City of Blood by Jack Kaiser is a role playing game supplement published by Schwalb Entertainment for use with Shadow of the Demon Lord. This is in the Lands in Shadow series which further detail part of the official Urth setting.
This is an eight page PDF that is available from RPGNow for $2.29 but was purchased at the reduced price of $1.58 during a sale. The front page has a half page illustration and around a quarter of the page is the Credits; the rest of the supplement is content.
The first few paragraphs give a standard overview of the region; Qif, the City of Blood, is part of the Confederacy of Nine Cities.
The Roaring Crowd (many of the titles of the sections are more to do with the city’s entertainment than anything else) states that Qif is on Crescent Bay, not far from Pruul, the City of Thieves. The city’s main source of entertainment is its gladiatorial arenas; as many gladiators are slaves, the city has quite a bit of trade with Dis, the City of Chains.
Quinta, Autarch of Qif gives details and stats on this former gladiator who is Qif’s current ruler. Her efforts to make the gladiatorial games less bloody failed when the Empire fell apart, as she is doing.
Crucible is about the primary arena in Qif; there are others but this one can easily take 150,000 people and there is still temporary seating for an additional 100,000. Ownership of the arena is in small pieces and these pieces of ownership swap hands regularly. Given the amount of death and blood here, the arena is a haunt for many different undead, and its sand is prized as a spell component by the necromantic tradition. There is also a d20 table of sights to see in Qif.
Entertaining Ways to Die has rules for three types of arena combat; jousting, chariot racing and a derivative of the latter, horse racing. Another d20 table has more optional events to hold in the arena.
Life in Qif explains that, for a slaveholding city, there is a lot of potential upwards, and downwards, mobility, thanks to the games. Sometimes the downward mobility is fatal. The current autarch is a former slave who bought her freedom – all gladiators, except criminals, are entitled to earn money, and slave gladiators may be able to buy their freedom. The city’s life revolves around the arenas, and the people who participate in, run and watch the events, especially betting on them.
Gladiators has stats for four different potential gladiators, one of which is an individual clockwork.
Finally, Characters from Qif has a new background table and a paragraph on creating characters who hail from the city.
City of Blood in Review
The PDF lacks bookmarks and, although it is short enough to not truly need them, they would have been appreciated. The text maintains a full colour two column layout and appeared to be almost error free. There are a couple of colour illustrations, and an unlabelled map of the city, which appear to be custom. Presentation is good for a short supplement.
There are no specific adventure hooks given per se, but there are many hidden within the text. Adventuring in Qif revolves around the arenas. Taking part in events, watching events, finding monsters for events, dealing with the consequences of events (such as getting rid of undead) and rivalry between different factions. A GM may have to dig deeper than is normal for supplements in the Lands in Shadow series to find the hooks, but they are there. The city of Qif itself is rather poorly described though; only the Crucible is covered in any detail – or even really mentioned. Reading up on gladiatorial material would also be advised; without gladiatorial events, there is no city. City of Blood is an interesting location, but it needs much more detailing to use properly, and it can be found by clicking here.
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