Jal Kan'Tuun - Where the Sun Sleeps (Torchbearer in a CC-BY version of Tekumel)

Torchbearer Expeditions
1

Where the sun sleeps in the vast waters, lies Jal Kan’Tuun, the Sky-Stone City, Glorious City to All Who Can Behold It. Jal Kan’Tuun shifting and settling deep into the earth. The dark red waters of Chak’Ib border the southern edge and lap at the edges of the Foreigner’s quarter.

You are a foreigner. Arrived by boat from across the sea. The only part of Jal Kan’Tuun that you ever see is the Foreigner quarter. Jobs are handed (sometimes whispered) to you by the assistants to the slaves of the Great Houses.

Beyond the safety of Chak’Ib is Ch’ann, a wasteland of a city, a place that even the sun skips over. Here is where you will live and become a citizen or die worse then a slave.

This is the beginning of our story.

2

Monday is game night!

I’ll post characters here and the Prologue.

3

This is a scorched and blasted land. No roads, no animals (but foul things stalk the surface), only ash and black sand. Behind you, Chak’Ib wanders it’s course to the Great Ocean.

The great smoking caldera, the heart of Ch’ann, waits for you. A slave’s slave came to you with work. A simple job. Retrieve an artifact from Deep-Earth-Water. The entrance is marked with a ring of green and blue lichen. It’s the only thing growing there in the black landscape.

On the side of the caldera the entrance blows hot, watery air. Lichen and moss sway back and forth. There are human sized mounds scattered about, names scribed into piles of rocks, and the smell of hot, sulfury, rocks.

A filtered light casts odd shadows the area.

Welcome.

4

A rusty start with watery near death

100 feet of metal stairs turned to a slide with a watery pit at the bottom.

All corridors filled with warm, slimy water

Parleying with a rotting, undead guardian for safe passage

Diving a sump to get to the next passage while keeping gear dry and torches lit

Watery death by spear trap foiled by teamwork.

Wacking a floating skull out of the air with an urn and staring down the other skull until it goes away.

Currently locked in a room with an urn game and 3 shadows demanding death. And it’s flooding do to an over enthusiastic halfling.

5

It happens!

6

The setup for this was pretty basic. I took White Plume Mountain and hacked away at it while keeping the Empire of the Petal Throne feel. I created a new map loosely based on WPM. I drew two version. One for scanning in later and another for writing down some notes.

Example:
100 feet of metal stairs turned to a slide with a watery pit at the bottom.

Was pretty much as written on the sheet. I took some guidance from the adventure in the Torchbearer book for the Ob numbers.

I made a few notes on the map of some possible outcomes
Twists: Light being dowsed, gear flying everywhere, getting really wet
Conditions: Angry -> being banged up from the stairs

I did that for each room while leaving the hallways unplanned.