The Sweeper
The corridor ahead of you is clean.
Not draught-clean. Somebody has run a broom down it, wall to wall, pushed the ash into a low grey ridge along the left-hand side, and left the fan-marks of the bristles standing in it. The candle in the bracket at the corner is three hours old.
Somewhere further along, out past your light, there is a sound. A slow scrape. A pause. A scrape.
The Way Out
Somebody sweeps this maze. The ash goes somewhere, the spent candles are replaced before they gutter, and the dead do not stay in the corridors. That is not housekeeping and it is not mercy — it is a job, and there is a man doing it.
His name is Doros, he is somewhere past sixty, and he is in here on terms nobody has written down: the Cult pays him, or holds him, or he is the last of a household that has swept these corridors since Minos was a boy. Let him be vague about which. He has a broom worn to a stub, a hooked lamp, a folded sack, and a service route he has walked so long his feet have polished the middle of it pale.
He is not a monster and he is not a quest-giver. He will walk the party out because six bodies are a great deal more trouble to explain than six live strangers, and he says so in exactly those words. His price is not an object and it is not a burial. It is a debt of witness: thirty-one names, everyone he has stood over in here, said aloud outside to a woman in Knossos who has been writing them down for forty years. And they go out his way — his round, in his order, in silence, past two things the party would much rather fight.
Requirements
| Requirement | Where it comes from |
|---|---|
| Knowing somebody works here | R005 The Chandler's Rest — the tally-board is a round in walking order, forty-one brackets, a chalk stroke a day. R050 The Quiet Kitchen keeps an inventory slate of meals sent out, and somebody was eating them |
| His round, and its hour | Three rooms keep his time: the nineteen fresh candles down the table in R019 The Tallow Refectory, the one-hour lamp burning in the eighth alcove of R032 Sanctum of Quiet Hours, and the restocked jars behind the barred door of R084 The Cool Cellar. Investigation DC 12 across any two of them fixes the hour to within a half |
| Somewhere to stand and be met | He will not be chased. R076 Alcove of the Kind Shade is the reliable one — Ligeia has watched him pass for two hundred years, likes him, and will say when he is next due if she is asked about him rather than about exits |
| Something to hold the names | A wax tablet from R047 The Wax Cellar, the slate off the wall in R050, charcoal from any banked hearth and a stretch of plaster — or six people who agree to memorise five or six names each |
| Sheathed weapons, twice | His route crosses the west end of R075 The Long Silence on a plank road he laid himself, board by board, and it ends at the charnel door of R082 Charnel of the Sated |
Clues
| Tier | Line to deliver |
|---|---|
| Whisper | This stretch of corridor is clean. The ash is in a ridge against the left-hand wall and there is nothing down here that tidies. |
| Trace | Two parallel lines drawn through the dust of a side passage, heel-width apart, going away from you. Whatever made them was carried by the shoulders and there is no body at the end of them. |
| Sign | A niche off the corridor with a broom worn down to a hand's width leaning in it, a folded sack, a water jar, and a nail with a clean rag hung on it. A place where somebody stops. |
| Proof | Sixty feet off, an old man crosses the end of a corridor with a bundle over his shoulder and a lamp on a hook. He looks at your light for two seconds, does not hurry, and goes round the corner. |
| Path | A line of boards laid end to end across a floor of broken pottery, worn pale down the middle by one pair of feet, going east into the dark. |
| Door | Two low leaves at the end of the round, no lock, barred from the far side, and the old man standing with one hand flat on them, waiting to hear what the party says. |
Resolution Scene
Eighteen minutes, and the decision is whether to trust him — twice.
Phase one — the meeting (4 minutes). He does not run, does not fight, does not bargain, and does not stop sweeping while he talks. There is no check to make him agree; he decided before the party opened their mouths. He asks how many they are, looks at the ceiling, does the arithmetic out loud, and says the line about the bodies. The only roll worth making is Insight DC 12, and it comes back clean: he means it, he is frightened of something that is not the party, and he is very tired.
Phase two — the price (6 minutes). He sets the broom against the wall and recites. Thirty-one names, no dates, no stories — a first name, sometimes a trade, sometimes and her brother. Read at least eight of them aloud at the table and do not rush them. Then: say these to Phaidra, who keeps the fig stall inside the Amnisos gate, and tell her Doros is still sweeping.
- Written down is free. Wax, slate, charcoal on a scrap of linen. Hand a player a real index card if you have one; that card is now the ending of your session.
- Memorised is a cost. Split the list and take one Intelligence check DC 10 per character at the door on the way out. Each failure loses a name. He will not repeat it — he will say, evenly, that it is gone now, and go back to sweeping.
- Refusing is allowed and it is not the fallback yet. He shrugs, wishes them luck without irony, walks his round, and can be caught again a room later.
Phase three — the walk (8 minutes). Single file, his order, no talking, and twice he holds up a flat hand.
The first stop — the plank road. Boards over ankle-deep sherds, forty of them, laid across the west end of the gallery in R075. Single file, half speed, one at a time. Acrobatics DC 10, or DC 13 in unmuffled medium or heavy armour. A failure tips a board: if the noise count is running that is noise 3, and if it is not, three grey shapes turn their heads at the far end and Doros stops dead until they turn back.
The second stop — the feeding. At the charnel door of R082 he sets his bundle down, whistles two notes on a bone pipe, steps back to the wall, and puts his palms flat against the stone. Everyone does the same or the scene goes wrong. Something comes to the door, takes what he brought, and does not look at the party for eleven seconds. Wisdom saving throw DC 13 to hold still — but any player who says out loud that they put their back to the wall and their hands flat simply passes. Reward the stated action over the die every time.
If anybody draws steel, the thing at the door notices six warm strangers instead of one delivery, Doros is gone through the leaves without a word, and the party is in the Fallback with a fight behind them.
Fallback
He was never met, he was refused, or somebody drew. The maze still throws its ash out somewhere, and the drag-marks go there.
- Follow the marks. Any swept corridor read against the grain leads inward to the ash pit under the kilns: a brick chute, two feet by three, forty feet long, sloping up to a grate on a midden slope outside the walls. Athletics DC 13, thirty minutes, single file, in the dark.
- What it costs. The flue is still warm: 2d6 fire damage and a Constitution save DC 12 or a level of exhaustion. Nothing flammable comes through — bowstrings, scroll cases, feathers, wax, the pantry sacks. Leave them at the bottom or lose them halfway up.
- What it costs that matters. The names. Nobody in Knossos hears them, Phaidra's ledger stops at four hundred and nine, and Doros is still sweeping.
- The party always gets out. Out is a grate, a slope of grey ash, olive trees, and the sun on the sea about a mile off. Filthy, scorched, alive.
Resolution-owned, never on the loot table.
- The list, delivered. Phaidra reads it in the street and adds the names to a ledger nobody in the palace knows exists. Thirty-one families in Knossos now owe the party the kind of debt that opens doors, hides people, and feeds them for nothing. Write down two of the families; you will use them.
- The knotted cord. Doros gives it at the door, and he gives it to whoever asked him a question about himself. Forty-one knots on a waxed line: his round, in order, by touch, in the dark. Usable once to re-enter the Labyrinth by the service route and cross it without a d100 roll.
- The two notes. If a character watched him at the charnel door and asks, he will teach the whistle. Once, a creature of the maze that eats what it is given lets the party past instead of eating them.
- He does not come with you. Say it once, plainly, when somebody offers. He has a round to finish and he is not being brave about it.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | He is expecting them — Ligeia sent word, or the kitchen cat did. DCs −2, the list is nineteen names, and the thing at the charnel door is asleep and stays asleep. One stop on the walk, not two |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | DCs +2. The Cult has begun watching him: two of its people are on the round ahead, and the party must be got past them into a store-niche and kept quiet for three rounds. Three boards are missing from the plank road |
| 15 | As APL 12, and the thing he feeds is not at the door — it is on the route, ahead of them, and one bundle is not enough for it. Doros will offer to go back for a second. Do not let that be the only answer; a party who talks it down, buys it off, or walks the long way round has earned the ending |
- He is not a twist. Not a shade, not a god slumming, not Daedalus in a hood. He is an old man with a bad hip who sweeps up after a charnel-house because it is his job. The deck already trusts a cat to be a cat and a ghost to be glad of company; trust this too. The moment the players stop waiting for the catch is the moment the scene works.
- Spend real table time on the recitation. Say the names slowly, in the voice, with the details he attaches to three or four of them. It should be faintly embarrassing to sit through, and then it should not be, and then somebody will start writing them down without being asked.
- The feeding is the whole nerve test. Palms on the wall, eleven seconds, and no initiative. Do not narrate the thing at the door in more than two sentences and never give it a stat block at the table. What the party is being asked for is the ability to do nothing, on purpose, while frightened.
- The last name on his list is the chandler's — the man whose tally-board hangs in R005 and whose chalk strokes stop nineteen columns in. Doros says the name, does not explain it, and the party can work out the rest or not.
- The swept dust in R076 is not his. That is Ligeia's, two centuries of patiently moving air, and she is proud of it. A party who has seen both will compare the marks; let them, and let her be asked about him, because she has opinions.
- Never make the debt enforceable. No curse, no geas, nothing follows a party who walks out and forgets. The whole weight of it is that he has no way to make them and asks anyway.
- If the party is out of time, skip the search and put him at the Door clue: the two low leaves, the hand flat on them, the offer in three sentences. Eight names, one stop on the walk, palms on the wall. Six minutes, and keep the scrape of the broom.