Overview
South Bay is the third largest of the Floenry Islands, a rugged and rocky land characterized by rolling, grass-covered hills and areas of light rainforest. Approximately 200 years ago, a distant empire attempted to colonize the island, establishing a town along its northern bay and bringing in thousands of settlers. However, the poor, rock-laden soil was only suitable for sheep and goat farming. This colonization inadvertently introduced common rodents and tatzelwurms to the ecosystem. These nocturnal, legless, draconic predators and scavengers thrived, quickly infesting the island. Today, the settlement is a rotting ghost town, its settlers long fled, leaving the tatzelwurms as the undisputed lords of their domain.
Geography
The island’s landscape is rugged and rocky, featuring extensive grass-covered, rolling hills and scattered patches of light rainforest. The ruins of an old human settlement are situated along its northern bay. The terrain, particularly the rocky hills and open grasslands, is highly conducive to the tatzelwurm population. The dense jungle areas have the fewest tatzelwurms.
Governance
There is no formal human or civilized governance on South Bay. The island is effectively ruled by its dominant tatzelwurm population. These highly territorial and aggressive creatures control the land, especially at night, making any travel or presence on the island extremely hazardous and subject to their predatory instincts.
Points of Interest
- The Ghost Town
- The decaying remnants of the former human settlement along the northern bay. Its collapsing wooden structures and stone foundations now serve as ideal dark dens and nesting grounds for tatzelwurm packs during daylight hours.
- The Wrecked Ship
- The rotted hull of a pirate galleon, run aground on the rocky shore of the northern bay. Completely reclaimed by the sea and heavily infested by local tatzelwurm and serpent rat packs, its multi-level deck structures are now used as a nesting ground by over a hundred of these creatures.
- The Submerged Vault: Deep within the waterlogged hold sits an iron-banded vault room housing three ancient chests:
- The Chart Chest: Contains waterproof parchment charts of the Floenry archipelago preserved by silver runes etched along the margins.
- The Silver Chest: Holds tarnished silver tableware, gold goblets, and a velvet pouch containing eleven perfect deep-sea pearls (worth 80 gp each in the south, 160 gp in Bizantium or the North).
- The Warded Chest: Inscribed with fading death, pain, and blindness wards, but protected by an active Alarm Ward that screeches deafeningly for ten minutes when the rusted lock is forced, summoning every predator on the beach. Inside lie three Marbles of Transformation (expanding into silk climbing rope, a silver-edged cutlass, and a battleaxe) and the infamous Lion Headdress of Yin-Sloth.
Notes
Habitat and Ecology
- Tatzelwurms & Serpent Rats: These legless, draconic predators and nocturnal serpent rats are the dominant co-species. They are most abundant in the rocky hills, open grasslands, the abandoned ghost town, and the nearby shipwreck. They are least common in the dense jungle areas.
- Pack Dynamics: Tatzelwurms and serpent rats are highly territorial and aggressive, forming packs ranging from two dozen to as many as eighty individuals. These packs roam the land, conducting ferocious night-hunts that make no traveler safe.
- Diet: Their primary diet consists of lizards, small rodents, and birds’ eggs.
- Local Wildlife: In addition to the tatzelwurms, the island supports typical Floenry chain wildlife, including white-tailed deer, monkeys, small rodents, lizards, snakes, and birds. Notably, South Bay is entirely free of larger apex monsters like drakes or wyverns, allowing the tatzelwurms to fill that ecological niche.
The Lion Headdress of Yin-Sloth
Found within the warded chest of the wrecked galleon, this masterwork marble headdress depicts a roaring, noble lion with archaic glyphs carved across the brow: Mystic Knowledge (Corrupt), The Sun (Vitality), Duality (Good and Evil), and Directed Power.
- Physical Nature: While heavy (20 lbs) in hand, once donned it becomes light as a feather, molding perfectly to the wearer’s skull with narrow, menacing eye slits.
- Boon & Might: The headdress grants supernatural physical strength (+5 to melee damage), 30 temporary Hit Points, nightvision (60 ft), absolute immunity to toxins and magical clouds, and allows the wearer to cast six innate occult spells daily (tongues, water to wine, decipher writing, darkness, and self-healing).
- The Insidious Curse:
- Consuming Paranoia: The wearer develops an obsessive dread of losing the mask or being betrayed by companions. Within weeks, they will violently refuse to ever remove it.
- Alignment Inversion: Every time a spell is cast from the headdress, the bearer’s moral alignment inverts to its diametric opposite (e.g., principled/good warps into sadistic/evil; selfish shifts into fanatical).
- Grotesque Wither: The mask drains the wearer’s physical beauty, rotting their appearance month by month until their flesh becomes a withered, terrifying husk.
The Annals of Bletherad: The Four Masks & The Jester's Curse
According to ancient theological treatises preserved in the Library of Bletherad on Y-Oda, the elder jungle gods—Pith the Snake God, Tark the Spider Goddess, Ippotomi the Water Goddess, and Lopnel the Red God—originally forged four sacred headdresses to empower mortal champions against the demon-god Yin-Sloth.
Amused by their efforts, Yin-Sloth crafted his own crocodile mask, and then forged six parody masks in the likeness of a “noble lion.” He cast them into the world as a cruel jest—endowing mortal heroes with intoxicating godlike might while inexorably poisoning their souls into monstrous tyrants. The mask on South Bay is one of these six lost relics.
Historical Context
Two centuries ago, the island’s poor soil and the inadvertent introduction of tatzelwurms led to the failure of a colonial settlement, driving out the human inhabitants and leaving the island to be overrun by the draconic predators.