The Forbidden Island
Introduction and the feel of the area
This island is elevated, surrounded by 50 m cliffs on all sides. Scaling them is hell, due to how slippery they are, and due to all manners of mutated wildlife that covers them (four-winged seagulls that make nests in the nooks and crannies, red moulds with spores so spicy that you can fall due to sneezing and coughing, and so on). That being said, there is a hidden "stairway" out of little holes in the rock, leading up to 007.018. If your players decide to move their ship around the island to find a point of ingress, they will probably find it.
Once you get to the island, it doesn't get much easier. Animals seem to be animated by a strange bloody force, biting and clawing everything that they encounter. Mosquitos are the size of knifes, and plants are constantly covered in thorns. Due to that, all movement speeds are halved during travel on the world map. Even the people you find seem to be terrified and changed by this place, not to mention the beasts that prey upon them.
That being said, the local plants and changed animals contain an entire pharmacopeia that could be extracted out of them by a skilled apothecary, not to mention the dyes and the spices. Foraging is also much easier, as the plants seem to be barely able to provide that much bounty.
Random Encounters (1d6):
- 1d6 foragers (1 HD, unarmored, knifes. Will flee once they see anything else)
- 1 Jawsnapper (4 HD, AC as Leather, 2 sets of jaws (2 attacks per round, damage as greataxes) - a red beast the size of a pig, covered in powerful jaws that can bite off limbs and cauterise them in the same moment. Does not seek to kill, only to maim.
- 1d6 Killer Mosquitos (1 HD, AC as Chain as long as they may move, unarmored otherwise, damage as dagger. After drinking 3 HP worth of blood will fly away) - they always seem to fly towards 008.021 after drinking enough blood - it usually does not kill you.
- 2d4 Jumpers (1 HD, AC as Leather, damage as mace) - dog-sized grasshoppers, whose sounds cause awful pain for any human who hears them (if you do anything else but cover your ears on your round, take 1d6 NON-LETHAL damage). Luckily, they are herbivores, the local people sometimes hunting them down.
- 1d6 Green Gremlinds (1 HD, AC as Unarmored, instead of attacking steals an item and runs, hiding among the plants) - little green creatures shaped out of plants, hiding and following anyone who has anything that could be of danger to their Master. They are thiefs and masters of stealth, stealing and sabotaging other's equipment.
- Reshaped Thrall (3! (supernatural) HD, AC as chain (due to dead flesh), fangs like shortswords) - a creature animated by hunger and cruelty, sent from the Forbidden Fortress to subdue, kill or chase away any intruders. With it, another randomly chosen creature (roll again, ignoring the foragers result). The Reshaped Thrall was once human, and when met with a powerful symbol of virtue it may return to its old form for just a few moments.
Hexes themselves
007.019 Terrorised Village
154 people call this place home, 1/4 of them maimed in some awful way. They are kept in constant fear by the nearby fortress out of black stone, neither living nor dead. They know fear from the moment they are born, seeing their peers maimed and themselves almost drained of blood. They mostly forage for their food, which seems to grow readily on this island, almost as if given to them by a strange force. If one checks their cementery, they can find out that the village has stayed in this state for at least 250 years.
008.021 Forbidden Fortress of Sade
1 Vampire and their 12 Reshaped Thralls (remove each per one from the encounter table killed) call this place home. The Vampire (7! HD, AC as Chain, Armed with an enchanted spear Heartseeker (+3 to hit and damage against humanoids, stores the stolen blood within)) takes the form of a boneless sack of blood, looking like a mix between a leech and a man. He found this island and moved the people over here hundreds of years ago, and spilled his blood over every part of this land, making it his own (using magic so old, that it isn't magic anymore). He can know the approximate location of any group of people moving on the island, as well as slowly change the wildlife. He could spend millenia like that, but he has grown bored - he will gladly hunt The Most Dangerous Game in the form of adventurers, offering them immortality if they manage to survive 3 days on the island, while hunted by him. Otherwise, he mostly kills his time by finding new ways to torture and change the local populace, as well as by composing poetry, painting and watching his Thralls fight.
In his kennels, one may find all the kinds of creatures shown in the encounter table, as well as his next experiments.
In the black fortress you may find:
- 1000 GP in golden items, jewellery and coins from across the ages
- 1000 GP in furniture, rugs and similiar hard to move luxuries
- 20 paintings, using mostly red paint (which is similiar to blood, but is actually just crushed insects) - they depict hunger, beasts, and the flow of life from one to another. They are quite pretty.
- Multiple scrolls of poems, describing how he is a child of the night and deserves to rule over the world. They are mediocre.
- Many strange torture devices, that would be beloved by any prosecutor back on the Continent.
- A cauldron full of ectoplasm, created from drained souls of the local populace. It is modified so that as long as it has the lid on, the souls will not escape. By now, it could be used as a weapon of spiritual mass destruction, as it holds an amalgamation of 1000 souls.