Lanka
One city plagues this otherwise tropical paradise. The city of Lanka (on the Island of Lanka) is inhabited by pirates, dealers in narcotics and slaves, and one corrupt gold mining organization which vie for power to control the dilapidated piers. The interior of the island is covered in impassable jungle covering steep ridges.
The Superheroes visited Lanka. From the notes:
The sounds of a busy market can be heard outside. Fresh tuna! Strong Whiskey! Exotic Spices! Black Lotus, Stygian, the best! Lizard-on-a-stick!
You are near the end of a broad pier, amidst throngs of colorfully-garbed, doe-eyed, brown-skinned humans actively engaged in the buying and selling of various goods, from fruit to spices to liquor to opiates to slave-girls to arrowheads and fishhooks. The people who glance at you look fleetingly concerned, but quickly go back to their transactions.
Large merchant vessels are moored at either side of the pier, with gangplanks guarded by burly shirtless sailors.
A tropical sun blazes overhead, and the humid air carries the smell of salt spray, dead fish, and woodsmoke.
On shore, a large town of shoddily constructed 2 and 3 story buildings is cloaked with woodsmoke. Beyond, steep ridges carpeted in green rain forest rise up over 3000'.
Lanka is run by the Syndicate, made up of leaders from the mining company, the shipping company (pirates, mostly) and the merchant's guild (local purveyors of booze, drugs, slaves). The interior? Much too dangerous for men... if the killer monkeys and tigers don't get you, the giants will.
Upon entry into the crowded muddy streets, in which elephants pull loads of freshly felled huge old-growth logs, babbling herdsmen swat their goats through the crowd, and near-naked children knock over merchant carts filled with fly-covered tropical fruits and meats...
The city has an uneasy truce with the fog giants of the interior swamplands. The giants lay claim to the silver and gold mines, and trade with the city for liquor and cows. A threat hangs over the town: one giant is equal to a hundred men. Kill one of us, we kill 100 of you.
Questions about a Temple: Some people have heard that once native peoples once lived inland and might have had temples, but that hundreds of years ago, they disturbed a resident dragon, who wiped them out. In the subsequent centuries, travelers founded the city of Lanka here and began trading with the giants.
Questions about the giants: They live over the ridge, and are always drunk. They own the mines now, and men are forbidden to trespass. And men are forbidden to kill giants, even those that become violent in town. The truce says for each giant killed, the giants will kill 100 men.
Questions about the jungle: Far too dangerous – man-eating monkeys and tigers plague the forest, and besides the 10-year truce with the giants says that they own the interior.
Questions about the mines: Fifteen miles inland, at the foot of a great extinct volcano, the mines were started by men, but frequent raids by giants led to bloody skirmishes that persisted for decades. Now, truce keeps them drunk and mostly peaceful.
The Oracle: Five days after the party's arrival, at Syndicate Headquarters (a mildew-stinking wooden building with no decoration or insignia), a clerk takes bids for sessions with The Oracle. (Bids of 1000+ gp or magic items will ensure a reservation.)
The Oracle is an ancient old Swami in rags, and men carry him out atop what appears to be a 10' beetle shell.
On the far west edge of town (farthest from the coast) is the smelter facility. This primitive and massive structure allows giants to dump loads of ore into a huge pile, that laboring men then shovel onto a conveyor belt powered by three cows walking in a circle, swatted by boys with sticks. The belt drops the ore into the massive iron smelter pot, a 20' high cylinder. Molten low-grade gold and silver run out the bottom into stone ingot molds. When one is filled, two laborers lift the 4'x4'x6” stone blocks on two poles and move them aside to a cooling facility. Other laborers shovel coal and logs into an opening near the smelter's base and oxen pull the gears which open and close giant bellows.
One giant-sized leather sack of ore earns four gallon-sized ceramic jugs of cheap overproof rum, or one cow. The giants are mostly drunk, and will sometimes get into squabbles.
A broad and muddy path leads through a few hundred yards of stumps into the thick rain forest. Four-foot water-filled footprints stomp 2' deep both directions in the reddish mud.
The giants' path is about the only way to navigate the thick rainforest vegetation. Giant ferns and other prehistoric plants clog ground travel, and conceal deep pools of wet rotting vegetation in a sort of stinking quicksand goo. Towering 200' broad-leafed trees, covered in hanging vines, completely block the sky.
The trail is obvious (having been used by giants for a decade+), wide and deep, with deep mud puddles. Travel is at half normal rate. Impossible for pack animals or carts. Giants, of course, have no problem with it. When it rains (every afternoon), it basically becomes a river, stopping humans altogether. Grab a tree and pray.
To get to the interior basin is a 4-day journey on foot.
Giant dragonflies buzz about.
Deadly plants can be found if the party leaves the path. (After a few hundred years without the natives killing these plants, now they thrive..)
From the top of the 4th ridge (one per day for humans), the interior basin can be seen. Mornings, the entire basin is shrouded in mist until the afternoon sun and breeze blow it away. Then, the rains come.
A lake is below, at the base of a dormant volcano, topped by mist. Covered in green. Even at this distance, some 10 miles off, the mine near the bottom can be seen.
At the bottom of the basin, the path degenerates into a swampy marsh. Along the perimeter of the marsh, tree trunks have been stood up like flag poles and decorated with cow and bull (and some su-monster) skulls 40' up.
Travel on foot across the marsh is even slower going, sinking up to the knee or sometimes chest, and in the morning mists the party should feel quite vulnerable. Naturally the fog giants don't mind splashing about – it only comes to their ankles or occasionally shins.
The giants live in lean-tos made of massive old-growth logs against a rock wall at the base of the volcano. The logs are decorated with silver wire wrapped round in spirals and crude designs.
They own the jungle, and will attack humans on sight.
Within are snake and panda skins, as well as weapons and trinkets of silver and barrels of rum. Several horribly hung-over giants.
Leader is Ga-Ur, an elderly fellow who remembers the dragon raids a couple hundred years ago (nobody else does – for them the dragon is a bogeyman, capable of breathing fire, ice, turning you to stone, breathing acid, you name it, going invisible, stealing your soul, etc)
Killing the dragon is 'one last thing' so Ga-Ur can relax. It plagues his conscience that he was not able to stop the dragon's raids.
The dragon: Magla-Maduri
At the base of a huge egg-shaped rock is the entrance to the ancient temple, covered in moss and vines. (cave of a gorgimera), and ghost of the shaman resides in anguish... and once held one of the Luma Stones.
Location: Map 14
