Sand in the Teeth
Sand, first. In your teeth, in the creases of your eyes, gritted into the palm you push yourself up with. You are on the floor of an oval of raked sand eighty feet across, ringed by tiers of stone benches cut from the cavern wall, and the benches are not empty.
Nobody cheers. That is the wrong part. Two hundred somethings sit in the dark and watch you stand up, and the only sound is a slow scrape, off to your left, of a gate being drawn open by hand.
Premise. The party is this evening's entertainment, and the audience is not human. They have their weapons — the show is no good otherwise — and nothing else. The way out is the gate they were dragged in through, which is why this Beginning points at X03: the party's instinct will be to fight back toward the entrance, and the maze will spend the session making that harder.
Starting State
- Weapons and worn armour only. No packs, no rations, no rope, no potions, no spell focuses that are not also jewellery. A component pouch is gone; a holy symbol on a neck-cord is not.
- Full HP and spell slots.
- One item back, each. Before initiative, each player names one small item they had hidden and rolls Deception DC 12 against whoever searched them. Success: they still have it. Failure: they watch it being worn by something in the third tier. This costs one minute and buys enormous goodwill.
- Light. Braziers on the tiers. Dim on the sand, dark above.
Opening Scene
A Medium encounter, on purpose. This is the one Beginning in the deck that opens with a fight, because being dropped into an arena and told to talk it out is a worse scene than the one where you swing. Keep it Medium and keep it short — five rounds, maximum.
The bill. Two Bull-Kin brutes (W02) come through the scrape-gate, and a bull-masked cultist stays behind the bars to work a lever.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Taurine brute (minotaur, reskinned) | 1,800 |
| 1 | Bull-masked cultist (behind bars, unreachable) | 450 |
Base 3,600 plus the cultist as a hazard; ×1.5 for two bodies = 5,400 adjusted, under the APL 9 Medium budget of 6,600. The sand and the lever make up the difference — see below.
The lever. Every third round the cultist pulls it and a section of sand drops six inches, dumping whatever stands on it into a knee-deep pit of loose grit (difficult terrain, DC 12 Acrobatics or fall prone). Telegraph it: the lever screams before it moves.
The audience. They do not intervene, and nothing in the tiers will be reachable this session. Do not let a player climb into them. The right answer to "I go up the benches" is "the dark up there is full, and it does not move aside."
Ending the fight. When one brute drops, the other backs to the gate and the cultist starts closing it. The party has two rounds to get through. If they take them, the fight ends the moment they are past the bars, and the audience — this is the beat — begins, very slowly, to leave.
Gear Recovery
Required, and it is a running thread rather than a single room. The party's packs were sorted into a keeper's alcove past the scrape-gate: reachable in the opening scene if they push through fast (Investigation DC 12 to spot the alcove while moving), or replaceable across the run.
- The alcove holds two-thirds of it, DM's choice which third is missing. Rope and rations, yes; the wizard's spellbook, always.
- What is missing has been distributed to whatever the party meets next. A Sown Bones room may be carrying their waterskins. Say so when they see them; it is the best kind of small revenge.
- If the party never finds the alcove, every Sanctuary room (archetype S) restores one missing item, no check. Do not run a nine-room dungeon with a party that cannot cast.
First Clue (Whisper tier)
X03's Whisper, and this scene delivers it for free: as the party pushes through the scrape-gate, they pass a second gate, chained, with fresh air coming through it and a rag of daylight on the floor beneath. The way they came in is right there, and it is held.
Deliver it as an observation, not an invitation: "You are close enough to that outer gate to smell the evening. There are four spears on the other side of it."
Exits
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One brute. Lever every fourth round. DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three brutes, and the cultist has a horn that calls one more on round 4. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Four brutes, two levers on opposite sides, and the sand pit is 5 ft deep. DCs +3 |
Captivity, an audience, and forced violence for entertainment — this is the second most intense Beginning in the deck. The softer framing: "You were taken in your sleep by people who trade in fighters. Nobody hurt you; they need you able to stand." If the arena's watching crowd is the part that bothers a player, empty the tiers and make it a training pit with one bored keeper. The scene still works.
- This is the Beginning for a party that wants to hit something in the first ten minutes. Some tables do. Give them that and they will forgive the dungeon a lot later.
- Keep it to five rounds. If it is dragging, the second brute breaks and runs for the gate. A fight that outstays its welcome in the first scene sets the session's pace badly for two hours.
- The audience is the horror, and it is free. Never describe them clearly. Two hundred things that watch and do not cheer is more frightening than any stat block, and it costs you nothing to maintain.
- X03 is implied, not compulsory. If the party finds a different way out and wants it, let them. But note that this Beginning has already told them where the door is, which makes the "fight back to the entrance" ending feel earned rather than assigned.
- If you are running short, cut the lever and the hidden-item roll. Two brutes, three rounds, through the gate.