The Prison Pits of Larubia

You’d heard that Larubia was a great city to visit, but somehow—surely it was all a misunderstanding!—you were arrested and sentenced to hard labor in the prison pits outside of town. Now you and your friends have no armor and no weapons, just the rags on your back and pickaxes for mining the mystery mineral phyrene. 

As you descend into the prison pits you’ll face cannibal miners, killer insects, sirens, phyrene mutations, and more. Ultimately you may discover the long-lost subterranean kingdom of Eskragor, home to ancient automatons, high-tech ray guns, and a mad Emperor obsessed with invading the surface world. 

Enter the Prison Pits of Larubia—If you dare!   

The Prison Pits of Larubia is an Old School pulp sword & sorcery adventure designed for use with the Million-Colored Sun RPG. It's written by Leighton Connor, eerily illustrated by Perplexing Ruins, and features a dynamite cover by Joshua LH Burnett. 

The adventure can be inserted into practically any fantasy setting. An existing PC party can travel to Larubia, or the party can form when they meet as prisoners.  

The caverns the PCs explore are vast and endless, with countless paths branching off, looping around, and dead-ending. To simplify tracking the PCs’ progress, the prison pit is presented as a “point crawl,” where we have only plotted out the most interesting areas. These points of interest are connected to each other by abstracted paths showing where they are in relation to one another. 

Players are free to explore the prison pits as they wish; the narrative emerges from their choices. 
 
Prison Pits of Larubia includes random phyrene effects (see below), rules for creating a character with the Eskragorian bloodline, rayguns, robots, and more!  

What Is Million-Colored Sun? 

Million-Colored Sun is a rules-light RPG of pulp sword & sorcery that lets you create and explore worlds of weirdness and wonder. The game features quick character creation, a flexible and easy-to-use magic system, lots of tips and tricks for running thrilling sword & sorcery games, plus monsters, sample characters, and an introductory adventure, The Tower of the Cyclopean Sorcerer. Million-Colored Sun is written by Steve Johnson, Leighton Connor, and Joshua LH Burnett. You can buy Million-Colored Sun wherever Hex Games are sold. 

To see the game system in action, check out the Sample of Play, available for free through DriveThruRPG. The Sample of Play depicts three players and a Game Master as they play an action-packed session of Million-Colored Sun, bringing to life both the rules and the tone and general vibe of the game. 

There are two Million-Colored Sun adventures currently available: The Red Witch of Chapel d'Angoisse by Steve Johnson and Beowulf Vs. Grendel by Leighton Connor. 

What's In the Book?

Prison Pits of Larubia includes the following:

Welcome to Larubia - Briefly describes the city of Larubia, where the PCs are arrested, and explains how the adventure begins. 

Into the Pit – Describes the entrance to the prison pit and gives an overview of PC resources, the uses of phyrene, NPC miners, and rumors the PCs may hear. 

Exploring the Pit – A point crawl map of the prison pit, keyed with various thrilling encounters.  

Eskragor – A point crawl map of a deeper level of the pit, where the ruins of an ancient subterranean civilization lie. 

Appendix: Eskragorian Bloodline – A new inhuman bloodline you can use when creating characters in future Million-Colored Sun games. 

The Book

Prison Pits of Larubia will be an 8.5” x 5.5” perfect bound paperback book with a color cover and black-and-white interior illustrations. We estimate it will end up being around 50 pages long. The book will be printed by DriveThruRPG; backers who want a print copy will receive a coupon to purchase their print copy at cost from DriveThru. We estimate that this will probably cost $2.22, plus shipping. Shipping will be handled by DriveThru.    

Art

The Prison Pits of Larubia will feature a beautiful, full-color cover by Joshua LH Burnett. The interior will boast black-and-white artwork in the proud sword & sorcery RPG tradition, expertly drawn by Perplexing Ruins.

We are presently planning on three full-page interior illustrations. If we hit a stretch goal (see below), we will include additional artwork. 

Stretch Goals

If we raise enough money, we'll make the book even more beautiful! 

$600 - At this level, the book is funded! You'll get a copy and can play it with your friends!

$900 - At this level, we get more interior artwork! 

An Excerpt from the Book 

What is Phyrene?
Phyrene is an extraterrestrial mineral brought to this world by an enormous meteorite millennia ago. It is cool to the touch and is a stable, steady source of power. The Larubians use it to provide illumination, but ancient civilizations were able to harness it as a power source for sophisticated machines. 

Spellcasters may harness the power of phyrene. Any magic-using PC who holds phyrene while casting a spell may draw on its power, adding the equivalent of 1 Fortune point per apple-sized chunk. This burns out the phyrene, reducing it to ash. Though phyrene is a stable power source, magic is inherently dangerous, seeing as it involves rewriting reality in accordance with the caster’s whim. If a PC rolls a 20 while spellcasting with phyrene this results in a cataclysmic explosion, doing 1d20 points of damage to anyone within 10’.

If a PC using phyrene fails normally (not a Bad Break) to cast a spell, or if a PC eats phyrene, or is otherwise exposed to it in an unusual way, roll on the table below.

Who Am I?

Leighton Connor has been publishing RPG content for more than 20 years. With Steve Johnson he co-founded Hex Games in 1997, where he co-created QAGS (the Quick Ass Game System), the ENnie Award-winning Hobomancer, American Artifacts, and more. He is the co-creator, with Steve Johnson and Josh Burnett, of Million-Colored Sun. He has run (or co-run) successful Kickstarter campaigns for Leopard Women of Venus, Akashic Titan, and Akashic Titan: Blue Bolt for Dungeon Crawl Classics, as well as Laser Ponies Second Edition, Project 8Ball, Swann Castle, Million-Colored Sun, and Lightning Man volume 1. You can visit his website at www.leightonconnor.com.