensive.
If you are running short, skip the four features and keep Aikaros's three answers. The scene works in six minutes.
Aikaros comes back. He is on the other side of the bronze gate at the end of X08, and whether he opens it is a real question. Note down how the party treated him.