Sharpened Hooks: The Bloody Contests of Tanadara

The real-life Frank Dux of Bloodsport fame claims that the Kumite is a secret 60-round single-elimination tournament held every five years. A sixty-round single-elimination tournament would require over a quintillion (~1.2 × 10¹⁸) participants, which is several orders of magnitude more than the total number of humans who are estimated to have ever lived on earth (~1.2 × 10¹¹ as of this writing) and would obviously be impossible to keep secret.

But of course, in imaginary worlds, fighting tournaments can remain unconstrained by size or secrecy. What if the whole world were embroiled in a fighting tournament?

Aeons ago, the apocalyptic elf cabal known as the Thorns of the Haemophage succeeded in their ages-long goal to summon the Blood Gods to the world of Tanadara. The forces of Chaos ran roughshod across the surface of the world, only stopping when the elves—rightly horrified at the destruction they had wrought and realizing that the end of the Age of Man would probably also be the end of the age of everything—invoked desperate spellcraft to bind the Blood Gods long enough to bring them to the negotiating table.

The price of peace was ultimately the Malraninin, a vast tournament requiring the participation of all able-bodied sapients on Tanadara. Occurring only once every hundred years, the Malraninin takes years to finish, comprising a single-elimination tournament featuring every healthy humanoid in the world. (Just wrangling everyone and pairing them takes weeks if not months.) Although most fights are not to the death, there are no restrictions, and enough fights are deadly that the Blood Gods remain quiescent for now.

As the longest-lived race, the elves are the keepers of the Malraninin, charged with ensuring all participate. (The average human is born and dies without ever participating in the Malraninin, which is more than enough time to forget the grave import of the contest.) Participation is mandatory; any who refuse, or who run and are caught, or who voluntarily maim themselves to avoid the contest, are executed. Cutting a deal with your opponent ahead of time to throw a fight is considered poor form and also a form of refusal, but it also tends to be rather hard to prove and so is somewhat commonplace in the early rounds. (But then again, sadistic opponents might take advantage of you taking a dive, so make sure you trust your fight partner before you coordinate a fight.)

It will probably surprise no one to learn that high-level magic-users are exceedingly rare on Tanadara, because they usually flee when they first learn teleportation or planar travel. Conversely, unknowing planar travelers may find themselves in a The Return of the Archons situation, being conscripted into the chaos of the Malraninin without a full understanding of the situation. (And the locals are unlikely to believe your claims of being from another world or dimension, because that sounds like exactly the sort of tall tale someone would spin if they were trying to claim an exit from the tournament. Not that it would help you even if they did believe you; the Blood Gods hunger for you just as well as any native-born Tanadaran.)

Incidentally, even those cosmologists who know of other worlds don't know about the Malraninin, because the folk of the world do not often speak of it, especially with strangers. The spies of the elves are always watching for tournament-dodgers, and it is best to avoid their scrutiny.

Unsurprisingly, however, Tanadara has a much higher concentration of martial artists than most other worlds; most inhabitants know at least the rudiments of boxing, swordplay, offensive magic, or some other self-defense art, even if they are not especially skilled.

During any given Malraninin, thousands if not millions of people can die, so the Malraninin is equal parts celebration and mourning ceremony. Despite the violence, the final rounds of the Malraninin bring pilgrims from across the world, so there is a certain level of cultural exchange brought by tournament season.

After the tournament, survivors often return to their lives a little more harrowed than before. (Which is especially unfortunate, given the silence and shame around the Malraninin. Domestic violence and suicides often spike after a Malraninin, not that anyone keeps track of such statistics.) Life continues apace, at least until the next tournament.

It goes without saying that the Malraninin requires years of planning, and that several large-scale projects (like war) stop for it. Farming and other necessities of course continue, although such responsibilities do not prevent participation. If your community needs you, you had better fight like it.

Story Hooks:

• Your village's headman was just and giving, but he died during the Malraninin and his sons are not quite so altruistic. You and your band have undertaken a quest to retrieve him from the lands of the dead (and maybe to get revenge on his killer along the way). But the elves claim bringing back one of the Malraninin dead risks the Blood Gods' wrath. Will you risk taboo to restore your village's fortunes? Will the elves allow this trespass to go unanswered?
• In the midst of adventuring in your GM's typical setting, you somehow stumble into Tanadara and are recruited into the Malraninin. (Perhaps you delve too deep into the Deepearth and emerge on the surface of Tanadara, or perhaps a wizard's trap sends you very far away.) Do you fight, or do you attempt to flee? If you flee, can you return to the anomaly that sent you here? And if you fight, what if one of your opponents seeks to fight to the death?
• Your remote tribe was uncontacted by the outside world until thirty years ago, when trade opened with your neighbors. Your village prospered under the trade agreements until now, when elves appeared and said all must participate in a fighting tournament or die. Will you go along with the strange foreign elves' wishes to avoid trouble, or will you resist their demands?

Four Kingdoms

A friend was soliciting ideas for foreign dominions, and I came up with four kingdoms plus their attendant problems. Use them as you see fit:

Mercantile Stratocracy. The kingdom bought its independence with blood, selling its mercenaries to the other nearby states. The gold from these campaigns has made the country rich beyond its wildest dreams, and enhanced the lives of its people. But everything has a price: the land's leaders are haunted by the things they have done and seen (sometimes literally!), and the kingdom's neighbors now look upon its natural resources and newfound wealth with hungry eyes. The merchant-generals are skilled enough warriors to earn their wealth, but are they skilled enough to keep it?

The Warren. Beneath the forests and glades, the tunnel-folk carry out their endless digging. What they cannot grow in the forest or in the mushroom farms, they trade using gems mined from the long night below. No enemy can penetrate their labyrinthine tunnels, and no natural disaster has yet threatened their kingdom. But all the tunnel-folk know is to dig, dig, dig. Do they dig towards their doom? Will they awaken something that slumbers below, or might they move so much earth that the forest above collapses into the pits below?

Utopian Mortocracy. It's a real nice place to raise your kids up: crime is low, manual labor is carried out by the Honored Ancestors (read: your grandpa's zombie), and people are finally free to fulfill themselves in arts and philosophy. But the undying wizards who run the place are focused on arcane studies and don't like surprises; upward mobility is practically non-existent, and the secret police ensure that nobody upsets the status quo. There's a lot of pressure to solve your disputes out of sight, away from the vigilance of the state's panopticon, and resentment simmers among the intelligentsia. Beneath the veneer of utopia lies the seeds of revolution, awaiting fertilizer.

Steam-Powered Theocracy. The wonders of a new age! Praise be the Intersection of Fire and Water! Their capital city is built around their god and the source of their technological wonders: a steam vent fed by underground aquifers and uranium deposits to form a natural nuclear fission reactor. If the underground rivers ever run dry (or if sappers from hostile nations dam them up), the uranium deposits could grow hot and reach criticality, destroying the city and spraying toxic effluvia across the land. 

Secret Paths of Silver

Man and the related humanoids are pattern-sensing creatures, time-binding animals. So it is of little surprise that they determined how to bind concepts into words, how to bind words back into concepts, and how to link these to the Tapestry that holds reality together. (Modern physicists would call this Tapestry "spacetime," but fantasy sages don't usually include spacetime in their worldken.)

The first humanoids to do this can be considered the first natural philosophers, as their conclusions arose from careful study of the natural world. Beyond the mere archival qualities of the sage, however, these were experiential, empirical philosophers. They go by many names, but players and game rulebooks typically call them druids.

The druids of Khaldun were the first to wrest the secrets of magic out of the land, the root from which the other magical traditions spring. (It makes sense when you think about it. They channel divine magic from the land like priests, but wrap their arcana in secrets and codes like wizards.) The druids were among the first to enumerate (and then, over the aeons, forget) the slow, green war. And in the Age Before Ages, they were the most powerful magic-users on the face of Khaldun.

They shaped the world.

Before the war between gods and Primordials, they created strange wonders, chief among which is the system of Moonpaths.that once connected the far-flung corners of the world. Available wherever moonlight shines, the Moonpaths were relatively stable shortcuts allowing nearly instantaneous travel among disparate locations. They usually connected between druidic sacred sites and other important places, allowing druids to meet and defend these strategic locations at a moments' notice.

But such magic was long ago. The gods and Primordials made war, the Tapestry changed, and the Moonpaths collapsed. Most that remain are broken, dangerous, and unstable, often appearing only at certain times or when summoned by ancient chants and blood rites.

Strangely, archaic records suggest that druids often met on Khaldun's moon, implying that it was not the lifeless ball of rock it currently is. But this may be poetic, as archaic records often claim many metaphorical things that are not true, like saying there were two moons.

(Of course, some of these things may be true. The Dark Powers of Ravenloft claim that the ancient elves hid thousands of years of history in the hopes of destroying a potent world-emperor. And while most sages blame the ancient war between thought and matter for catastrophes like the convergences, they were instead caused by this forgotten empire — meaning that all manner of history might be lost to time. Likewise, the Archfey Vance recently informed his subjects of a civilization on the Faerie reflection of the moon, so maybe there is something to the moon once having held life...)

Repo Men

Inspired by R.E.P.O., this is the usual XP-for-treasure format with a hook to tie the adventures together.

Aeons ago, various boss monsters borrowed money from some entity (probably a powerful fiend like Mammon or an ultroloth, although you can obviously use whatever entity you wish if you're avoiding canonical Dungeons & Dragons factions), and now the time has come to collect. You are agents of the entity in question, delving into dungeons and trying to repossess treasure for your infernal masters.

The characters would gain XP for treasure, as usual, although the twist is that they probably aren't keeping any of this treasure themselves. I imagine they receive a commission in scrip (maybe 10% or so) which can be spent at the company store. In addition to standard equipment, the company store also carries hirelings and magic items. (I would probably randomize the latter so that there's a constant churn of weird items coming through.)

Obviously, the GM has to determine how magic items from dungeons work. Can you keep them? Can you squirrel them away? Do they enter the company store after the adventure?

It's essentially the same idea as standard class-and-level adventure games: enter the dungeon, loot everything to the bare walls, and get out. This setup has a few benefits that might make it worthwhile for certain groups:

1. If your players aren't interested in overland travel, this is a good excuse to give them various dungeons in the same campaign without having to travel to them. The central "hub" of the campaign is Hell's mercenary barracks, or whatever other extradimensional base of operations you devise.
2. The company store allows you to put whatever weird items into your campaign you want without altering the original adventures. It's Hell's lost and found, essentially.
3. The format allows people to drop in and out as desired.

I haven't quite figured out what adventures I'd like to use. (Obviously, if you get to it before I do, you can use whatever you like.) I'm thinking of dungeons that have "boss monsters" in them, a creature around which the dungeon is built (and who might be in debt to a powerful fiend). As such, the capstone is likely to be something like I6: Ravenloft or S1: Tomb of Horrors, but everything before then is open to suggestion. A cursed house like The Cursed Chateau or Tegel Manor? A frontier ruin like Prison of the Hated Pretender or The Submerged Spire of Sarpedon the Shaper? A larger village investigation leading to a dungeon like Against the Cult of the Reptile God or The Village of Hommlet?

Apart from needing a central figure whose stuff can be repossessed, you can really run any adventure you like.

A final note: this also seems like a good campaign frame to have in your back pocket if you run something like Fires of Dis or The Shrike, where the characters go to Hell and so might end up indentured to some powerful demon. In which case, just start throwing dungeons at them with a mandate to deliver all of value to their master. Of course, intrepid players will probably try to determine how to wriggle out of their infernal contracts, which seems like an interesting wrinkle to this campaign...

The Slow, Green War

The slow war is all around us, but few of us can see it.

Some few druids of Khaldun know about it; those who can cast speak with plants or awaken sometimes come to understand the outer edges of the slow war. The dreaming druids of the Foxfire Forest were vexed (but somewhat sympathetic) when their fellow druid Bardo Urrok announced that the slow war of the wood is too noisy for him, and left their company for less-forested climes. Some travelers have since reported running into the eccentric halfling in the Hoarfrost Ridge, above the timberline.

Those Who Remember awakened a hawthorn bush, and were surprised (and amused) to learn that its morality was totally alien, with a very pragmatic view of murder and a lack of understanding of their own, seemingly-contradictory moral stances. (The bush didn't understand the elf druid's concept of an "invasive species," for example; a creature that outperforms others in an environment is clearly the victor to be lauded rather than lamented.) The bush's exploration of animal-scale life was sadly cut short by a group of dark elves as part of the far-reaching consequences of the Battle of Scandshar.

The key is this: plants are involved in an aeons-long struggle to survive amidst dwindling resources and increasing predation. There is plenty of sunlight and nutrients, but "arbitrarily large" is different than "infinite." They have defenses against herbivores, and are evolving new ones all the time, but herbivores are also adapting at the same glacial pace and move much more quickly. Humans and their ilk choose some plants and inhibit others, seemingly with no rhyme or reason. (And those selfsame creatures will often cultivate land in ways that make it inaccessible to plants of any sort.)

All of this to say that there is a war out there, happening much more slowly than any of us can readily bear witness. This is the slow war of plants. And while plants in folklore and stories are often ancient and placid, depicted as living in harmony with their environment, real plants are bloodthirsty, impatient, and downright Darwinian. They compete for resources, parasitize each other, or even engage in biological warfare. (To say nothing of defenses against herbivores such as poisons and spinose teeth.)

More grist for the mill of common druidic misconceptions.

Troikan Effluvia

My Troika! players are currently running through Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, and while they have successfully solved the problem of a Parchment Witch trying to steal the package they're delivering, they still have another problem: the Maxillary Uslurper from the original published adventure. It hasn't targeted them yet, but if it does, they're ready for it, having acquired several cilantro-laden burritos from the café. (They initially hit the Parchment Witch with a burrito, assuming it was somehow connected to the Maxillary Uslurper. It, uh, didn't work.)

While cilantro doesn't help, here's a fun tip for you if you're ever fighting a Parchment Witch: the Sorcerer of the College of Friends used the Animate spell on its stolen skin, causing the face to deform and rendering the Parchment Witch blind during most of the fight until it ate its own face.

Troika! rules, by the way.

As part of my prep for Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs, I made two handouts: the Ice Tomorrow advert quoted in the book, and a political pamphlet for the ice miners on Out-of-Order and Myung's Misstep. If you're running it (or even if you're not), you might find them useful.

Design Notes:

• The reverse of the Ice Tomorrow advert features a portion of an article regarding the creation of CompoGel, a Troikan version of pykrete. Canonical references include the Ice Cream Sphere from Axes & Orcs' High Fructose Hyperspace and Winters-Thawing Collegium of Eldritch Academics, a randomly-generated wizard college from Academies of the Arcane. Shakespeare-Marjanovic Heavy Industries and The Prince of Seven Moons are from our campaign, as The Prince of Seven Moons is a recurring antagonist and it is occasionally useful to remind the player characters that he's doing stuff about which they probably ought to worry. The details of his devious plans are left to your own devising, although the seed kernel of The Prince of Seven Moons is The Moon King from The Moon King Wants to Party. (In our game, they are separate but likely related entities.)
• I was originally considering having the Myung Icers' Liberation Front be a greater presence while on Out-of-Order, thus the pamphlet, but I ultimately decided to stick with Slow Sleigh to Plankton Downs (and The Forest Primordia on the return trip). As such, fleshing out their ranks is best left to the individual gamesmaster, If you need stats, Knights of the Road from Troika! are probably a fine start, although several of the working class factions from Get It at Sutlers (such as Codwallopers, Oligopolists, Palyngers, Rippiers, and Victualers) might be better.

Sharpened Hooks: Santa Claus vs. Troika

December is shaping up to be quite busy, so I suspect I won't have an opportunity to use these, but you might! Here are two Troika! adventure hooks for Yuletide:

Dead Letter
Centuries ago, a delivery meant for Santa's workshop arrived at Whalgravaak's warehouse instead, and Santa's elves only just tracked it down. Can you retrieve the parcel from its resting place?

I haven't decided where to put Santa's misplaced package, but Rooms 12, 13, 14, or 15 all seem like potentially good resting places.

Kidnap the Sandy Claws
Can you help? Rudolph approaches the player characters, having wriggled free from his harness. Santa entered a building to deliver packages hours ago, and hasn't returned! Can you rescue him?

Santa has been kidnapped by a gang of cocksure gamins (as described in Get It At Sutlers, page 67) who seek to use his intended presents for their own pleasure. If you're stuck for a hideout location, I might start with Dyson Logos' South Sewers Hideout, stocking it with gamins, guard animals, sewer monsters, and a beefy lad to act as the local boss. (I might go with the stats of an ogre from the core rulebook.)