The Thief's Contract
The client's sketch is charcoal on a scrap of sailcloth: a bull's head in profile, one horn drawn heavier than the other, and beneath it a measurement in a merchant's shorthand. Two spans. Bronze. Heavier than it looks.
You are inside the counterweight housing of the great bull-gate, which is a cramped stone room full of chain, and the chain is warm. Above you, out through the gap you came in by, someone in the gatehouse yawns. Below you, the shaft goes down further than your rope did.
Premise. The party broke in on commission to steal one specific object, and they got in through the gate machinery rather than the door. That entry teaches them exactly what X19 will need at the end of the session: the front gate is a machine, machines have keys, and they now know where the keyholes are.
Starting State
- Full kit, plus a thief's outfitting: 100 ft of rope (60 of it already used and hanging in the shaft), a grapple, chalk, a hooded lantern, oil, and one set of thieves' tools that the party is sharing whether they like it or not.
- The client's sketch. One item, one sheet, and the party's only description of the object they came for. It is a bull's head in bronze the size of two hands, and it is the key-object for X19 — though the sketch does not say so.
- The client. Name them in one line and do not overbuild it. A Knossian shipping family, a rival temple, a collector in Naxos. What matters is that the fee is real and the party's reputation is on it.
- Full HP and spell slots.
Opening Scene
The counterweight housing: 25 ft × 25 ft, ceiling lost in chain, floored around a central shaft that drops out of lantern-light. Two chains as thick as a thigh run down the shaft, and a third has snapped and been left hanging. The room is warm and smells of tallow and hot bronze.
No creatures. The room is the puzzle, and it is a tutorial. This is where the party learns to read a mechanism, which is the single most useful habit in this dungeon.
The gate machinery, in the order they should discover it.
| Element | Check | What it tells them |
|---|---|---|
| The chains | Automatic | Two live, one snapped. The gate is running at reduced capacity |
| The counterweight box | Investigation DC 12 | It is a stone crate on a pin, and the pin is drilled for a locking bar that is not there |
| The socket | Investigation DC 14 | A bull's-head-shaped socket in the housing wall, two spans across, empty. Something used to sit here and work the release |
| The gatehouse above | Perception DC 13 | Two guards, bored, one asleep. They change at dusk. Nobody looks down the housing |
| The chalk marks | Investigation DC 15 | Someone has been here before with the same idea, and their chalk arrows go down, not out |
The socket is the Whisper clue and the session's spine. The party should leave this room knowing that a bronze bull's head opens the front gate from inside, and believing — wrongly, comfortably — that the one their client wants is a different one.
Going back out the way they came is possible for exactly as long as the party is still in this room, and you should let them notice that. The rope is right there. The moment they descend the shaft, a maintenance clapper trips and the housing seals — an audible, mechanical, un-sinister clack. No monster required.
First Clue (Whisper tier)
The empty socket, and the shape of it: a bull's head, two spans across, that something used to sit in and work the gate's release. Ambient, entirely physical, and easy to walk past. Do not explain it. Let a player be the one who says "…that's the same shape as the sketch."
X19's Trace tier will confirm the socket's function; its Sign tier reveals there are two heads, not one. This scene only needs to plant the hole.
Exits
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | All DCs −2. The shaft descent is Athletics DC 8 and the slide does no damage |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | DCs +1. Three guards above, one of them alert and walking a beat over the housing grate |
| 15 | DCs +3. The housing is trapped against exactly this kind of entry: a Daedalan alarm (Investigation DC 17 to spot, Thieves' Tools DC 17 to silence) that rings in the gatehouse and puts a Cult of the Thread patrol on the party's trail for the first three rooms |
The lightest premise in the deck alongside B02 and B10 — the party chose the crime, nobody is captive, and nothing is taken from them. Safe to run cold with a table you do not know.
- This is the mechanism tutorial, and it earns its keep six rooms later. A party that learned to say "what is this machine for?" in the first scene will jam R001's hopper, read R045's bellows, and survive R033's walls. Give them the win.
- Let the client's object stay MacGuffin-shaped for now. The bronze bull's head they were hired to steal is not the one in this socket, and it is not on the loot table. X19 tells you where the working one is; until then the sketch is a promise.
- Do not put a guard fight in here. The two above are scenery. If the party goes up to rob the gatehouse, they can, and they will find four spears and a bell — and the session becomes a different one. Say the odds out loud before they commit.
- Chalk arrows pointing down are the best line in the scene. Someone else had this plan. It did not work out, and the party will meet what is left of them if you want (R062, R091).
- If you are running short, keep the socket and the chains, drop the chalk and the gatehouse, and put them down the shaft in four minutes.