The Chocolate Coast at the edge of the Lost World. So called because of the vast quantities of chocolate which flow from Iron Cup’s inland plantations out to the trade fort at Isle of Sweat, and from there to the rest of the world. Further inland: Forest fens of giant cycads and ferns. Flooded pampas infested with enormous dinosaurs. Canyons filled with monstrous insects. Volcanoes that periodically disgorge great lava flows. Further still, the Gunpowder Empires of the Giff.
This is the context in which we place the Silent Ranch, a patch of swamp on a minor tributary of the River Sweat. Surrounded by prehistoric forests where hadrosaurs splash and giant sloths graze on primitive trees. Far away from sneering nobles and idiot wizards and trading companies and ravenous greed and murderous armies, for now. Nested atop a hideous secret that, if she’d known about it, the owner would have thought twice before locating her ranch there
This is the context in which we place the Silent Ranch, a patch of swamp on a minor tributary of the River Sweat. Surrounded by prehistoric forests where hadrosaurs splash and giant sloths graze on primitive trees. Far away from sneering nobles and idiot wizards and trading companies and ravenous greed and murderous armies, for now. Nested atop a hideous secret that, if she’d known about it, the owner would have thought twice before locating her ranch there
JAEGER TARAZA
Jaeger Taraza is a Ranger from the Baronies, a rump state of monarchists who refused incorporation into the Commonwealth after the death of the Old King. A Jaeger is a groundskeeper and game warden who manages the estate of a landed noble. Technically Taraza doesn’t own the patch of swamp where she built her home. It was scooped up by some minor Marquis from the surviving branch of the DeCavalier family at the Surveyors’ Auction during the last Baronial moot. On paper she works for him. If he ever shows up he’s going to suffer a convenient accident.
Taraza ranches Catoblepas. They have no economic value but her home incredibly unappealing to attack. She’s retired and a bunch of killer cows with death glares make one hell of a keep-out sign. She’s also undead, cursed to retain her intelligence as her body rots. She’s immune to their death gaze, and she makes an incredibly toxic perfume from their acid breath that prevents her body from rotting by killing all the microorganisms. Her deathly pallor is where she gets the nickname Stoneskin.
Taraza ranches Catoblepas. They have no economic value but her home incredibly unappealing to attack. She’s retired and a bunch of killer cows with death glares make one hell of a keep-out sign. She’s also undead, cursed to retain her intelligence as her body rots. She’s immune to their death gaze, and she makes an incredibly toxic perfume from their acid breath that prevents her body from rotting by killing all the microorganisms. Her deathly pallor is where she gets the nickname Stoneskin.
THE SILENT RANCH
The Silent Ranch is so described because animals don’t make a lot of noise around the Catoblepas herd. For months after Taraza moved in, the ground was carpeted with birds and lizards who didn’t get the message. The T Rex who mistook the herd’s stench for a field of rotting corpses and tried to eat them yielded more meat than Taraza could eat in a year, and there are still a few pieces dangling in the smokehouse. The remaining wildlife learned to play ball, heading off a minor ecological catastrophe.
The Perimeter Fence
Taraza made the perimeter fence from bamboo, a fast growing invasive species introduced to the Lost World to provide building material which now grows in dense monocultural thickets throughout the jungle. It’s there to mark the boundary of the Ranch and discourage the Catoblepas from wandering. They could easily destroy it but the depressive beasts can rarely find the energy.
The Jaeger’s Cabin
Taraza built her house on stilts to keep it dry during occasional floods. It’s made of mixed bamboo and local materials, with woven screens for insect control. Her Catoblepas perfume keeps the flies off her but she doesn’t like beetles crawling in her workspace or gnawing her cloth.
Besides Taraza’s sword and bow, she has three Javelins of Lightning in the house for emergency use. She also has a muzzleloading fowling piece which she really enjoys shooting, but keeps in reserve since she has to buy powder at considerable markup during her rare visits to regional trading posts.
Along with her hammock and dangling bags of supplies, the cabin is decorated with a few pieces of furniture bought from traders or scavenged from abandoned frontier settlements. The centerpiece is a cabinet shrine to Beer and Bread (God of the harvest and the “natural order”), There Are Doors (God of thresholds, beloved by adventurers) and Lord of Leaves (actual nature deity, sworn enemy of Beer and Bread). At the bottom of the tableau is a piece of an unknown but shiny metal, embossed with an image of a goose. Taraza found it in the swamp, assumed it was an image of a tutelary spirit left by a past civilization and added it to her objects of worship.
The Jaeger keeps her treasure in a lacquered chest. Gold trade tokens (heavy but indestructible) and Cave Elf silk bills (lightweight but delicious to insects) from her adventuring days. Also in the chest are the deeds to the property, explaining that she holds it in trust for the Marquis DeCavalier. Completely useless in a lawless forest where possession is the whole of the law but essential if anyone from the Baronies ever shows up to challenge her claim.
The Catoblepas Pen
The Silent Ranch’s ten Catoblepas are hardy beasts, unbothered by a little rain. Taraza only herds them into this elevated wooden structure when flooding gets so severe that they’d be washed away if they stayed at ground level. The platform has troughs for food so the hungry cows don’t wander off when she wants to keep them penned, along with racks holding handmade brushes, picks and files for hoof cleaning, etc.
The Smokehouse
This mud brick building sits on a boulder protruding from the swamp, accessed by a wooden ramp. The interior is filled with dangling dinosaur and bird meat in various stages of curing. Fire, when kindled in the space between the stone foundation and the elevated structure sends smoke up to the interior where it slowly filters out through the thatch roof.
The Hatch
A patch of metal, half-buried in the peaty soil and ferns. An interlocking mechanism, crying out to be manipulated by delicate hands. Leads down to the CRASHED SHIP.
Taraza made the perimeter fence from bamboo, a fast growing invasive species introduced to the Lost World to provide building material which now grows in dense monocultural thickets throughout the jungle. It’s there to mark the boundary of the Ranch and discourage the Catoblepas from wandering. They could easily destroy it but the depressive beasts can rarely find the energy.
The Jaeger’s Cabin
Taraza built her house on stilts to keep it dry during occasional floods. It’s made of mixed bamboo and local materials, with woven screens for insect control. Her Catoblepas perfume keeps the flies off her but she doesn’t like beetles crawling in her workspace or gnawing her cloth.
Besides Taraza’s sword and bow, she has three Javelins of Lightning in the house for emergency use. She also has a muzzleloading fowling piece which she really enjoys shooting, but keeps in reserve since she has to buy powder at considerable markup during her rare visits to regional trading posts.
Along with her hammock and dangling bags of supplies, the cabin is decorated with a few pieces of furniture bought from traders or scavenged from abandoned frontier settlements. The centerpiece is a cabinet shrine to Beer and Bread (God of the harvest and the “natural order”), There Are Doors (God of thresholds, beloved by adventurers) and Lord of Leaves (actual nature deity, sworn enemy of Beer and Bread). At the bottom of the tableau is a piece of an unknown but shiny metal, embossed with an image of a goose. Taraza found it in the swamp, assumed it was an image of a tutelary spirit left by a past civilization and added it to her objects of worship.
The Jaeger keeps her treasure in a lacquered chest. Gold trade tokens (heavy but indestructible) and Cave Elf silk bills (lightweight but delicious to insects) from her adventuring days. Also in the chest are the deeds to the property, explaining that she holds it in trust for the Marquis DeCavalier. Completely useless in a lawless forest where possession is the whole of the law but essential if anyone from the Baronies ever shows up to challenge her claim.
The Catoblepas Pen
The Silent Ranch’s ten Catoblepas are hardy beasts, unbothered by a little rain. Taraza only herds them into this elevated wooden structure when flooding gets so severe that they’d be washed away if they stayed at ground level. The platform has troughs for food so the hungry cows don’t wander off when she wants to keep them penned, along with racks holding handmade brushes, picks and files for hoof cleaning, etc.
The Smokehouse
This mud brick building sits on a boulder protruding from the swamp, accessed by a wooden ramp. The interior is filled with dangling dinosaur and bird meat in various stages of curing. Fire, when kindled in the space between the stone foundation and the elevated structure sends smoke up to the interior where it slowly filters out through the thatch roof.
The Hatch
A patch of metal, half-buried in the peaty soil and ferns. An interlocking mechanism, crying out to be manipulated by delicate hands. Leads down to the CRASHED SHIP.
THE JUNGLE
The marsh is surrounded by a prehistoric forest. Taraza has cut a few hunting trails through this but going is slow even on these.
The Rookery
A pack of Terror Birds roost near the silent swamp. Like Great Blue Herons nesting under the watchful eye of a Bald Eagle, these social birds accept a certain level of predation and theft in exchange for protection. Taraza occasionally poaches their eggs or culls the herd, in exchange they don’t have to worry about Tyrannosaurs, Smilodons, Cave Bears, or a million other Lost World beasts who would otherwise compete with them. This arrangement doesn’t apply to other adventurers stomping around the forest, who the birds aggressively charge.
The Golem Oven
Without alchemical assistance, the extreme heat and humidity of the Lost World limit working hours and drive water consumption up to absurd levels. The Golem Oven is a failed attempt to compete with Potion Addict’s de facto monopoly on draughts of Endure Elements. It was supposed to print wafers that granted immunity to heat exhaustion, dehydration and jungle diseases. As with all artifacts made using the power of Wild Magic, buffoon god of irresponsible mages, it did as advertised and then some, endlessly printing Biscuit Golems. Rather than do the responsible thing and destroy the artifact under controlled conditions (risking dangerous magical feedback), the creators hauled it out in the jungle and dumped it.
The oven is a four legged dome of metal with an opening in one side, meant to sit over an open flame. The top is embossed with an image of Wild Magic in his aspect as a clown crucified on a wheel of fortune. Even without a fire to heat it, the oven is in direct sunlight for a few hours a day, enough to superheat it so it starts printing Biscuit Golems.
Hendrik Blink
ALL HELL BREAKS LOOSE
It starts with the Biscuit Golems. They show up around the ranch and make mischief, spooking the animals but not doing any permanent damage. Taraza searches the woods but the tiny gingerbread men don’t leave much of a trail in the undergrowth. The crumbs are carried away by ants and tiny lizards before she can follow them back to the oven.
Then a Catoblepas browsing for sphagnum moss unearths The Hatch of the crashed spaceship buried beneath the flooded swamp. The beast wanders away, uninterested in the inedible metal surface. Then a Biscuit Golem unlocks the mechanism.
The hatch triggers the cryocaps, inadvertently releasing both the ship’s crew and the thing they were transporting. Driven insane by the neverending waking dream of their malfunctioning reefersleep caskets, thirteen Hateful Geese surge out of the ship. Their scientific curiosity and mechanical acumen have degraded into an urge to steal or destroy anything that’s not nailed down. They wreak havoc on the ranch, scaring the animals, stealing and breaking things. Taraza and her cows chase them off into the jungle. They teleport back when she’s not looking.
The Perfect Predator bides its time. Waits until dark before sneaking into the ranch and killing one of Taraza’s animals. The beasts’ death gaze is useless against the stealthy night feeding monster. The mutilated cattle bear strange wounds, geometric scars from alien weaponry and sinister life draining probes.
The Geese keep fucking everything up. The Biscuit Golems treat it like a big joke. The Terror Birds find all their eggs smashed. A voice speaks in the dark, commanding Taraza to KNEEL. SURRENDER. SUBMIT. Her arrows never seem to catch it.
Then a Catoblepas browsing for sphagnum moss unearths The Hatch of the crashed spaceship buried beneath the flooded swamp. The beast wanders away, uninterested in the inedible metal surface. Then a Biscuit Golem unlocks the mechanism.
The hatch triggers the cryocaps, inadvertently releasing both the ship’s crew and the thing they were transporting. Driven insane by the neverending waking dream of their malfunctioning reefersleep caskets, thirteen Hateful Geese surge out of the ship. Their scientific curiosity and mechanical acumen have degraded into an urge to steal or destroy anything that’s not nailed down. They wreak havoc on the ranch, scaring the animals, stealing and breaking things. Taraza and her cows chase them off into the jungle. They teleport back when she’s not looking.
The Perfect Predator bides its time. Waits until dark before sneaking into the ranch and killing one of Taraza’s animals. The beasts’ death gaze is useless against the stealthy night feeding monster. The mutilated cattle bear strange wounds, geometric scars from alien weaponry and sinister life draining probes.
The Geese keep fucking everything up. The Biscuit Golems treat it like a big joke. The Terror Birds find all their eggs smashed. A voice speaks in the dark, commanding Taraza to KNEEL. SURRENDER. SUBMIT. Her arrows never seem to catch it.
THE BURIED SHIP
The Geese revived at point 13, the Predator was contained at 14. Once the hatch is opened the whole structure starts slowly filling with swamp water. This whole area is full of interactable objects for the players to play with, and for the Golems and Geese to fuck up at the worst possible moment. The Predator can move freely here, crawling through jeffries tubes or fissures in the metal to ambush intruders and escape danger.
Most of the technological devices are nonfunctional, but adventurers can still find
- Paired Reception Needles (Stab one into the eye of a creature, stab one into your eye. You both can see through the paired eyes)
- Extendo-Flag with an alien planet depicted on the cloth
- Solve-It-Thyself Illustrated Repair Manual
- Patented Vanadium Dagger
RANDOM ENCOUNTERS
On the ranch, encounters are either with Taraza, a Catoblepas, a Biscuit Golem, a Hateful Goose or the Perfect Predator. If you roll an encounter with the Predator in broad daylight or a situation it can’t easily sneak up on you then it watches you from concealment, planning an attack for later. An obvious but incredibly nasty play for Hateful Geese and Biscuit Golems is to make lots of noise and provoke the Catoblepas into death-gazing adventurers. Hateful Geese can be baited into appearing with valuable items left unattended or fragile piles easily knocked over.
In the jungle beyond the ranch, use the generic Primeval encounter table with a couple substitutions. Add in the Terror Birds (Flightless Birds from the Hot Plains table) and remove the Troglodytes and Colossal Ape. Add cross-referenced omens. Terror Birds chasing Hateful Geese, dinosaurs getting eviscerated by the Predator, Cavemen munching Biscuit Golems… Since everything went to hell Taraza is always home to defend her animals against attack. If the threats were all dealt with she’d have a 50% chance to be at the ranch or out in the woods doing Ranger stuff.
Inside the spaceship encounters are only with the Predator, Golems and Geese.
In the jungle beyond the ranch, use the generic Primeval encounter table with a couple substitutions. Add in the Terror Birds (Flightless Birds from the Hot Plains table) and remove the Troglodytes and Colossal Ape. Add cross-referenced omens. Terror Birds chasing Hateful Geese, dinosaurs getting eviscerated by the Predator, Cavemen munching Biscuit Golems… Since everything went to hell Taraza is always home to defend her animals against attack. If the threats were all dealt with she’d have a 50% chance to be at the ranch or out in the woods doing Ranger stuff.
Inside the spaceship encounters are only with the Predator, Golems and Geese.
WHY ARE YOU HERE?
…And what are you going to do about it?
- Taraza isn’t scared of monsters. She’s killed scarier monsters before and if the Predator wants to take her unlife, she’ll go to her final death defending what’s hers. But she’s only one woman. She can’t guard the herd, protect the Terror Bird nests, hunt for the source of the Golems, kill all the geese AND venture into the crashed spaceship all at once. She drops an Animal Friendship to befriend a pterosaur and sends it with a message to the nearest trading post, places known to be infested with adventurers looking for work. The offer: a bounty on each Hateful Goose killed, and a big bounty for the Predator.
- The Golem Oven is stupid and inconvenient, but arcane power is arcane power. Whether scrapped for parts or bent to a new purpose, acquired by the players for their own uses or on behalf of a paying customer, it’s a valuable magic item.
- The Cavemen who live in the suppurating jungles of the Lost World are fed up. The bamboo and the forts and the vast sections of jungle slashed and burned for chocolate cultivation by self righteous Grain Clerics were bad enough. Now these assholes are farming smelly death cows that kill everything they look at? It’s too much. Not liking their odds in a straight fight, a coalition of clans pool their resources and hire mercenaries with a payment of gold, gems, feathers, ivory, dinosaur bones, magic items and traditional entheogens. The mission: kill the Catoblepas herd.
- Aside from the occasional form letter Taraza has no contact with her hypothetical liege lord, who never saw fit to notify her of new laws regarding revenue owed from his lands. The adventurers get the contract from the Marquis to collect several years of back taxes, drawing them to the Silent Ranch and into danger.
- The Hateful Geese can be restored to sanity. Magic that heals stat damage will do it, as could strong psychoactive drugs. With their minds intact the Geese are intelligent Lawful Evil space explorers, viciousness tempered by curiosity and strong familial instincts. They show gratitude to the adventurers, the rest of the Lost World inhabitants aren’t so lucky.
- On its homeworld, the Perfect Predator was master of all it surveyed. Like a cave bear on earth, it was worshiped by the intelligent but primitive creatures that peopled the planet. The cavemen of the Lost World are much like the beings it once ruled. Not stupid, but easily awed. Ready to be led, to offer blood sacrifices. If the thing gets tired of terrorizing cattle and branches out to cult recruitment, it could be a real problem for everyone.
Denise Hoffman
THE MAKING OF
I created this dungeon for the FATAL and Friends thread to show off the Monster Overhaul. Users in the thread selected which monsters to include.
- Biscuit Golem
- Catoblepas
- Flightless Bird
- Hateful Goose
- Perfect Predator
I added the Ranger myself. I used the treasure tables from the generic spaceship and from OSE to populate the area.
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