Camp of the Lost Cohort
There is a fire in here, a real one, and the smell of something cooking that you decide not to think about. A wall of shields is stacked in a proper arc around it, spears racked behind, a standard planted upright in a cairn of stones. Someone has swept a clean rectangle in the dust and drilled in it so often the floor is polished.
Four men stand up as your light reaches them. Their armour is patched with leather and wire and their eyes are enormous. One of them says, in an accent two generations out of date: "Halt and name yourselves. Have you brought the relief?"
DM summary. Four soldiers and a priest who came in with an order forty years ago and never got another one. They will trade, they will escort, or they will take what the party has, and which of those happens is decided in the first two minutes by whether the party treats them as men or as monsters.
Terrain & Features
Battle map: The Horde Camp — pages 45 & 46, 110 × 75 ft
The horde camp is the cohort's: the tent ring is their shelter line, the worn ground is the drill square (30 × 20 ft, swept). Draw the shield-wall arc facing the party's entry, the standard in its cairn, and note the cavern dark beyond the firelight.
- Dimensions. 80 ft × 60 ft, ceiling 30 ft — a natural cavern with a level floor, big enough that ranged weapons and the far dark both matter.
- Light. Their fire, throwing light 40 ft. Beyond it, nothing. The party is lit and they are not, and they chose the ground for exactly that reason.
- The camp. Shield wall stacked in an arc, spear rack, drying frames of fungus and rat, a latrine trench cut properly downwind, and forty years of tallies scratched on one wall in a hand that gets shakier and then steadier again.
- The standard. A Knossian cohort standard, planted in a stone cairn, its cloth long gone and the bronze polished weekly. Touching it is the fastest way to start the fight. Saluting it is the fastest way to stop one.
- The drill square. A swept, polished rectangle, 30 ft × 20 ft. They still drill in it twice a day. If a fight happens here they will form up in the square, because that is where the line goes, even though it is tactically stupid.
- The picket. One man out in the dark, 60 ft from the fire, on the way in. Perception DC 14 to notice him before he notices you; he has been doing this for forty years and he is very good at it.
- The quartermaster's chest. Behind the priest: a bronze-bound box holding everything they have salvaged and cannot eat.
Encounter
Only if the parley fails, and the parley has to be actively broken.
| Count | Creature | XP each |
|---|---|---|
| 4 | Lost Cohort Hoplite | 700 |
| 1 | Knossian Priest of the Thread | 1,800 |
Base 4,600 XP; ×2 for five bodies = 9,200 adjusted, against the APL 9 Hard budget of 9,600. On budget, and it will not go the distance: the priest calls terms when two of his men are down, and any hoplite left alone grounds his spear and asks for water.
What triggers it. Touching the standard; drawing on the picket; being caught in a lie by the priest and then doubling down; or refusing the toll and pushing through the camp anyway.
Round 1. They form up in the drill square, which takes them a full round and which they will do even if it is the wrong thing to do. The priest stands behind them and blesses. The picket comes in from behind the party — that is the only clever thing this cohort does, and they have been rehearsing it since before anyone at the table was born.
Tactics, and the two levers. They hold a shield wall and get worse the moment it breaks. Food ends this fight. Any visible rations, waterskin, or fresh kill within 30 ft forces each hoplite to save or walk toward it, attacking only what stands between him and the food; a party that dumps half a day's rations on the floor has broken the line more reliably than a spell would. And the drill calls still work: History DC 15, or any Cult of the Thread contact, lets a PC give one command — Halt, Dress the Line, Ground Arms — as an action.
They can be talked down mid-fight. The priest raises an open palm and asks for one thing. Take the terms. Attacking a raised palm here means no priest in this maze will offer terms to this party again, and you should tell them that afterwards rather than before.
Bypass Options
Both routes set the cohort's starting attitude. The attitude track itself — Hostile, Wary, Dealing, Sworn — and everything that moves it is in the checks below.
The cavern's south side is broken ground, out of the firelight, and nobody has been posted there in years.
- Getting past the picket: group Stealth DC 15, at disadvantage for anyone carrying an open light. Passive Perception 12, but he is looking.
- Success: the party crosses the cavern without ever being challenged and takes exit A or C. They never meet the cohort at all, which is a real loss and should be described as one — you should let them hear the drill call from the dark as they go.
- One failure: the picket challenges. No fight; the parley simply starts, at Wary, with the party caught sneaking, which costs them the first Persuasion check at disadvantage.
- Two failures: the picket shouts and the cohort forms up. Parley starts at Hostile and the toll is doubled.
The oldest arrangement in soldiering.
- Doing it: put food and water down in the open, 30 ft from the fire, say what it is for, and walk. No check if the offering is real.
- The price: three days' rations for six, or equivalent. Real, tracked, gone. A party that pays this and then meets a room with no resupply will feel it, which is the point.
- Success: the picket steps aside and one of the hoplites walks the party to whichever exit they name, in silence, and salutes. They get no trade, no escort, no clue — and no trouble.
- Failure — the offering is short or insulting: the cohort takes it anyway and the track drops to Hostile. They do not attack; they are now simply four hungry men with the party's food, between the party and two of the three exits.
- Withdrawing instead: the party can leave the way they came at any point up to the moment weapons are used, and nobody follows — they have a post to hold. Cost is the clue drip and the trade.
Traps / Puzzles / Checks
The attitude track. Three states. Start at Wary and move one step per event, announcing the change through behaviour rather than numbers — spears come up, or go down.
| State | What they do |
|---|---|
| Hostile | They demand a toll of food and water and take it by force if refused. The fight is one refusal away |
| Wary (start) | Spears levelled, questions asked, nobody attacks. They will trade grudgingly at bad rates |
| Dealing | Spears grounded. The barter table below is open, the chest is opened, and the priest talks |
| Sworn | Rare and worth playing for. Two hoplites are detached to walk with the party for one room and fight on their side once |
Moving the track.
| Event | Effect |
|---|---|
| Offering real food or water openly, before being asked | +1 step, and it is the single most effective thing the party can do |
| Saluting the standard, or naming the cohort correctly (History DC 13) | +1 step |
| Knowing the drill calls (History DC 15) and using one respectfully rather than as a command | +1 step |
| True news of Knossos, told at the table by a player | +1 step. It has to be told, not summarised |
| Weapons drawn on the approach, or the picket handled roughly | −1 step |
| Any lie. The priest's Insight is +6 and he has nothing to do all day but listen | −1 step |
| Touching the standard | Straight to Hostile, no roll |
| Persuasion DC 15 to ask for passage plainly, once, after any of the above | +1 step on a success; nothing on a failure |
The barter table (open at Dealing or better). They are scrupulous traders and they will not cheat.
| What they want | What they give |
|---|---|
| Three days' rations for six, or two full waterskins | An escort: two hoplites walk the party through the next room and fight on their side for one encounter, then go back |
| Salt, oil, or wine | The Cult's current counter-sign and hand-shape — anything of the Cult of the Thread holds off for one round before it acts, in one room |
| Boots, a cloak, or any spare armour | Six javelins, a whetstone, and a full lamp of oil |
| True news of Knossos, told properly | The cohort's own tally of which corridors flood and when: the party may ask you one yes/no question about the next room before they choose an exit |
| A named weapon, or anything magical | The priest's own thread-knot, worn openly. Cult of the Thread creatures treat the party as initiates until the party gives them a reason not to |
The thing they will not trade. The standard. Do not let a player talk it out of them, at any DC. It is not stubbornness; it is the only reason four men and a priest are still four men and a priest.
Exits
Conditional — one roll on the loot table. The quartermaster's chest: forty years of salvage off people who did not make it, sorted, labelled, and kept properly.
- Earned by reaching Dealing and trading honestly. The priest opens the chest himself and lets the party pick one thing, which is exactly the roll.
- Not earned by robbing them. The chest is stripped and empty in ten minutes by four men who have had forty years to plan what they would do if this ever happened, and what they leave the party is the chest.
Scaling — APL 6 / 12 / 15
| APL | Adjustment |
|---|---|
| 6 | Three hoplites, no priest — a decanus speaks for them and is easier to move: all track DCs −2 |
| 9 | As written |
| 12 | Six hoplites and two Thread-Wardens on the picket, and the priest opens by asking the party a question he already knows the answer to. DCs +1 |
| 15 | Eight hoplites, a priest, and a Thread-Warden who is the relief they have been waiting for — he arrived last week with orders and the cohort has not decided yet whether to believe him. The party can side with either. DCs +3 |
- Pacing. Fifteen to twenty minutes as a conversation and a trade. Behind schedule: open at Dealing, put the barter table in front of the players as a list, let them make one trade, and be out in seven minutes.
- Give the players the barter table. Read it, or write the five lines on paper. Choice architecture beats improvisation here, and the trade is the scene.
- Play the accent old. They ask about a king who is dead, a war that ended, and a relief that is not coming. Do not have them work it out. Have one of them half work it out, stop, and change the subject — that is the whole tragedy in four seconds and it does not need a speech.
- News of Knossos is the best beat in the room and it needs a player to actually tell it. Ask for it directly: "What do you tell them?" If a player lies to be kind, let the priest catch it and let him say nothing.
- Do not make them villains. They are hungry, disciplined, and forty years out of orders. The fight is available and it is the failure branch, and a table that talks its way to Sworn should get their two hoplites and should get to keep them for a whole room.
- Clue drip. Two objects here take a clue well: the wall of tallies, forty years of days in one hand, which suits X14 (A Thread of Your Own Making) or X03 (The Way You Came); and the cohort's last written order in the chest, sealed, naming a gate and an hour, which suits X08 (The King's Writ) or X19 (The Bull-Gate Mechanism).
- Table safety. Long confinement, hunger, and men who do not know how long they have been here. Nothing graphic. If the "they don't know the king is dead" note is too bleak for your table, one of them does know and has decided not to tell the others, which is warmer and just as good.
- Warband callback. Cult of the Thread negotiates when it is losing and keeps its word when it is not. A party that has fought the Cult and then meets these men should notice the same square knots on the shield-straps and make their own decision about what that means.
Creature Cards
Both belong to the Cult of the Thread (W18) and both recur, so the numbers live in the bestiary — the hoplite again in R026. Its Forty Years Lost trait names a Thread-Warden, who arrives in this room's own APL 12 and 15 rows; that card is in the bestiary too. The tactics above are this room's and stay here.
Shared across rooms, so the full cards live in the bestiary: Lost Cohort Hoplite, Knossian Priest of the Thread. Every mention above opens the numbers here on this page.