The Adventure Zone: (K)Nights is a bonus campaign of The Adventure Zone for Maximum Fun donors. It follows a Dungeons & Dragons campaign played out by the McElroy Brothers and their father Clint, with Travis acting as the Dungeon Master.
It centers on the Steampunk Capital City of the Jaden Province of Iren, The Great Continent. The city is run by two ruling faiths, The Order of Myrkul (God of Death, led by the Lord Thanos) and the Circle of Istus (Goddess of Fate and Order, led by the Mother of Fate which is a hereditary title passed from mother to daughter), as well as the eleven ruling families that serve under them. The City is stratified into five layers of society (and architecture), with the Order and the Circle sitting at the top, followed by the quarters for the ruling families, the merchant districts (also called Waukeen's Walk, after the God of Commerce), the Commons that houses the common folk who serve the families and depend on the Order and the Circle in kind for basic necessities, and Underton, the bowels of the city that houses all the machinery to keep it running as well as the broken, poor, and destitute. Other factions include;
- The Knights of Tyr, a lawkeeping religious order led by Lord High Knight Mason, who believe that the word of law is all that is needed and morality holds no place in lawkeeping.
- The Hand of Pelor, a group of healers that are thought to be a mostly neutral party but holds immense power in very subtle ways. It is led by the Grand Healers and headed by Elder Parsons.
- The Congregation of Merchants, a merchant's guild that is led by Merchant Guild Master Catho.
- The Children of Eldath, a humble monastic order dedicated to aiding the poor and destitute of Underton.
- The Beasts of the Ring, a group of revolutionaries who represent chaos and reform who started as a thieves guild before becoming the rogue faction they are today. They worship Mask, the God of Thieves and until recently were led by Canis.
Our story begins in Underton, and follows the adventures of Tom Collins (Griffin), a half-Elf warlock barkeep who desperately tries to pass himself off as a wizard due to the social stigma that comes from making a pact with gods from the outer planes that warlocks do, Lenny Manalito (Clint), a human bard who was once a well respected musician before Tom blackballed him for unknown reasons and forced him into a destitute life in Underton where he plays his steam-powered keytar for copper coils, and Troth (Justin), a female Teifling monk who has been a member of the Children of Eldath for most of her life and has just been sent down to Underton on her first real assignment.
The podcast contains these tropes:
- Badass Bureaucrat: Magistrate Atreyus Kannon. The only ruling family leader to be elected, he's secretly part of the Beasts of the Ring and pushed for more progressive legislation regarding the lower classes. Also, a bard who uses Magic Music to damage a robot by rapping insults at it.
- Bavarian Fire Drill: When infiltrating the Knights of Tyr headquarters, all four of them pretend to be lawyers visiting their client. Their one client.Kannon: Sylvan, what's up? It's your four lawyers.
- City of Adventure: Capital City
- Door Roulette: On the second floor of the mansion, they wind up opening doors to see what's inside, finding, variously, guard barracks, a portrait gallery, a balcony, and a room with a giant spider.
- Eldritch Abomination: Tom Collins worships The Great Old One, who is not so abstract in the traditional sense, but more in the sense that it's a shifting mass of geometric shapes and colors.
- Fluffy the Terrible: The iron golem behind the Machine door in The Gauntlet is named Doug.
- Foreshadowing: In the Knight-Captain's office, they find a document detailing a joint project between the Knights of Tyr and the Order of Mykrul, involving powering human sized robots with humanoid souls. Tom steals the document, taking the info for the Beasts. Having this document is how the Beasts of the Ring were able to save the people of Capital City from the plague that swept their world in TAZ Balance.
- "Home Alone" Antics: Travis revealed that many of the security traps in the Magistrate's house were inspired by Home Alone.
- I Have Your Wife: Cole, the Knights of Tyr second-in-command, kidnapped Kannon's son to pressure him into adopting harsher, less progressive policies than he promised.
- Inconsistent Spelling: The story has alternatively been called Nights and Knights. Travis has refused to settle on which one is correct,
claiming that both of them are. - Knights and Knaves: Guarding the Gauntlet's series of doors is Lying Jack, a popular magic-powered robot toy that answers questions either truthfully or falsely depending on a set pattern.
- Layered Metropolis: Capital City is built like a five-tiered cake, called The Mount, with the third tier at ground level, connected to the rest of the land by bridges. The lower two levels are dug into the ground, while the upper two levels tower into the sky.
- Only One Name: As a tiefling, a demonic race whose people often name themselves after virtues, Troth chose her own name based on the archaic word for faith or loyalty.
- Shared Universe: Because of the nature of the IPRE traveling between realities in The Stolen Century arc of TAZ Balance, they come across a version of the TAZ (K)Nights universe, set in the far future, after a plague wiped out most people living there.
- Special Guest: Lin-Manuel Miranda took over for the role of Magistrate Kannon.
- Steampunk: Travis refers to the setting as this. In practice, the heavy Magitek elements make it closer to Gaslamp Fantasy, Dungeon Punk, and Urban Fantasy.
- Thieves' Guild: The Beasts of the Ring, who set up the Gauntlet to recruit new leaders.
- Trojan Prisoner: The Party attempts this with Tom as the fake prisoner and Lenny disguised as a guard. Predictably, they get found out.Lenny: What about the old "I have these fake prisoners." gag?Tom: That's a bad gag, it has never worked in any piece of media with that gag!
- Urban Segregation: Capital City is stratified like a tiered cake into five layers of society. The Order and Circle are on top, then the ruling families, then the merchant districts, then the commoners, and lastly Underton, where the broken, poor, and destitute live among the machines powering the city.
- With Catlike Tread: All four players fail a stealth roll entering the room where Kannon's son is being held captive.
- You Wake Up in a Room: All three characters go from their individual daily routines to waking up together at the entrance to the Gauntlet.
