Comments from the writer: We’re always looking for ways to make game night more fulfilling and help your players discover the best of Mage Hand classes and settings. So we’re polishing up a few ideas from past projects into campaign seeds, full arcs or short campaigns you can run for your party with minimum prep and maximum freedom.
First up, a part of The Last Owlbear adventure cut for space: a send up of classic sword-and-sandal tropes in a gladiatorial arena.
Introduction
You’re the newest attraction at the Dragonfall Colosseum—and there’s no way out. It’s fight or die until you can break the bonds that hold you!
In this adventure, players must survive long enough to win their freedom from an efreeti named Alakir the Brazen, lord of the Colosseum. But do they fight to escape, liberate their fellow gladiators, or simply glory in the blood and sand and cheering crowd?
The City of Dragonfall. When the corpse of a blue whale descends to the ocean floor, an utterly unique ecosystem grows around the sudden abundance of food. Similarly, when an ancient dragon’s corpse falls from the sky, an event called a “dragon fall,” a complex, magical ecosystem springs up around it. As you find it now, one such dragon fall has been picked clean of meat and magical materials, leaving a skeleton that quickly developed an entire city beneath the bones. Dragonfall is an oasis in its desert surroundings and a frontier town for the quick, the brave, and the sly, where laws are an afterthought and dirty deeds come cheap.
Adventure Hooks
In sword-and-sorcery epics like Conan the Barbarian and Planet Hulk, characters are regularly coerced or enslaved into fighting. GMs should work to tell rich stories without relying on hurtful shortcuts like these. Here are other reasons a character might be fighting in the Dragonfall Arena.
Absolution. Gambling, bad investments, or family obligations have saddled you with a debt you can’t repay. Your service in the arena, or the money you win, could free you or your family from the debt.
Glory. Deeds accomplished in the arena are sung in song and repeated in legend. You fight so your name is on the lips of bards and chanted by adoring fans.
Justice. The arena houses someone who escaped punishment for a crime. You fight to mete out justice to that criminal.
Love. Someone in the arena has your heart. You fight to win their love, to prove your devotion, or to escape with them.
Revenge. You carry a wound—physical, mental, or otherwise—given you by someone in the arena. You fight to balance the scales and take your revenge on the person who wounded you.
Worship. Battle and conquest are the domains of gods of war, ravening fiends, and the spirits of great beasts or ancestors. You have sworn to serve one such being, as might serve a warlock, cleric, or paladin. Your oath calls you to fight.
Levels 1–4: Gauntlet
In this part of the adventure, players meet the pit fighters bound along with them, forge alliances, and discover the rot at the heart of the Dragonfall colosseum.
A great map to use for the arena is the Colosseum of Challenges by Cze Peku. Each variant of the map becomes a new challenge for the gladiators.
I like to move through the first tier of play fairly quickly, sometimes one session per level, so players can build simple characters quickly and feel the limits that make powerful higher tiers more meaningful. In each session, players fight one of four increasingly powerful (and increasingly monstrous) gladiators and decide how they’ll interact with each of them. You can use these four, or add in NPCs from your own world!
- The ghost of Sir Errik Shadwell inhabits this animated armor (CR 1). A human paladin in life, Sir Errik broke his oath and died in obscurity. With enough defeated opponents, he may win back the favor of his god and free his soul from its steel purgatory.
- Elena Silverwind is a half-elf bandit captain (CR 2) determined to hold Alakir the Brazen accountable for his many crimes. She entered the arena determined to cut her way to his throat.
- Spine is a manticore (CR 3) who is happy to fight for the promise of easy prey. Though a monstrosity, Spine has an Intelligence of 7 and speaks Common; moreover, her simple motivations make her easy to bargain with.
- Brutus the pit bear (CR 4) is a decisive fighter and undisputed champion of the arena. Once a simple brown bear to be killed for sport, Brutus was awakened by the latent magic of Dragonfall and now commands the arena just as a dragon would its lair. Brutus feels that something unjust was done to him, but can’t articulate exactly what. He now fights for dominance as he searches to understand his new intelligence.
Levels 5–8: Shackles
In these adventures, players gradually uncover Alakir’s plot to summon an elder demon and enslave all of Dragonfall. Alakir is a brilliant tactician, and stages elaborate trials designed to take the souls of enough gladiators to summon this fiend.
Characters who perform mighty or daring feats during the trials can become Crowd Favorites, gaining special bonuses they can use in combat and social encounters.
The first trial is a territory control challenge. The gladiators are broken into two teams, one on the right and one on the left. Players must spend an action to plant their team’s flag on a boulder to earn points. Boulders closer to the other team’s side of the arena are worth more points. Of course, deadly force is encouraged, since a team member can’t plant a flag if they’re dead. Alakir puts any gladiator with whom the players have allied on the opposite team, hoping to antagonize them. The other team is led by Felis Maximus, a pit lion awakened by the same magic as Brutus. Each boulder absorbs the souls of any who die atop it, feeding Alakir’s ritual.
In the next trial, Alakir summons a whirlwind from the Elemental Plane of Air. Characters must fight for their lives while being constantly drawn toward the center of the whirlwind. Any creature who dies in the whirlwind has its soul added to Alakir’s tally.
In the next trial, the arena is gradually flooded, the water reaching higher each round of combat. Any creature who dies beneath the surface has its soul added to Alakir’s tally. Elena has a debilitating fear of the sea, while Sir Errik has no need to breathe and easily fights underwater.
In the final trial, deadly jets of flame from Alakir’s home, the Elemental Plane of Fire, criss-cross the arena at random during the combat. By this time, it should be no surprise to the characters that any creature who dies to the flames has its soul added to Alakir’s tally.
Between trials, characters can investigate Alakir’s plans by sneaking around the colosseum, attending social gatherings, or investigating the magical apparatus used to stage the trials.
Level 9: Throne
It all leads up to the final confrontation with Alakir as he completes his summoning ritual in the arena.
As Alakir summons the fiend, characters must face the ghosts of those who have died in the arena, including past friends and allies. Only if they can reach and slay Alakir can they stop the ritual and free themselves from fighting in the arena!
If the characters fail, Alakir adds their souls to his tally and enslaves all of Dragonfall, eventually extending his evil influence over the entire continent.
If they succeed, they can finally decide whether to lay down their arms and seek a life of peace, or continue to adventure unbound to the will of a mad tyrant.
Leave us a comment with how you would run this campaign! Who in your world would be the master of the arena?
Sick! This is going right into the setting I’m designing