Chapter 2: Gazetteer of tal’Dorei 97shalesteps aDventures
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For low-level characters: The Shalestep village of Pud-
dlefoot has never had anything remarkable happen to
it. People there are quiet and simple, with no interest in
tales of great heroics. No great adventures have ever come
to their rocky shore... until the whale. The dead whale,
bloated with corruption, its white hide covered in oozing
green lesions, is a source of fear for the nearby townsfolk.
What happened to this behemoth? And why is Rill the
Hermit ranting about seeing tall shadows spying on Pud-
dlefoot from the mountain peaks?
Visa Isle
About 40 miles off the coast of the Bladeshimmer Shore-
line, west of the Verdant Expanse, two islands belch clouds
of black smoke into the open sky. Visa Isle and its smaller
sister island have been surrounded by rumors and sailors’
legends since the dawn of human civilization. Some say
that every night, the island burns to ash—giving the island
its distinctive orange glow—and every day new trees grow
to maturity by sundown. It is an island of fire and death.
Those who have explored its dense jungles and returned
claim only to have found common wild pigs and—at
worst—unusually large fire beetles and mantises. They
were the lucky ones. They didn’t wander unprepared
into the Ruins of Vos’sykriss, and did not encounter the
serpentine spirits that haunt its elder halls. The only
expedition to have ventured into the Ruins of Vos’sykriss
and lived to speak of it returned to Emon just as Thordak
and the Chroma Conclave descended upon the city. Their
leader, a half-orc professor of archaeology and spirit-
speaker named Jorlund Vohr, survived the destruction of
Emon, but all his notes and the stone tablets he recovered
were dissolved along with his apartment by Umbrasyl’s
acid. He longs to return to Visa Isle and is desperately
trying to get funding from the Alabaster Lyceum.visa isle aDventures
a DorMant thre at
For mid-level characters: In ancient times, Vos’sykriss
was the seat of an serpentfolk empire that dominated
southern Tal’Dorei. Before the battles of the Calam-
ity, seers within the empire had visions of the coming
destruction and desperately sought a way to survive it.
The serpents constructed a magical field of perfect stasis
beneath their city and chose their strongest and most
powerful to slumber and rebuild the empire when the
danger had passed. Those that perished in the Calamity
haunt the ruins of their ancient city as ghosts, eager to
take revenge on the living for destroying their glorious
empire. When Jorlund Vohr’s expedition delved into
Vos’sykriss’s deepest sanctum, they unwittingly ended
the serpents’ ancient spell and awakened the Sleepers.
Soon, a people long thought extinct will return to claim
the world as their own.