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You have been dispatched by Venture-Captain Ambrus Valsin to a training location outside of Absalom, known as the Red Redoubt of Karamoss. Another group of Pathfinders were sent to the location to set up an obstacle course, including both physical and mental challenges. You are to test their success, and yourselves, by completing the obstacle course.
The noonday sun shines brightly in a cloudless sky, but the rugged landscape diffuses the light as if through a stained glass window composed entirely of crimson panes. Deep red metal walls, broken but mostly untouched by rust even after a millennium, form an obstacle course through the landscape. Clearly, when the Red Redoubt of Karamoss was named, it was not done ironically.
The marked path through the siege castle's ruins leads to a large central chamber open to the sky above. Aside from the metal flooring, walls and rubble, nothing remains of the so-called "machine mage" Karamoss or his lost armies. Refuse, old campfire rings, and other signs of life attest to the place being a haven for scavengers and vagabonds.
The chamber is filled with a large, circular shaft in the metal floor, with smoothly rolled edges that demonstrate superbly uniform craftsmanship. A rope ladder descends into the pit, anchored by pitons hammers into the floor panels.