Once a year, a dozen Athenian youths are herded into the labyrinth of King Minos to sate the bestial appetite of the Minotaur. So great is the power of the Cretan monarch that none dare resist, until the demigod Theseus joined the most recent batch of victims in order to infiltrate the labyrinth, slay the Minotaur, and liberate Athens from its oppression.
Except, well, Theseus wasn't up to the task. Shit.
 |
| Mari |
Last night I joined in a playtest of laumry's one-page Shadowdark funnel 'Theseus is Dead'. The premise is simple: Theseus has failed in his quest to kill the Minotaur and your gang of unfortunates now need to make your escape. Or die horribly. A pitying guard has provided you with two torches and a flint & steel. Other than that, all you have are your clothes and your wits.
This post will be divided between a summary of how the session played out, and my thoughts on the adventure - laumry has kindly provided me with a copy.
Session Summary
The Players and Characters
laumry: Referee.
Myself: Soltar, an extremely agile Scholar.
Sully: Barnabus the Wise, a Sailor, followed by Herodotus the not so Wise (a Cultist), and finally Hector not of Troy (also a Cultist).
wil: Simon, a very strong Sailor.
---
Events
The session ran for 3 hours.
The sounds of battle and a bestial roar of triumph echoed from the north. We stood in a room with four exits. Theseus' cord stretched from a bronze statue of King Minos in the centre of the room, out through the northern archway, which bore a bull's head inscription. The eastern archway bore a carving of a bull and child, the western archway a skull. The south was barred by a great metal door flanked by clay statues, where we had entered. We went east and came to a crossroads - hearing noises from the north, we went south.
We entered a long, narrow chamber with a sandy floor and sporting scenes daubed on the walls. Before us was a line spanning with width of the room - beyond lay a pair of swords & shields, beyond those were two clay figures in set poses. The darkness continued past them. Soltar and Simon made ready and sprinted across the line - the figures immediately raced towards them. Soltar was quick and grabbed a sword and shield, charging one figure back into a pit which lay at the edge of the torchlight. Simon grabbed the other set but was beset by the second figure. Barnabus and his gang charged in and tangled with the statue before Simon pushed it into the pit as well. One clay figure was completely smashed, leaking ichor, the other staggered around. On the other side of the pit was a javelin and discus, and two more figures. Barnabus took a running jump across the pit, but didn't make it. The still-animate statue staggered over to his crumpled body and bludgeoned it with its fists. Herodotus (no relation) took charge of Barnabus' mob and we left the way we came.
Back at the crossroads, we checked the eastern passage and found a tightrope over a pit. Heading north we found another eastern passage with an identical pit. We found that we could lower ourselves into the pit safely from the edge - Soltar cut the rope, lowered himself in and climbed up the other side. There he found a long wooden pole, and sack holding a flask of oil, a torch, and a note which read: "Hope in the condemned is like salt on meat." Soltar threw the pole and torch back and gathered up the rope - following the corridor further led back to the first pit, and he repeated the manoeuvre to rejoin the party.
We heard noises from the north, saw lantern light illuminate a stretch of Theseus' red thread and a looming, monstrous shape, and heard a woman's voice pleading. We ran west, back to the entrance chamber, then headed north, following Theseus' thread and encountered the beast coming the opposite direction. We ran back to the entrance room and headed west, through the skull archway, then south, arriving in a shrine to Hades. Herodotus pocketed a dagger and downed a jug of wine from the altar, incurring a curse from Hades. Simon took a block of incense, Soltar carved a sliver off and burned it as an offering to the god. Hades' voice boomed out, chastising us as thieves but demanding that we bury any Athenian bodies we find, righting an affront to the gods.
Leaving the shrine, we heard roars of rage and metallic booms coming from the entrance chamber while a woman pleaded with 'Asterion' to calm down and cease his attempts to leave - he was too shameful for the outside world. While this went on, we also discovered a pit trap in an adjoining corridor and hatched a plan. Gathering up on the far side, we called out and taunted the Minotaur. It heard us, and charged - it resembled a monstrous half man-half bull divided down the middle, covered in grievous wounds. The Minotaur easily cleared the pit trap and pulverised Herodotus in a single blow, stopping to gorge on the remains.
We fled in the direction of the entrance, encountering a woman bearing a lantern on the way who called out to the Minotaur, addressing it as 'Asterion' again and pleading for it to come away from the trapped areas. Soltar grabbed the woman and held his blade at her throat, demanding she keep silent. The Minotaur saw this and howled with rage, but was kept back by Soltar holding the woman forth as a human shield. The woman was Pasiphae, wife of King Minos and mother of Asterion - the Minotaur. Soltar demanded to know how she had entered the labyrinth - she had a secret entrance in the north. She didn't know the way back though, they had followed Theseus' thread here. She demanded to be released, stating that our actions were an affront to the gods - Soltar replied, 'No'.
So began a slow chase, with Asterion pursuing us while we traced Theseus' thread back until eventually we found the site of their battle. Theseus' ruined body lay atop his sword, which Hector claimed and found it possessed magical properties. Asterion reared up to charge but was calmed by his mother. Simon took Pasiphae's lantern, while Soltar and Hector bound her hands with rope and tied them to Soltar's wrist, and we continued north, following her directions.
We reached as far as the passage would take us and found a lantern on the floor. Pasiphae refused to let us out, as if she did so then Asterion could also exit. Soltar appealed to the queen, saying that this sick farce was the true affront to the gods and that innocent people and her son should not be used for such sport. The queen agreed and told Asterion he had to leave, that his shame could not be exposed to the outside world - the Minotaur tensed, protesting. Simon and Hector readied themselves for the end. Soltar spoke to him: "Peace, Asterion. To feel the shame of a parent is no great crime, it is something which unites all men."
With a cry, Asterion reared up and gradually crumpled into the form of a beautiful, strong man who lay weeping on the flagstones calling for his mother. Soltar cut the queen's bonds and she ran to him, leaving her ring with directions to a point in a nearby wall with a secret mechanism. A door opened to the outside world and in poured fresh air and sunlight. We gathered up Theseus' body on a shield and bore him to a nearby beach, where Ariadne waited with a trireme, and buried him there.
Simon and his crew opted to stay in Minos as servants of Pasiphae, while Soltar and Hector and their followers departed on the trireme for adventures in the Aegean.
 |
| Jerard S. Marantz |
The Adventure
This was great fun to play - laumry clearly has a great personal passion for this myth and it really shone through in his enthusiasm and energy while running the session. Good GM chops, that one.
Spoilers below
Overview
Theseus is Dead (TiD) is a one-page dungeon with 13 keyed locations, 10 corridor traps (2 of each type), 5 NPCs, one really big monster, and 9 regular monsters - the usual caveats of one-page dungeons apply, get your own bestiary etc.. It's written system-neutral, we ran it with Shadowdark, with an appropriately strong Bronze Age Greek aesthetic. TiD is intended for a 3-4 player funnel, with each player controlling a foreground level 0 character out of a starting group of 4 unfortunate chumps. I asked laumry about his motivations behind the dungeon and its purpose, and he told me that he wrote it 'for him' - having returned to the hobby after a long hiatus he's figuring out how he wants to engage with it through the lenses of player, designer and Referee. I think he's got a very good avenue to take down each of these options.
TiD is a chase dungeon, in the vein of The God That Crawls - eventually Asterion will find the players and begin to pursue them, and there's almost no chance of them taking him head on. Given that the vast majority of the labyrinth is unlit and the party starts with a scant two torches, players are immediately pushed into desperate exploration to try and find equipment and/or escape before shit hits the fan the Minotaur hits you.
Layout
Done in MS Word, of all things! It's a simple two-column layout and it works well. The first column provides a simple and easy to parse map, a brief setup section (one of the directions therein is "Read the myth of Theseus"), a list of the labyrinth's inhabitants, and the clock (this is important). The second contains all the keyed locations, trapped corridors, and a brief section detailing events following the PCs' escape. NPCs have their stats, special features, and needs outlined in dedicated sections, locations are presented in paragraph form.
I found the information within readily available, although the 7pt font did require a bit of squinting at times. The hand-drawn Minotaur portrait in the background sneaks up on you!
Contents
Each inhabitant of the labyrinth one might encounter is given a brief description, how they should be statted (no stats included), and a list of needs which vary from: 'stop the slaughter', to 'feathers, escape.' One character has needs which conflict with each other, mirroring their internal conflict. The NPC descriptions provide good seeds to develop into emergent behaviours for them depending on how the party interact with them and the labyrinth as a whole.
The 13 keyed locations sprawl into three general areas, following the north, east, and west corridors away from the starting vestibule:
- North: the Minotaur's domain, ironically the safest part of the dungeon (at least in the beginning). Fewer traps, some clues as to Asterion's past, and Theseus' magic sword (the one thing guaranteed to hurt Asterion). Heading north-east runs into traps but also leads to Daedalus and Icarus, who can outfit the party with some serious gear. South-east leads to...
- East: the Pentathlon Challenges. Compete against Taliskoi (animate statues) guardians in a series of events, culminating in meeting the spirit of Asterion's deceased brother, who can provide critical information on his sibling's affliction. Heading north from here through a trap gauntlet leads to Daedalus & Icarus, who seek to escape.
- West: the shrine of Hades and Mother's Ruin. A shrine to the god of the Underworld who, if beseeched, will charge the character's with a task in exchange for a boon. North from the shrine lies a contraption surrounded by murals hinting at the origins of Asterion's curse.
The paths between all of these run through a central 'hub' of corridors and the entrance vestibule.
From the off this gives players 3 branching options to choose from, with overlapping opportunities to backtrack and find new directions of travel. While the labyrinth isn't truly Jaquays-ed, there are numerous interconnections between the central hub of passageways so you don't feel limited in mobility unless you commit to entering a room at the end of a route - few rooms have multiple exits. In the 3 hours that we played, we largely hung around the southern half of the dungeon (only encountering about half of the written content there) before heading north in our final flight from Asterion. There's a good amount of stuff for players to engage here - different groups could end up with very different experiences, there are elements in the adventure notes which we didn't even consider (animating a giant bronze statue) or come close to (meeting Daedalus and Icarus in their workshop).
The contents strike a nice balance between traps (telegraphed unless you're moving quickly, which is my preferred style), interactions with hostile and non-hostile denizens of the labyrinth, tools and weapons to improve your odds, and even some treasure.
 |
| Our tldraw map of the labyrinth. |
The Clock
A key element in TiD is the clock which tracks Asterion's movements, with 5 steps. Every dungeon turn there is a 2-in-6 chance that it advances one step:
- Asterion feeds on Theseus' body. Pasiphae (his mother, the Queen of Crete) enters the labyrinth through a secret door.
- Pasiphae finds Asterion and heals him with a potion.
- Asterion follows Ariadne's thread (red on the map). Pasiphae follows him.
- Asterion enters the entrance vestibule. Pasiphae attempts to prevent his escape, expressing her shame.
- Asterion kills his mother and roams the labyrinth, crazed with guilt and rage. After this, there is a 1-in-6 chance that the PCs encounter him from the direction of his last known location.
The clock serves to provide the party with a sort of grace period before they are really hunted and, if close enough, they can overhear important information from Pasiphae. Similar to the layout, the variable 'ticking' of the clock provides different experiences for different groups - some may end up actively hunted much earlier than others and be herded into different areas of the dungeon. Given the theme, it works much better than a simple random encounter chance and really serves to drive home that the Minotaur isn't just a mindless monster.
The Minotaur & Pasiphae, and a Conclusion, of Sorts
These two characters are the central pillar of the adventure, so deserve a section of their own, and I wanted to highlight the part of the adventure I enjoyed the most. The short version of the Minotaur's creation myth is that Pasiphae, Queen of Crete, daughter of Helios, and wife of King Minos of Crete, was enchanted by Poseidon (with Aphrodite's help) to mate with a snow-white bull which Minos had failed to sacrifice appropriately to the god. Pasiphae gave birth to the Minotaur, Asterion, as a result. The legend goes that the child matured into a ferocious adolescent and was imprisoned in the labyrinth, later to be fed Athenian youths as a form of tribute to Crete. Pasiphae has, as is so often the case with historical and mythological women, become a cautionary tale of sin, despite her actions being the result of a divine curse. Asterion serves as a bestial footnote to the glorious myth of Theseus, existing to show the demigod's strength and heroism.
laumry delves beneath the mythological veneer and focuses on the pair of them, demigod daughter of the god of the sun and her cursed child, himself a demigod by blood, as human beings. Myths of the Minotaur's creation refer to Pasiphae breastfeeding the infant as a mother would any other child. The myths note that Asterion became violent as he grew older, but was not always so. Was the Minotaur fated to become a violent, maddened beast kept in confinement? Are monsters such because of their nature, or are they made?
TiD takes the latter answer. This Asterion, despite his awful physical affliction, was once a sweet-natured boy, as attested to by the artisan Daedalus and the shade of Androgeus, Asterion's deceased brother, who wishes to see his sibling freed from his enforced existence as their father's executioner. Pasiphae is torn between her love for her son, wanting to heal his wounds and protect him, and the overwhelming shame she feels at the nature of his conception and, on some level, his very existence. Such shame, and presumably ill-treatment at the hands of King Minos, led to Asterion being locked away in an unlit prison with only owls and visits from his mother for company. Traces of his former life - a doll, paintings on the walls of his den, his relationship with his mother and brother - point towards a frightened child trapped in the body of a monster, twisted by shame.
The adventure serves as an example of the numerous prisons of our own making which all of us inhabit, and the very real trauma that parents can inflict upon their children. It is entirely possible to kill Asterion, with enough careful planning, the right equipment, and a healthy dose of luck, but it is also possible, through repeated and/or strong enough appeals to his humanity, to break the curse and render him fully human. In our session this clicked for me right at the end and, through a garbled speech which was half-intended to appeal to Asterion and half as a badass set of last words, I was able to accomplish this.
There was a point during our session, I can't recall exactly when, where we began to refer to the Minotaur as 'he' rather than 'it', and using his name. My character, Soltar, took Pasiphae hostage - initially I saw her as a haughty noble who wanted nothing more than to see us fed to her monstrous son, but her repeated attempts to calm her son, who she seemed to fear and love in equal measure, as we fled revealed an inner torment which caused harm to both herself and the child that she loved. I referenced The God that Crawls as a similar style of dungeon, but the similarity ends with a roaming central threat haunting the players in a maze. I don't remember anything in there regarding St. Ambrose's motivations beyond blob-monster-who-responds-to-Christianity, and the village cult cannot be reasoned with in any way. I think TiD does far more with its single page than Raggi does with ~50.
This was easily the strongest part of TiD for me. I think it's fair to lay a reasonable proportion of this at laumry's feet, given his knowledge of and passion for the myth, but reading through the module gives the Referee everything they need to play out this messy, raw, and very human interaction. Throughout the entire session I was suffering horribly from hayfever, but at the end there were some genuine tears mixed in and I think that's maybe the highest possible praise I can give to something like this. That feeling certainly doesn't come around often.
laumry is intending on submitting his adventure to this year's One Page Dungeon contest, which is very appropriately on the theme of strings. I highly encourage you to grab a copy when it's available, and run it.
---
If I had sold the gifts of Kypris,
given my body in secret to some man,
you would have every right to condemn me
as a whore. But this was no act of the will;
I am suffering from some madness brought on
by a god.
It’s not plausible!
What could I have seen in a bull
to assault my heart with this shameful passion?
Did he look too handsome in his robe?
Did a sea of fire smoulder in his eyes?
Was it the red tint of his hair, his dark beard?
No comments:
Post a Comment