ACT 8: THE FORBIDDEN ISLE

Crypto Sword & Magic

Published in

Crypto Sword & Magic

5 min readNov 9, 2019

The venomous penal colony in the south bay

SYNOPSIS

The house of mankind’s congressional library archive myriads of books on historical events, which include a record on an island that was forbidden and forgotten for centuries. The ancient record was just recently found by a librarian and sent to the house leader for review.

The record dates back to the ancient times when the empire was ruled by a wise emperor Khuppa, the father of infamous king Kafra. Under Khuppa, the empire prospered. The market was full of rich foods and wines and the capital city’s sprawling streets were filled with laughter and bustling with activity as visitors and merchants from all over the world come to marvel at its high cultures and breathtaking landmarks.

For decades, King’s command kept the city safe by strict policing. Sentinels were all over the city to maintain order by arresting all criminals, thieves, and phony alchemists. The capital penitentiary soon became filled with these intractable outlaws. Thus, Khuppa had to find a way to make space. He decided to exile these criminals to a far-flung penal colony.

The script writes that the penal colony was decided to be an island located in the South bay. The isle that has long been known by the seamen but was not explored previously due to its isolation from the outside by the cold, strong, tremendous currents of the waters of the south bay. The isle was known to be teeming with rocky terrain, thick fogs, toxic fauna, and thickets of mangroves. Particularly, putrid swamps were found all across the untamed island, unwelcoming to the outsiders.

Before the transport ship leaves the capital for the island, one of the convicts infiltrated and burglarized the king’s chamber. He took the king’s precious world stone and onboarded the ship the next day. No one noticed the incidents by then.

The ancient script depicts the landing of the convicts was quite spectacular. The band of convicts rushed into the murky mangrove forest to find foods. They thought they could tame nature but that was an utter misjudgment. It took only a few hours for the transporting wardens to realize that something went wrong. The script writes that the wardens heard screeching screams of the convicts echoing over the foggy forest which soon became muted by the spine-chilling howls. Feared, Wardens escaped the island dementedly.

A few days later, king Khuppa realized about the stolen world-stone from his chamber. Khuppa hurriedly dispatched king's guards led by lord commander Espen to the island to retrieve the heirloom.

The document writes that, a few days later, a small vessel returned to the port with Espen himself onboard, shattered and broken. He was the only survivor of the expedition.

His account of his experience on the island was brutal. He said, his soldiers were slaughtered by eerie monsters residing in the bogs. He continued to lay out what he had witnessed. Many of his brave soldiers poisoned, haplessly incapacitated by the most venomous reptiles on earth and eaten raw by huge Vodyanoys often risen suddenly from swamps. Ogre tribes ambushed and slain the knights.

The most startling was his encounter with a monstrous creature at the heart of the island. Espen said he saw the unimaginable scene at the deepest part of the island. Arrived the cave at the center of the island, Espen lowered the glow of his torch’s flame down to the bog only to descry unbelievable sights. There were shattered livers, jagged veins, tears of fabrics, sunken chest, rotting skulls of the convicts floating all over the noxious dark water.

Maddened by the scene, Espen said he slowly craned his neck and faced numerous eyes staring down at him. When he lifted the torch, he clearly saw a three-headed dragon coiling over the world-stone stolen from the king’s chamber. This massive creature is later known as “Hydra”. As soon as he realized the situation he is into, he ran to the shore without turning back. When he reached the shoreline, he could find a canoe and sailed north to the capital.

Khuppa heard about the incidents from Espen and became aghast. Reckoning it would be pointless to attempt to retrieve the world-stone from this savage island which devoured most of his brave fighters, he declared the island as a forbidden territory and completely banned the entry. Thereafter, no one ever stepped into the island and the place was lost from peoples’ memory until the ancient document resurfaced in the congressional library.

When the heroes came back from the mystic forest, there stood the house leader holding the ancient document at his right hand. He mentioned his concern about the world-store hidden in the island being seized by some evil forces, which would jeopardize the fate of entire mankind. He called upon the heroes to conquer the island and bring back the precious stone to the custody.

A ship has just already arrived at the port to transport heroes to the forbidden island. Heroes, now it is the time to sail to the forbidden island and retrieve the world-stone from the realm of the prime evils!