Sankihuasi Trial (Sank-i-way-si)

Trail by Ordeal (Pit Levels 1 - 3)

An introductory scenario playable between 1 to 2 hours. It is not meant to be exceedingly difficult either, rather it is an opportunity for characters, who may not otherwise, to have an ingame reason to interact and stick together afterwards.

Structure

Exposition

Set Up

Using the pregenerated characters on offer, or suitable types of the players' own creation, the party will be forced to spend 24 hours traversing a superstitious dungeon.

A group of people who spent little time together before, are forcibly kneeled in front of the Sapa to answer for any part they played in a coup attempt against his reign.

Though there is little evidence to condemn you, there is also insufficient evidence to exonerate you. Therefore, it is decided to determine your guilt or innocence through a trial by ordeal. If they can survive from midnoon today to midnoon tomorrow then they have proven themselves. If not, then they have suffered their punishment.

— Sapa

Conflict

Ready to Play

^{(5 - 10 mins in)}
Members of the group are pushed into a hole at midday where a spot of sunlight luminates a circular room. The fall is between 15 to 18 feet. Every party member has a chance to take damage at this start that will effect their progress going forward.

Die Roll	Result
1 - 4	Nothing. You land safely
5	Minor scratches. Roll for location
6	Minor sprain. Roll for location
7	Shard is embedded into the body. Roll for location
8	Cut yourself on a shard. Roll for location
9 - 10	Fracture bone on impact. Roll for location

There are rows of 3 foot long obsidian shards are studded along the walls, as well as, the odd rock or shard of broken bone aggravating the initial injury. An injured limb could slow someone down and bleeding will attract the inevitable night predator.
The first to fall is likely to sustain injury (not necessarily the worst possible injury).

Die Roll	Injury
1	Head
2 - 4	Torso
5	Right Arm
6	Left Arm
7 - 8	Right Leg
9 - 10	Left Leg

Those who follow can be caught by the ones already in the hole (depending on their reaction or strength rolls) so subsequent members have a better chance to begin at full health.

Roll Reaction	Catch
2	Miss, -1 penalty of other characters
3 - 5	Miss
6 - 8	Roll Again
9 - 11	Caught
12	Caught, +1 morale bonus for the one caught

---

Weapons need to be impromptu from what can be found in the initial hole they fell into; such as scavenged human bones used as a club, grey flint as a makeshift knife or loose rocks to throw. Kokka, being of the warrior class, has a close connection with one of the guards at the roof of the pit who would throw down an old serrated bronze lance for him. He would also warn them that they cannot wait out the time in the spotlight entrance, as it will only serve as a kill box for when the beasts are released.

Rising Action

Discoveries in the Dark

^{(10 - 30 mins in)}
The pit is old. And full of trash. The architects never clean out the bones of neither men nor beast, just left there to rot and terrify others who come in after them. As a result, there is a large collection of skeletons that can trigger three opportunities.

One such scene shows a man who bashed his skull open against the flint walls rather than starve to death in the dark. Roll Sanity .

Die Roll	Discovered a Corpse Table
1 - 2	Character hallucinates the skeletons rising to give chase. Sanity Check.
3 - 4	Scavenge a femur as a makeshift club against the animals.
5 - 6	Requisite a dead man's cloth for emergency bandages to treat from the earlier falls.

	Hooks
1	hear echoes of footsteps unrelated to the party on the other side of the wall
2	discover a vial of high concentrate of aoctli to heal wounds
3	discover the bones of some unfortunate previous prisoner. See Corpse Table.
4	discover an old loop of wet knotted string loosely resembling a crown
5	discover a block of wood covered with a childish drawing
6	discover a cache of quipu ledgers in a rough spun sac
7	discover water pudding on the floor from stagnant rain water to aid in recovery
8	notice a large deep hole off in the corner that penetrates into the levels below the third level

Roll Discovery

Things found in this trial add a boost to the player character if they are struggling. However, a few can act as a hook to the next adventure or as a hint to a future mystery, if they remember that they found that item.

• Rolls 2 and 7 are medical items that restore health or temporarily improve resilience.
• Rolls 1 and 8 offer insight into the pit's nature for this specific adventure.
• Rolls 4, 5 and 6 are an opportunity to gain clues into other events. These items can be taken and keep once you leave the pit.
  • The elaborate knot carries a secret code that enables a special ability once it is deciphered.
  • The etching on wood implies an intimate relationship between a resident of the House of Women and a school boy.
  • The ledgers record a previously unknown transaction between unsavory elements of the government and an outside interest.

In truth, only the very deepest levels of the pit are still truly mysterious and unmapped. Staying at the top levels provides some monitor of safety. Though it may not seem like it, but these levels are pretty well trafficked by a host of people.
Who may, quite carelessly, leave some personal effects behind.

— Sinqa Ñisqa

In trying to get a feel for the layout of the first three layers, a perceptive character may come out realizing that: Suspected Layout

Level 1 is one long passage, with one secret notch in the wall to let in a big animal, and that turns back on itself while gradually descending into the second level.
Level 2 starts as a single passageway that splits into two. The left turn turns back into the initial split. Whereas the right turn descends into the even darker third level.
Level 3 begins in a single dark chamber with three optional pathways which are hard to discern in the blackness. This chamber is also meant to be the landing site for the rubble and characters if a roll of 20 on the encounter table occurs.

Climax

The Beast Unleashed

^{(30 - 40 mins in)}

Sankihuasi is the most horrible place in Ca-Chisneu.
It is all a man-made recreation of the lower universe; and typically reserved as a place where the worst criminals go to die.

— Qillqana Isku being told the beliefs of the Innoit

At this phase, roll for either one or two encounters.

Falling Action

Led Out

^{(40 - 50 mins in)}
There are obfuscated service tunnels for state maintenance workers and staff to use. They connect to all the trapdoors and sliding walls as means for the architects to impede prisoner progress.
Once the allotted time has passed; the workers who, up to this moment, have been trying to kill the party, are now obligated to guide them out of the pit. Because these workers do not want to risk themselves in a dark hall lined with razor sharp walls, they slackly shephard the group through the service corridors instead. The party would be directed under wooden arches and up rope ladders through low candle lights to the Supaypa-Huasin building outside the pit.

Resolution

Having been freed, the survivors will be exonerated of what they were accused and given some medical treatment, if they need it, to regain health.

Components

Goals

The goal is:

1. to vindicate yourself in light of a treason charge
2. to offer an initial scouting opportunity (though the characters may not know it at the time)
3. to familiarize and acclimatize to the dower environment, so that delving deeper into the more dangerous levels (I.e. below level 3) at a later time would be easier

Hooks

The hook is to practice teamwork tactics and gain perspective of innoit hell and it's cultural impact.

Relations

Competitors

Kokka Ñaña Usucachi

^{(Coca / Nana / U-ser-k-cou)}
A noble blooded, though unremarkable, and middle aged Innoit warrior.

• SAN: 40
• Indefinite Insanity: at 8+ points
• Involuntary Action: feints for 1 round with a small chance for injury upon impact
• Bout of madness: develops aichmophobia. (-2 movement and reaction penalty for as long as they remain in the pit)

Ussun

^(Us-soon)
An administrative clansman skilled in quipu tying and accounting.

• SAN: 60
• Indefinite Insanity: at 12+ points
• Involuntary Action: screams in a foreign tongue
• Bout of madness: screams to the point of exhaustion and incapacitation (75% chance they attract an animal) Roll for an Encounter

Tamya Auquitayasi Llactahuaman

^{(T-mya / Ackwa-ty-a-see / Lack-ty-waa-man)}
A minor Innoit noble seeking to climb the hierarchal ladder and oversee his own province through academic and athletic excellence.

• SAN: 70
• Indefinite Insanity: at 14+ points
• Involuntary Action: attempts to grab another player's weapon
• Bout of madness: flees from the group (50% chance they impale themself on the wall) Roll for Damage

Ukumari

^(U-ku-mari)
A young dusky adult who spent much of his childhood as a political hostage to his people's conquerors. He harbours secret independent goals to free his people.

• SAN: 50
• Indefinite Insanity: at 10+ points
• Involuntary Action: throws anything they were holding at a target
• Bout of madness: madly lashes out at the group (25% chance they cut them self on the wall) Roll for Damage

Die Roll	Body Part
1 - 3	Right Leg
4 - 6	Left Leg
7 - 10	Abdomen
11 - 15	Chest
16 - 17	Right Arm
18 - 19	Left Arm
20	Head

Backdrops

Locations

The Pit

Architects prescribe the pit contains a few dozen rooms split amongst a dozen levels. Its interconnectedness is its most dominant feature.
There is only one publicly acknowledged entrance into the Sankihuasi - that being a hole in the ground. The rest is a long corridor spiraling downwards with obsidian swordlike spikes jutting out from the walls every step of the way.

Absent of any alternative light source, the group must walk slowly to avoid cutting themselves on the walls. Coinsidently, there is only enough room for two people, walking very closely side by side, to edge out in touching the walls. This makes searching the walls for traps, discovering false walls, using the walls to guide ones path in the dark or even devising tactics with the 'wall at your back' nearly impossible.

Threats

Pit Ecology

The party's movement and exploration acts as a droning mechanism to wear on their, already restricted resources: be it torches, time, lack of rest or sanity. It is utterly claustrophobic, quiet, as well as dark. A type of sensory deprivation overtakes wanderers with its oppressive uncanniness. There is no passive perception.

Encounters

As time advances or the party makes noise, there is a chance for an encounter. Roll Encounter

Die	Number	Encounter	Detail
1 - 5	1 per two characters	Puma released via a trap door at the far end of level one	A big cat starved for 3 days to make the beast hungry without weakening it at all
6 - 10	5 per one character	Rats filter through cracks and crevices and scamper along the edges and between spikes to surround the party	A squirming, roiling mass of squeaking rats with teeth flashing and claws scratching everything in its path
11 -13	2 per one character	Snakes pool together in a shallow depression in the center of the corridor	Brightly coloured snakes aggressively hissing mouth open to display its fangs
14 - 15	11 - 20	Spiders filter through the ceiling and rest at head level on the protruding wall shards	An awful, scuttling mass of legs and mandibles scrambling out the darkness
16 - 17	1	A bear wanders around level 3 and will seek scents of blood	Less than five feet long for the confines, they are well disguised in the darkness with black, blond, or cinnamon fur
18 - 19	2	Jaguars released from a sliding door behind the group	A mating pair agitated by the unfamiliar environment
20	1	Floor Collapse	Ground falls away to the level below with a strong chance for shrapnel injury

Plot type

Survival Adventure

Related Organizations

• Tawantinsuyu

Related Locations

• Ca-Chisneu
• Cusp
• Gates To Hell

Dice Clock

Using a d6, whenever the player(s) do something meaningful like:

• Creep into a room
• Search for traps
• Investigate a curious feature
• Discern on how to open a false wall or secret door
• Translate an old impression

For every 10 minutes, turn the die up one value until it reaches 6 so the group knows an hour has past.
As time moves forward, if the characters are unable to rest, they will suffer exhaustion: loss in constitution.