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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Iron Sky" data-source="post: 5228490" data-attributes="member: 60965">Eat It, SanzuoBrief Synopsis The party finds a djinn bottle and are taken to Celestia where they must win a series of staged arena battle-games to win the djinn's arena and freedom from an ex-djinn cyclops.  Pan Neek Pan Neek was a typical satyr, frolicking and dancing and seducing anything that walked through the forest.  However, one day a straight-laced priest of Erathus entered the forest to convert the heathens and changed Pan's life.  Missionary Sodom Grimsin preached of hellfire and damnation for the satyr's heathenish, carefree ways.  Most of the satyrs laughed, but Pan turned his back on the way of his peoples, swore off women, and traveled back to the nation of Puritania with Grimsin. There he saw the wonders of civilization; aqueducts, bakeries, sexual repression, crime, running water,  taxes, markets, arbitrary legislation, and especially the arena.  He spent his days immersed in the blood and sand of the arena, his nights dreaming of owning an arena full of sweaty, muscular gladiators of all races battling it out at his whim with creatures from all across creation cheering them on.  Against Grimsin's protests, he began to build his own arena. The Puritanians laughed as he began to build his own arena, but he wasn't deterred.  For decades he worked alone, building it up from scratch.  The arena was nearing completion when a burning figure fell screaming from the sky and thudded into an alley nearby.  Undetterred by the omen, he took the bottle that was clenched in the corpse's crispy hand and instantly, in a flash of smoke and light, there was a... cyclops?  Eyevan the Djinnius Eyevan the Djinnius was renowned amongst the cyclopes as being “the smartarest.”  While playing a drinking game, he won a magical lamp out of which a djinn appeared and offered a single wish.  Being the smartarest cyclops of all the cyclopes, Eyevan thought and thought and eventually, with a hideous grin, wished for “all da vishes in the voold” (DM note: Eyevan has an Arnold Schwarzenegger accent).  The djinn grinned back and in a flash produced the Djinn Wish Ordinance Manual and flipped to Article 1: Any customer that wishes for more wishes shall be made a wish-granting djinn, bound to a suitable container, for the propagation of the species.   In an instant Eyevan was a djinn, trapped in his own beer bottle.  Many years and misadventures later that, while interesting and occasionally disturbing, aren't relevant to the current events, Eyevan's bottle was discovered by Pan Neek.  “What is it you wish, baby?” Eyevan said, upon appearing.  Pan instantly realized he had an opportunity to make his yet-unfinished arena a reality.  “I, like so wish that once I totally finish this arena and put these tools down for good that it will be, like, the best arena ever and that I'll, like, live forever and be, like, invulnerable” (DM note: Pan has an exaggerated California surfer accent, a faint lisp, and exaggerated feminine hand-gestures). Eyevan slipped back into his bottle quickly, skimmed through the Djinn Wish Ordinance Manual, and found the article he was looking for.  Article 4: Any customer that wishes for immortality shall be made an immortal djinn, bound to a suitable container, for the propagation of the species.  He also referenced Article 7: Always give the customer more than they ask for.  Customer satisfaction first!  He frowned as he read Sub-article 12a: Wishes are final but must include an associated escape clause with some marginal degree of plausibility. He then read the infamous Sub-article 15b-7: Djinn are bound to their respective container for eternity, though some exceptions may apply and the revised amendment to Article 27: Should a newly-bound djinn find a suitable replacement within one hundred(100) years of being bound and before one hundred(100) wishes are fulfilled, they shall be returned to their previous state.  The replacement djinn is subject to the same terms, though any number of years or wishes already served by said previous djinn will apply to the same term and wish limits.   Eyevan quickly figured out his plan to take the Arena for himself and get out of his bottle in the same swoop.   Mt. Celestia Arena, sponsored by Kord – preferred God of Strength since Creation!  Pan's wish for “like, the best arena ever” made Eyevan figure the best place for it would be the best, ”goodest” place in creation – Celstia.  Eyevan transported the arena to Celestia, gained the sponsorship (and zoning-board assistance) of Celestia resident/God Kord – worshiped by cyclopse everywhere!  Pan worked hard and was just hammering in the last few nails to finish off the arena when Eyevan, using a fuzzy gray areas of several other amendments and sub-articles, granted Pan his invulnerability (by making him formless and unable to interact with normal matter) and immortal (by binding him to the bottle in Eyevan's stead) in advance of what was agreed upon.  Eyevan told Pan: “Hah, fooled you.You must now grab your tool and finish your arena or be doomed to take my place in the bottle for eternity.”  Pan tried to pick up his hammer, but his hands passed right through it.  Eyevan scooped it up for himself and tucked it into his belt, then grabbed the bottle and hurled it off Mount Celestia, far out into the Astral Sea.  Decades later...   Adventure Synopsis  0) Hooks  1) Blue Djinn Fridays  2) We Will, We Will Rock You  3) The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny  4) Stop, Hammer Time! Hooks  1) The party, while searching for a tavern or inn comes across a small tavern with ducks all around it and a 12-inch tall man on the bar playing a tiny piano.  The bartender asks if they want to buy the special, cheap, and gives whichever PC buys it the djinn bottle containing Pan Neek.  2) While in the ocean or along the shore, the party spots a bottle floating in the water.  When they scoop it up, Pan Neek pops out.  3) When the party are buying supplies or magic items, the merchant sells them the djinn bottle, “real cheap”. 1. Blue Djinn Fridays When one of the party members touches the bottle, a plume of blue smoke billows out of it, forming a transparent, insubstantial satyr.  He's wearing a gaudy pink and yellow jacket, tight sky-blue pants, and a bright red headband with matching arm-warmers.   “You guys have, like totally summoned me.  I can grant you any wish, but if you are nice people at all, gosh, I could really use your help.”   Without giving them a chance to reply, Pan reveals his plight to the most attractive male character.   “So, handsome, here I was, minding my own business, making this totally spectacular arena, you know hammering and pounding – I love using my tools – when I found this darling bottle that summoned this brute that offered me a wish and then did just terrible things when I, like, asked for my arena to be the best one ever once I was done, and for immortality and stuff..   “Anyway, you would be such dears if one of you could just wish to go to the Mt. Celestia Arena, it would just mean the world to me and if you can help get me back to my normal self, I can reward you handsomely.”   He says the last bit with a suggestive look at one of the male PCs.  If any of the PCs react to his flirtation, he says “playing hard to get I see” and focuses his attention on them for the rest of the adventure.  If the party doesn't agree right away, he says – as fast as he can:   “If-you-wish-to-go-to-the-arena-say-what.”    If that doesn't work, he starts begging.  If the party doesn't eventually give in, they're, like, totally heartless bastards and can go to hell.  Otherwise, Pan teleports them to the arena. 2. We Will, We Will Rock You  With reference to Article 7, Pan takes the party straight to the action of the arena, right in the middle of a match in progress.  The current battle is between an old red dragon and its dragonborn followers and a mob of demons.  The party must escape the arena while avoiding the carnage, breath weapons, burning auras, and collapsing arena obstacles and pillars to get out of the middle of the fight.Meanwhile the crowd of thousands cheers, throws debris, coins, food, weapons, and the like at the players and the combatants.  Loud music booms and the crowd stomps in time.  Throughout it all, a pair of unseen announcers voices booming out with a play-by-play: “Ah, the classic pillar-to-the-face trick, we first saw that back in '75 Nightmares vs Ogres and its become a staple of most team's playbooks since then...” “That's right Ted...” “Oooh, that's gotta hurt!” “That Mezzodemon can't be happy about that one, his last offensive push barely put a dent in the tough Dragonkind defense.” “First down! Looks like the Vrock is outta there, let's see who gets the next kill!” “My gold would be on that Dragonborn Flanker, given his numbers from last season...”  Etc.  In a floating crystal box high above the arena, a cyclopse on a blinged-out throne, a black-glass monocle, and a full set of golden teeth watches the action, occasionally talking with the cyclopse around him, sometimes talking into a Sending Stone (link), and once or twice getting in on the action by dropping a boulder into the arena.  Once they have gotten out, Pan explains the predicament further, resting his insubstantial hand on a PCs as he talks. “That horribly dressed cyclopse up there is Eyevan the Djinnius, the awful meanie that trapped me in this bottle.  Ugh, the bottle has this horrible smell of gross stinky giant that I just cannot get rid of.  Anyway, while you guys were fighting your way out of that mess, I found out that the Hammer Challenge is totally starting tonight – three rounds of hot and heavy man-on-man, team-on-team, single-elimination action – and the winners get Eyevan's Hammer.”  He points to a massive hammer made of beaten gold and studded with gems that sits in a display case behind Eyevan's pimpin' throne.   “So the Djinn Wish Ordinance Manual Sub-article 12a totally says that anyone who is given a wish gets, like, a way out of it.  There's like 5 boards under the north bleacher that need to be hammered into place that Eyevan used as my loophole and then the arena is done and I can get out of this awful bottle.  Unfortunately, I can't do it – he passes his hand on one of the male PCs' chest for a second, then presses his hand through – and to make matters worse, it has to be my tools that finish the repairs!  The good news is that, through a loophole in the Hammer Challenge liability and disclosure agreements, you can ask for my hammer back instead of that hammer.  You can grab my tool and use it to pound our way through my loophole!"  If the PCs suggest that they just wish to have the arena repaired, he'll pause and say: “If I fulfill 100 wishes then I'm so bound to this bottle it'll be forever.  I was actually afraid that getting you all here would be the 100th – between all the ones that'd have been done between me and Eyevan – but we're so lucky it wasn't.  Everyone is like, so selfish, you are the first ones I finally got to come here *cough* and survive *cough* I'm desperate!  He puts his hand on one of the male PC's shoulder when he says this.  Presumably if the players have agreed to come this far, they'll enter the challenge to get Pan's hammer. 3. The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny  Once the party enters the challenge, they will have a couple hours to prepare and explore the arena.   The arena is massive thanks to Pan's wish, almost a small city full of shops, inns built into the walls, docks for spelljammers, and more.  This exploration could be roleplayed, or could be a skill challenge to avoid getting in fights with unruly extraplanar creatures amped up from the games, to find the unrepaired section of the arena, and/or scout out the cyclopse and the others who have entered the Challenge.  The Challenge itself is a single-elimination set of matches with each match having different rules and teams the players face.  Presumably, there are other teams out there, but the relevant ones that the players will face are:   Match 1, vs Jason and the Arrrgonauts  In the first match, whichever side occupies the majority of the five marked “victory areas” at the end of a round wins the match.  The locations are at various interesting places around the arena: one atop a fifty-foot marble pillar, one at the bottom of a fifty-foot pit, one in the center of a bridge over a burning field, one in the debris right next to the arena wall(see below), and the last just sitting out in the open in the center of the arena with sweet grass and beautiful flowers around it.    Jason is a huge human with a bronze shield adorned with skull-and-crossbones, a huge spear, a cutlass, a horse-hide crest helmet, an eye-patch, a billowing red cape, a bare rippling chest covered in tattoos of gods, maps, skull-and-crossbones, vases, and a sculpted beard dotted with beads.  His men are similar but don't get as much screen time.  They shout to each other dramatically as they fight in slow motion shouting things such as: “Avast, hold the phalanx mateys!” “Arrrgonauts! Ready your grog and drink hearty... For tonight, we drink in hell!”   Match 2, vs Pun-pun's Punishers  In the second match, there are three banners along the middle of the arena and each side must take two banners back to an area near where they entered the arena.  At the end of a round where one side has two banners in their area, they win.    Pun-pun is an ordinary looking kobold that happens to be a practically immortal epic solo through highly-optimized shenanigans.  Fortunately his incomparable power and the lack of any real threat makes him lazy.  He just walks casually towards one of the banners, ignoring the fight aside from repeating whatever attack players make against them with some extra damage tacked on to prove his superiority while his massive kobold swarms harry the players.   Match 3, vs Dolly the Sheep  The final match a simple deathmatch, whichever side is standing at the end wins.  Their enemy is Dolly.  Dolly is the offspring of an ancient primordial beast.  She looks like a normal sheep (with an extra nippy bite), but  every time she takes damage she splits into two clones (each with half the hit points of the original).  Each clone is also split after damage is dealt until the arena is swarming with sheep.  The arena crowds: the crowds are always excited and rowdy any square within a couple of squares of the arena wall is difficult terrain and they take attacks as random things are thrown into the arena.  Also, the crowd gets extra excited on critical hits and misses.  On a critical hit, the crowd throws some coins or gems that the party can collect after the fight and also throw things at any target that is critically hit.  They throw things at any creature that critically misses.   The announcers: The announcers give constant play by plays on whatever happens.  One way of handling it would be to describe the players and enemy's actions only via the announcers recaps of it with other random spice added on for humorous effect. Ex: “Wow, Bill, that elf really winged that Arrrgonaut with his bow” “Yeah Ted, too bad Jason was shouting 'This is ARENA' and kicking the drow into the pit at the same time!”   “Dang, those sheep can bite, looks like these guys are taking a bleating!” “Sure are Bill, reminds me of the time that gibbering mouther escaped into the crowds last year, boy was that a riot.”   4. Stop, Hammer Time! When the party succeeds, Eyevan lowers his crystal observation box and brings out his golden hammer, ready to give it to the party.  When the party asks for the other hammer, his expression falls and he glares at the party, but gives the hammer to keep the crowd from rioting.  He leaves before they do, saying only, “I'll be back.” As soon as the party leaves the public eye, Eyevan pursues the party through the under-bleachers, trying to catch the party before they can find the last boards and nail them up with Pan's hammer.  Pan lets them know that if they can get the last boards up before Eyevan catches them, the cyclops will be pulled back into the bottle and Pan will be free.  The party may make skill checks to avoid the cyclopse as long as possible, the more successes they get determining how far they get before the cyclopse catch up.  The party is probably worn out from the previous 3 fights and the cyclopse are powerful and Eyevan still has remnants of power from being a djinn years before.  When battle is joined, Eyevan always has something to say when he attacks with his hammer and flaming axe depending on what's happening: “Time to get hammered,” “Get two a da' choppa',” “You're fired,” “You're getting boulder,” “Time to get paid; you're broke,” “Brace for the axe-plosion,” “Your sentence will end with an axe-clemation point,” etc.  Pan is unable to assist, aside from warning them right after they get hit and cheering, hooting, and catcalling his favorite male PCs.  Conclusion When the party finishes the battle, Pan Neek regains his original satyr form.  After running around for several minutes saying "Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod", he takes over the arena and rewards the party handsomely for their help.  Any surviving cyclopse flee and Eyevan's bottle has mysteriously disappeared as well, but that's a story for another adventure. Cyclops – Eyevan the Djinnius, the djinn who used Djinn Wish Ordinance Manual loopholes to bind Pan to the bottle instead of him.Celestial Arena – The arena that Pan was originally building that was taken to Mt. Celestia, then run by Eyevan.  The party is attempting to get it back for Pan.Reformed Satyr – Pan, who gave up the wilds and sex for the arena and sexual repression(celibacy).  Also, he is trying to regain his original satyr form rather than djinn form.Unwelcome Advances – Eyevan giving Pan his immortality and invulnerability in advance of what Pan wished for, forcing him to replace Eyevan in the bottle.  Also, Pan's (likely) unwelcome advances on male PCs.Carpenter's Mallet –  The mallet Pan needs to finish his arena and get out of Eyevan's wish-trap and bottle.Two Djinn One Bottle – Eyevan was bound to the bottle that Pan is now trapped in and will be returned to it again if the party can get Pan out.</blockquote>

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