The Champion's Shade
A wide court with a bronze door at the end of it, and one leaf of the door fallen inward a long time ago. Chalk marks on the floor where people once stood in a queue. A wall covered, floor to shoulder height, in tally scratches.
A girl of perhaps seventeen comes out of the dark at a run, in a torn linen chiton with a bronze pin at the shoulder, and she is relieved — she is laughing, she has been waiting, she grabs the nearest of you by the forearm and her hand is cold as a cellar.
"You came the right way," she says. "Good. Good. How many are you?" She counts you, twice. Her face changes.
"Six? There should be fourteen. Where are the rest of you?"
DM summary. The shade of a tribute girl who killed the thing that came for her class of fourteen, could never find the way out, and has held this door ever since so that the next fourteen would not have to go past it. She thinks the party is this year's tribute. She will not let them go deeper. She cannot be killed, and the win is either to prove you are not children or to tell her the truth and let her go.
The Boon
The Brother's PinaxOptional item
A painted tablet naming her fourteen, hung at a shrine by the brother who was not chosen
What it is. A votive tablet the size of two hands: cypress board, gesso, red and black paint gone chalky, a hole drilled at the top for its peg. Fourteen names run down The Brother's Pinax in a column, and under them a dedication in a worse hand: the man who paid for it wrote that part himself. It was hung sixty-odd years after the year it names, which is how long it took the boy who was not chosen to become an old man with the money to pay for it.
Where it comes from. Early, in the first three rooms: hanging on a shrine's votive wall among two dozen other boards, or on a loot roll as a painted board wrapped in cloth. Late: in her camp, in the niche with the cloak and the whetstone, still wrapped — she took it off a body in a corridor decades ago because the cloth was good, and has never unwrapped it. Perception DC 13, or free to anyone who asks her what else she has. Melas was eighty; he paid a man to carry it down and hang it, and the man got as far as this quarter of the maze. Say none of that; let a player unwrap a board and read the names off it.
What it does here. It is the truth as an object, not a claim she must believe. News of Melas needs no History or Insight DC 14; the dedication says it in his own hand. The date comes with it instead of History DC 15, a votive being dated by the king it hung under, three generations dead. Showing her the board triggers Phase 3, and the rites afterwards want only her name said over it rather than Religion DC 14. What it cannot do is the noticing: hers is the fourteenth name, and she must get there herself.
What it doesn't do. It does not say she is dead. It says she is remembered, and those land differently. It does not replace the tally at Investigation DC 10 or her body at Perception DC 13, it grants no bonus to any attack, save, or damage roll, and after the third re-form nothing reaches her, the pinax included. A party who never found it has four other roads to the same truth and runs this finale 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 tribute court: its doorway gaps frame the north double door — draw one bronze leaf standing and the fallen leaf flat, a 20-ft dull mirror on the floor. Chalk the queue line with its fourteen footprints, the tally wall, and her table with the lamps she keeps filled.
- Dimensions. 70 ft × 70 ft, ceiling 25 ft: a formal court with a bronze double door at the north end, one leaf standing and one fallen flat inward.
- Light. Dim. Two lamps she keeps filled with oil she scavenges, and she will refill the party's lamps unasked, because that is what you do.
- The fallen leaf. Twenty feet of bronze lying flat on the floor, tarnished to a dull mirror. She has no reflection in it. She has never once looked. Anyone who does is due a DC 12 Perception check and a quiet moment.
- The tally wall. Ninety-two marks in sets of four and a cross, chalked in four different colours as her chalk ran out and was found again. She believes it says four. Counting them properly is Investigation DC 10, and it is the cheapest devastating check in this book.
- The queue line. A chalk line and fourteen chalked footprints where the tribute stood to be counted. Three of the footprints are still occupied by something that walks the same fourteen steps, over and over.
- The bench. Stone, along the west wall, with fourteen names scratched into it by somebody who wanted them kept. Thirteen are cut deep. The fourteenth — HIPPONOE — is scratched thin and hesitant, as though she felt awkward adding her own.
- Behind the standing leaf. A body: a girl in a torn chiton, curled at the threshold with her back to the door, holding a bronze cloak-pin in her fist. It has been there a long time. It is not hidden and it is not trapped; it is simply where nobody has walked in ninety-two years. Perception DC 13, or automatic for anyone who goes behind the door.
- Her camp. A niche with a folded cloak, a water jar she keeps full, a whetstone, and a broken spear she has repaired eleven times.
Roster & Budget
One champion, and three of her classmates who never stopped queuing.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Hipponoe of the Fourteen (boss) | 8,400 |
| 3 | Lost Wanderer | 700 |
While she is only blocking the way: 8,400 base ×1 = 8,400 adjusted, 58% of the APL 9 Deadly budget of 14,400. She is not trying to hurt anyone. She is standing in a doorway.
If she is struck: base 10,500, ×2 for four bodies = 21,000 adjusted, 1.5× budget — and the XP is a fiction, because none of it can be banked. Nothing in this room can be killed. The Wanderers re-form; she re-forms; there is no experience here and you should say so to any player who asks, in exactly those words, because it reframes the whole encounter in one sentence.
The three Wanderers do not fight at all unless she is damaged. They walk their fourteen steps and they turn and they walk back.
Phases / Clock
| Phase | Trigger | What visibly changes |
|---|---|---|
| 1 — The Welcome | On arrival | She is glad to see them. She offers water, checks them for wounds, and tells them the plan: stay behind her, go back the way they came at first light, she will hold the door. She asks whether Melas is well |
| 2 — The Door | The party says they are going deeper, or tries to pass | She plants herself in the gap. Her voice drops out of the register of a seventeen-year-old and into something flatter: "Nobody goes past me. That is the whole of it. That is what I am for." The Wanderers stop walking and form a line behind her |
| 3 — Whichever Truth | Her body is found, the tally is counted aloud, Melas is spoken of truly, or she is beaten in a fair contest | The room stops being a fight. Run whatever comes next slowly and let the players talk. She is going to ask a question she is afraid of and somebody at the table has to answer it |
Round one is the counting. She counts the party twice, gets six, and asks where the other eight are. Let a player answer that. Whatever they say, she believes it, and she takes it badly, and she starts making a plan to go and look for them — which is the moment the table realises what she has been doing for ninety-two years.
Combat Resolution
Required, and here is the honest version: this fight cannot be won by damage, and it can absolutely be lost.
- She fights like a trained seventeen-year-old with ninety-two years of practice — footwork, the spear, and the door behind her. She never leaves the threshold. She has no interest in the party's flanks and cannot be drawn.
- All her damage is non-lethal. A PC she drops is unconscious and stable, and on her next turn she picks them up and carries them fifty feet back toward the entrance and lays them down out of the way, apologising. She is not fighting the party. She is confiscating them.
- At 0 hit points she does not die. She comes apart, and one round later she is standing in the doorway again at full hit points with her spear in her hand and no memory of the last minute. See Persistence Check.
- The Wanderers stand between her and the party once she has been hurt. Damage passes through them; they re-form in eight seconds; and they are three children in a queue, which is a thing to make a player put down their dice.
- Duration. If the party insists on fighting, give it four rounds, then stop the initiative and describe her getting up for the third time, and ask them what they are trying to accomplish. That is not a punishment; that is the encounter doing its job.
- What "losing" is. A party knocked out entirely wakes fifty feet down the corridor, tidily arranged, bleeding stopped, packs stacked, water jar left within reach. They lose an hour of clock and nothing else, and the Resolution still happens — from further back, and with a party who now know exactly what she is.
Alternate Resolution
Two ways, and either is a full win. Roleplay, and the DCs are low on purpose.
Way one: earn passage. The old rule at any guarded gate is that a champion may pass a champion. She will accept a contest, and she will name the terms because she was trained for exactly this in the yard at Knossos.
| Contest | How to run it |
|---|---|
| Spear to first blood | One PC, non-lethal, three exchanges. Best of three opposed rolls: PC attack roll vs her +9. She fights honestly and calls her own hits |
| The stadion | A footrace, twice the length of the court and back: opposed Athletics, her +7, best of three. She is fast and she is delighted by anyone faster |
| Wrestling | Opposed Athletics, her +7, two falls out of three. She learned this from a woman who beat her every day for a year and she will tell you about it |
| The stone | Throwing weight, one throw each: Athletics DC 16 to beat her mark, and any PC may coach another |
Win, and she stands aside and holds the door for them, and asks them to send somebody back for her when they get out, and means it. Lose, and she is kind about it and still will not let them past, and the party must find the other way. She will grant a rematch after any rest.
Way two: lay her to rest. She does not know she is dead. Nothing here is hidden and every piece of it is in the room.
| The truth | How it lands |
|---|---|
| Count the tally aloud | Investigation DC 10. Ninety-two, in sets of four. She stops. She says "That's not right," and then she says it again with less certainty |
| Show her the body | Perception DC 13 to find it, no check to show her. She recognises the pin before she recognises herself. Do not rush this |
| The date | History DC 15: which tribute year this was, and who was king then, and that he has been dead for three generations |
| News of Melas | Her younger brother, who was not chosen. History or Insight DC 14 to piece it together, or free for a party who visited the shrine of the missing girl and read the votives. The true answer is that he lived a long time, married, had four children, and paid for a stone with her name on it that is still standing. Give this to the player who has been kindest to her |
| The rites | Religion DC 14: her name spoken, two coins, and the words. Any party can do this once they know who she is. A cleric or an acolyte does it free |
If the party carries The Brother's Pinax, the Melas row and the date row both come free of their checks and arrive in her hands at once, and Phase 3 begins the moment she looks down the column. Give the board to whichever player has been kindest to her and let them hold it up; she will take it, and turn it over, and turn it back. She still has to reach the fourteenth name by herself, and the rites afterwards need only her name spoken over the board.
When it lands, she does not dissolve in a beam of light. She sits down on the bench, next to the fourteen names, and asks whether they were frightened at the end, and whether anyone came looking. Answer her. Then she says the thing this whole finale is built to earn — "Then I can stop" — and she puts the spear down for the first time since she picked it up, and she and the three in the queue go out together, in order, the way they came in.
Either way, the door is open. She does not need to be defeated for the party to pass. She needs to be finished with.
Persistence Check
She is a named hero and the win condition here is non-lethal. Killing her is not available — not as a bad choice, not as a costly choice. It is not on the table, and the DM should say so plainly the first time a player asks.
- The plain win. She stands aside because she was beaten fairly, or she goes to her rest because somebody told her the truth. Both are complete. Neither requires a single point of damage.
- If the party attacks anyway, she takes damage normally and behaves as under Combat Resolution. At 0 hit points she re-forms at the door one round later, at full hit points, with no memory of the exchange — and one chalk mark is added to the tally wall, by nobody, while everyone watches.
- Three re-forms and something goes out of her. She stops talking. She stops being seventeen. What is left is a door-guard with a spear that will hold that threshold against anyone for as long as the maze stands, and it can never again be reasoned with, laid to rest, or beaten in a contest. The party must leave by Exit B, they lose this finale's Door-tier clue and its reward, and the girl on the bench's list of names now has nobody left who remembers her. Describe the fourth attempt going through her like a hand through smoke and say nothing else. It is the single worst outcome available in this deck and it should cost the table something to have caused.
- She cannot be turned, banished, or destroyed by turn undead, dispel evil, or similar. She is not an evil spirit and she is not animated by anything except a promise. Channel divinity used on her makes her stand up straighter and thank the cleric for their service.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Hipponoe at −25% HP (140) and no Shield Wall of One. One Wanderer. Contest bonuses drop to +5, all DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Hipponoe at +25% HP (234) and a third legendary action. Five Wanderers, and they close the doorway behind the party as well as in front. Contest bonuses +9, DCs +1 |
| 15 | Hipponoe at +50% HP (281) with a second phase: at half hit points the court remembers the night it happened — the lamps go blue, the fourteen are all present in the queue, and the thing she killed is heard breathing somewhere behind the party for the rest of the scene, never seen and never statted. A lair action on initiative 20 lets her make one spear attack or move one unconscious creature 30 ft toward the entrance. Contest bonuses +11, DCs +3 |
Exit to the Resolution
- Pacing. 35–45 minutes, nearly all of it talk, and it is the quietest finale in the deck by design — the last twenty of the twenty. Behind schedule: skip the contest, put the body behind the door in plain sight, and run the tally and the rites. Fifteen minutes and it will still be the thing they talk about in the car.
- Play her at seventeen. Fast, funny, bossy, unbearably competent, and running an evacuation plan she has rehearsed for ninety-two years. Do not play her as sad. The sadness is the players' job and they will do it without any help from you.
- The three in the queue are the load-bearing horror and they need no lines. Fourteen steps, turn, fourteen steps. If your table has a hard line about children in peril, make them lost soldiers of the cohort instead — the beat is identical and nothing mechanical changes.
- Do not let a player "solve" her with a spell. Speak with dead, revivify, and remove curse all fail informatively: she is not a corpse, not recently dead, and not cursed. She made a promise and she is keeping it.
- If one player has been the group's cynic all session, give them the fallen leaf and the missing reflection. Handing the doubt to the doubter is worth more than a monologue.
- Table safety. Child tribute, a young woman's body, and ninety-two years of a promise nobody released her from. Offer the softer framing before the read- aloud: she can be a grown soldier of the lost cohort with the identical script. Do not describe the body's condition; describe the pin in her fist and stop.
- Clue drip. This finale delivers the Door tier and she is the best courier for it in the deck, because she knows the way in perfectly and has never once been able to use it. Two hooks: her ninety-two years of scavenging, which means she knows every corridor between here and the entrance and will draw it in chalk on the floor for anyone who asks kindly (X03 The Way You Came, X14 A Thread of Your Own Making), and the fourteen names on the bench, which is the tribute roll and a Proof-tier object for anybody hunting a person taken by the maze (X05 Carry Them Out, X10 Ariadne's Thread — she stood in that queue and she remembers who came to see them off).
- Callback. A party that met the kind shade in her alcove (R076), watched the nine dead reenact their deaths (R054), or read the votives at the shrine of the missing girl (R070) has been walked toward this room all night. If they took the trouble to learn a name at any of those, spend it here.
Boon Card
The Brother's Pinax
Votive object, no magic in it at all · a painted cypress tablet with fourteen names on it · optional, and never on the loot table
Weight 2 lb, and it breaks if dropped on stone · Fourteen names in a column, HIPPONOE last · One line of dedication at the foot, in a worse hand · No check to read it, in Knossian letters a child could follow
What It Says. Under the fourteen names: "MELAS SET THIS UP FOR THE FOURTEEN OF THAT YEAR, AND FOR HIPPONOE HIS SISTER, WHO WAS THE BEST OF THEM. HE WAS NOT CHOSEN. HE IS SORRY HE WAS SO LONG." Read it aloud at the table once and never summarise it afterwards.
The Truth in Your Hands. Shown to Hipponoe of the Fourteen, it delivers news of Melas and the tribute year's date with no ability check of any kind, and it triggers her third phase the moment she reads the dedication, in a fight or out of one.
A Votive Is an Offering. The board is a funeral gift that was already given. Rites performed with it need only the dead's name spoken over it: no Religion check, no coins, no cleric, and no consecrated ground.
It Does Not Say She Died. The dedication names her among the fourteen and never says the word. She has to count down the column and arrive at her own name herself, and a DM should let that take as long as it takes.
After the Third. A shade that has re-formed three times cannot be reached by anything, and that includes this. Held up to what is left in the doorway, the pinax is a painted board and she looks straight through it.
Hold It Up. One action, in or out of initiative: a creature holds the board where she can see it and reads one name off it. She stops fighting. So does everything else in the court.
Creature Cards
Hipponoe is unique to this door. The three in the queue belong to the Shades of the Maze (W09) and recur across the deck, so their numbers live in the bestiary.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Lost Wanderer. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.
Hipponoe of the Fourteen
Medium undead, lawful good · CR 12 (8,400 XP)
AC 17 (a memory of a hoplon) | HP 187 (25d8 + 75) | Speed 30 ft., fly 30 ft. (hover)
Saves Dex +9, Wis +8, Cha +9 · Details Athletics +7, Insight +8, Perception +8, Survival +8 · Resistant to cold, necrotic, and nonmagical weapons · Immune to poison, exhaustion, frightened, grappled, restrained · Darkvision 120 ft.
She Will Not Kill You. All damage she deals is non-lethal. A creature she reduces to 0 hit points is unconscious and stable, and on her next turn she carries it 50 ft toward the entrance and sets it down out of the way. She has never killed a person and she is not going to start with these ones.
Nobody Goes Past Me. She does not leave the threshold of the bronze door except to move an unconscious creature to safety, and she cannot be moved from it against her will. Any creature that tries to pass through her space must succeed on a DC 17 Strength saving throw or be stopped and shoved back 10 ft.
She Does Not Know. She cannot perceive her own body, her own reflection, or the true count of the tally wall until another creature points one out to her and says what it means. She is not concealing anything. Nobody has ever told her.
Cannot Be Laid Down by Force. At 0 hit points she disperses and re-forms at the door at the start of the round after next, at full hit points, with no memory of the exchange. She cannot be turned, banished, or destroyed by radiant damage or channel divinity. She can only be released — see the finale's Persistence Check.
Legendary Bearing. She takes two legendary actions per round, spent at the end of another creature's turn, and regains them at the start of hers.
Multiattack. Three attacks with the mended spear.
Mended Spear. Melee or thrown, +9 to hit, reach 10 ft or range 20/60 ft, one target. Hit: 14 (2d8 + 5) piercing damage plus 7 (2d6) cold damage. This damage is non-lethal.
Behind Me. She moves up to her speed without provoking, ending adjacent to a creature of her choice, and until the start of her next turn attacks against that creature are made with disadvantage while she is conscious and adjacent to it. She will use this on a player character in the middle of the fight the party started, and you should let that land.
Shield Wall of One (recharge 5–6). She plants the spear and the three in the queue step into rank beside her. The doorway and every square within 10 ft of it become difficult terrain, and every creature that starts its turn there makes a DC 17 Strength saving throw or is pushed 10 ft back down the court. The wall lasts until the start of her next turn.
Catch Them. When a creature within 30 ft is reduced to 0 hit points by anything, she may move up to her speed toward it. If she reaches it, it is stabilised.
Step and Turn. She makes one spear attack, or moves 20 ft along the threshold without provoking.
Count Again. She names how many of the party she can see and how many she has accounted for. One creature of her choice within 30 ft makes a DC 17 Wisdom saving throw or has disadvantage on its next attack roll against her, because she said its position out loud and it knows she is right.
Hold the Door. Costs 2 actions. Until the start of her next turn, she has resistance to all damage, cannot be moved, and any creature that attempts to move through the doorway has its speed reduced to 0 for that turn.