Last week in my Hell’s Rebels game, I pointed the party to the Murders in the Nursery by having the message from The Rose of Kintargo (which I had delivered to an NPC cleric of Milani I’d saddled the PC’s with as part of a starting team) suggest that solving that ongoing problem would be a good next step for the rebellion.
Then, as I asked the players how they wanted to approach the situation, one of them asked “Does the Devil’s Nursery have a tavern?”
Of course, there’s not one in the book, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense. Sure the nursery is poor, but beer is cheap and a halfway decent balm for one’s woes. So I called for a knowledge (local) check to actually be aware of where the tieflings go to drink, and after some quick thought I came up with this place:
The Pit
The Pit used to be Kintargo’s best known fighting pit, built after an explosion during the Chelish Civil War caused a small area of the sewers to collapse. The nearby sewers were rerouted, and the openings were walled over to create a large circular pit, about thirty feet in diameter, with ten foot high walls.
The new regime in Kintargo wasted little time bringing in all their favorite vices, and that included pit fighting, a bloodsport that was already becoming almost synonymous with tieflings in the popular consciousness. The pit in southern Kintargo was built to host such events, and over time Tieflings were brought in to fight, and sometimes die, for the amusement of Kintargans.
Over time, the area around The Pit became the home of more and more tieflings, retired fighters and soldiers and their families. Eventually, it became known in the streets that if one had a child with fiendish traits, one could simply drop them off in South Kintargo and the tieflings there would take them in, bringing the neighborhood the nickname of ‘The Devil’s Nursery.’
Decades later, Strea Vestori decided that the Devil’s Nursery should be more than Kintargo’s garbage dump, and was able to successfully organize the tieflings and lobby for recognition and some small amount of representation by the city, effectively governing the Nursery through the Cloven Hoof Society. She was able to win many prominent non-tieflings over to her cause, and even met with the Lord Mayor on several occasions. One of the first major campaigns she led was to close down the fighting pit, so that tiefling mothers would no longer have to fear their children being lured away by the call of violence, and ending up another body to be fished out of The Pit.
This effort was successful, and The Pit was closed down, only to later be reopened as a tavern, which the topside portion had basically been already, selling refreshments to the spectators who came to watch the fights.
The Pit is a circular red brick building centered on the old fighting pit, and even the floor of the upper area is a good three feet underground.
A quick map I created for it.
(Map created with Pyromancer’s Dungeon Painter Studio.)
Today, The Pit mostly serves locals, with the old fighting pit, now referred to as ‘The Inner Circle’, mostly playing host to the local minor crime lord, a tiefling with dull yellow skin and shining golden teeth named ‘Lucre’.
A wooden staircase leads down into The Inner Circle, where several tables are set up, one of which Lucre can often be found holding court in, and another of which is typically occupied by his bodyguards. (Experienced thugs, probably 3rd level brawlers, fighters, or rogues.) A secret door in the wall of the old combat pit, behind a hanging curtain, leads into an accessway into Kintargo’s sewers, where Lucre maintains a small base in the old basement of a nearby building.
Lucre makes most of his gold through running protection rackets in the Redroof markets, and is well liked in the nursery as a source of jobs and help for tieflings down on their luck, who mostly hope that he’ll never have cause to call in the favors owed to him. He also has a small stable of tiefling thieves, whose stolen goods he smuggles through sewer routes into Old Kintargo.
If approached, he’ll expect a bribe before doing business, something in the realm of 50 gold. A streetwise PC might realize that buying him and his boys a round of their typical, drastically overpriced drinks is a discrete way to do so, and that runs 40 gold.
If asked about the murders, he’ll share the common wisdom that one shouldn’t stay out in the streets of the Nursery after dark, point the party to the young tiefling woman Zea whose been looking into the murders, but will suggest they not mention his name to her. If he believes the party are on the level, he’ll send one of his guards with a gold piece to offer one of the innumerable young tieflings hanging around the streets of the nursery in exchange for guiding them to Zea and making introductions. He'll also suggest he would owe a favor to anyone who was able to bring down this serial killer.
If asked about the Red Jills, he’ll sigh and complain about how their behavior is going to bring retaliation down on the Nursery, and how she’s luring away all the ‘young talent’ to go get themselves killed. He doesn’t share that he also feels threatened by the Red Jills, but a successful Sense Motive check reveals this. If he thinks the party seem competent and discrete, he will offer a 500 GP bounty on Scarplume’s head.
If the party inquires into investing in the neighborhood and trying to improve conditions in the Nursery, he’ll suggest again that it would be best for them to talk to Zea. As one of the few members of the Cloven Hoof Society not too scared to admit to membership in the wake of Strea’s disappearance, she’d be ideal for organizing any community efforts the players would like to be involved in.
