The Sandy Arena, Round 0
The contract complete and signed, the goblin looks it over, then sniffs. It reaches into a jar of snails sitting behind the wooden plank it's using for a desk, pulls out a trowel, and
crunches the snail onto the contract document to seal it.
"Go kick some ass. Take the ferry to the ship and give this to the arena master. Rikkit here will lead you to her when you get there." He pulls out a kruthik hatchling, out of a bag nearby and ties the document onto its back. A moment later, he produces a small jar of what is, by the scent, ogre sweat, dips a cloth in it and drops the kruthik and the cloth in a small cage.
The ferry departs soon, carrying nothing other than a massive tube-shaped cage stacked next to four smaller tube-shaped cages, all draped in heavy leather tarps. Strange scraping noises come from within and the larger one's canvas tarps seem to have been soaked in water before they were thrown on for some reason.
Before long, the group arrives at the Kolloseaum - it looks even larger when you are moored along side it, staring up at it. A muffled scream cries out from somewhere above and the ship's deck planking shakes with the stamp and roar of the crowd.
The group is instantly lost. The ship is like a small city, but as many as ten decks tall in places. Fortunately, someone remembers the kruthik. As soon as its cage is opened, it high-tails it across the deck and it's all the group can do to keep up with it.
It leads the group under massive creaking wooden bleachers, past a group of children playing gladiator and whacking each other with sticks, past a scary-looking minotaur in plate mail covered in scars and blood, and a pair of goblins struggling to haul what looks like a small green dragon's head towards a busy taxidermists shop.
Hovering at the center is a blue-skinned ogre mage surrounded by floating sheets of parchment and a crystal ball hovering beside her. She's constantly shouting orders and somehow managing the chaos going around her. The group has no chance of being noticed until the kruthik leaps off a goblin's head and clomps onto her foot.
She looks at it in irritation, rips the document off of it and begins prying it open with one hand as she blasts the kruthik to a spray of green ichor with a snap of her fingers.
"Gil and company?" she shouts, glancing about. She spots the group and floats over.
"We'll start you off with something relatively easy and simple. Head to Arena Five - nothing too exciting, just your standard sandy pit - and get ready for the fight. For a group of your caliber, should be a bit of a challenge, but nothing you can't handle. Get to your arena, you'll definitely know when the match starts..."
With that cryptic statement, she floats off and instantly begins shouting at an ogre dragging an angry drake into the room by the tail, the savaged body of a goblin clenched in the beast's jaws.
The arena itself is pretty much what comes to mind when one thinks of "gladitorial arena" - a sandy ring with two stone pillars in the center, some stairs leading down into iron-bar doors. The only difference is the arena probably seats a thousand people...
GM: | I grabbed the first pictures I could find in my collection for Joy, Lerrick, and Gil. If those don't work, you can find better ones after the adventure since I already created portraits for you from them.
I have probably a thousand pictures in no discernible order, so there might be ones that are better, but it takes a long time to skim through them all so this is what you get.
For those who don't know, in 4e class nomenclature | usually indicates hybrid (Cleric|Shaman) while / indicates multiclass (Rogue/Assassin). You can also have both (Wizard|Artificer/Assassin).
Place your characters wherever you want on the map and roll initiative if you haven't already. The monster initiative is 22 (which is pretty remarkable since I roll all the monster's initiatives then average them...), but they won't arrive in the arena until their initiative count, so if you go before them it's probably time to ready actions and whatnot.
Once everyone's rolled init and placed their characters (and finished their characters *cough* Lerrick *cough*) we'll get this thing underway (it'll be tomorrow night or Monday night at the earliest for me).
@MetaVoid - I haven't figured out the second and third matches completely yet, but the answer to your Hand of Fate question about the first match is "Yes". I'll answer the other ones when I get them figured out - I have to get up in 7 hours and I still have other RL stuff to do before I can get to bed, so I'll worry about the rest later. | |
[sblock=Terrain]The walls out of the arena are 30 feet tall sheer stone Athletics (Climb) DC 25 if you want to try to escape into the stands for some reason. The pillars in the center are the same DC and can provide cover.
The stairs are all difficult terrain. The northern podium area is one square above the rest of the arena.[/sblock]