37
The Cartographer's Cell
RoomLore & Navigation
crampedmap-knowledgelore-checkclue-rich
Fifteen feet by twenty, and every inch of the walls is written on. Chalk, charcoal, scratched lines, a chain nailed up as a measuring rule with its links counted in Linear A. Somebody lived in this room for a while and worked the whole time.
He is still here, in the corner, sitting up against his pack with his knees drawn in. In his lap is a wax tablet, and on the tablet is a map, and the map is unfinished by about a third.
DM summary. A dead surveyor's working room and a partial map of the maze that is genuinely worth something at the table. The party leaves with a real navigational advantage, and with a fairly clear picture of how a competent person dies down here.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: custom map. A 15 × 20 ft cell whose walls are the exhibit — sketch the box and spend your prep reading the survey notes aloud. Browse the book if a page half fits your table better.
- Dimensions. 15 ft × 20 ft, ceiling 7 ft. Cramped: two people can work in here and the fourth is standing in the corridor. Say so, and let the party sort out who goes in.
- Light. Dark, and there is a stub of tallow candle on the floor with perhaps ten minutes left in it. He was working by that.
- The walls. Four surfaces of working notes: bearings, pace counts, a running tally of doors, and one long sequence of numbers that is a room-by-room record of every passage he took, in order, with the ones he backtracked struck through.
- The chain. A surveyor's chain nailed to the north wall as a measuring rule, 66 ft of it, links counted and marked every ten. It comes down. It is the single most useful mundane object in the room and it weighs a lot.
- Dexios. The body: a Knossian surveyor in a labourer's leather apron, no wounds, no rot to speak of in the dry air, and a waterskin drained to the seam. He died of thirst about three weeks ago with a map in his lap and a corridor fifteen feet away.
- His pack. Chalk, plumb bob, a spare stylus, three wax blanks, one boot, and a letter he did not finish.
- The unfinished crawl. A patch of wall behind him where he had been chipping out mortar with the stylus. He got about two thirds through. Another day of water and he would have made it.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
Nothing here is trapped, and nothing here is hostile. The room's only difficulty is reading what is on the walls before the candle goes out — and there is no time limit, because the party has their own light and can say so.
| Element | Value |
|---|---|
| Read the tablet's map | No check. It is a clear, professionally drawn partial map of a section of the maze |
| Read the wall shorthand | Investigation DC 13, or free for any character with a mason's, surveyor's, navigator's, or cartographer's background. Ten minutes |
| Understand why it is unfinished | Investigation DC 12 on the struck-through sequence: the same corridor appears four times, struck through three of them. He was not lost. He was being re-routed, and he noticed |
| Identify the cause | Investigation DC 15 comparing his tally to the doorways: every re-route came after a passage marked with a knot. Somebody has been changing the maze's marks behind him |
| Read the letter | No check. Three lines, unfinished, addressed to a crew chief: the chain is paid for. Tell Nikandros the marks lie. I am going to sit down for a— |
| The unfinished crawl | Athletics DC 14 and ten minutes of work with any tool finishes what he started; this is exit B |
Exits
AObviousThe doorway you came in by, which has no door and never had one. No check.Rider: none. The party leaves the way people leave rooms.
BHiddenDexios's crawl, behind the body, two thirds chipped out. Investigation DC 12 to see it for what it is (or free, if anyone looks behind him), then Athletics DC 14 and ten minutes to open it.Rider: you come out into the passage he was fifteen feet from — the party arrives dusty and quiet, and takes one free Perception check on entering the next room before anything reacts to them.
Loot
Room-specific — Dexios's Wax Tablet. Off-table; it does not consume a d100 slot and it is not a maguffin for any Resolution.
- The tablet is a partial map of a section of the maze, drawn well, and it is accurate as far as it goes.
- Once per session, when the DM would roll d100 for the next room, the party may declare they are using the tablet: roll twice and choose either result. The party must be able to describe which way they are heading, which takes ten seconds and is the fun part.
- The tablet is spent when the finale is declared — past that point the maze the party is in is not the maze he mapped, and you should say so in his handwriting: the last third is blank.
- The chain comes with it if anyone will carry 66 ft of iron: it is a rope that cannot be cut, a measuring rule, and 30 lb of nuisance.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | All DCs −2, and the wall shorthand is annotated in plain Greek by a second hand — his apprentice's — so the re-routing is obvious without a check |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | DCs +1, and a third of the wall notes have been deliberately rubbed out since he died. Somebody has been in here. The tablet still works |
| 15 | DCs +3, the tablet's re-roll is usable once and only for a room the party has not yet visited, and the crawl is freshly bricked from the far side (Athletics DC 18 or an hour of work) — whoever rubbed out the notes closed his door behind them |
DM Notes
- Pacing: ten minutes, and it is a reading room. Give the players the information in the order Dexios found it — bearings, then the repeated corridor, then the knots — so they discover his conclusion rather than being handed it. Behind schedule? Hand over the tablet, read the letter, name the knots. Three minutes.
- The tablet's re-roll is the point of the room. Say it plainly at the table and write it on the party's sheet. It is the deck's cleanest navigational reward and it is worth remembering that it exists two hours later, when the d100 gives them a room they hate.
- Do not make his death a mystery. No wounds, no monster, an empty waterskin, and a crawl he nearly finished. The maze killed him with arithmetic. That lands harder than a body with claw marks and it is the room's whole thesis.
- If the party is entered as B11's surveyor crew, this is their predecessor and Nikandros is a name they know. Play that for everything it is worth; it is the only room in this batch that can be personal.
- Table safety. A man who died of thirst, alone, close to an exit. It is quiet and grim rather than gory, but the helplessness of it can land heavily; if that is unwelcome, have him die of a fall — a broken leg, the same chalk, the same crawl — and change nothing else.
- Clue drip. Two objects: the struck-through corridor sequence, which is a third-party account of the Cult re-tying the maze's marks (X10 at Sign tier, and it corroborates anything the party already suspects), and the map itself, which is the deck's strongest X14 object — a party doing their own mapping now has a professional's baseline to build on, and should be told that their own chalk marks and his notation can be reconciled with ten minutes of work.
- Two exits, and that is deliberate. The room is a cell. It is the smallest room in this batch and it should feel like the party is crowding a dead man's workspace.