The Hidden Island
Introduction and the feel of the area
This island is always surrounded by fog, leaving its inhabitants living in dim light throughout the day. Visibility is limited to ~15 ft during the day, with total darkness during the night. The local plants are small and black, only adding to the despair of this place. The whole island stinks of rot, it's soil valuable for agriculture if shipped off the island.
The inhabitants of the island are Eternal Lepers kept alive by the temple's Deity as its protectors, and a group of magicians who have abandoned their humanity and given their devotion in return for the Deity's blessing of immortality. They have a friendly rivalry, based around who can provide more bodies for their God. All fear The Worm That Walks, an abomination that arose out of the death created by them.
Both the Noxers as well as the Lepers have ships, which they use to raid surrounding islands, capturing sacrifices for their Deity, in return for its continued blessing. The slaver ships have 2d8 crewpeople, armed with mancatchers, nets and ropes instead of their usual equipment.
Random Encounters (1d4):
- 1d8 Lepers (1! HD, AC as Leather, Damage as Unarmed (save vs supernatural leprosy)) - they will try to pretend to be friendly, only to attack you and Mark you. If at least half of the team is infected, they will try to flee.
- 1d8 Noxers (1 HD, unarmored, Spear (rubbed with shit and dead meat, use infection mechanics), slingshot and 1 MD. Each knows one of these spells: blink, confusion, deafness, dancing lights). They are dark-skinned with black leathery flaps coming off their bodies. They are a bit smaller than a normal human. They do not age, and they fight dirty.
- 2d6 Black Goats (1 HD, unarmored, horns (as mace)) - since goats can survive on anything, this island has quite a population of them. They are completely black, together with their eyes, horns and flesh. They make for good sacrifices for demons.
- The Worm That Walks (7 HD, AC as Plate, Fractal Mandibles (2 attacks as greataxe - those missed still take 3 damage) burrows under the surface of the earth, or walks on it. It was a normal maggot once, but it has never metamorphised - instead, it ate more and more corpses left by the sacrifices in the local temple, and as it is known, you are what you eat. It is now capable of reasoning, and craves more knowledge - thus it can be bribed with it.
Hexes themselves
028.042 Leper's Colony
There are 54 Lepers vegetating here, in untidy houses out of mudbrick made on ancient foundations. The first thing that hits you as you approach is the stench of dead bodies. Only when you see them, you realize that they are in fact still alive. The common areas are dirty, as their sight is bad, with the exception of seeing beauty that hurts them so much. Even so, they hang on to life - they find little joys in singing (their ears are fine, unchanged by The Disease) or playing word games. Their great joy is in Infection, however. They have a herd of 200 black goats which they herd throughout the island. They also have 3 ships, each able to carry 10 people. Among them, mementos of their previous lives and pieces of solace in the current one may be found. Those include:
- A plethora of defaced religious items (20 slots, worth 5 gp each to a museum)
- Pieces of jewellery, now covered in grime (1 slot, 100 GP, or 150 GP if properly cleaned and fixed by a jeweller)
- A set of human skin drums, which when played cause those who hear them to feel no pain.
030.043 Noxer's Burrows
There are 39 Noxers living here, in burrows held together by a canopy of woven black plants. Each Noxer knows their place, and yet has the ambition to go higher. Each is a magician, who has abandoned their mortality with the blessing of the Deity in the temple at 029.042. In the centre of their little hamlet they built an obelisk, on which any new spell they manage to find is inscribed. The obelisk now oozes with black lightning, as the spells breed and fight and live and die. It contains the spells:
- Create Food
- Blink
- Confusion
- Dancing Lights
- Deafness
- Shape Earth
- Haruspicy
Their main source of food is the spell Create Food, but they also have a mushroom farm and fish. Their leader is Ilosk The Sixfingered (3+1! HD, Leather Armour, poisoned dagger (1d4 and save against paralysis after 2 rounds) and Living Net (made out of sinew of a great seabeast, each round attacks as a 3 HD creature, with a hit entangling a person and rendering them incapacitated), 4 MD (knows Counterspell, Shield, Sleep and Blink)) - she calls herself their Mother, but mostly cares about her own further ascension, so that she may learn even more of the secrets of reality. She founded their order and has lived for over 400 years; any tricks you may try to throw at her, she has probably already seen.
029.042 THE TEMPLE OF THE HOLE
This is not a place of honor. The temple is made out of black stone, with stone spikes pertruding out of it. A plaque next to its entrance says "Department Of Abnormalities, Containment Area No. 6" Its center used to be a giant slab out of black stone, but it is cracked open from the outside now, the warnings in dozens of ancient languages around it all disregarded. Inside there is a Deity. IT is not like the new Gods, those who have domains or statblocks. IT demands SACRIFICE. IT offers gifts in return. Those who look into THE HOLE are SACRIFICED. Those who bring them are rewarded - immortality, magical items, lifestock. If IT recieves no SACRIFICES in a solar year, IT begins to send PLAGUES to surrounding people. First on the island, then the surrounding ones, then the whole archipelago, then even further. It gets worse and worse, until it is fed again.
The fog around the island is its doing. In fact, once they catch you, tie you up and throw you into THE HOLE, it is the fog that you will see as you fall.