Something Worse Outside
You went into the Labyrinth on purpose, at a dead run, with the thing behind you close enough that one of you is going to be picking its hair out of a wound later. The entrance was a black rectangle in a cliff that everyone in Crete has been warned about since childhood, and you chose it, and every one of you would choose it again.
Forty feet in, the passage turns, and the sound behind you stops at the threshold. Not slows. Stops. Whatever it is will not come in here.
Which raises a question about this place that none of you want to ask out loud.
Premise. The maze is the safest thing available, which tells the party something about the outside and something worse about the inside. This is the Beginning for a party mid-flight — from a monster, an army, a god's displeasure, or a mistake — and it points at the two Resolutions that treat the entrance as the objective: fight back out (X03), or bring the place down behind them (X12).
Starting State
- Full kit, and whatever they were carrying when they ran. Ask each player what they grabbed. Anything they did not name is at the camp, three miles back, with the thing that is now standing in the entrance.
- Ask the table what they are running from. Take the first answer everyone likes. Good ones: a Nemean-blooded lion, a war-band with a legitimate grievance, a plague town's mob, a god's sacred bull, a Fury with a valid warrant. Whatever it is, it is outside, it is patient, and it will still be there at the end — which is what makes both implied Resolutions bite.
- Two PCs are bloodied. Player's choice which: each starts at half HP. They ran a long way and not cleanly.
- Full spell slots — or, if the table prefers the harder version, everyone has spent their two highest-level slots. Offer the choice out loud.
Opening Scene
A Medium encounter, and it is a chase that ends in a fight rather than a fight that happens in a room. Two things followed the party inside; the big one did not.
The entry passage: 100 ft long, 15 ft wide, turning twice, with a collapsed section 40 ft in that makes a chest-high scramble, and a widening at the end where the maze proper begins.
The pursuit. Two Keres — carrion-spirits, W20 — came in with the party, riding the same panic. They are fast, weak, and they do not stop.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Kere (carrion-spirit) | 1,100 |
| 1 | The thing at the threshold | — (never fought) |
Base 2,200; ×1.5 for two bodies = 3,300 adjusted, well under the APL 9 Medium budget of 6,600 — the pressure comes from the chase structure, not the bodies.
Run it as three rounds of movement, then a fight.
- Round 1: the party is running. Anyone who stops to fight is alone. The scramble at 40 ft is Athletics DC 12; a failure costs half your movement.
- Round 2: the Keres catch whoever is slowest. One attack each, then they overshoot and turn — they are fast and stupid.
- Round 3: the party reaches the widening and can choose: turn and fight in a space where the party can spread out, or keep running into an unmapped maze with two spirits on them. Both are legitimate. Fighting is easier and they should be allowed to work that out.
- After the fight: silence, and the shape at the threshold a hundred feet back, filling the entrance, not coming in.
The threshold. Whatever the party ran from is visible at the entrance for the rest of the scene, and it will not cross. It does not speak. If the party goes back to look, it is still there, and it is content to wait. Never fight it, never stat it, and never explain why it will not enter — the maze's own reputation is the answer, and it is the most frightening thing in this Beginning.
First Clue (Whisper tier)
The thing that will not come in, and what it means: the maze has a threshold, and things respect it.
That is X03's Whisper (the entrance is a real, contested door — and it is still there behind you) and X12's (this place is a structure, and structures can be brought down across a doorway). Deliver it as an observation from whoever looks back: "It's not scared of us. It's scared of the building."
Exits
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | One Kere. Scramble DC 10. Only one PC starts bloodied |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Three Keres, and one has the Swarm trait — it splits when reduced below half. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Four Keres, the scramble is a 10-ft climb (Athletics DC 16), and on round 4 the thing at the threshold reaches in — one 20-ft-reach attack, +10 to hit, 22 (4d8 + 4) damage, once, at whoever is furthest back. Then it withdraws. It still will not enter. DCs +3 |
Pursuit, panic, and an unkillable thing waiting at the only door — this Beginning runs on dread rather than gore, but it is a genuine "no way out" scenario and some players find that claustrophobic rather than exciting. Say up front that the maze has other exits and the party will find one. If the pursuer the table invents turns out to be heavier than expected (a domestic threat, a person), swap it for a monster without comment.
- The only Beginning that opens on movement, and the deck needs one. Three rounds of chase, one short fight, one image of something in the doorway, and the party is rolling d100 inside eight minutes with adrenaline already up.
- Never stat the thing at the threshold. The moment it has an AC it stops being the reason this Beginning works. If a player insists on attacking it, let the attack hit, let it not care, and let it stay exactly where it is.
- Both implied Resolutions treat the entrance as the goal, which makes this the most focused Beginning in the deck. The party wants to go back out the front, so X03 is the obvious ending — and X12's "bring it down behind you" is the ending for a party who works out that the way to deal with something waiting at a door is to remove the door.
- Let the table choose the harder start. Offering "full slots, or you spent your two best ones getting here?" costs nothing and the party that picks the second option will tell you about it for the rest of the night.
- Keep the Keres cheap. They are not the encounter; the chase is. If the fight reaches round 4, have the last one shriek and flee deeper — and now there is something wounded and frightened loose in the maze ahead of the party, which is a gift.
- If you are running short, one Kere, two rounds, and the shape in the doorway. Four minutes.