How to Run a Session

The procedure, the clock, the dials, and two sessions run end to end

Before the Session

Ten minutes, most of it deciding rather than reading.

Choose or roll the Beginning (d12). Rolling is fine; choosing is better if you know your table. Read the opening scene once before play. Three of the twelve strip the party's gear, and every one of those puts the recovery path in the opening scene — check it so you can answer the first question a player will ask.

Set the Resolution. If the Beginning names an implied Resolution, use it: those pairings are built to make the ending feel inevitable in hindsight. Otherwise roll d20 after the party finishes the first room. Ten of the twenty need no particular premise and fit any opening; if the roll lands on one that wants something this party hasn't got — a captive they came for, a warrant, a patron — reroll without comment.

The players are not told, ever. The Resolution is not a quest. It is the thing you have decided is true about this maze tonight, and it reaches the table as clues, in tiers, over hours. See "Clues and the Ending" below.

Note the APL and grab the column. The deck is written for APL 9, and every entry with a fight or a DC in it carries APL 6, 12, and 15 lines as well. Decide which one you are reading tonight and stop thinking about it.

Roll the Final Encounter early. This is the best two minutes of prep in the book. Nothing is spoiled — you are the only person who will know — and it buys you two things. First, you know what the evening is walking towards, so you can let a warband foreshadow it. Second, every Final Encounter names one optional boon: an object, an animal, or a piece of knowledge the party might pick up hours earlier, which pays off in that specific ending. Read the boon note, pick the room where you will plant it, and then plant it without comment. None of them is required and none of them shortens the fight enough to be the answer; what they do is turn a lucky pick-up three hours ago into the reason the ending went the way it did.

Decide your session length, and therefore your room count — see the clock, below. Then set your dials, and say the ones that affect fairness out loud.

Ask the table what nobody wants in the game. Two minutes, before the first roll. Then run it hard.

The Procedure

Roll physical dice. Use this procedure.

BEFORE PLAY
  1. Choose or roll the Beginning (d12).
  2. Set the Resolution:
       – If the Beginning names an implied Resolution, use it.
       – Otherwise roll d20 after the party finishes the first room.
         Ten of the twenty need no particular premise and fit any opening.
         If the roll lands on one that wants a premise this party hasn't
         got — a captive they came for, a warrant, a patron — reroll.
     The players are NOT told. It is revealed through clues.
  3. Note the party's APL and grab the matching scaling column.
  4. Optional, and worth the two minutes: roll the Final Encounter now,
     read its boon, and decide where in the run you will plant it.
     Nobody is told anything.

EACH ROOM
  5. Roll d100. If that room has already come up this session, reroll.
  6. Read the room's read-aloud, run its content.
  7. Present the exits. The party picks one.
  8. Drip one Resolution clue on the way out.
  9. Repeat from 5.

THE TURN
 10. When the session clock says so, declare that the finale is live.
 11. At the next room exit the party takes, roll d20 → that Final Encounter.
 12. Run the Final Encounter (a room in its own right; no d100 roll).
 13. Run the Resolution. The session ends on the escape, not the kill.

Steps 5 through 9 are the whole game, and you will run them nine to twelve times in an evening. Everything else on this page is about doing those five steps quickly enough that the table never watches you read.

Reading the Dice

The dice. Rooms are d100, Beginnings are d12, the Final Encounter and the Resolution are each d20, and loot is d100.

Reading percentile dice. A d100 is two d10s — a tens die and a units die. A roll of 0 on the tens and 0 on the units reads as 100, not 0. Every deck table prints the die to reach for, so you never have to re-read this paragraph mid-session.

Let a player roll the d100. Hand the dice to whoever opened the door. The maze becomes a shared antagonist instead of a DM whim, and it buys you the seconds you need to pull the room up.

Never roll the next room until the party has committed to an exit. The commitment is the decision; the roll is just weather. A party that hears the dice before they have chosen will start treating exits as flavour text, and the navigation game — which is most of what this dungeon is — quietly dies.

Tracking what you've used. Rooms don't repeat, and this site keeps no state: no saved sessions, no crossed-off numbers, nothing that breaks when you open a private window. Keep a scratch column of rolled numbers beside your initiative order. A typical session uses only 9–12 of the 100 rooms, so the list stays short and duplicates are rare. In a campaign, carry that column between sessions — it is the only piece of state the Labyrinth has.

Duplicates. Reroll them. If three consecutive rerolls land on used rooms, stop rolling and pick an unused room you want; nobody at the table can tell the difference, and it is faster than a fourth roll.

Running a Room

A room is four beats, and they happen in this order every time.

1. Read the read-aloud first, then look at the sheet. The players should not watch you scan a page before you speak. Every room opens with a boxed paragraph written to be read cold; read it, then take your beat to find the mechanics while they react to it.

2. Run the content. The room's archetype tells you what kind of scene you are in: a Gauntlet is a fight with terrain, a Puzzle Room has an answer, a Trap Room has a mechanism and a timer, a Parley room has somebody who would rather talk, a Lore & Navigation room is a breather that hands out information, an Avoidable Threat is a Deadly thing the party is meant to consider walking around, and a Sanctuary is a rest. Each room's DM notes name the optional half — the second puzzle stage, the extra warband wave, the searchable side chamber — so you know what to cut when you are behind.

3. Present the exits out loud, every time. Two or three of them, each with its cost: a crawl that means dropping packs, a flooded arch that means one at a time, a stair that means noise. This is the whole navigation game. Exits differ in cost and flavour, never in destination, and it is that cost that makes a choice a choice.

4. Drip one Resolution clue on the way out, not on the way in. Rooms should end on a hint. It is what makes the party want the next door instead of the next rest.

On searching. Rooms reward it and it costs table time; both of those are intentional. If your table searches everything, plan for fewer rooms and let the searching be the session. If your table is decisive, let them be — a room crossed in six minutes is a legitimate room, and the loot they skipped is not owed to them.

A Deadly room the party sneaks past is a win, not a skipped encounter. Say so at the table. It teaches them to look for bypasses, which is this dungeon's actual skill curve.

The Session Clock

A Labyrinth session has no fixed length; you decide by how many rooms you run. An average room is 12–18 minutes of table time.

Rule of thumb. Call the finale when roughly 70% of your planned table time is spent, or immediately after a late short rest — whichever comes first. Never call it in the same breath as a bruising room; give the table one quiet beat between.

Watch the room clock, not the room count. If your rooms are running twenty-five minutes because the table is enjoying itself, you are running a five-hour session's worth of content in a three-hour slot, and the honest fix is fewer rooms rather than faster ones. Nine rooms and a real ending beats fourteen rooms and a rushed escape every time.

Attrition and rest

The grind is the point, and it is the main way this feels different from a oneshot.

• Short rests happen in Sanctuary rooms, or anywhere you explicitly allow. Default cap: two per session.
• Long rests are not available in the maze except in the two Sanctuary rooms that say so — at most one per session.
• Resting outside a Sanctuary (optional rule): roll d6; on 1–2 the previous room's warband finds the party, at half strength.
• Target state at the finale: 50–65% of resources. Above 75% and you owed them one more Hard room; below 35% and you should hand them a Sanctuary first.

Two Hard fights back to back is the fatigue point. After the second, steer for a Sanctuary or a Lore room, or use your one silent reroll — you are the one reading the dice, so nobody needs to know.

Clues and the Ending

The Resolution must never be a surprise the players had no chance to see coming. Nor should it be a quest handed out in the first ten minutes. It arrives in tiers, one per room, on the way out.

A Whisper is a draught, a smell of salt, a scratch on a wall in the wrong alphabet. A Proof is a thing a player can hold up and say a sentence about. By the Path clue, the answer to "how are we getting out of here?" should come from a player's mouth rather than yours; that moment is the payoff for two hours of restraint.

If the party has ignored three clues in a row, stop being subtle: put the next one in an NPC's mouth, write it on a wall, or let them find the body of somebody who was most of the way to working it out.

Each Resolution page lists what it requires and where those requirements can come from, so you can check mid-session whether tonight's ending is still reachable. If it is not — the object is at the bottom of a flooded room the party fled, the NPC who knew the route is dead — you have two honest options: put the requirement in the next room, or switch Resolutions and start dripping the new one. Nobody will ever know.

Calling the Finale

Announce it, don't spring it. "You feel the maze narrowing" is a real mechanical courtesy: it gives the party a chance to rest, buff, and spend consumables, and that is what makes a Deadly boss survivable. Say it after a quiet beat, never in the same breath as a bruising room.

Say which finale rule you are using before the d20 leaves your hand. Forced — the next exit is the finale, whichever one they take — or rerollable, where a different exit means a different d20. Both work. Deciding after the roll is what makes a table feel cheated.

Then roll d20 at the next exit and run it as a room in its own right. No d100. The Final Encounter has its own read-aloud, its own terrain, and usually its own clock.

Most finales can be won without killing anything. Eighteen of the twenty carry an alternate resolution — a puzzle, a bargain, a skill route, a price paid — and those are not consolation prizes; several are harder than the fight. Read the alternate before play so you recognise the moment a player stumbles onto it.

If you planted the boon, do nothing about it now. Do not remind the party that they are carrying it. If they work it out, the ending is theirs; if they don't, the fight is written to work without it. The moment a player says "wait — the shield" is worth more than any bonus the shield grants.

Running the Resolution

The escape is the ending, not the boss. Budget real time for it: fifteen to twenty minutes in a normal session, and more if the ending is a chase or a negotiation. A session that ends on the kill ends flat, and the Resolution is where the evening's choices get counted — who they spared, what they carried out, whose help they took and what it cost.

Three things to have ready:

• The requirement, and whether the party actually has it. Check this when you declare the finale, not when they reach the door.
• The price. Most Resolutions charge something: an object left behind, a debt taken on, a body carried, a promise made to something that will remember it.
• The last line. Decide what the final image is before you get there. The maze behind them, closing; the light; the wardens' brazier; the sea. End on that and stop talking.

In a campaign, the price is the hook for the next descent. Write it down.

Flow Tips

Everything above, in thirteen lines. If you read nothing else on this page before your first session, read these — they are the ones that show at the table.

1. Read the room, then look at the sheet. Read-aloud first, mechanics second. The players should not watch you scan a page before you speak.
2. Name the exits out loud every time. Two or three, with their costs. This is the whole navigation game; if you skim it, the maze stops feeling like a maze.
3. Never roll the next room until the party has committed to an exit. The commitment is the decision. The roll is just weather.
4. Let a player roll the d100. Hand the dice to whoever opened the door. The maze feels like a shared antagonist instead of a DM whim, and it buys you the seconds you need to pull the room up.
5. Drip the Resolution clue on the way out, not on the way in. Rooms end on a hint; that's what makes the party want the next one.
6. Skip a room's optional half when you're behind. Every room's DM notes say what to cut.
7. A Deadly room the party sneaks past is a win, not a skipped encounter. Say so at the table. It teaches them to look for bypasses, which is this dungeon's actual skill curve.
8. Two Hard fights back to back is the fatigue point. After the second, steer for a Sanctuary or a Lore room, or use your one silent reroll — you are the one reading the dice, so nobody needs to know.
9. Announce the finale, don't spring it. "You feel the maze narrowing" gives the party a chance to rest, buff, and spend consumables, which is what makes a Deadly boss survivable.
10. Say which finale rule you're using before the d20 leaves your hand — forced, or rerollable via another exit. Deciding after the roll is what makes a table feel cheated.
11. The escape is the ending, not the boss. Budget real time for the Resolution; a session that ends on the kill ends flat.
12. Keep a scratch list of rolled room numbers. Rooms don't repeat, and the site doesn't track it for you. One column of numbers beside your initiative order is enough.
13. Plant the finale's boon early and never explain it. Roll the ending before the session, read the Boon column, and put that one object, animal, or overheard fact in the first two or three rooms as if it were nothing. The moment a player says "wait — the shield" is worth more than any bonus it grants.

DM Dials

These are yours. Decide them before play, and say the ones that affect fairness out loud.

When It Goes Sideways

The party is walking through everything. They are above 75% resources at the 70% mark. Stop substituting mercy: run the next Deadly room as written, let the warband reinforce, and do not offer the bypass. Attrition is the arc, and a party that reaches the finale fresh will find it merely long.

The party is falling apart. Below 35% before you meant to call the finale: substitute a Sanctuary at the next exit, allow the short rest, and consider calling the finale early rather than grinding two more rooms out of them. A Deadly finale against a party at a quarter strength is a coin flip, and coin flips are not what this dungeon is for.

Someone is going to die. That is permitted, and sixteen of the twenty finales are written to allow lethal outcomes. What is not permitted is a death nobody saw coming: name the risk out loud before the roll that carries it, every time.

They are stuck on a puzzle. Fifteen minutes is the ceiling. Every Puzzle Room carries a fallback — a brute-force cost, a partial success, an NPC who can be made to explain — and using it is not a failure of the room. The maze is allowed to be solved badly and expensively.

They ignored the clues. See "Clues and the Ending": escalate to an NPC's mouth or a wall. If they have ignored five, switch Resolutions to one they have accidentally qualified for, and drip the new one hard.

You are out of time and the finale hasn't happened. Declare it now and cut a room. If even that will not fit, end the session at a Sanctuary and open the next one with the narrowing — the clock is a tool, not a contract.

A room lands badly at your table. Use your silent reroll and move on without discussion. Every entry with a hard theme carries a softer framing in its DM notes; that is what it is there for.

Two Example Sessions

Two tables, the same deck, nothing shared but the procedure. One is a three-hour session with a fast, decisive party who fight or sneak and rarely search; the other is a five-hour session with a party who measure everything and would rather solve the room than break it. Both are good sessions. Neither one is the correct way to run this book.

Read them for the shape rather than the detail: where the clock went, when the clues landed, when the finale was declared, and how differently two endings feel when one party arrived carrying something they found in hour one and the other walked straight past it.

Example One — Three Hours, Seven Rooms, and a Chimera

The table. Six players at level 9. This table decides in fifteen seconds and commits, fights what is in front of it or goes over the top, and has never finished searching a room. Three hours, hard stop.

Before play. Ten minutes with the deck. B03 Sand in the Teeth was chosen rather than rolled: it is the Beginning for a party that wants to hit something in the first ten minutes. It implies X03 The Way You Came, so there was no d20 after room one, and nobody was told. APL 9, as written. Then the optional two minutes: d20, 14, F14 The Chimera Triarch — Deadly, and one of only two finales with no alternate resolution at all, which suited this table. Its boon, the Keeper's Clapper, wants planting early in a room with tack or cages and names R016 and R049, so whichever came up first would carry it. Taking the early plant means it is not also hanging on the yard's west rail later.

The run. B03 pays the Whisper for free, a room earlier than the cadence above asks for it: pushing through the scrape-gate they came close enough to the chained outer gate to smell the evening, and four spears on the far side of it. Take that when a Beginning offers it — the tiers are a cadence, not a schedule, and a clue the party walked into is worth two you had to place. They caught the keeper's alcove in passing — Investigation DC 12, which you only get to roll if you are moving fast — and had two-thirds of their packs back. Not the spellbook.

• R013 Hoplite Ossuary · 0:26 — Hard, and no initiative was ever rolled: up the shelves at Athletics DC 12, and down behind six dead men who then had to turn round, which breaks the wall for both their neighbours. Out through the bronze door with the grave-goods behind it, spellbook among them. Trace: these grooves are spent, and the men in the wall came up out of them.
• R041 Pit of Peeled Shields · 0:40 — Eight minutes, which is what it is built for. They ignored the flagstones at the narrow point, so the false span kept its spikes, and walked the four-foot lip with a borrowed hoplite spear as a handrail, which costs no check at all. Thirty-one shields down there, six still good, none taken. A second Trace: one carries the Knossian double axe upside down.
• R004 Pen of the Lowing Dark · 0:48 — Deadly, over the line on purpose, and the right answer is to walk past it. Greaves padded with straw, the belled chain traced by touch rather than lamplight, forty feet of ox-bone at half speed on a group Stealth DC 15. One ring chimed; the Champion snorted and did not wake. Say at the table that this was a win. Sign: hurdles pulled out of the pen wall and dragged off north, recently.
• R050 The Quiet Kitchen · 1:06 — Sanctuary, thirteen minutes, no lingering: fire lit, hot meal, whetstone round the table, pantry handed over without a check, one of the two short rests spent. Nobody went near the loose brick by the hearth. Proof, read to them rather than found — the slate's last three entries are all meals sent to the hall by the way in, thirteen portions, twice a day.
• R029 The Ash Trod · 1:19 — Fifteen minutes that should feel like eight, and where the spellbook got spent. A ray of frost skinned a seam into a bridge, the three rounds were counted aloud, and they crossed bridge to bridge to the west door — forty feet instead of the trod's hundred and ten, and Pyre-Hounds will not stand on frozen crust. No clue; this room pays in distance.
• R049 Menagerie of Broken Cages · 1:34 — Deadly, and the Clapper was in the keeper's satchel in cage 11, a few feet inside the door they came in by. They threw the seized feed lever, the trough filled, the manticore came off the cage-tops last because it will not queue behind hybrids, and the hall turned its back for three rounds. They spent all three running. Nobody opened cage 11.
• R082 Charnel of the Sated · 1:51 — A true Medium and a quick room, twelve minutes: they read the floor from the doorway, stayed outside the Grave-Honey Flow's thirty-foot leash, and burned the swarms out of the drift before either bit anyone. Proof again, in the corridor beyond — two bored voices settling who has the middle watch and whether the priest is coming down tonight.

At 2:04, two-thirds of the evening gone, the finale was declared, and with it the Path: the entrance hall seen from a doorway — brazier, hurdle barricade, eleven spears, two officers, the bronze gate shut behind all of it. Four minutes of consumables, then the yard.

The finale. They came in at near fifty-five per cent of resources, which is where the dungeon wants them, and fought the Triarch for eight rounds and forty minutes without ever knowing there had been a farm tool with their name on it. The coal pit and the goat head's temper did it: two shoves over the lip, and Intimidation aimed at the goat twice, which is the maximum, each costing the Triarch its Multiattack. The cages opened at half health and the hybrids went for whatever was nearest, twice the Triarch. The barbarian dropped in round six, the Triarch stopped to eat, and that bought the round it took to drag him onto the bone ramp.

The Clapper would have bought three claps — the goat coming by the shortest line, the fire cone landing where the party chose it. One shove into the coals, one breath that missed, and on the third clap the Triarch's whole attention on the bearer. Better story, same fight: from Phase 3 it does nothing at all, and a party who never finds it fights exactly the encounter as written.

The ending. Out through the beast-gate smelling of the yard, which cost nothing here, because nothing at the threshold hunts by scent. The Door was the floor itself: grooves again, and woodsmoke. Eleven wardens on a hurdle barricade, two officers, one with the gate key on a cord, and a man who said "That's not the priest." They did not bluff and did not work the gatehouse; they went for the cord. Somebody had come off the ossuary shelves three hours earlier with a tooth in his pocket, and kicked into a groove it came up as a hoplite on the wardens' own side of the barricade. The line broke on round four, before the second watch was due. A third of them down, the rest running. Twelve minutes, then the ramp and daylight on limestone. One of the wardens had been in the tiers that evening, watching. The session landed exactly on its three-hour stop.

What this session shows.

• Seven rooms is a real session. Two of them ran in twelve minutes or less because the deck flags its quick rooms, and that is what buys the boss his forty.
• Sneaking past a Deadly room is the room played correctly. R004 and R049 were earned — the padding, the chain-tracing, the lever. Say "that was the win" out loud.
• Hand a fast party its clues. Nobody made an Investigation check for a Resolution clue all night, and they still named their way out when the finale was called.
• The boon is optional, and the finale is written to prove it. Plant it, say nothing, and let it be missed. Missing it should cost a good story and nothing else.

Example Two — Five Hours, Fourteen Rooms, and Nobody Drew a Sword at the End

The table. Six players at level 9, the sort of table that measures a room before it walks into it and would rather open a door than break it. Five hours, one break.

Before play. B11 The Surveyor's Crew was chosen rather than rolled, and it implies X14 A Thread of Your Own Making, so there was no d20 after room one. APL 9, as written. Then the optional two minutes: d20 for the finale, five, F05 The Gorgon Queen of the Sunken Court — Deadly, with a puzzle for its alternate resolution. Its boon is the Polished Aspis, a shield kept mirror-bright, and it wants planting in the first three rooms in a room with armour in it, as the second thing on a loot roll, so that ruling was made in advance. Then twenty minutes at the survey station with the previous crew's tablet, filled in to room fourteen and stopping mid-wall in room fifteen.

The run.

• R037 The Cartographer's Cell · 0:15 — Eighteen minutes reading four walls of a dead surveyor's bearings. Out with his chain and a Whisper: one corridor in his tally, written four times and struck through three.
• R013 Hoplite Ossuary · 0:33 — Hard, no attack rolls: the second shelf tier, Athletics DC 14 to reach round for the grave-goods — rope, and a bronze-faced shield in oiled cloth. Whisper: a sealed tablet nobody had opened.
• R059 The Counting Room · 0:53 — Ten minutes: they counted their own session out loud, ran the plumb-line two hundred and ten feet, and were told how many rooms were left. Trace: a tally-board of thirty-one chambers, stopping mid-line.
• R063 Bath of the Cold Spring · 1:03 — Fifteen minutes, ten of them hunting a catch that is not there; a short rest, the cure unused. Trace: the arrow they chalked on the arch was gone. Not smudged. Gone.
• R080 The Whispering Trapfloor · 1:18 — Twenty-two minutes and the worst spend of the night: distrusting the voice, they prodded every row with the statue's head until the counterweight bottomed out. Trace, out down their own chute: fifteen feet of depth.
• R072 Loom-Widow's Parlor · 1:40 — Hard on paper, twenty minutes, no initiative; somebody looked up first, and the quietest player paid the toll. Sign: she weaves what she can hear, and she cannot hear the exits.
• R066 The Petrified Garden · 2:00 — Deadly, eighteen minutes, nothing taken: statues read from the doorway, then the south wall at half speed, clear of the circle. Sign: a hole in the ceiling with weather in it, fixing their depth.
• R085 Chamber of the Weighing Chain · 2:18 — Ten minutes, cut down: the cradle came loaded to eight, the other billets make eleven, so they added the five and walked under. Sign: the gate post's tally, hauls not days, in the hundreds.
• R091 Cell of the Chained Prophet · 2:28 — Lamps out, seventeen minutes talking to a voice, for a name, a sound from outside, and a promise. Proof, and the shape of the end: "When you break one of them, look at the others' faces."
• R084 The Cool Cellar · 2:45 — They spent the dead surveyor's tablet at the cell door; the next d100 was eighty-four, and with it the long rest, rations, and a stick of chalk. Proof: four sets of tallies, none of whom left together.
• R073 The Balance Hall · 3:05 — Seven minutes: the pivot was already chocked, so the east door was dead and the slab safe, and they walked the fixed walkway. Proof: the load figure by the door, in an engineer's hand.
• R096 Camp of the Lost Cohort · 3:12 — Eighteen minutes and the best of them: rations down before anybody asked, and the news of Knossos told properly. Proof: a picket who remembered four Knossians with a chain and could not say whether it was two weeks ago or two years.
• R087 Ruin of the Old Temple · 3:30 — Ten minutes, and the second short rest, because the room is safe and says so. Proof: a draught that is actual weather, and the temple's record that three rooms turn.
• R099 The Cartwheel Rotunda · 3:40 — They chalked the outer wall, found the index plate, and dialled the south mouth — then somebody said that a mark on a drum does not stay where it was put, which is why, they decided, the arrow at the bath had gone. Path: their own map, corrected forty degrees, and the surface thirty degrees off everyone's certainty.

The finale. It should have been called in the temple at the seventy-per-cent mark and was held one room, because the rotunda was the room this ending needed; the finale then ran fifty minutes and gave the ten back. Four steps down into a foot of black water, nine tarnished mirrors facing outward, and a woman on the fountain rim with her back turned: "Don't come round. I would rather not."

They spent nine minutes not fighting. She talked about the statues and what she wanted — a message carried out, a name cleared, a particular man told she is still here — and they wrote it down, because that is what this party does. Then they worked in the room's order: two of them on the verdigris-seized crank chain, Athletics DC 13 and two rounds, until daylight came down the sun-well; then one mirror of the nine polished at Sleight of Hand DC 12. The second clean surface had been on somebody's arm since the ossuary.

That is all the Aspis changed, and it changed everything: step two wanted two clean mirrors and they needed one, and step three could be angled from behind a statue. She turned anyway, because somebody had to step inside the ring to swing a tripod, and the lamp-shells began going out while the party worked to make the room brighter. She named the shield aloud, since she cannot smash a mirror on an arm, and shot the man carrying it; he watched her in the bronze without averting, called the angle, somebody said nobody move, and she burned a Legendary Resistance on the first save. Two rounds later she failed twice. The cleric came back out of the jar on the fountain rim. They left her standing in the water with her guard, because somebody had the message written down.

The ending. They put the map on the floor with a lamp at each corner: fourteen rooms, the doors they had not taken, and depths in cubits down one margin. The slope went to a Survival check, ninety feet of descent nobody had noticed; the rotation was free, because of the rotunda; the datum was the counting room's shaft and the temple's draught together. Three out of three, so the walk out cost them no encounters. Then the map pointed at a blank wall thirty degrees off the direction all six were certain of; that argument took six minutes and no dice, and the map won because it was right. The Door was under a hundred years of rubble exactly where the map said a stair would be, and it came out on a hillside in the afternoon. Somebody noticed that the previous crew's tablet had stopped mid-wall in room fifteen, and that their own fifteenth chamber had been the Sunken Court. Nobody behind the screen commented. The contract was eleven days at four drachmae; the survey they carried up the stair is the only accurate map of the maze's western range in the world.

What this session shows.

• Fourteen rooms in five hours is arithmetic. Four of them ran at ten minutes or less on the deck's own behind-schedule lines, which paid for twenty-two minutes of prodding a floor.
• Thoroughness comes out of later rooms. The trapfloor and the garden gave nothing back and were both right; the bill arrived at the weighing chain and the balance hall.
• Plant the boon in hour one and never explain it. A polished shield, after the rope, at 0:33, made the last scene a puzzle instead of a fight.
• Let the Path clue be arithmetic the players do. A depth, a bearing, a draught, and a room that turns; they corrected the map themselves.
• Time is a currency too. They long-rested at room ten and arrived above the 50–65% band, and it did not matter: what they had spent was clock.