The Session in One Breath

Elpida keeps Anthesteria, the festival of opened jars, when the town feeds its dead and they go home. The party are honoured guests. They play the festival games, hear the story of Pandora's Jar by the hearth — and at midnight the dead come to the feast starving, with things walking among them nobody has seen before. The Jar under the hill is open, and the first evils it let out, Old Age and Sickness, have come home to keep it that way. The party saves the town, follows the dead uphill and down a trapped stair, and closes the Jar. Pandora is not the villain; she is the oldest ghost story on the island, and the saddest.

Major Beats

1. The invitation. Archon Kleio invites the party; Dios (Zeus) lights a grin-lamp for each guest at the gate.
2. Festival games. The silent drinking contest, the swings, the masked procession, feeding the dead. Phaedon's story; the Lantern to the kindest guest. p. 2
3. Enc. 1 — The Haunting (Hard). Shades, Wraiths, Keres, ghouls; twenty villagers. The Archon's offer and the Jug of First Wine. p. 3
4. Enc. 2 — The Way Down (Hard). Clues, Acantha's grove, three traps, Kyros at the Door That Asks. p. 4
5. Enc. 3 — The Open Jar (Deadly). Pandora, the Twin Sorrows, the Hollow Heroes; the d12 each round. pp. 5–6
6. Dawn. The Jar closes; every lamp in Elpida flares once; Acantha laughs; Zeus reveals himself.

Who's Who

• Archon Kleio — host and patron. Brisk, frightened, a ledger under one arm. Pays 1,500 gp now, 3,000 gp on success (+50% at 18+ saved). Secret: her drowned brother is among the Hungry Shades (Insight DC 16).
• Dios (Zeus) — the lamplighter. Gentle, evasive; eagle birthmark (DC 16). "I have done everything I can do. The rest is yours." Reveals himself on Paths A–C.
• Phaedon — blind storyteller; Apollo's. Sees through masks and illusions; teaches the Closing Words; reads the pedestal; adv. once on an appeal.
• Acantha — ash nymph of the grove over the buried temple. Gives buckthorn, pitch and the Sprig. Sealing the Jar frees her; she will never ask.
• Kyros — the hollow warden at the door; wants a riddle, a gift or a show.
• Pandora — two thousand years in the dark. "Go away." She means it, three times.

The Lamp-Count

Six grin-lamps (tea lights), one per PC, lit at the gate. Lamp-Count = lamps lit. Every lamp lit in the sanctum = 1 Hope. The Lantern is not one of the six.

Unlit PC: disadv. on saves vs Frightened; undead have adv. to hit them; no Hope.

Snuffed: fail Breath of the Grave · fail Dirge-Cry by 5+ · 0 HP · a villager group wiped out · a trap save failed by 5+ · the Lantern out of the party's hands at round end · a bad Omen.

Relit: Lantern touch (action) · a True Story (1/PC/Act) · an offering (1/scene) · 18+ villagers saved · a good Omen.

Omens (d8, at Hush)

1. A loved voice calls a PC: WIS DC 15 or Frightened (success: lamp burns higher).
2. Cold breath: CON DC 14 or 2d10 cold.
3. Shadows lean toward the Unlit. Let the table notice.
4. A pale child, empty hands: any offering relights 1; ignored, a lamp gutters.
5. Corpse-candles follow: group Stealth DC 16 or no surprise in the next fight.
6. An open jar on the path: pitch it = relight 1; leave it = snuff 1.
7. Silence for a round: the DM relights 1 (or the Lantern +10 ft.).
8. A Ker sits ahead, watching. Go around by 30 ft.; speak and it answers in a voice you know.

Trackers

Difficulty

On the Table

Act I: 4 water elementals = Keres · 2 spectres + 1 ghost = Unfed Wraiths · 8 ghosts = Hungry Shades · 4 zombies/skeletons = ghouls · 4 villager tokens. Act II: minotaur skeleton = Kyros · 2 spectres = Geras & Nosos · 4 haunted armors = Hollow Heroes (placed as statues) · a humanoid = Pandora · ghosts = Shadows/Specters · a Huge figure = the Jar-Wyrm. Props: six tea lights, a lighter, a small lantern, a cup and a d6.

Arrival

Elpida sits on a terraced hill on the Isle of Anemos: whitewashed houses, an agora with a bonfire, a temple of Dionysus, and above it all a dark crown of ash trees where nobody goes. By dusk on the third day every door in town is daubed with pitch, every child is chewing buckthorn, and every street smells of honey and boiled seeds.

• Hand over the invitation (item card).
• Kleio meets them with wine in one hand and her ledger in the other: "Guests! Good. Eat. Play. Don't eat the porridge in the black pots — that's for the dead."
• At the gate Dios lights a grin-lamp for each guest from his pole-lamp: "Keep it lit all night." Light the players' tea lights. Ozone; eagle birthmark (Perception/Insight DC 16).

Running the Games

• Two is fine; four is a feast. About five minutes each. A PC may enter any number.
• Each winner gains Heroic Inspiration plus the prize. Hand over the prize card.
• Watch for the kindest guest — the one who gives a prize away, helps a child, tastes the dead's porridge so an old woman doesn't have to. Dios is watching too.

1 · The Choes — the Silent Drinking Contest

Everyone drinks a full jug in silence. Speaking or laughing disqualifies. Use a real cup and a d6 if you like.

Last one standing wins the Ivy Crown. Fail a CON save by 5+: Poisoned (drunk) until midnight — the cold sobers everyone up. Rivals: Thrasos the cooper (red-faced, enormous), old Myrrhine (has won eleven years running), a sailor who keeps humming.

2 · The Aiora — the Swings

Swings hung from three old plane trees for Erigone. Swing highest: Athletics or Acrobatics, contested by the town champion, Kallisto (+6). At the top of the arc the swinger sees over the wall: Perception DC 16 spots a line of pale lights coming down from the ash grove, hours early.

3 · The Masked Procession

Dionysus's ship-cart rolls through the agora with masked revellers behind. Best mask or best turn: Performance or Deception DC 15 wins the Mask of the Revel (advantage on one CHA check before dawn). Insight DC 15: one masked walker isn't breathing — a Ker, come early. Noticed, it slips away uphill. Phaedon, if asked, already knew.

4 · Feeding the Dead

Help the old women stir the chytroi, the black pots of seed-porridge for Hermes of the Underworld and the dead: Religion, or Survival to cook it right, DC 14. Success: a Pot of Panspermia (6 portions). In the Haunting a portion offered to a Hungry Shade (action) makes it eat instead; in Act II a portion left as an offering relights a lamp. Failure: a PC tastes it — roll an Omen.

The Lantern of Elpis

After the games Dios gives the Lantern and its note to the kindest guest (if nobody stood out: whoever asked him a question about himself). "It is the last light that was in the jar. When you stand where the first jar stands, say the old words." Then he is gone into the crowd. Hand over the Lantern card.

Phaedon's Story (read aloud by the hearth)

"Long ago the first woman was given a jar and told not to open it. Everyone tells you she was foolish. I tell you she was curious, and curiosity is how every light in the world was ever lit. She opened it. Out went every sorrow that ever walked: old age, sickness, violent death, the grief that has no body. We call them the Keres. Once a year, when the jars are opened, we feed them and our dead, so that they do not feed on us. On the last night we pitch the doors, we chew the thorn, and we say: Out, Keres. It is no longer Anthesteria. And they go. But the first jar was never closed. It is up there, under the ash trees. And she has not left the room. Remember what stayed in the jar when everything else flew. It was not strength. It was not cleverness. It was the smallest, quietest light that ever lived."

True Stories & the Closing Words

• Phaedon: "A lamp is just a thing that holds a little light. What you tell it decides what kind." A player who tells a true story about their character (1–3 sentences, aloud) relights that PC's lamp — once per PC per Act; the Lantern-bearer's relights two. Demand honesty, not quality.
• Asked how a jar is closed, he teaches the Closing Words: "Out, Keres! It is no longer Anthesteria!" They work only at the Jar. Said anywhere else, the dead turn to look at the speaker.

Festival Moments (d8, any time before midnight)

1. A child in a too-big mask asks a PC what they're afraid of, and writes the answer on a clay sherd for the dead to read.
2. An old man pours wine on the ground at the gate, three times, for his wife. "She liked the second jar best."
3. Somebody's goat gets loose in the wine stalls. The owner offers a cup to whoever catches it (Athletics DC 12).
4. A flute-girl plays the same tune over and over; every time she stops, the bonfire leans toward the hill.
5. The priest of Dionysus paints pitch on every doorframe with a brush the size of a broom, muttering the Warding Rhyme.
6. Two cousins argue about whether the dead come "up" the hill or "down" it. Nobody can remember.
7. A honey-cake left on the temple steps is gone the next time anyone looks. Nobody saw anyone take it.
8. Dios lights a lamp that won't take, frowns, and lights it again. It takes. He doesn't smile.

Rumors at the Feast

• "The dead were early last year. And hungrier." (true)
• "Nobody goes up to the ash grove. Nobody says why." (true; the temple is under it)
• "My grandmother's grandmother saw a man made of bones go up there, carrying a jar-lid." (Kyros, near enough)
• "The lamplighter isn't from Elpida. Nobody hired him." (true)
• "Old Phaedon's been telling the same story for forty years. He was blind for all of them." (true)

Games Tally

Midnight

The town goes quiet to let the dead in, as it always does. The bonfire leans. A cold comes down the hill like water…

Turn to the Haunting (p. 3).

The dead come through the gates and over the walls: the Hungry Shades, grey and thin — somebody's grandmother, somebody's son — with their mouths open and their eyes on the living, not the porridge. Behind them glide the Unfed Wraiths, the oldest unburied dead on the island, and the Keres, who have never come to Elpida before. Someone screams. The children are on the swings.

The Agora

• Hearth (centre): bright light 20 ft. Shades won't enter it unless a villager is inside.
• Wine stalls (W): half cover; smashed jars = 10×20 ft. difficult terrain.
• Swings (N): swing 20 ft. over difficult terrain as part of a move (Acrobatics DC 12).
• Procession cart (E): 10 ft. high, ¾ cover inside; no Large creatures.
• Temple of Dionysus (S): pitched doors — no dead cross. Villagers inside are safe.
• Cemetery gate (NE): the ghouls come in here on round 3, and drag what they catch back to it.

Forces (≈ 12,200 XP)

• 8 Hungry Shades — two per villager group.
• 3 Unfed Wraiths — urge the Shades on (Lord of the Unfed); Breath of the Grave at clumps of PCs.
• 4 Keres — circle the lit lamps; hunt the Lantern-bearer.
• Round 3: 4 Graveyard Ghouls from the cemetery gate, for the nearest villagers.

Shades, Wraiths and Keres resist nonmagical B/P/S — which is why the Archon hands over the Jug afterwards. In the Lantern's bright light, Shades, Shadows and Keres have disadv. to hit, and Keres can't Dirge-Cry.

The Crowd — Twenty Villagers

How It Ends

All three Wraiths destroyed, or the end of round 6 when the temple bell tolls. The remaining dead pour back uphill toward the ash trees, carrying what they took. Let the party see where they go.

The Archon's Offer

In the wreck of the feast, Kleio counts the dead and the living in her ledger, then shuts it. "Every year we feed them and they go home. This year they came hungry. Something up that hill has changed. I'll pay you to go and find it, and stop it, before the children have to see this again."

• 1,500 gp now; 3,000 gp when it ends (+50% at 18+ saved). Persuasion DC 16: +1,000 gp of her own.
• The Jug of First Wine — six anointings; an anointed weapon is magical and ignores B/P/S resistance and immunity until dawn. "Steel didn't touch them. This will." Hand over the card.
• A short rest in the temple while the town barricades itself.
• Insight DC 16: she watched one Shade the whole fight and let it go — her drowned brother. Asked kindly, she says so; that True Story relights a lamp.

Stat Blocks

Finding the Jar (need 2 clues)

• Follow the dead — Survival/Perception DC 15: frost on the grass, dropped honey-cakes, straight up to the ash trees. Automatic if seen from the swings.
• Ask Phaedon — "They built a temple over it and then they buried the temple. The ash trees grew over the roof."
• Question a fed Shade — Religion DC 15 or Speak with Dead: "The jar that never closes is breathing. We are so hungry."
• The archive — Investigation DC 16: a scholar named Kyros went under the ash grove to close "the Jar" four hundred years ago.
• Watch the Lantern — Arcana DC 14: its flame leans toward the hill like a compass.

Each clue past two: advantage on one check below. Fewer than two: an hour lost in the cold — roll an Omen; the Lamp-Count can't rise before the grove.

The Ash Grove — Acantha

The ash trees on the crown of the hill are older than the town. Their roots have broken through the roof of something stone: column-drums in the leaf-litter, a black stairwell between two roots. A thin figure with a long taper looks at your small flames. "You brought your own."

• Lull: wards hold 1 hour — no snuffing; a short rest is possible.
• "Old Age and Sickness came back up the stair three nights ago. They were the first out of the Jar. They want to be first back in, and they want it to stay open."
• Warding Gift: a buckthorn leaf each (bonus action: 10 min resist necrotic, adv. vs Frightened) and a pot of pitch (3 marks: a 10-ft. line, a door, a trap or a Circle; no Ker, Shadow, Specter or Shade crosses for 1 hour). Teaches the Warding Rhyme. Hand over the cards.
• Sprig of Asphodel if the party is warm to her: "There is a door below that asks for something. Give it something."
• Secret (Persuasion DC 15 or a sincere question): "If the Jar closes — I can leave."

Trap 1 · The Weeping Stair

Two hundred steps spiralling down, water running upward along the treads. Notice Perception/Investigation DC 16: hinged treads halfway. Trap: the treads fold into a slide — DEX DC 16 or slide 60 ft., 4d10 bludgeoning, prone. Bypass: rope and spikes (Athletics DC 14), flying, spider climb, or pitch on the hinge.

Trap 2 · The Breathing Jars

A 100-ft. corridor of open jars breathing like a sickroom; noise wakes them. Notice: automatic; Medicine/Nature DC 15 knows noise wakes it. Trap: group Stealth DC 16 (half must pass); fail → CON DC 16, 5d8 necrotic + Poisoned 1 hour (half, not poisoned, on success). Bypass: buckthorn = adv.; silence = auto; pitch seals 30 ft.; gust of wind = adv.

Trap 3 · The Hall of Bronze Faces

Bronze plates; in each, the face of someone the viewer lost, mouthing their name. Between them the floor is an illusion over a 40-ft. shaft. Notice: Investigation DC 17, truesight, or Phaedon. Trap: WIS DC 17 or Charmed, walk to the face and fall: 4d6, Athletics DC 15 to climb out. Bypass: speak to the face — a True Story or a goodbye — automatic success and relight your lamp. Blindfolded PCs are immune but must be led.

The Dark Between the Lamps (Lamp-Count 1)

2 Keres + 1 Unfed Wraith + 2 Shadows (4,200 XP); +2 Keres at 0. Ends at 3 lamps lit. Lantern relights (action), True Story (bonus action, one sentence), pitch lines. The Closing Words do nothing here.

The Door That Asks — Kyros

A door of black, pitch-soaked oak, too tall for the lamps to reach its top. Before it stands a minotaur's body made of a scholar's bones, lamplight showing through his ribs. "I have not been spoken to by the living in four hundred years. Please. Don't make me do the other thing."

The lintel (History DC 10): "Born from a god's first gift to humanity, carried by the first woman, containing all suffering and one salvation — what am I?" (Pandora's Jar.)

Fight: Kyros + any surviving Wraiths (max 2) behind him (Intercept). Below 40 HP: "Answer the riddle and I yield!" Defeated, he folds into grave dust with a relieved sigh.

Peaceful: the Amulet of the Labyrinth (card) and a warning: "Three wards glow in the deep room. Old Age and Sickness stand beside her; while their wards burn they cannot stay dead. Steel will not touch them unless a god's wine is on it." Short rest on the landing.

Lamps → Hope

Stat Block

Unfed Wraith and Ker: p. 3.

Behind Kyros's door the passage goes down farther than it should. The sanctum is a round room carved from the island's dark root, its walls lined floor to ceiling with jars — thousands, each empty, each open, each turned slightly toward the door. The only light bleeds from the pithos at the centre, the colour of an old bruise. Three rune-circles pulse around it: green, blue, red. Pandora paces at the far wall, three steps left, three steps right, her feet not quite touching the floor; in the jars behind her, her reflection is a skeleton. Beside the Jar stand two thin grey figures you know from the story: Old Age, stooped and familiar, and Sickness, sweating and coughing. The door seals behind you.

She does not choose to attack; the evils compel her the way pain compels a flinch. If anyone speaks instead of drawing steel: "Go away." She means it. She says it twice more before she stops meaning it.

The Room

• The Jar (centre): AC 13, 25 HP. Destroyed → every summon dismissed, but a burst of grief: 6d10 psychic within 30 ft. (CON DC 18 half), and the Jar can never be sealed (Path D only).
• Three Sealing Circles — Pestilence (green, NE) · Despair (blue, NW) · Strife (red, S). Work one standing on or beside it.
• Six pillars: half cover; Shadows Hide behind them. Four Hollow Heroes in niches at the compass points — statues until woken (block below).
• The wall of jars: on a natural 1, a jar whispers in a voice the PC knows. Dim light; lamps 10 ft.; the Lantern bright 20 ft.

Hope

The Twin Sorrows — Geras & Nosos

• Act right after Pandora. Each guards its own Circle — Geras over Despair, Nosos over Pestilence — and makes the PC working it its first target.
• Immune to unanointed steel — the Jug of First Wine matters. Spells work.
• They come back: destroyed, a Sorrow re-forms at the Jar with half HP at the start of Pandora's turn — until its Circle is sealed.
• Geras halves healing within 15 ft. and hands out Exhaustion; Years upon Years slows a cone. Nosos blocks healing and spreads poison along a packed line.
• Path B or C pulls both back into the Jar at once.

Ways to Close the Jar

Lamentation

At 40 HP, all three Circles, or the Closing Words. She stops attacking (Vessel still works unless suppressed); Persuasion is DC 14; a True Story answering "Hope is not enough" is an automatic success.

"I did not choose this. I never chose this. They made me curious — and then punished the world for it. What would you have me do? Hope is not enough. Hope was never enough."

The Pedestal

History DC 17, or Phaedon free: "First to leave were Pestilence and Pain. Last to remain was Hope. The jar closes when hope returns."

What Comes Out of the Jar (d12)

Start of each of Pandora's turns while the Jar is open, roll in the open. Effects last until her next turn. Each sealed Circle steps the die down: d10 → d8 → d6. Spend 2 Hope = reroll. A skipped turn = the lid stays shut.

Curiosity's Price (variant): the first creature each round to attack Pandora rolls the d12 instead. Mercy never lifts the lid.

Dawn

The pale glow gutters and goes out. The Keres pour back into the Jar like smoke up a flue, and the lid sets with a sound like a door closing in the next room. Pandora sits down on the floor by the pedestal and cries — the first time in two thousand years she has been allowed to. The jars along the wall fill with soft gold light, one by one. Down in Elpida, every lamp in every window flares once.

• Paths A–C: Acantha's bond snaps and she laughs for the first time in centuries. A golden eagle lands on the pedestal; Zeus reveals himself and thanks each PC by name. Phaedon sees, once, then goes blind again, peacefully. In Elpida the taken villagers wake cold and hungry and alive.
• Path D: the Jar seals itself around her with a lid of black pitch. Zeus, a voice only: "You did what you must. It is enough." The lamps of Elpida stay dark.
• Rewards: Blessing of Elpis (A–C: advantage on one save within 24 hrs) or Divine Favour (D: one attack). The Shard of Elpis (Path B, or an equivalent sealing) and the Blessing Cord (Path C) — item cards. Kleio's 3,000 gp (+50%). The Amulet, if not yet given. The empty Jar: 500 gp to a collector.