A whirlpool has opened in the Atoll of Hanga, leading down to the legendary temple of the long-dead shark god. Treasure hunters salivate at the prospect of a drowned ruin to plunder. Religious authorities worry the great fish may have reawakened - a mindless hungry god that would make Mothermonster look like an HD 0 herd animal.
THE ATOLL
The waters around the tropical atoll are infested with sharks, who are unusually bellicose. They don't immediately attack swimmers, but anyone bleeding in the water risks being bitten. If one shark bites the others join in.
BRIDGE
This wooden structure was built by the DRAGON CULT. It looks like a big wooden diving board on pilings driven into the sand, with a winch system holding an anchor chain over the whirlpool. The chain is connected to an elevator platform which goes down to the entrance of THE TEMPLE AT 68.
It takes either the Dragon or six men turning the capstan to bring the elevator platform up, more if it's fully loaded with treasure and adventurers.
EASTERN SHOALS
These large rocks are home to a Giant Crab. The crustacean normally eats coconuts from the inland trees and fish caught in tide pools on the coast, but is afraid of the dragon on the beach to the north. Its lair holds a handful of silver coins and a bottle of fortified wine that inspires fearlessness.
HILL
This rocky protrusion provides an excellent view of the entire island. A single Shofar Ram lives here, irritably searching for foliage and bellowing to drive away intruders. He wants to graze the PALM TREES on the east side of the island but is afraid of the Dragon and Barbarians.
INLETS
Water is sucked in through these gaps in the island (which is slowly eroding at the edges). Small boats can fit between them without getting dashed on the large rocks, but then immediately get sucked into the WHIRLPOOL. Large vessels are destroyed by the stones or get stuck if exceptionally durable.
LONG SHIP
A large ship sits on the beach, partially disassembled. Tents and awnings tacked to the boat form improvised shelters. Seals and sharks slathered with gin and coconut milk roast in pits, fired by charcoal day and night. Two Slaves and Portygul the Dragon are here.
The ship holds Portygul's modest hoard and the Barbarians' clan totem. If it is destroyed, they can't use any Feats of Strength until they carve and consecrate another.
PALM TREES
The coconuts that grow on these trees are the only source of fresh water on the island.
A mottled grey Boar lives here, bristling with quills and incandescent with rage at the newcomers who ate his Sow and Shoats, unable to attack them due to Portygul's fear breath. He's patient and cunning, hiding in the undergrowth and waiting for an opportunity for revenge. If the Dragon gets in a fight he joins in the fray on the side of the attackers, exploiting his immunity to slashing damage to gore the big lizard.
SMALL ISLAND
The Small Island is covered with Seals, beached to avoid the numerous sharks infesting the waters around the island chain. There were Seals on the main island but the Barbarians killed some and chased the rest off. When they swim they quickly dive to the bottom, since sharks prefer to attack prey from beneath.
WEST ISLAND
The west island is barren except for a handful of palm trees.
The ground is infested with Sandwalkers in cryptobiosis, who exit hibernation to suck moisture from anyone walking on the surface. They can be fooled by walking in time with the waves, disguising the sound of footsteps as the ocean. The 'walkers are filled with pearls, formed around coins and other bits of metal ingested over their centuries long lifespan.
WHIRLPOOL
The whirlpool is 100 feet across at the top, 25 feet at the bottom and 100 feet tall. An enormous Rotifer on the seabed is the cause, sucking water down into its gullet to filter feed. A stone passage extends from the western waterfall of the whirlpool 25 feet above the seafloor, allowing access to THE TEMPLE. The elevator dangling from THE BRIDGE allows access.
The rotifer is full of treasure from sunken ships. Coins and gems and weapons and armor.
DRAGON CULT
The Dragon Cult arrived at the Atoll in a longship. They beached it and used the wood to build the bridge and elevator system. The Barbarians went down below into the Temple, leaving the cult leader and Slaves to watch the base camp.
PORTYGUL
Portygul is a Young Orange Dragon. He formed the cult using his fear breath to terrify some tribesmen into submission and mounted the expedition to the Atoll of Hanga because he thought it sounded like fun. Now he's stuck waiting for his henchmen to come out of a hole, worried he just killed them all.
Portygul is emaciated and melancholic, with delicate wings that look like they'd rip if a mosquito bit them. The Barbarians are his first cult and like all young dragons he didn't realize how attached he was to them until he sent them on a mission.
During the day he lies on the beach or plucks sharks out of the water for the Slaves to barbeque. At night he sleeps under an awning with a fire to keep him warm. He wants to sun himself on the HILL but the Shofar Ram blasted him when he tried.
SLAVES
The Barbarians in the Dragon Cult are great sailors but middling engineers. They brought their most educated slaves Baldwin and Jadot. The pair of engineering students came to Thousand Lakes to build flood control infrastructure and were captured in a raid. They warned Portygul that the bridge would require timber from the ship, rendering it unusable for the trip home, but he didn't care.
Since the Barbarians went down they've spent every day climbing for coconuts, barbecuing seals and drinking gin. It would be nice if they could swim without being attacked by hostile sea creatures, but compared to the frozen swamps this is a vacation. They hope the Barbarians never come out of the hole.
THE TEMPLE
The temple was built long ago by surface dwellers, and was originally above water. Until recently it was flooded, until the whirlpool made by the Rotifer sucked all the water out of it. Sections are still flooded and full of sea creatures.
Unknown to the robbers, the temple is still used as a dumping ground for cursed items by Mermaids from the Pelagic Clay, a nearby underwater civilization. The concentration of evil artifacts has created a Nightmare Beast that stalks the halls, acting out the memory of the Shark God.
The beast begins stalking visitors to the temple after they've been there an hour.
1: This was once a sacrificial pit, a shark pit leading down to water filled tunnels that led out to the open ocean. It's completely full of silt now.
2: A tablet of red stone lies face down in the muck of this alcove.
If a magic caster with any empty spell slots reads the script on the tablet, a parasitic spell copies itself into every spell slot they have open. The clogged slots can only be freed up by casting the parasitic spell so that it fills the empty slots of other casters within earshot, freeing up the caster's slots at a rate of one per casting.
3: These narrow passages are overgrown with huge barnacles, slicing anyone who moves quickly.
4: A golden sphere shimmers amid the sponges and slime.
The orb grants wishes, altering the world around it and creating whatever the user thinks of. The user must Save vs Magic every time they touch it to avoid killing themselves with an intrusive thought - like turning into spiders or replacing their internal organs with wine.
5: Statues of deposed Merman rulers are heaped here as a damnatio memoriae, broken into chunks and missing faces. You'd have to clamber over the pile to get into the flooded chambers to the east and west.
The statues animate halfway through climbing over them, stats as violent Gargoyles but blind and deaf.
The flooded chambers have fistfuls of pearls, white gold and sea jasper amid the silt.
6: A flooded, dead end tunnel filled with fish bones and harmless marine worms.
7: Heaped potshards from wine and drugs used to prepare sacrificial victims. Crystal stoppers gleam amid the smashed vessels. The pottery is still pregnant with hallucinogens, anyone who touches it becomes especially attractive to the Nightmare Beast.
8: Corridor smeared with the remains of sticky webs.
A giant Marine Worm lurks on the other side of the doorframe, anchored to the dead-end hallway. It sprays webs at anyone who walks outside the door and bites them savagely.
9: This whole complex of rooms is still flooded and partially collapsed.
10: This complex of rooms is flooded and filled with silt.
11: The narrow passage is full of sea urchins. The spiny ones deal small amounts of damage, but the soft flower urchins are poisonous. Those who fail a save are incapacitated by muscle contractions and breathing problems for d6 turns.
12: Mosaic depicting a giant shark hunting young whales. The shark's eyes are polished jet.
13: This tunnel is narrow but free of clutter or creatures.
14: The algae on the chamber entrance is scraped and smeared perpendicular to the frame.
Amid the fronds of white kelp is a huge Mantis Shrimp. It waits in ambush for prey to walk by the entrance, stuns it with a shockwave, grabs it and drags it into the room for consumption.
The chamber to the west holds the Shrimp's molted exoskeletons, inlaid with gold and semiprecious stones swallowed alongside prey and incorporated into the carapace.
15: This chamber was used to prepare sacrifices to the shark god. It hasn't been opened in an age and the last offering is still inside.
He's a Wight now, dressed in jewels and gold along with the Skeletons of his "brides", priestesses who satisfied his every earthly desire in the moments before he was supposed to be fed to Hanga's children.
He's been waiting for a long, long time. Since the God died and the temple was sealed. All he wants is to be devoured by a shark. Anything else provokes his murderous rage.
16: The door is a solid piece of stone carved in the image of a shark's underside, complete with teeth. There is no visible mechanism for opening it.
The magic wards on the door outlasted the death of the God. To open it, smear the shark's mouth with fresh blood.
17: The men's altar for smaller sacrifices, marked by a huge pair of sculpted claspers. Men would offer buckets of fish parts here.
18: Whatever image was here has been removed and the alcove used to store a curved bone sword.
This is the cursed intelligent chaotic +2 sword Quadrapelagia. The blade casts Paralysis as it pleases, inhibiting the user and people around them.
19: The women's altar for smallar sacrifices, marked by a sculpture of a pelvic fin with a slit in the middle.
In an age where infanticide was a common fate for disabled or unwanted children, women offered their babies as sacrifices so they could be reborn as sharks and swim forever alongside the God.
20: The wall opposite the doorway is suspiciously clean of algae, arthropods and other marine life. There's a heap of bones and shells on the floor below.
Anyone who passes here suffers the effects of the head at 24.
21: This half-flooded chamber holds a panoply of shark related items once used in religious rites.
- An enchanted shagreen cap that lets the wearer cure any disease or curse afflicting them if they kill and eat someone.
- A pair of nose plugs with dangling tassels, which let the wearer imitate a shark's electrical sense while submerged in water.
- A wooden falcata edged with shark teeth, which gains +1 to hit and damage each attack the user makes in the same battle (resetting after the fight)
The chamber is home to Predatory Snails with cone-shaped shells and lethally poisonous stingers.
22: A sickly green amulet seems to shimmer with heat-haze. Crustaceans surround it in a circle, clearly fascinated but not willing to draw closer.
The amulet is cursed. The wearer can pass through walls at will, but every time they sleep they must save vs magic or be possessed, carrying out murders while possessed by the entity that lurks inside.
23: An enormous set of shark jaws is mounted to the door, large enough to stand upright in without touching the teeth on top.
The jaws aren't magical and don't snap shut. The endless rows of teeth are only a danger if you move through quickly and carelessly.
24: At the end of this corridor is a black basalt sculpture of a head, facing the entrance.
The sculpture head is the size of a washing machine and very heavy. Its eyes melt any flesh in line of sight, rapidly killing anything in its field of vision. It was pointed to the wall and had its eyes covered with a stone slab, but a curious visiting Mermaid turned it around. Her skeleton lies on the floor of the chamber.
25: A hidden chamber for temple priests to wait in ambush, observing comings and goings through pinholes in the wall. It's empty now.
26: The mosaic on the floor of this columned hallway depicts Hanga the Shark in a grand battle with King Dolphin to avenge the cetacean's rape of his wife. The blues are set with pieces of turquoise, the greens aquamarine, the whites quartz.
27: Empty alcove. A statue hand sticks out of the sediment on the floor, a discoloration on the hand indicating it once wore a ring.
28: Faded painting of a hammerhead shark breaching the surface.
29: Bas relief of a helicoprion using its wheel of teeth to open the armor of a eurypterid-man.
30: Painting of a man in a boar-tusk helmet coupling with a sawfish.
31: Marble sculpture of a boat shaped like a shark. Small enough to be removed, potentially valuable.
32: The floor here is carpeted with colorful anemones, curled up on themselves to conserve moisture. The anemones drip with soporific poison, anyone who fails a save passes out and is slowly devoured by a Swarm of crabs living amid the fronds.
33: Corpse of a Barbarian. Mottled scars from poison, an exit wound out the back of the neck like a projectile blasted through it.
On the dead man's finger is a pink coral ring. It pulls loose with a wet, tearing sensation.
When this cursed ring is put on, the nematocysts painfully latch onto the wearer's finger. The wearer takes and deals double damage.
34: Painting of babies swimming alongside Hanga, transforming into sharks.
35: This was the shark priests' kitchen, where the lowest temple slaves cooked fishy offerings (and occasionally people) not destined for the sharks at 1. The room has already been searched.
The Barbarians took everything of value to 37.
36: Dining space for priests. Was open to the air once, the hole in the ceiling is filled with a huge rock that could collapse and destroy the room if deliberately disturbed.
The Barbarians took everything of value to 37.
37: Priestly reception area, where honored guests were entertained prior to meals.
The Barbarians have piled all the loot collected so far in this room. Heaped silverware, a sacrificial tripod, a potion of Waterbreathing (unidentified), and a whole lot of shark teeth.
38: Whatever art was in this alcove is effaced.
39: Giant Remoras stick to every surface. If prey comes within scenting distance they detach and flop along the floor toward it.
40: Depiction of the divine twins (Hanga and Hamsa) fighting in the womb of Mother Ocean.
41: Statue of a reverse mermaid with a shark head and human legs. There's a layer of slime over everything.
42: This alcove is still flooded.
An Abyssal Fish lives in the water. Its lure is hypnotic and draws prey toward it on a failed save. Get too close and it pulls you into the pool, allowing it and a Swarm of smaller fish to feed.
43: This flooded chamber was once used to store personal effects during rituals that required worshipers to be nude. Weapons shimmer in the dark water.
There's a Tiger Shark in here now, swimming back and forth endlessly in search of a way out. Killing it inflicts a curse on the perpetrator, but allows unrestricted access to the piles of discarded equipment. Most of it's useless, save for a +1 Dagger of Swimming.
44: This tunnel was once a back entrance for the priests. It's full of rocks and sand.
45: Storage chamber. Narrow water-filled holes in the ground were once used to hold jugs of wine, oil, pickles and potted meat.
One of the holes is home to an Elemental Spirit. She's waiting for someone to pass through the room alone so she can Charm him. To go drowning and to stay and to stay until the whirlpool closes and the temple fills with water again.
46: The shark priests slept in this room. The wood is all but rotted away, leaving only a few metal fittings in the muck.
The Barbarians took everything of value to 37.
47: This room was once a courtyard open to the sky. The clay and stone above is held up by the rotted remains of ancient trees that grew after the place was abandoned.
Seven BARBARIANS are here, cornered by the slime, tossing flasks of Fear to chase it away. They want it to retreat far enough that they can escape past the barricade to the east, but it just sulks and then comes back.
48: This passage is blocked by hastily stacked rubble and the remains of furniture. A large Slime lurks on the east side of the barricade.
About once every hour it tries to ooze through the opening at the top, and is repelled by a puff of orange gas. It would love to chase after easier prey.
Jian Han
49: A thick curtain of bioluminescent moonkelp dangles from the ceiling, like the poisonous tentacles of a jellyfish.
It obscures line of sight but is otherwise harmless.
50: This long chamber was a place for visitors to queue when the main hall filled up. Now it's full of colorful Sea Slugs, poisonous and confident in their own invulnerability to predators.
51: Mosaic of a man cresting a wave in a chariot pulled by a great white shark.
52: Mosaic of humans as remoras sucking on a giant shark. The pinks and reds are made of quartz.
53: The space between the columns is overgrown with peculiar white coral that sparks in the dark. Skeletons of marine creatures poke out of the knobbly growths.
The dangerous static charge of the coral electrocutes anyone who draws too close, arcing to metal weapons and armor.
54: Wall painting of Hanga walking on shore in his human form.
55: Abandoned on the floor in the slime is a blue pendant in the shape of a shark tooth.
While this cursed amulet is worn, the wearer can gain temporary HP by
eating bucketloads of fish blood and guts. They can stack their HP higher than their
maximum, with no upper limit. They lose HP at a rate of one per hour. They cannot heal or gain nutrition by any other means.
56: A bronze statue, so corroded the features are unreadable.
57: An empty coat of chain, a few scattered body parts and several Leeches of Paradise stuck to the walls.
All that's left of a Barbarian who was overfed by the leeches and exploded.
58: Schools of endless fish, tessellated.
59: Fasteners for a tapestry, now missing.
60: Whatever decoration was here has been destroyed by immersion in water.
61: A handful of Seals are holed up in this alcove, standing guard over the body of a pup. They went down here to get away from all the Sharks, but now they can't leave thanks to the Rotifer creating a funnel under the entrance. They feel cornered and that makes them dangerous, doubly so now that the Barbarians killed one of their young when it startled them.
62: Plinth that once held a jug for depositing coins.
63: Blank space that once held a slate for posting notices.
64: The west wall is painted like a magnificent underwater palace, which seems to recede as the viewer walks toward it rather than growing closer.
65: The ceiling of this tunnel was originally ribbed to create the impression of walking down the gullet of a shark. Time and the tide have collapsed the decorative stonework, leaving the passage smooth.
66: The painted image has been recently defaced with runic writing:
Here the men from Thousand Lakes conquered the Shark God
- Hoborg
- Lar
- Ottoborg
- Hneftafl
- Mardukian
- Uliac
- Kol
- Hyglac
- Sko
67: A bundle of heavy but buoyant fogwood leans against the wall, hung with sturdy leather straps.
This is the Barbarians' idea of a flotation device. If the temple floods their hope is to get back to it and hold onto it while it ascends to the surface.
68: This downward sloping tunnel was once the public entrance to the Temple. Most of the water drained out of the flooded complex through this passage, falling into the whirlpool and the maw of the Rotifer outside.
Roerich
BARBARIANS
The Barbarians are from Thousand Lakes. They followed the Orange Dragon Portygul to the Atoll of the Shark God to plunder it. They lost two warriors to underwater hazards and are cornered in the Priests' quarters on the west side of the map by a big slime.
The seven Barbs wear coats of chain and wield shields with swords, spears and one handed axes. They carry flasks filled with concentrated powder from Portygul's breath attack. When thrown the flasks break open and inflict Fear on anyone in the dust plume.
The lead Barbarian Hoborg is a bit too phlegmatic for a Lakelander, unable to enter the same blood fury as the others. They follow him anyway because his plans usually work. They're embarrassed to be trapped by a brainless sea jelly but he doesn't want to lose more men hacking away at things they can't harm.
The Barbarians haven't been attacked by the Nightmare Beast because Hoborg told them it was an illusion and they should ignore it. Their disbelief scared it off and it isn't attacking them again until they fall asleep.
The Barbs would love to team up with brave warriors to clear the rest of the dungeon, sharing the glory and the treasure. Unfortunately they work for a Young Dragon who wants all the treasure for himself, forcing them to choose between their honor as Men of the Lake and their duty to their patron.
NIGHTMARE BEAST
The Nightmare Beast is a monster spawned by the concentration of magical energy from the cursed artifacts deposited in the Temple by the Mermaids.
The Beast looks like a goldfish with stumpy fins and the face of a human baby, swimming through the air and perpetually shedding shark teeth out of its drooling mouth. This form is based on a vague memory of the shark god and the tiny souls sacrificed to him.
If killed, the beast spawns the next day. The only thing that can permanently banish it is removing cursed items from the temple. For each of the bolded colored items taken away it loses a hit die. However if all six are kept together the beast reappears wherever they are concentrated.
The Mermaids don't care if people take the cursed items, as long as they take them to the surface instead of anywhere under the sea.
Frazetta
THE MAKING OF
I used the Monster Manual Overhaul to
create this area. I started by rolling, but decided to just pick
entries that supported the theme of the initial results (Barbarians
following Dragon, Nightmare Beast, Mantis Shrimps).
No comments:
Post a Comment