This Year's Tribute
There are fourteen of you in the antechamber and eight are children. The oldest of those is maybe sixteen and has been holding the same clay cup for an hour without drinking from it. A priest with a shaved head reads names off a list in the flat voice of a man who has done this nine times, and when he reaches the end of the list he rolls it up, and the inner door opens, and the smell that comes out of it is old.
Somewhere behind you, a woman's voice says, quite clearly and to nobody: "Hold the thread. Do not let go of the thread."
Premise. The party has been delivered as part of the tribute of youths — bought, volunteered, conscripted, or simply in the wrong city on the wrong week. They go in with the tribute, and the tribute goes in with them. This is the Beginning that comes with people to protect, which is why it points at the two rescue Resolutions.
Starting State
- What a prisoner can hide. Each player names two items small enough to conceal and rolls Sleight of Hand or Deception DC 13 for each. Success: they have it. Failure: it was found, and they can see it on the priest's table. No weapons larger than a dagger, no armour, no packs.
- Full HP and spell slots. Spellcasters who need a focus have a substitute hidden or improvise one from the offerings in the antechamber (a cord of beads, a votive knife, a scrap of temple linen — Arcana or Religion DC 12).
- The tribute. Eight youths, none of them combatants. Name three of them, give each a single trait, and let the players decide how much they care. Do not force it.
- Light. Lamps in the antechamber. Nothing carried in — the party's first problem is light, and it should be.
Opening Scene
A 30 ft × 30 ft antechamber with a low offering table, a drain, an outer door that is barred behind them and an inner door that is not. Nothing here attacks anyone. The tension is entirely social and it should be allowed to breathe for ten minutes.
The priest, Nemenios. Cult of the Thread (W18), and utterly unmoved. He will answer questions in the manner of a man explaining a schedule.
- "What happens now?" — "You go in. Some of you go a long way in."
- "Can we take the children back?" — "The door behind you is barred from the other side. I am on this side. Consider what that tells you about my authority."
- Persuasion DC 16 gets one useful thing: the party may take the lamps.
- Intimidation DC 18 gets a worse thing: he shrugs and calls two wardens, who put the party through the inner door immediately and take the lamps back.
The offering table holds the confiscated goods of nine years of tributes, most of it worthless, some of it not.
| Feature | Check | What it gives |
|---|---|---|
| The table's contents | Sleight of Hand DC 14 | One confiscated item back, per successful attempt, one attempt per PC. He notices the third |
| The list Nemenios reads from | Investigation DC 13 | Fourteen names and, in the margin, in a different hand: she went in on her own |
| The drain | Perception DC 12 | Red fibres caught in the grating. Wool, dyed, and not old |
| The youths | Insight DC 11 | One of them, a boy called Pheres, has been in this antechamber before and got out of it |
Pheres. He is your lever for the whole session. He was in last year's tribute, he was pulled back at the door because the count was wrong, and he knows two true things: that the passages nearest the entrance loop, and that "the lady with the thread" is real and was alive nine days ago. He is frightened, twelve, and will not be left behind without a fight.
Gear Recovery
Required, and deliberately partial. There is no guardroom to raid: the party's gear stays in Knossos and is not coming.
- What they get instead: the antechamber table (see above), the lamps if they talked well, and the tribute's own supplies — a basket of bread, two waterskins, and a coil of thin red wool that one of the children was given "to hold."
- Across the run: every Sanctuary room (archetype S) yields one weapon or one piece of light armour, no check, because a nine-room dungeon with an unarmed party is not a dungeon, it is a punishment. Say this out loud to the table if they look worried: "You will find weapons. Quickly."
- The red wool is not a maguffin. It is thirty feet of yarn and it is X10's first physical hint. Ariadne's actual spool is elsewhere.
First Clue (Whisper tier)
The woman's voice from the read-aloud — "Hold the thread. Do not let go of the thread." — spoken by one of the escorting priestesses to a child, not to the party. Ambient, deniable, and pointed directly at X10.
If you have rolled X05 instead, the Whisper is Pheres saying, to nobody, "She went in on her own. Nobody made her." Both lines are already in the scene; deliver whichever matches, and let the other stand as flavour.
Exits
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | All DCs −2, and the party keeps three concealed items each |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | DCs +1. Two wardens stand behind Nemenios and the offering table is watched |
| 15 | DCs +3. Nemenios is a full priest of the Cult with a warded list; taking anything from the table is Sleight of Hand DC 18 and he counts the tribute twice |
The most intense Beginning in the deck: children delivered as sacrifice, the party among them, no gear and no agency for the first ten minutes. Ask before you run it, name the content directly, and offer the alternative: the tribute can be fourteen adult prisoners with no children at all, which costs the scene some horror and nothing else. If a player wants the youths to survive as a hard guarantee, give it to them — the tribute's fate should never be the twist.
- This is the deck's most emotionally loaded Beginning and its best one. The party enters with something to lose and a reason to go deeper that is not loot. Both rescue Resolutions become obvious choices, which is the point.
- Do not kill Pheres. He can be lost, separated, taken, hidden, and found — all of that is good drama. His death is not a twist, it is a tax on the players' attention, and this dungeon has enough of those.
- The eight youths are not eight NPCs. Name three, sketch the rest, and let the party split them off or shelter them in a Sanctuary room. If the players genuinely try to escort all eight, make it a real logistical problem for two rooms, then have six of them find a bolt-hole to wait in.
- Nemenios is not evil, and that is worse. Play him as an administrator. He has a ledger, he has done this nine times, and he considers the party's opinions irrelevant rather than offensive.
- If you are running short, cut the offering-table checks and hand each player one concealed item, then go through the door in five minutes.