The High Warden of the Thread
Threads. Thousands of them, strung wall to wall and floor to ceiling in a temple older than the maze, dyed in a dozen faded colours and pulled taut through bronze rings hammered into every column. Walking into this room is like walking into the inside of a loom.
A man in a red himation stands at the capstan in the middle, turning it slowly, taking up slack. Six of his people work the anchor rings around the walls. He does not look up.
"Nine rooms," he says. "You came in wet, you went right at the choir, and you did not stop at the fountain." He lifts a knotted cord and runs it through his fingers, knot by knot, without looking. "I have had you on the line since the second hour. Sit down, and I will explain what you are for."
DM summary. The Cult's high priest, who has been tracking the party's whole run on a knotted cord and intends to make them part of the liturgy. He is a liar, his own people do not know it, and the proof is in this room.
The Boon
The Cutting OrderOptional item
A cutting order in Deukalion's own knots, which his wardens can read and he cannot disown
What it is. Two feet of the Cult's own vow-line, red-brown and finger-thick, tied in four square sailor's knots with a fifth at the head that any initiate reads as a signature. The Cutting Order is an instruction — shorten the line at the choir-post, re-lay it to the gate — and both ends are seared black by a blade nobody in this Cult may own.
Where it comes from. Plant it early at any Cult post — the hall of nine doors (R003), the thread-wardens' court (R026) — coiled on a peg among the ordinary work-cords, or sold as string by a scavenger who took it off a courier. Late: the room before this one, in the courier's satchel. Do not call it evidence. It is a piece of cord, and nobody should know what they have until they stand at the pit.
What it does here. It is one of the exposure's two proofs, in hand from the doorway and costing no check, so the cut-pit's Investigation DC 13 is the whole rest of the requirement. It also changes who the argument is with. Get the cord into a warden's hands, which is an action, and his Deception +8 opposes nothing; with a second proof named aloud the DC 16 check is not rolled. She reads it, looks in the pit, and decides. The party still has to find that second proof, and the pit is the cheap one. And he sees it: from the first sight of the cord in the open, getting it back is what he is doing, on foot and in front of everyone, because the one move that would cross the room fast is a cut and his own people are watching. Every round of that is a round he is not spending on the party.
What it doesn't do. It never touches him. He is unpersuadable, keeps 165 hit points and the road of threads, and the fight after his people walk out is the same 5,900-XP fight. A party that killed a cultist in this room rolls the argument anyway, at disadvantage, and a party who never found it exposes him on the five proofs below, exactly as written.
Card and numbers or jump to the card ↓
Arena
Battle map: The Great Hall — pages 29 & 30, 110 × 75 ft
The great hall is the cella: chalk the eight columns in two rows down the chequer, the shrine step at the north end, and the capstan at centre — then string the web: dry-erase lines between fourteen anchor dots on columns and walls, wiped thread by thread as they're cut.
- Dimensions. 70 ft × 70 ft, ceiling 30 ft: a pre-Knossian temple cella that the maze grew around, with eight columns in two rows and a raised shrine step at the north end.
- Light. Forty small clay lamps hung on the threads themselves. Moving a thread moves the light, and the shadows in this room never sit still.
- The web. Guide-threads run between bronze anchor rings on the columns and walls — fourteen anchors, all reachable, all cuttable (one action, no check, with any edged weapon). The web is not an obstacle to walking; it is Deukalion's road. See his card.
- The capstan. A waist-high bronze drum at the centre, wound with the master line. Turning it takes up or pays out slack across the entire room. One full turn (an action, Athletics DC 13) either draws every thread taut — everything in the web's squares is restrained unless it makes a DC 15 Dexterity save — or lets it all sag, dropping the whole web to knee height as difficult terrain.
- The cut-pit. A stone offering-well behind the shrine step, six feet deep, filled to the brim with cut thread: thousands of severed ends, seared where a knife heated in a lamp went through them. This is the evidence. The Cult's first law is that the thread is never cut, only re-tied.
- The shrine. A niche with the Cult's own anchor: the single knotted line every initiate is tied to at their vows, running out of the wall and down into the pit. Where it enters the pit, it has been cut and re-spliced with a square sailor's knot. Deukalion's knot. Everyone here was taught that knot is a sin.
- The lamp-line. A single thread running the length of the room with all forty lamps on it. Cutting it drops every lamp: the room goes to dim, and there is a 50% chance per 10-ft square of loose thread that it catches, which is a fire nobody in this room wants and which the Cult will stop fighting to put out.
Roster & Budget
A priest, his officers, and the six people whose faith he is standing on.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Deukalion, High Warden of the Thread (boss) | 5,900 |
| 3 | Thread-Warden | 1,100 |
| 1 | Knossian Priest of the Thread | 1,800 |
Base 11,000 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 22,000 adjusted, against the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. Half again over, and it is bodies rather than terrain doing it — this is the most conventional fight in this batch and it is meant to be, because the alternate path here is the best one in the deck.
If the heresy is exposed, the wardens and the priest walk out. The remaining encounter is Deukalion alone: 5,900 adjusted, 41% of the budget, and a deliberately sad little fight against a man with nothing left to stand on.
Phases / Clock
| Phase | Trigger | What visibly changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — The Sermon | On arrival | He explains. He is calm, he is welcoming, and what he is proposing is that the party be tied into the maze permanently as living anchors. The wardens keep working the rings. No initiative yet |
| 2 — Taut | Any refusal he cannot talk around, an attack, or the second proof being produced | He throws the capstan. The web goes rigid, the lamps swing, and he begins moving along the threads — appearing at one anchor and stepping out of another thirty feet away, mid-sentence |
| 3 — He Cuts | Deukalion drops to half HP (83), or the wardens' faith breaks | He does the one thing his own law forbids, in front of everybody: he draws a hot knife and cuts the master line to escape a bad position. Every thread in the room goes slack, the lamps come down, and every Cult member present sees it happen. This is a free third proof, and if the wardens are still fighting, they stop |
Round one is the knotted cord. Before anything else, he reads the party's own session back to them from the knots — three or four real rooms they have been in tonight, in order, out loud. It costs you nothing, it terrifies players more than any statistic on his card, and it establishes the only fact that matters: he has been watching, and the maze has been reporting.
Combat Resolution
A mobile caster in a room built to be his.
- Round 1. He does not open with damage. He opens with Bind the Path on the two front PCs and lets the wardens close, while the priest blesses from the shrine step. He fights from the middle of the web and never stands still.
- Tactics. He steps between anchors every turn — 60 ft in a blink, with no opportunity attacks — and he always ends his turn with a thread between himself and the party's heaviest hitter. Cut anchors and this collapses: with fewer than four anchors intact he can only step 30 ft, and with none he is a man in a himation with a knife. Cutting anchors is the fight. Say so with the first step he takes.
- The wardens cut and re-tie mid-combat to move their own line and to restrain PCs; the priest curses anyone who cuts a thread. Both are ordinary people who took vows, and both will surrender when their faith goes.
- The weakness he cannot fix. He must be heard. Every ability he has is spoken aloud — the blessings, the bindings, the sermon — and a silence effect, a gag, or a 3rd-level counterspell on Bind the Path costs him his next turn entirely, because he will stop and repeat himself properly rather than proceed unheard.
- What winning looks like. He goes down or he runs — at a quarter hit points he will cut and go, and he can, and letting him is legitimate. He is a cult leader, not an icon, and killing him is permitted. Five to seven rounds, 30 minutes.
- If the party is losing, the wardens take prisoners rather than kills. Being tied into the web as an anchor is a genuinely horrible outcome and a completely recoverable one; a PC at 0 hit points here wakes up bound at the wrists to a bronze ring, being prayed over.
Alternate Resolution
Expose the heresy to his own people. Roleplay, two proofs and an argument.
The Cult of the Thread has one law: the thread is never cut, only re-tied. The wardens believe it and have died for it. Deukalion cuts. He has been cutting for thirty years, because a maze whose thread runs to the gate is a maze that does not need priests.
The proofs. The party needs two of these in hand, or seen and named aloud in front of at least one warden.
| Proof | How it is found |
|---|---|
| The cut-pit | Look in it: Investigation DC 13. Thousands of severed ends, seared with a hot blade. Nobody in the Cult is permitted to own a hot blade |
| The shrine splice | The initiates' own vow-line, cut and re-tied with a square sailor's knot at the pit's edge: Investigation DC 15, or free for anyone who learned the Cult's splice earlier in the run |
| His own knife | A thin blade with a scorched tang at his belt, visible on a Perception DC 16, and undeniable if taken |
| His knotted cord | Sleight of Hand DC 17 to lift it. Every knot in it is a re-tie over a cut. He tracked the party by cutting the maze's own guide-lines behind them |
| He does it himself | Phase 3. Free, loud, and in front of everyone |
The argument. With two proofs, one PC makes the case to the wardens — not to Deukalion, who is unpersuadable. Persuasion or Religion DC 16, opposed by his Deception +8. Advantage if the party has treated a Cult member decently earlier in the run; disadvantage if they killed one in this room.
- Success. The wardens stop. One of them — give her a name, give her about four words — walks to the pit, looks in, and sits down on the step. The priest takes the vow-line off his own wrist and lays it on the floor. They leave through the north door and they do not fight the party again tonight or in any later session.
- Failure. He turns it: "They are cutting us apart with words, exactly as I told you they would." The wardens fight with advantage on their first attack and the party has spent a round. One retry only, and only with a third proof.
If the party brought the Cutting Order, it is one of the two proofs before anybody rolls anything, and the round they spend putting it into a warden's hands is the round they would have spent arguing. Give the young warden — the one who is bad at knots — a position somebody can reach, and let the table work out for themselves that she is the one to hand it to.
Deukalion afterwards. Stripped of his people, he does one of two things, your call by how the table has played him: he fights alone and badly, or he sits down at the capstan and tells the party the truth, which is that he has known the way out for thirty years and has never once used it. Either way the north door is open.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Deukalion at −25% HP (124), no Bind the Path. Two wardens, no priest. Anchor-stepping is 30 ft. All DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Deukalion at +25% HP (206) and a third legendary action. Five wardens and two priests, and the capstan turns itself at the top of each round (alternating taut and slack). DCs +1 |
| 15 | Deukalion at +50% HP (248) with a second phase: at half HP he ties his own vow-line to the capstan and becomes immune to forced movement and to being restrained while any anchor stands. Six wardens, two priests, and a lair action on initiative 20 — a thread whips at one creature, DC 17 Dexterity save or 14 (4d6) slashing and restrained until it uses an action to cut free. DCs +3 |
Exit to the Resolution
- Pacing. 35–45 minutes. Behind schedule: skip Phase 1's sermon to three sentences, put the knife in plain view, and let one proof carry the argument.
- He is not a fanatic and should not sound like one. He sounds like a tired senior administrator who is certain he is the only competent person in the building. The heresy is not evil magic; it is a man protecting his job by vandalising the only kindness in this maze.
- Give the wardens faces before the argument matters. One of the three should be young, visibly bad at this, and re-tying the same knot over and over. When the proofs land, cut to her.
- If the party has been slaughtering cultists all run, the exposure path is harder and should be — they have no standing. Let them buy it back by not killing anyone in this room, and say that out loud as a rule of the scene.
- Table safety. People bound to rings by the wrists, and the proposal to make the party into permanent living anchors. The softer framing: he wants their names and their route woven in, not their bodies, and the binding is ceremonial.
- Clue drip. This finale delivers the Path tier, and no room in the deck is better placed for it. The cut-pit holds the ends of every line ever laid in this maze, and one of them is red wool, thinner than the rest, cut nine years ago (X10 Ariadne's Thread — this is the strongest Path clue X10 has). His knotted cord is a complete record of the party's route, which is a map (X14 A Thread of Your Own Making).
- Callback. A party that met the Cult in the hall of nine doors (R003), the court of the thread-wardens (R026), or the camp of the lost cohort (R096) has been shown the square knot at least once. If they noticed it then, give them the shrine splice for free — recognising a knot nine rooms later is exactly the kind of attention this deck exists to reward.
Boon Card
The Cutting Order
Evidence, no rarity · two feet of the Cult's own vow-line, knotted in his hand and seared at both ends · optional, and never on the loot table
AC 11, 2 hit points, and a hot blade destroys it with one action | Weight nothing | Attunement none
Appearance: red-brown line the thickness of a finger, four square sailor's knots along it, a fifth knot-mark at the head that is his personal sign, both ends melted black rather than whipped
In His Own Hand. Any Cult member who handles it reads it without a check: an order to shorten a named line and re-lay it, tied in the square sailor's knot their first law forbids, sealed with Deukalion's own mark and cut with a hot blade at both ends. It counts as one of the two proofs the exposure needs, in hand from the doorway, and it is the only proof that requires no check to find.
They Believe an Object. While a Thread-Warden or the Knossian Priest of the Thread is physically holding it, Deukalion's Deception +8 does not oppose the argument; he cannot talk over a thing in her hands. With the cord held and one other proof named aloud, the DC 16 Persuasion or Religion check is not rolled — she reads it, looks in the pit, and decides, and the DM plays her deciding. If the party has killed a Cult member in this room the check is rolled after all, still at disadvantage and still unopposed.
He Wants It Back. The first time Deukalion sees the cord in the open he stops mid-sentence, and from then on getting it off the party is the thing he is doing. He will not take the short road to it: Cut and Step is a cut, his own people are watching, and thirty years of not being caught is not thrown away for two feet of cord. So he crosses the floor on foot, or sends a warden, or gives an order in the voice of a man who is used to being obeyed — and every round of that is a round he is not spending on the party. If he gets a hand on the cord while nobody is holding it he burns it with the knife at his belt as an action, and it is gone.
What It Cannot Do. It does not persuade Deukalion, who is unpersuadable; it grants no bonus to any attack, save, or damage roll; it does nothing at all once the wardens are dead or gone; and it never ends the fight. He still has 165 hit points, fourteen anchors, and every reason to leave by the west wall.
Put It In Her Hands. One action, within 5 ft of a Cult member, or thrown into her square, where she picks it up on her own turn. Reaching a warden to do it is the cost of the whole trick, and it is the only cost.
Creature Cards
Deukalion is unique to this temple. His people are the Cult of the Thread (W18) and appear throughout the deck, so their numbers live in the bestiary.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Thread-Warden, Knossian Priest of the Thread. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.
Deukalion, High Warden of the Thread
Medium humanoid, lawful evil · CR 10 (5,900 XP)
AC 18 (bronze cuirass, shield of knots) | HP 165 (22d8 + 66) | Speed 30 ft.
Saves Wis +9, Cha +8 · Details Deception +8, Insight +9, Persuasion +8, Religion +6 · Darkvision 60 ft.
The Road of Threads. On his turn he may step into any anchored thread within 5 ft and step out of any other anchor within 60 ft, without provoking opportunity attacks. This costs no action. With fewer than four anchors intact the range drops to 30 ft; with none, he cannot do it at all.
Everything Aloud. All of his abilities are spoken. He cannot use Bind the Path, Curse the Cutter, or any legendary action while silenced, gagged, or unable to be heard, and he loses his next turn re-starting the words rather than continue unheard.
On the Line Since the Second Hour. He knows the party's route through the maze this session and the order they took it in. He may state one true, specific detail about their run whenever he likes, which is not a mechanic and is the best thing on this card.
Legendary Bearing. He takes two legendary actions per round, spent at the end of another creature's turn, and regains them at the start of his.
Multiattack. Two attacks with the knotted scourge, or one scourge attack and one use of Curse the Cutter.
Knotted Scourge. Melee, +7 to hit, reach 10 ft, one target. Hit: 12 (2d8 + 3) slashing damage, and if the target is restrained it takes an extra 7 (2d6).
Curse the Cutter. One creature within 60 ft that has cut a thread this encounter makes a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw, taking 27 (6d8) necrotic damage on a failure or half as much on a success. On a failure it also has disadvantage on attack rolls until the end of its next turn, and every Cult member present hears the curse named.
Bind the Path (recharge 5–6). Threads snap taut across a 20-ft cube he can see within 60 ft. Each creature in it makes a DC 17 Dexterity saving throw or is restrained; a restrained creature may spend an action on a DC 15 Strength check or cut itself free with any edged weapon, dropping one anchor's worth of the web.
The Line Holds. When a creature within 60 ft attempts to move more than 15 ft in one turn, he may pull the line: DC 15 Strength saving throw or that movement is halved and the creature ends its move prone.
Take Up Slack. He turns the capstan a quarter turn from wherever he stands. Every creature standing in the web makes a DC 13 Dexterity saving throw or has its speed halved until the end of its next turn.
Bless the Warden. One Cult creature within 60 ft may immediately move up to its speed or make one weapon attack.
Cut and Step. Costs 2 actions. He cuts a thread and steps 60 ft to any anchor, and one anchor of his choice is destroyed in the process. He will not use this while any of his own people can see him — until Phase 3, when he does not care.