Updated 00:00 2nd May
Playtest Kit v1.1
Playtest Adventure
The Red Pit
“What do I know of cultured ways, the gilt, the craft and the lie?
I, who was born in a naked land and bred in the open sky.
The subtle tongue, the sophist guile, they fail when the broadswords sing;
Rush in and die, dogs — I was a man before I was a king.”
– The Road of Kings
The hammer falls; with it, the rust-pitted iron manacles that have been the symbol of your enslavement clatter to the ground. The sudden release from their chafing weight elicits a low and dangerous chuckle from the back of your throat — like the cough of a leopard that has caught the scent of its prey.
The gap-toothed trustee squints up at you, then over his shoulder at that hulking fool, Nazarus. “Don’t get used to it, swine!” the Kothian chief of the trustees bellows. “You’ve done well, aye, and Master Abdibaal rewards those who keep their backs bent and their noses clean. But you’re not free, you hear me? Tomorrow, those go back on.” Grinning, he cracks his whip for emphasis. “Now move, ere I lose my patience with you, slave!”
But you don’t move. You stand, shoulders squared, your lungs expanding as you draw in a deep breath of hot, rancid air. The sheer walls of the Red Pit rise above you — an open-air prison that your captors swore would break you. “No man like you can live long as a slave!” they gloated. But what do they know of men like you, men who have trod a thousand blood-mired paths — from the deck of a Zingaran galley, heeling in the froth of slaughter, to the dank alleys of the East, where a razor-edged whisper augurs death? A slave? By the gods, you’ve been a slave and more, besides!
It has not been easy to get to this moment; you’ve bided your time, swallowed equal measures of anger and pride. You’ve danced to the tune Nazarus and his mangy pack have played, kowtowing to his whip and to their endless jibes, all under the watchful eye of the overseer, Abdibaal, and his swarthy Pelishtim mercenaries. You’ve played your part. But no more.
Now, it’s your turn to call the tune.
With a bellow of maniacal fury, you snatch the gap-toothed trustee by his throat. Corded muscle writhes along your blade-scarred forearm as you haul him aloft; iron fingers convulse, crushing the life out of him. Spitting in contempt, you hurl his scrawny corpse at his mates before whirling to face the slaves at your back — men you have toiled alongside, starved with, and bled with. “Brothers of the chain!” you roar. “Would you lick the boots of those who would grind you into dust... or would you be free men? Aye, rise up and slay the dogs!”
And with a shout that shakes the foundations of heaven, the gods of blood and slaughter descend upon the Red Pit to once more claim their own...
Enslaved and condemned to die in Koth’s most infamous quarry, our heroes must overpower their jailers, evade a withering hail of arrows, and defeat a vicious man-eating lizard as they scale the Red Pit’s sheer walls. In the race to freedom – who will be the first to die?
A demonstration scenario for 4-6 adventurers using the 2d20 rules for Robert E. Howard’s CONAN: Adventures in an Age Undreamed.
Prologue
On the western marches of Koth, in the bleak hills near the border with Argos and Ophir, lies an ugly scar in the earth that men call the Red Pit. From its depths, slaves hack blocks of fine rose-hued limestone from the ground —— stone ultimately bound for the palaces and villas of Khorshemish. The slaves who are sent here rarely last a season; they live at the whim of the elements, toiling beneath the blazing sun by day and huddling together in their rags for warmth by night. Despite all this, some still have dreams — dreams of freedom — though most dream only of the rich red froth of vengeance.
For the purposes of this scenario, the Player Characters (PCs) begin as slaves, naked but for a twist of cloth around their loins and armed with only their wits, their fists, and a handful of makeshift weapons. Regardless of their origins, they face the same fate: to scrape and scrabble at the rock until Death comes for them.
Unless they can wrest their freedom from the Master of the Pit.
That Master is a brutal man called ABDIBAAL, a eunuch deep in the confidence of the Kothian king, Strabonus; he is as merciless and intractable as his master, though the fat-bellied eunuch has forgotten more about intrigue than Strabonus will ever know. A cadre of his countrymen, PELISHTIM MERCENARIES from western Shem, prowls the edges of the Red Pit, ever watchful. But inside the quarry, Abdibaal employs a gang of THUGGISH TRUSTEES to keep the other slaves in line. NAZARUS THE WHIP is their chief. The last member of Abdibaal’s retinue is a NAMELESS STYGIAN, tall and gaunt, whose sole task is to care for the eunuch’s prized pet: a 300-pound carnivorous lizard he keeps caged near the edge of the Pit.
Synopsis
The adventure begins as the slaves’ workday draws to a close. The brazen horn has sounded and Abdibaal orders Nazarus and his Trustees to tally how much stone each slave grubbed forth, collect their tools, and mete out punishment to those who missed their quota. Only after will they receive their meagre ration of hard bread, water, and a wooden bowl of herb stew.
A lucky few — the PCs among them — who have demonstrated a willingness to work and who have “kept their noses clean” have their irons struck off for the night ... a luxury calculated to make the balance of the slaves work that much harder. For the moment, however, our heroes’ legs are free, and they stand closer to the sweet taste of freedom than they have in months.
The players start with only their fists against Nazarus’ whip and the other Trustees’ truncheons; however, should the party sweep aside the Trustees and their chief, they might secure mining tools to wield in their defence or even spur a general slave uprising. No matter how they begin, their revolt does not pass unnoticed. Abdibaal astride his horse, up at the lip of the mine, orders his archers to target the players along with any other slaves foolish enough to join them. Through this hail of arrows, the adventurers must rush to the base of the only scalable cliff, atop which the Master of the Pit, his guards, his archers, and his monstrous pet lizard await.
Once they reach the relative safety at the foot of the Pit wall, they must gather their strength and make for the surface. Impetuous adventurers may choose to scale the face of this cliff barehanded, with nothing but raw courage and Mitra’s blessing between themselves and the archers’ deadly shafts. Craftier characters might release the Pit's massive stone-hauling basket, letting it plummet to the quarry floor to provide a rope straight to the surface. Most likely, the party scurries up twin rope ladders hanging from a rocky outcropping high on the wall, a formation called the Eunuch’s Ear.
As the players ascend from the Red Pit to the Eunuch's Ear, Abdibaal sits not idle. He exhorts his archers to maintain their barrage; if it comes to it, he lowers a few of his mailed Pelishtim to the Eunuch’s Ear with orders to cut the ladders before the PCs reach the outcrop's surface. Should the player's take and hold the Ear, the remaining mercenaries rain down havoc with their broad-bladed spears. Finally, if all else fails, Abdibaal orders the grim and silent Stygian to unleash a Mighty A’Ghama. Maddened by the reek of spilled blood, the lizard-beast claws its way into the Red Pit, bent on slaking its hellish appetite.
And So It Begins
Our heroes’ goal is simple: fight tooth and nail to reach the surface and gain their freedom. There are no intrigues, no ulterior motives; this first tale is pure action, a bloody, bare-knuckled contest for survival — will you die a slave under the brutal summer sun or break out and triumph as a free man? The goal of the NPCs is equally simple: stop the player characters and restore the status quo to the Red Pit. The Master, Abdibaal, escapes at the end of this chapter, for he features as the villain in a larger cycle of tales.
25
The Lay of the land
The action begins in ZONE 1, with a scrawny, gap-toothed Trustee hammering an iron awl-punch through the rivet securing the PCs pitted leg manacles . . . and granting them a slim chance of escape. A second Trustee waits here as well, holding a woven basket to take the pitted iron chains.
Adjacent to the PCs, in ZONE 4, nearly 120 slaves stand and watch, shuffling and clanking. In ZONE 2, Nazarus sits at a massive table laden with baskets of bread and a huge pottery urn of still-warm herb stew. He oils his whip, while his merry band of thugs (nine additional Trustees) stands by and wagers their night’s ration of bread on which shirker will next suffer their chief’s wrath.
Two additional medium zones — ZONE 3 and ZONE 5— stand between the PCs and the scalable eastern wall of the Pit, marked ZONE 6.
[Begin Sidebar Here]
Begin in the Middle
Much of Robert E. Howard’s work opened using a literary technique known as in medias res — “begin in the middle” — which created explosive and dynamic openings, then a brief pause to fill the reader in on the backstory. For GMs, this means starting the adventure as close to the point of no return as possible. The tale of the Red Pit commences just after one of the Trustees strikes the chains off the ankles of the PCs. However, GMs are encouraged to find their own point of no return, if they so desire. Maybe before the chains come off, or after Nazarus begins to ply his whip against those slaves who have offended him?
[End Sidebar Here]
Forty feet up the eastern wall juts an outcropping called the Eunuch’s Ear (ZONE 7). Here Nazarus and his Trustee dogs sleep, in a cave that reeks of sweat and rancid meat. There’s shelter beneath the outcropping from any archers on the surface (ZONE 9). Two rope ladders lead up from the quarry floor to the top of the Eunuch’s Ear.
Adjacent to this outcropping, just off its southern edge, hangs the giant stone-hauling basket (ZONE 8). This triple-woven hopper is suspended from a cable-thick rope that runs to the surface, where its control mechanism and counter-weight are located.
Finally, ZONE 9 is the surface of the Red Pit. In it stand the twelve Pelishtim mercenaries — three archers and eight spearmen and their captain — that make up Abdibaal’s personal guard. The Master of the Pit perches here, as well, his thick bulk astride a chestnut mare. His pet, a Mighty A’Ghama, waits in its iron cage: a nightmarish lizard like something dredged from the bowels of the River Styx, slavering and agitated. A gaunt Stygian in the ragged robes of a former priest tends the beast.
Once the fighting breaks out, the scenario offers two paths to reach the cliff face. The first (ZONE 5) leads through their fellow slaves and across a field of scree — ...
RPG