OSE Encounter Activities Test Drive: Shadowdance of the Lizard Corsairs

Walter Martishius

Lizard pirates sail to a secluded cove and hatch a sinister plan at an ancient temple. The local wildlife doesn’t cooperate.

1: The Leadbelly, a little carrack stolen by the Lizard corsair Sazerac and his crew of 25 LIZARDMEN. The reptiles are equipped with a mix of traditional weapons and firearms, along with a big bucket of +1 magic bullets needed for a later stage of the operation.

Locked in the captain’s quarters: Zangaretta the NORMAL HUMAN, a ballet dancer kidnapped by the corsairs. As a traveling entertainer she’s accustomed to abuse and hardship, the lizards actually treat her better than some lords whose halls she’s performed at. They normally slice limbs off captives to eat but they need her in one piece for the ritual dance. They don’t even chain her up, letting her stretch and move around the cabin.

The ship carries ten small bronze cannons (five on each side) and 9,260 GP in coffee, chocolate and tobacco stolen from merchant ships. The ship’s mobility is restricted in the cove and it has trouble aiming a broadside at shore targets.

Per the rolled encounter activity, the Lizards are skimming scum off boiling water because they’re running out of fresh water, reduced to clumsily purifying less than safe liquids for consumption.

2: The reason the Lizardmen can’t row ashore: a GIANT SQUID swans around underwater, waiting for the Lizardmen to lower longboats so it can capsize them and eat the inhabitants. The cephalopod is smart enough to stay submerged at a depth that, even in the shallow water, protects it from musket fire. It carries 329 GP in its digestive system.

The Lizards could just beach the ship and the Squid couldn’t do anything, but the oddly regular rock formations on shore would tear up the hull and prevent them leaving.

3: Beach with triangular rock formations. A HERD of 19 wild Buffalo normally eat delicious plants at the water’s edge, but have been scared back by the Giant Squid trying to pull them in with its tentacles.
 

4: Temple entrance. Pyramid sticking out of hillside. Heavy doors unlocked.

5: Temple lobby. A congregation of 6 SHADOWS wait in the dark, converging behind intruders after the doors swing shut to block their escape and lifedrain them. This is why the Lizards carry the magic bullets, their swords can’t harm the incorporeal beings.

6: Treasure room of Lizard grave goods. 4,000 GP in decorative urns of tasty spices, little forks and knives for carving humanoid flesh, collars and chains for managing captives…

7: Shadow egg. Enormous fuligin black ovoid absorbs all light. Any shadows killed slowly respawn here, beading off the egg. Those who touch the egg are sucked in and destroyed as per Sphere of Annihilation.

Hatching the egg requires a ritual dance, whose movements are shown on the walls in bas reliefs highlighted by the harsh antilight of the egg. The Lizards lack the grace to perform the dance. Traditionally they used mammalian slaves for the task, hence the kidnapping of the Coryphée.

If the ritual dance is performed, the egg sucks every Lizardman in the room into its bulk and hatches an inky black Tyrannosaurus Rex. Immune to nonmagical damage and possessed of the corsairs’ vicious cunning, the tyrant lizard smashes its way out of the temple. The dancer runs for the ship but doesn’t make it.

THE MAKING OF

I made this to demonstrate the OSE Encounter Activities to the FATAL and Friends thread. I randomly chose five encounters.

• Herd Animal (large) Happily wading to feast on duckweed covered, tender Lily Pads
• Lizard Man Skimming and saving the sludge off boiling water
• The Normal Human entry has a table for careers and a separate table for personality details. Our Normal Human is a Jaded Coryphée.
• Shadow Receding under a door in search of prey
• Squid, Giant Spreading terror aboard a Troop [Ship]

The real prize in this module is the ship itself. A troopship with ten cannons is worth more than the rest of the treasure combined. I got the idea for the special egg from the first Fear & Hunger, where dinosaurs were actually lizardmen from a primordial age who used a cursed magic item to transform themselves into demigods. Their primitive brains conceptualized ultimate power as being a bigger lizard, so it made them into Tyrannosaurs and Pteranodons.