The Corruption of Pelursk

is a Pocket Dungeon,
written and designed
by Shel Kahn,
published in 2018.

This dungeon would not have existed

without the advice and assistance
of Chris Huth and Jonathan Lavallee.
Development Edit by Will Jobst.

Typeset in Volkhov, printed in Canada.

All content © Shel Kahn, 2018.

Learn more about Pocket Dungeons at

pocketdungeons.portablecity.net

Index:
Pelursk is an island. pg 1
Approaching Black Lake. pg 2
Pelurskite Crystals. pg 3
Mac Asgrel's Manor-house. pg 4
Exploring the Town of Black Lake. pg 8
At the Shore of the Black Lake. pg 12
The Belinn. pg 13
The Next Day. pg 20
The Isle of Pelursk. pg 23
The Hex Crawl. pg 25
HEXES: pg 27
GHOSTS: pg 30
RUINS: pg 35
ISLAND ATTACKS: pg 39
The Centre of the Island. pg 43
The Pelurskite King. pg 47
Fighting the King. pg 51
Escaping the Island. pg 53
Pelursk is an Island.
For as long as anyone has known, it’s been
the source for a widely traded and highly
valuable kind of magical crystal. Usually
white, glowing, emitting a steady warmth,
mysteriously linked to each other through
unknowable resonance, and lasting for
months, sometimes even years, before finally
crumbling away, pelurskite crystals are the
kind of spell component you’ll never afford
but always dream of having. Legend has it
they have been used for all sorts of miracles:
to create complex magical tools to access
dangerous spells safely; to bridge or bond
separate schools of magic together into
grand workings; even to communicate with
the dead without risk. Wizards, sorcerers,
immolators, illusionists, clerics and honestly
any magic user worth their stuff knows that
pelurskite is the answer to all their problems
—and that some of the greatest magical
works of the civilized world exist only thanks
to it.

Your characters have heard this too, and for

their own reasons desperately want to get
their hands on some pelurskite. Unable to
source any for easy access elsewhere, they’ve
bribed, cajoled, researched and/or sneaked
and finally made their way to the town of
1
Black Lake, on the shores of, you’ve got it, the
Black Lake, in the centre of which is found
Pelursk Island.

Black Lake is a small town, really more of a

village of 400 souls, a few days’ travel from
anywhere else. If it weren’t for the Isle of
Pelursk, this town wouldn’t exist—the land
around here isn’t particularly fertile, there’s
only a little good pasture, and the Black Lake
itself doesn’t produce much by way of edible
fish as it’s barely connected to other
waterways and naturally somewhat stagnant.
Residents drink well-water rather than water
from the Black Lake, and the nearest good
fishing site is two days travel along the wolf
and bear infested roadways.

It’s wild country, the road is not guarded,

though surprisingly well maintained, and it
wasn’t easy to get there, but your characters
made it! It’s just dusk, now, and the light is
fading from the sky as you approach.

Approaching Black Lake.

As you approach, you see that the town feels

quite ramshackle, the twisted wood of the
local windswept pines framing awkward
stone buildings and making up the
permanently warped sheds and docks. Two
main roads twist through the town, one
connecting to the trade road you came in on,
2
the other running parallel to the shore of the
Black Lake itself. A few smaller footpaths
wind through the houses, workshops and
stables.

Flawed blue pelurskite crystals are tied to

poles along the two main roads of town and
out along the trade route, lighting the way
for the approach of travelers. Each building
shines from inside with a warm glow, which
the most well-read character realizes must be
from f lawed yellow pelurskite crystals.

Pelurskite Crystals.
Legendarily, pelurskite crystals are pure
white, perfectly balanced between light and
heat in their output because they are
flawless, which is the state in which they will
work miracles. Flawless crystals are rare,
though, and much more readily available are
the flawed specimens. Flawed pelurskite can
lean towards light-production, glowing more
bluish than white and feeling cool to the
touch, or towards heat-production, tinted a
dimmer, warmer yellow and capable of
producing enough warmth to heat a home.

3
Mac Asgrel's Manor-house.
On a hill, a bit outside the town and
overlooking the trade road, stands a finely
built stone manor-house. The iron fence
around it is rusted and rotting, but the house
itself looks finely decorated, with a well-
maintained garden that stands in contrast to
the twisted trees in the wild land beyond it.
The architecture seems relatively old
—possibly several centuries old. Blue
pelurskite crystals, huge ones, sit in sconces
on either side of the twisted iron gate,
casting strange shadows, and a much dimmer
yellow one is half-immersed in a fountain in
the front yard, creating a gentle steam from
the water in the cool air of dusk.

Inside this glorious mansion you find the

richest person in town, a well-dressed older
merchant whose family has lived here,
judging from the age of the house, for
centuries. This merchant, Mac Asgrel, is
incredibly formal with you when you come
calling, and he has a very cold gaze, his blue
eyes seeming older somehow than his mid-
sixties complexion. He’s wearing a smoking
gown in a striking blue and yellow tartan,
has a few visible chains of fine metals
hanging around his neck, and defers any
offers of handshakes with a calm wave of his
hand. He doesn’t seem to have any family
here anymore, referring in passing to his
children having moved away to bigger towns

4
or taking over the trade route aspect of the
business, and he answers the door himself,
telling you that his hired help has gone home
for the night.

If you approach Mac Asgrel asking to buy

pelurskite, he’ll laugh. There’s a long stone
barn behind the manor, securely locked with
no windows, where he usually keeps the
specimens for trade, and Asgrel takes you to
show you its bare floor and shelves. He tells
you it’s emptied every month or two,
depending on how quickly traders can get
back and forth from Black Pond. These
traders who ship it to arcane market haven’t
been back since they last came for a pickup, a
little over a month ago, and now in the whole
village there are only the hot or bright
specimens folks use in their homes—highly
flawed and thus magically useless.

Asgrel’s having a rough month, he seems

short on patience and poorly rested. He will
offhandedly mention the corruption of the
wild crystals and the strange absence of Orig
but if you try and ask questions he realizes
you don’t know yet, and becomes reluctant to
tell you anything further. With some careful
charm, flattery and verbal caution, your party
might be able to get him to admit he is afraid
that if the crystals from the Isle of Pelursk are
done, then he and his business are done as
well, and the huge network of people that he
has working for him shipping and selling
these crystals around the world will come
5
crashing to the ground and then running
back to Black Lake for answers.

He lets slip that he blames Orig, but when

you press him he is reticent to tell you much
about him. He describes the man as a
tortured soul who cared very much for “the
island”; he says he was very serious about his
duty to the town and never married, focusing
instead on his job. He lets slip that Orig may
be on the island. When you ask him why no
one else has been sent to find Orig on the
island, he looks horrified at the suggestion. He
tells you that the island is sacred ground, and
also terribly unsafe for those who haven’t had
the correct preparation, and not to be
blasphemed by the touch of an uneducated
soul, and can’t be understood by the layman
and outsider, and so forth.

It’s not impossible to convince him that

someone needs to check it out, but it’s really
clear that he won’t send any of the villagers,
and he obviously won’t go himself - that
suggestion in particular makes his eyes
widen and take on a panicked sheen. Very
careful characters who roll well on high-level
CHA tests might be able to convince him that
he should let them go check the island.
Without that successful roll, though, he
insists you just go looking for Orig’s boat,
and don’t actually go ashore. He can’t
reiterate enough that it is both sacred ground
and utterly deadly.

6
Characters with skills to detect lies, or other
advanced social skills can roll on a mid-level
challenge to realize that he finds the idea of
you going to the island abhorrent—in a way
that makes you feel like he’s keeping a secret.
If you call him out on this, he cuts you off
immediately and tells you that you should
just get out of town, saying that there’s no
pelurskite here for you.

If anyone casts detect magic or a similar skill,

they realize there is pelurskite here—a small
and incredibly flawless crystal, glowing
gently underneath his silk undershirt on a
length of silver chain. He will admit, when
pressed, that he keeps one of the best crystals
for himself, for the “fun” of it. He brags
about how long it has lasted, and tells you
that he believes it’s keeping him young. This
might be a joke, or he might be much, much
older than he looks—mid-level WIS or similar
rolls will tell you that it seems possible that
pelurskite could indeed be used to grant
longevity. If anyone makes a move to try and
relieve him of that crystal against his will,
Asgrel is able to immediately cast teleport on
himself, disappearing while laughing at the
idiots who think they can steal his pelurskite.

Regardless of if you are going to go with

Asgrel’s blessing or if you intend to sneak
onto the island, you’re going to need a boat.
And since the one boat allowed on the island
is gone, you’ll need to make one yourself or
hire a carpenter in town.
7
As your party leaves the manor-house and
approaches the town of Black Lake, you notice
an increasingly strong, unpleasant smell in
the air. You see that the town is cloaked in a
low lying mist, with a strange, yellowish tinge
to it. The smell, unavoidable the closer you
get, seems to combine the sulfurous rot of
swamp water with the uncomfortable acidic
smell of burnt bones, hair or feathers. It
might make everyone’s eyes water, depending
on a mid-level CON challenge.

Exploring the Town of Black Lake.

In town, the people don’t seem to be very
busy. Older women and men sit around on
blue-lit front porches, mending baskets,
patching clothes, whittling small wooden
frames that are meant to hold the glowing
pelurskite crystals the region is known for.
People don’t reach out to talk to you.

Younger folk are huddled in groups under

the blue glow of pelurskite, looking
somewhat disturbed and secretive. They are
visibly unhappy to see outsiders, glaring at
you or pointedly ignoring you as you walk
by. There’s a suspicious and superstitious
aura to everyone’s faces.

8
Exploring the town means rolling on mid-to-
high level CHA tests or related skills to reassure
people that you’re safe to talk to. Older folks
want to know you’re polite and respectful of
their small eccentric town, younger folk need
to be assured you mean no harm and aren’t
going to be too demanding. It’s possible to roll
badly and make a villager quite angry with you,
raising the difficulty on getting them or any
witnesses to your argument to talk. However,
with successful rolls and an aura of
trustworthy blue-collar-ness, you can get a
few townsfolk talking.

Asking folks in town if you can buy

pelurskite, a few of the optimists will offer to
sell you their f lawed pieces, but no one has
any f lawless pelurskite at all. They have no
use for f lawless pelurskite in town—no one
here works magic - so as soon as it’s found
it’s sold to the merchant in the manor-house,
Mac Asgrel, to be picked up and traded far
away.

Asking about where the pelurskite comes

from, you learn that the shore of the lake
used to be littered with glowing pelurskite
crystals, and most of the town supported
themselves by gathering bushels of the most
beautiful and flawless specimens and selling
them to Mac Asgrel. Small f lawed crystals
were usually kept to light and heat their own
homes. It also becomes obvious that what
Asgrel has been paying the townsfolk for the
crystals is the tiniest fraction of where you’ve
9
heard the academic and arcane markets have
set the price. If Mac Asgrel was sharing his
pelurskite wealth with this town, you guess
that folks could all have their own horses and
houses of twice the size.

It’s clear that folks here rarely leave the town

of Black Lake—they don’t seem to trust your
assessment of the outside worth of pelurskite
crystals. There is a small-town response
among the children especially to outsiders.
If anyone has small trinkets or books to sell,
there are a lot of kids ready to buy or barter,
though almost all of them have no money.
Giving children gifts will make quick friends
of them and their parents, but might make
other townsfolk, especially younger adults,
sour about shameless tourists.

If you try to figure out when the crystals on

the shores of the Black Lake went “bad”, you
first learn from townsfolk that no one really
knows much about how they arrive on the
lake’s shoreline in the first place. Older folks
talk about the crystals like a gift from the
gods, and younger adults seem embittered
by their ignorance, resentful of the mystery
of the crystals and their inability to do
anything about this crisis.

One thing everyone agrees on is that they

come from the Isle of Pelursk—which is
treated by all the townsfolk as if it is sacred
ground.

10
Only one person, Orig Mandergorn, is
actually allowed to go to the island, and only
he is even allowed to have a boat in the
waters of the Black Lake. And both he and his
boat are missing.

You can see from the folks nearby who are

casually listening in on your conversation
that this is the biggest gossip in town, but at
least to your faces all the townspeople are
trying to be optimistic.

Some speculate that they’re all in trouble

because this man has failed to “feed” the
island and that's why things have gone bad.
Once a month, Orig rows over to the island
with a boat full of all the animal bones the
village produces, and there, people say, he
buries them in the soil. Or perhaps he burns
them on a ceremonial pyre, or maybe he
throws them into a deep well at the very
centre of the island. Everyone has a different
theory as to why this is necessary and how it
actually works to support the crystal growth,
but everyone is certain that’s what happens
and that without the bones, the crystals are in
trouble.

The odd thing, though, is that he said he fed

the island just two days before he
disappeared, and yet almost immediately
after his disappearance the crystals arriving
on shore became strange, stained with red, and
much too hot.

11
At the Shore of the Black Lake.
You discover the source of the smell. The
shoreline is ringed with crumbling crystals,
a dirty yellow colour streaked through with
deep red veining, all of them emitting a huge
amount of heat. The shoreline has ripples in
the air from the heat of the heaps of crystals
and the piles of cooked bugs and amphibians
tells you how lethal their temperature is.

The water of the lake itself is slowly boiling,

swollen bubbles rising and churning the
surface, and you can see that the water level
is already lower than normal from the
residue on the shore. Touching the crystals or
the water will burn, roll damage dice from 1d4
for dipping your hand in the water, up to 1d20
for full-body immersion.

12
The Belinn.
It’s fully dark now, and you need meals and
warm places to sleep regardless of what your
next move is. Back in town, there’s only one
place with spare room for all of you, the
home of Linn, Belo and Agi Belinn, known as
the Belinn. It’s an oversized house within the
town proper, possibly once a small manor
itself, converted into a pub and small inn. Lit
and heated by warm yellow pelurskite
crystals hanging from the ceiling in wooden
lanterns, the smell of roast sheep, stewed
vegetables, and pan-cooked flatbread fills the
air of the common dining room. This
comfortable establishment is run by a
marital trio of women who live there and
raise their kids together. Polygamy is typical
in this region - larger families can afford and
maintain larger properties or businesses,
and this certainly isn’t the only queer
romance in town.

Locals seem to have a lot of respect for the

Belinn family and their many children, with
a sizable crowd out front in the pelurskite-lit
dusk smoking pipes and discussing Agi, Linn
and Belo like they are pillars of the
community. The pub part of the building is
bustling when you enter. As outsiders you’re
quickly spotted by the owners and
approached.

13
Linn is quiet and helpful, pale and graying;
Belo is friendly and loud with a pink
complexion and a curly brown mop of hair,
and Agi is the most serious and suspicious of
the bunch, her short white hair somehow
making her face look a little more worn than
the rest, as if she mostly works outside.

Between the three of them, you can quickly

get assigned rooms for the night—the rooms
are a little cheaper than you’d pay in a big
town, but quite comfortable. Their
acceptance of your presence seems to relax
some of the more suspicious townspeople.

They can connect you, at your request, with

the town’s best carpenter, Dorma. He’s a
middle-aged man with rough working hands,
drinking a hot, brewed tea with a collection
of youths all in workshop aprons, signing to
them as they have a serious discussion.
Dorma is deaf, so characters can roll a mid-
level WIS check or relevant skill to speak the
regional sign language—the higher the
success, the more fluent they are. Dorma can
lip-read, but if no one can succeed at the
fluency roll, you’ll need to pay or convince
one of his apprentices to interpret for you.

Dorma usually builds furniture from the

twisted wood in this region, but assures you
he can craft a boat. If you convince him with
charisma or verbal skill that you’re trying to
save the crystals, he and his apprentices seem
to heave a sigh of relief. He tells you that
14
saving the crystals would save the town—if
they’re gone for good, he and his workshop
would have to relocate to be able to pay the
bills. Play your cards right and get him and
his many apprentices to have faith in your
ability to do this, and he’ll even build the boat
for free.

Sitting in the pub for dinner, joining a few

locals for a simple card game, or sitting out
front for a smoke with Agi and her friends,
you can eavesdrop (mid-level Sneaking rolls) or
engage in conversation (mid-level Charisma
rolls) to learn a few things.

Sitting in the pub for dinner:

• Locals keep asking Belo when her oldest

daughter Margi will be back. She used to
work in the Belinn and was a community
favourite for her smarts and strong sense
of what was right, but she earned the
attention and respect of Mac Asgrel and
he ended up sponsoring her to go away to
study - folks can’t remember if it was
politics or magic, but something
important. Now she’s been gone for years
and the whole town misses her.

• Belo is pretty affected by mention of

Margi - she honestly looks like she’s
outright grieving her at mention of her
name. When other folks comfort her with
“oh she’ll be home again once she’s read
all their books” she brushes them off and
15
 goes to collect herself in the kitchen. She
won’t discuss it further, and Agi and Linn
shake their heads, acting confused at
Belo’s strong response. Savvy characters
can tell Agi’s faking it from her
unconvincing shrug, but she keeps up the
ruse.

• The inn is missing one of the two big

tables, with an empty spot near the door
where a few extra chairs have been put
into a circle. Dorma asks Agi about it, and
she tells him a few of the legs came loose
and she’s keeping it in the shed till she
can repair it so her kids don’t make the
damage worse playing with it.

To play cards, a trick-based game they call

Twos and Tens, simply bid a small amount of
change and roll WIS or CHA to play smart or to
cheat. Start with a low-level challenge and raise
it gradually, rolling for each round of cards
between discussion points. Succeeding at the roll
gets players double their money back, failing
means the bid money is gone. Locals don’t want
bids to get beyond pocket change, and will
dissuade anyone trying to bid high to win
big. It also becomes clear that even when
there’s money on the table, no one is worried
about cheaters:

• Folks want to trust each other in this

town. It’s too small a town for much more
crime than petty thievery, and your
fellow players convivially share a list of
16
 the four or five folks to watch out for. It’s
clear the tight-knit social structure has
been keeping this town honest, at least until
now.

• With the looming concern of the strange

pelurskite on the shore now, people are
getting more paranoid. They’re talking
about the dark times more, and you can
see that some of these stories are new to
the children nearby, as if normally
they’re not spoken of at all.

• Next to the card table, an older woman is

teaching a few young boys how to knit,
and recounts to them how Linn (the
oldest of the three women)’s younger
brother Losef was kidnapped, back when
he was 10 or 11. It’s the most recent
significant crime in this town’s memory. The
Kidnapping remains unsolved, and you can
see that folks retelling the story of the
night that Losef didn’t come home is
making Linn uncomfortable, and she
drops a plate and curses it out
uncharacteristically.

Out on the front porch with a nice pipe, Agi

and a few older locals are also dwelling on
the past, and a few are quite worried about
Orig.

• If you ask, folks describe Orig as highly

respected, but it’s clear that otherwise he
was a bit of a loner and didn’t have many
17
 friends. In addition to the stock and game
animal carcasses, folks always made sure
he had a regular supply of gifts: baked
goods, clothing, and such. Between trips
to the island he stayed close to his home,
on the outskirts of town, whittling things
constantly, though he almost never sold
wood to the traders. He seemed to have a
regular supply of food and money, and
folks also speculate that his comfortable
livelihood was part of an arrangement
with Mac Asgrel, since the merchant was
the one most worried about the crystals
production. Folk seem as worried about
him as they are the crystals, though Agi
doesn’t join the speculation about what’s
happened to him and the island.

• If you ask this tight-knit porch crew

about the crystals, a few of the oldest
there admit that they can remember a bad
time when they seemed to stop appearing on
shore for a few months, but nothing like
this. It was part of that bad year when
things went so wrong - the crystals
stopped, Linn’s brother disappeared, and
the last feeder to the island, a quiet old
woman named Elb, hung herself. They all
look at each other, worried that things
will get that bad again now.

• If you ask for more details about the

crystals stopping, that’s all they can tell
you—they stopped appearing on the shore
for a few months, over 30 years ago. Then
18
 they came back. Orig just went every
month to feed the island and told them
the disappearance had just been
something to do with the weather, as far
as he could tell.

Sleeping in the inn isn’t too expensive and is

fairly safe. If you’ve really pissed someone off in
town, or if you’ve made Mac Asgrel
particularly suspicious, one of you could
receive a late night visit where shrouded
townsfolk threaten you to get out of town
quickly in the morning, or there will be
trouble.

19
The Next Day.
A few townsfolk are still sitting on porches,
gossiping and smoking and whittling
absently; others are packing up a convoy to
go try and make some money doing odd jobs
on farms or in bigger towns a few days’ travel
away.

You can buy some supplies around town,

including a few light or heat crystals if you
like, from fist sized specimens down to gems
that could sit in a ring comfortably. These
will shrink and grow weak with time,
eventually just crumbling to dust as the
magic is spent. You can also buy some fresh
water, travel-ready food and other staples.

When you go to find Dorma he and two of his

apprentices are almost done building a
rowboat. You get the feeling Dorma went
right from the pub to the workshop, from the
bags under his eyes. Dorma takes you aside
as the apprentices finish up, and tells you
that there are people who would stop you
from going to the island even in this time of
crisis, and you need to leave tonight if you’re
going to get away without further trouble. He
recommends setting out under cover of
darkness, due to how taboo it is to go to the
island in any situation, and especially now.

20
If you head towards Orig’s house a small
gang of angry youths intercept you. They
threaten to run you out of town if you don’t
leave this all alone, and from this distance
you can see his house is empty and dark—in
fact the door isn’t even latched, and is
swinging in the wind. Someone’s already
been there.

The rest of the day will go smoothly if you

hide in your rooms at the Belinn, but if you
continue going around town to talk to people
you’ll rile up a following of four to six angry
young adults, who stalk you and threaten
you if you go near the Black Lake. You’ll have
to fool them into thinking that you’re staying
another night in the Belinn for benign
reasons if you want to get any peace, and if
you aggravate them and put them on the
alert, then when you head out at night you’ll
have to roll well at Sneaking or get into combat.

Leaving at night means getting out of the

Belinn without catching anyone’s eye, which
will require mid-level DEX or WIS checks on the
part of each player. Failure could result in one
of the kids finding you, and they will need to
be bribed or cajoled into keeping a secret.

21
No matter how sneakily you leave the inn, if
you’ve made enemies in town or with Mac
Asgrel, there will be folks waiting for you by
the lake. They will try to fight you, but
they’re just townsfolk with no military
training and easily overcome. You know
there will be social consequences for killing any
of them, and also if things get too noisy they’ll
wake up more of the townsfolk, forcing you
to rush getting your quickly-made boat into
the water.

Whether it takes combat, sneaking or you

just walk quietly to the shore, Dorma and his
apprentices meet you there with the rowboat.
They’ve lined it with furs to try and protect
you from the heat of boiling water. It will
take an average difficulty DEX or similar test to
get into the boat without splashing boiling
water onto yourselves or each other. Boiling
water is a minor wound in splashing form,
with a potential 1d4 damage, but immersion has
a chance of killing most characters unless they
are heat (heat, not fire) resistant. But it’s easy
to get into the boat from the shore, and thus
splashes are the only risk at this moment.

The boat is warm and the stench of the mist is

even stronger on the water, but at night you
can almost make out a faint glow in the mist
that Dorma tells you is the Isle of Pelursk.
Unless anyone has a background that
justifies them being a very strong rower, row-
boating a whole party across the Black Lake to
the island takes about an hour and it is
22
sweaty, hot, stinking work. If there’s a reason
you’re VERY bad at rowing, or someone is
bringing an excessive amount of equipment or
weight, then the boat will start to leak at a
certain point, requiring someone to figure out
how to bail boiling water without hurting
themselves.

The Isle of Pelursk.

The island looms ahead in the dark. It’s
knotted with twisted pines and jutting rocks,
and seems almost bowl shaped—high at the
sides but it seems to dip in the centre. From
the middle of it you can see a pillar of light in
the mist, as if something deep in the gnarled
forest was emitting a concentrated glow. The
whole thing is shrouded in the stinking fog,
and as you approach to land the rowboat you
see that the lowered water level has actually
exposed a few feet of growing crystals,
which have a dark yellow glow and a strong
aura of heat. You’ll have to use the furs from
the boat to make a safe place to walk for the
incredibly hot crystal strip between the
water and the cooler soil and inert rock
higher up by the original water line.

The exterior of the island is made of huge

granite boulders, rusting orange where the
water level once reached them, with patches
of topsoil between them growing spiky reeds
and grasses. A perimeter walk (it will take
23
you a long time to circle the whole island) will
lead you to a charred, smoking row boat
beached on the burning crystals. It’s clearly
been there a while, someone tied it quickly to
a spindly tree that was once half-submerged,
judging from the algae line, but the tree and
the boat are now well above the current water
level. The charring wood has actually burnt
right through in spots. If you keep walking
around, you will also find a wooden plank,
about eight feet high and four feet wide,
stashed in between two boulders and
carefully hidden with piled dead grass and
pine needles. It looks like the top of a table,
maybe, and if you investigate further you can
see where four legs once attached.

If you venture into the interior of the island

and seek answers, you discover that, past the
border of granite boulders, the interior is
indeed full of soft spongy topsoil, crowded
with twisted pines whose branches form a
tight canopy over the moist ground, springy
with pine needles and moss. There don’t
seem to be any larger animals living here
—just small bugs and, way up high in the
canopy, small birds, all of which are very
skittish and avoid the characters. As soon as
you lose sight of the shoreline, which doesn’t
take long in the dark and crowded forest, you’re
into the mini hex crawl!

24
The Hex Crawl.
When moving between hexes, roll 1d12 or
draw from a blind bag or envelope of hexes to
select which hex to place on the map from the
list. Place the paper or fabric hex on the map
of the island, and read the description and
follow the hex’s instructions, including
rolling on further encounter tables.

If you roll a hex that has already been placed

on the table, simply round up to the next
available higher number on the hex table. If
you hit #12 and none are available, loop back
around to #1 and continue down until an
available hex.

The forest is dark, misty, knotted. It’s almost

impossible for characters to stay oriented once
they enter. Whenever characters try to leave a
hex, a party member must make a WIS or
Wilderness Wayfinding-related skill check to
orient them towards their goal. If they succeed,
allow them to move one hex in that direction. If
they fail, move them further around the
perimeter of the island but not significantly
closer or farther from the edge or centre.

25
When characters move to a new hex, do a
quick count. Any hex that is two or more hexes
away from them is removed from the map and
becomes available on the hex list again. If
there are eight hexes on the table, remove the
two furthest or least recently visited hexes and
make those available on the hex list again. If
they have not reached their goal after four or
more hexes, or the first time they revisit a hex
they’ve already seen, whichever comes first,
characters can roll perception or related skills to
become certain that the Island is magically
working against them, changing and
transforming the landscape so they’re never
where they think they are.

The GM can roll on this table, or keep the

hexes inside a bag, pouch or envelope and
simply draw a random one when they need
one. Hexes should be kept face down with
only the numbers on the back showing if
they are laid out on the table.

26
HEXES:
Roll 1d12, round up to higher number if a hex
is already on the map—or alternately, pull
random hexes from a blind bag and use
number on back to reference this table:

1. Safe pine forest with uneven rocky

terrain underfoot. Mid-level DEX or similar
test not to turn an ankle in the dark and
take 1d4 blunt damage.

2. Haunted pine forest, twisted and filled

with spiderwebs. Roll on the GHOSTS
table for an encounter.

3. Unsafe pine forest—large jutting rocks

coming up through the topsoil seem
toothlike. If one of you fails a DEX check,
take 1d4 slashing damage and Awaken the
Soil with your blood. Roll on the ISLAND
ATTACKS table for an encounter.

4. Pines thin and leave space for a ruin. Roll

on the RUINS table for an encounter.

5. Haunted ruin! Roll on the RUINS table as

usual and on the GHOSTS table with a +3
bonus for encounters.

6. The pines thin and you can see the stars.

No WIS or wilderness wayfinding related
skill check needed here to make progress in
the direction of your choice.

27
7. A moss-covered pit potentially traps you
—high-level DEX challenge to avoid falling
in. If the entire party falls in, roll on the
ISLAND ATTACKS table for an encounter.
If only a few, or none, fall in, roll on the
GHOSTS table for an encounter.

8. Ruins older than you can conceive. Roll on

the RUINS table with a -3 penalty and roll
on ISLAND ATTACKS table with a +3
bonus.

9. Swampy region. Roll a 50/50 chance to get

leeches. Medical skill or wilderness
experience roll (standard difficulty)
required to remove leeches—otherwise
their victims lose 1hp each time they enter
a new hex. Removal can be re-attempted
each hex. They will fall off after entering
four new hexes when the leeches get full.

10. Huge boulder with a crack down the middle.

If anyone investigates the crack, roll on
the GHOSTS table.

11. The pines multiply into a thicket. If you

want to traverse this hex, you must crawl
underneath their boughs through a narrow
tunnel. Roll on the GHOSTS table if they
choose to do this.

12. Three huge narrow standing stones in a

triangle. Roll for a GHOST with +3 bonus
and one ISLAND ATTACKS encounter.

28
29
GHOSTS:

Roll 1d6 for ghosts! If rolling +3, all scores

above 6 count as 6.

1. This ghost flickers into view directly in

front of you. She is an elderly woman,
wearing old-fashioned clothes you might
picture someone’s grandparents wearing
in old portraits. She is somewhat blurred
and you can see her better without the
torches burning, and she is shouting at
you, but no sound is coming out of her
mouth. If you approach her closely you
can see she has a noose tight around her
neck. She looks like she’s been crying. If
you see her more than once, she becomes
more and more desperate, trying to block
you from approaching the centre or
guide you off the island. She is fully
incorporeal and none of you can touch
her. If you try and get gestural directions
from her and then follow them, forgo
your WIS roll but when you move to the next
hex it will be the hex that will move you the
closest to the shoreline.

2. This ghost is wearing Mac Asgrel’s

distinctive blue and yellow tartan, but
their fashion is not contemporary. They
are in various states of decay, covered in
clumped ghostly dirt with grave worms
and such. They rise from the ground,
throwing moss and pine needles into the air
in an explosion. You can hear a howling
30
 when they open their mouth and they are
enraged at your disturbing them. They
tear at themselves and throw ectoplasm-
coated rocks and pine needles at the party.
Each time any ectoplasm hits a party
member, roll mid-level DEX or CON to save
against cold damage, if save fails, roll 1d6
cold damage for the victim.
Nothing seems to affect this ghost except
turn undead, which sends it back down
into the ground, though the howling
remains in the air.
Each time you roll this ghost it is a
different person in the same tartan and a
similar state of decay.

3. This ghost is a young man, in very dated

fashion, carrying a wrapped up object that
might be an infant. His hair and clothes
move as if underwater. He and his burden
both glitter unnaturally in the light of
your torches after he walks into the path
of your party. He simply stands and
stares at you all. Turn Undead does
nothing. Party members will have to walk
through him, which requires each to roll a
mid-level save CON against cold damage or
take 1d4 cold damage. If you take damage
you also find yourself clammy and damp on
the other side. As you walk through him
you can hear him singing a quiet folk-tune
that no amount of investigation can
reveal any details of. You only encounter
him once—if he’s been seen already, go to
the next entry.
31
4. This ghost is barely visible, but you can
make out a long cloak and a hood bobbing
ahead of you. If you extinguish the torches
you see a robed, hooded figure seemingly
assembling or repairing a ghostly ruin. If
you approach quietly you can hear the
ghost chanting in an ancient language. If
anyone rolls INT to decipher the language,
the ghost is chanting about the cycle of
life into stone, stone into life. If you’re
really sneaky and can get around to see the
front of the ghost, it is wearing around its
neck a ghostly memory of a pelurskite
crystal, twinkling white with perfect
balance. If you do not disturb it, the ghost
continues peacefully repairing the
ghostly ruin. If you do disturb it, by
talking to it, touching it, et cetera, the
ghost turns to stare at the party with
empty eye sockets before vanishing, as if
blown to pieces. If you encounter this
ghost more than once, it will a different
ghost doing the same thing.

5. This ghost is actually four ghosts—it is a

walking party of three robed and hooded
adults in a line, with a younger adult, in a
simple shift, walking behind the second
robed adult. They walk in a line across the
characters’ path. Their faces are shadowed
beneath their ghostly hoods; the younger
adult has had their head shaved and is
staring ahead with an expression of fear
and awe. If party members can approach
quietly without disturbing them, they will
32
 see that each member of the party has
had their throat cut in a fatal wound. Those
party members close enough can hear
the three robed ghosts chanting in an
ancient language, and if they are able to
decipher it, they translate their words as
“Life into Stone, Stone into Life”. Each robed
ghost is wearing a ghostly memory of a
perfectly balanced, white pelurskite
crystal around their necks.
If, instead of rolling wisdom, the party
opts to follow this procession, they will
always move towards the centre of the
island but will only stay visible for one
more hex before fading.

6. Whenever you encounter this ghost, it

will be a different one, but each of them is
monstrous in the same way: these ghosts
seem to be humanoid, but their skin
sparkles and flakes and crumbles like
pelurskite crystals. They are always found
sitting on a ghostly stone, merged with the
ghostly stone, flickering in a way that
makes it unclear where their body ends and
the stone begins. They are not wearing
clothing but there are almost no human
surface details except for their gaping
maws, full of sparkling teeth, from which
a moaning cry comes. If characters
approach they will be able to make out
the ghosts saying that they are hungry,
they hunger, they have been starved, they
have given everything and been starved,
and if characters come within arms reach
33
 the ghosts will reach out as if to grab them
and pull them to their mouths. The ghosts
are incorporeal and unable to pull the
characters, but if their grabbing is not
dodged, they characters will have to roll to
save against cold, and if they fail they take
1d8 cold damage. If this happens, the
ghost’s moan rises to a supernaturally
high pitch and characters’ heads vibrate
painfully with it. 1d4 vibration damage to
any character that doesn’t immediately get
away from the ghost and their moans.
Fleeing, of course, means forgoing the WIS
roll to wayfind out of the hex, and so the
characters simply get chased into
another random hex by the awful noise,
not making progress toward their goal.

34
RUINS:

Roll 1D6 for ruins! If rolling -3, all scores below 1

count as 1.

1. This ruin is two columns framing what

seems to have been a stairway leading
into the ground. The tunnel is filled in
with dirt and would require a lot of
equipment to excavate, but anyone who
lays a hand on the dirt filling it can feel
the heat of pelurskite crystals below. The
columns once had an archway between
them, and the keystone of the arch has
fallen halfway into the stairwell. The
columns themselves are wrapped in
carvings of hooded figures walking single
file in a spiral up each column. The
keystone, if the party digs around to get a
good look at it, is decorated with a
humanoid figure sitting on a throne that is
radiating lines, with a wide open mouth. If
you encounter this more than once that’s
because there are many of these stairways
around the island, all ancient, all in
disarray.

2. This ruin is an incredibly old well. It’s

steaming with the same boiling stench that
the Black Lake puts out, and if you stare
down through the steam you can see a
yellow/red glow from the corrupted
pelurskite crystals deep down. Into the
stones are set ancient carvings, worn to
almost illegibility from time and
35
 exposure. If you spend time deciphering
them, roll a high-level challenge on a
relevant skill like INT and on a success, see
that they are patterns of crystals and skulls.

3. This ruin is almost as big as the hex, and it

takes some exploring to figure out what all
the disparate pieces are, but if the party
takes the time to do so they realize it was a
dormitory. There are the remnants of
stone walls dividing the space into many
small cells, and each cell has two stone
platforms the same size as a single
mattress, and in places where the wall
survived up to waist level they can make
out a window opening per cell. In the
centre of the hex is a long low stone altar,
with five fallen stone pillars beside it.
The pillars are the most finely carved
they’ve seen, with heavy detail still visible
in their ruined state, and seem to have a
pattern of robed figures proceeding up them
in single file spirals. If they dig around in
the needles and soil around it the party
will discover near one pillar a skull that
looks like a human skull that grew into a
crystal. The eyes, nose and ear orifices
are covered by calcified crystalline growth
but the mouth and jaw are clear and the
teeth seem enhanced by the crystalline
shape. It is very heavy in its crystalline
state and will require special carrying
accommodation if a character wants to
take it with them.

36
4. This ruin is simply a pile of destroyed
stone masonry. It is clear that it was once a
small structure, but there’s no way to tell
any more from the crumbling rubble left
behind. It was clearly intentionally
destroyed; if the characters root around
they will turn up an iron sledgehammer
head with the smallest remains of a
rotted wooden handle.

5. This ruin may once have been a temple -

fallen columns peek through the mossy
pine needle blanket and a few stone steps
remain. The columns have been smashed
and only a few pieces remain intact
enough to give the characters a sense of
their decoration, and indeed it seems to be
spiraling single file lines of robed figures. At
the centre of the ruin are many tall raw
stones, uncarven - if there was a temple
here then it was built to house these
otherwise naturally occurring stones.
The stones themselves are faintly warm to
the touch, and if the characters extinguish
their torches they can see that they faintly
glow. Those with high INT, or a relevant
skill, can roll to see that these are granite
stones laced through with tiny
crystallizations of pelurskite, which
despite the great age of these stones, has
not (the way isolated pelurskite does)
evaporated away to nothing while
suspended in the stone matrix of the
granite.

37
6. This ruin is not nearly as old as the
stonework on the island. It’s a rotting
wooden shed, half buried in pine needles,
with a wooden table inside that is cut up all
over with knife blade hits, as if it was used
as a butcher’s cutting table. There’s sharp
shards and crumbs around, and a player
who rolls on INT or a related skill can tell
that they are bone shards. The knife that
hit the table must have been large, almost
a machete in size, but it’s missing. Nearby
there’s a broken wooden stool that no one
has fixed, and a hand-held whetstone, and
hanging from a wall within the shed is a
filthy rag, which stinks of decay. Behind
the shed is a half-buried midden of rotten
meat, cartilage, skin, fur and claws/nails/
hooves of game and farm animals. It
stinks of diseased rot and anyone who
tries to sort through it will have to make
a mid-level save against CON to not make
themselves vomit. If someone vomits and
yet continues digging, they’ll need to
make a high-level save against CON to
avoid losing 1d4 hp. In the end, there’s
nothing to be found—the farther down
you dig the more decayed and rotted and
unrecognizable the remains are. No bone,
though.

38
ISLAND ATTACKS:

Roll 1d6 for Island Attacks! If rolling +3, all

scores above 6 count as 6.

1. A vibration passes through the ground,

and a prone rock the size of a single bed
starts to roll over in its place, turning up
its underside, which is revealed to be a
giant pelurskite and mica crystalline eye.
If the party can avoid its gaze they can
escape unscathed. The eye is steaming with
heat and visibly made of stone, despite
moving like a living thing. Nothing seems to
damage it. If they touch it, or if it catches
sight of them, the ground underneath them
starts to shake dramatically, knocking the
party to the ground and causing everyone
to roll DEX (or related skill) to save against
injury when falling. If they fail the save,
1d6 blunt damage from hitting the ground
hard. Once the party stands up again the
rock is back to normal, as if it never was
there.

2. A deep hum rings for a second and then

disappears. For each party member that
does not freeze and hold silent upon
hearing the hum, a grinding noise beneath
their feet gives them a chance to roll DEX
to save from being knocked off their feet by
the emergence of a torso-sized pelurskite/
crystal/granite eye—the ground
separates beneath them like eyelids to
reveal it. Each of these eyes is so hot it
39
 steams and anyone who falls on one takes
1d6 burn damage. They cannot damage the
hot stone eyes and the longer they stay in
the hex the more eyes emerge from the
ground, making it harder and harder to
save DEX against stepping on one/falling
on one and getting burnt. Flee the hex.

3. A huge boom sounds and the center of the

hex starts to rise up - a granite and
pelurskite cupped hand pushing out of
the ground. Party members must roll DEX
to get out of it before it closes, attempting
to crush them. It can do 1d10 crushing
damage if party members fail DEX saves
to get out of the way, and once pinned it
requires a STR roll and a large weapon to
break one of the crushing stone fingers.
Anyone pinned in the hand for a whole
round also takes 1d6 burn damage from
the interlaced pelurskite within the
fingers. Once everyone is out of the hand
it starts to fall back to the ground, palm
down, attempting to grab or smash them. It
can reach everywhere within the hex but is
grounded at the elbow in the centre of the
hex. If two or more fingers are broken, it
starts up a high pitched keening wail,
causing CON saves to avoid 1d8 damage
from the sound. Flee the hex.

4. Deep rumbles are the only warning before

ten standing stones, appearing to be
mostly granite but glowing and steaming
with interlaced pelurskite, pierce from the
40
 ground around the party. Quickly it
becomes obvious they are the fingers and
thumbs of two partially-visible hands, as
they plough through the topsoil attempting
to crush the party members. They can do
1d10 crushing damage if party members
fail DEX saves to get out of the way, and
once pinned it requires a STR roll and a
large weapon to break the crushing stone
fingers. Anyone pinned for a whole round
also takes 1d6 burn damage from the
interlaced pelurskite. Once fingers are
broken, a deep vibrational howling emerges
from beneath the island, CON saves for
everyone to not be hurt by the noise. Flee the
hex.

5. The ground within the hex seems to

suddenly lift, then divide up into huge
horizontal stone and pelurskite ribs. The
ribs rise and fall as if breathing. This is
not good for party members—they need
to roll DEX to not get injured (1d6 injury
from the ground moving) and then DEX or
STR or relevant skill to get out of the hex
without touching the burning hot ribs as
they rise and fall in front of them. Burn
damage ranges from 1d4 to 1d8 based on
how much contact characters make with
the corrupted steaming pelurskite. If
players take the time to roll WIS to escape
with intent, the last person to leave the hex
takes 1d6 damage from the ribs smashing
back into the ground.

41
 6. A hissing, grinding noise alerts the party
as 32 sharp, furiously hot pillars of
pelurskite emerge from the ground,
encircling them. In the centre of the circle
the ground falls away, revealing deep
down more of the boiling water and
glowing pelurskite. High-level DEX rolls to
dodge burns, being pierced by the
pelurskite, falling in the sudden natural
well, depending on where you are
located. High-level STR rolls to climb out
of the well, or to knock down the
pelurskite crystals so they can escape.
CON rolls to save against 1d8 damage from
the unearthly howling that starts from the
well as soon as one of the pelurskite teeth
is broken. Flee the hex without looking to
figure out what direction to go—no time
for a WIS check.

It’s possible to get very lost. If the

adventurers are attempting to head to the
centre of the island and have taken more than
8 hexes to get there, they will start to hear an
owl hooting in the trees above them. If they
follow it, even if they have to flee an island
attack, it will lead them directly towards the
centre of the island, however many hexes that
takes. They might see its silhouette against
the sky (if they see the sky) but they never get
a good look at it.

42
The Centre of the Island.
When you’re progressed through the random
hexes to the glowing hex in the middle of the
map, you’ve reached the Centre of the Island.
Pick up all the hexes from the map and return
them to the GM.

A gentle slope leads you down, and there is a

sudden break in the forest. The trees thin and
there’s now space for a shallow wetland. Water
bubbles and steams against patches of
pelurskite which erosion has exposed
through the bedrock and topsoil, heating
everything. Here the sickening mist hangs
almost opaque over everything, which might
remind some of the party members of being
in a bone-rendering hall, fires boiling pots
full of animal bones. A bright light is glowing
in the centre of the misty marsh, far brighter
than the reddish corrupted pelurskite. There
is a very gentle wind, stirring up the mist
into strange shapes, reminiscent of the
ghosts (see the GHOSTS table) but unclear,
incorporeal. There’s a quiet, pervasive voice
that seems to be sobbing.

To get to the centre, adventurers have to roll

low-level WIS after each discovery or plot point
to stay out of the boiling water and off the
steaming pelurskite which can deal 1d4-1d8
heat damage, and as they pick their way
through the swampy ground they may notice
some things on the ground:

43
 Footprints—two different people, one
larger than the other, the larger pair
wearing what look like sturdier hard-
soled shoes, the smaller pair in a
more delicate pair probably not
intended for hiking. Both going
towards the centre, the smaller set also
returning from the centre.
Fallen chunks of bone, cut into what
might be called “bite-size” pieces.
Finally: a bloody machete, not quite big
enough to be a sword but heavy and
sharp and definitely covered in dried
blood. It’s lying on hot pelurskite, as if
thrown, and if someone wants to pick
it up they will have to be very careful
as it is absurdly hot—it can cause 1d8
heat damage until it cools off.

The light is so bright now, the mist is

swirling faster than ever, the sobbing is
audible and is almost ALMOST turning into
words, it’s so close to being understandable,
when the mist parts and a ghost approaches
you.

He’s a tall man, a little older than middle-age,

in contemporary clothes, with his hair pulled
back. He’s visibly cut up—there are multiple
mortal wounds, as if whoever attacked him
just kept swinging. These wounds definitely
match up with the machete. He walks straight
towards you, and as he approaches all other
sounds fall away. When he opens his mouth,
first you hear a horrific crunching, grinding
44
sound, as if bones were snapping against stone.
Then, underneath that sound, you can make
out his voice, as he is moaning “go back, go
back, you can’t see him, you can’t know, go
back”

He sways as he stands in front of you,

chanting his refrain, and if try to touch him, or
if you all walk past him, he screams once,
pitifully, and falls to the ground as if he has
crumbled. The mists swirl in to fill the void
and the sobbing returns. This time it resolves
into a strange, shrill, grinding voice crying out -
“So hungry, I’m so hungry, I never knew I
was so hungry...”

The glow is brighter than ever. It hurts your

eyes and any character with dark vision or a
lower than average CON has to shield
themselves from the glow. Low-level WIS rolls to
dodge burns from the furiously hot pelurskite
embedded in the swamp are at a small penalty
for characters who are shielding their eyes. If
you make your way right to the source of the
glow, you realize the water here has boiled
off entirely—and you stop having to roll WIS
to navigate. The heat of the pelurskite has
thickened the mist and combined with the
glow you can’t tell what you’re walking towards
until you’re almost upon it.

There’s a dais built of twenty-seven steps,

each constructed out of perfectly white,
flawless, brilliantly glowing pelurskite. It’s
incredibly strong, as if it isn’t being degraded
45
by time the way any other flawless pelurskite
sample you’ve ever heard of has been. The
voice is coming from the top, grinding and
shrill. Party members may notice now that
there is blood running down the steps from the
mist-shrouded top. As you climb the steps the
blood thickens, and there are visible spatters.
When you are high enough to see the top step
through the thick mist, you notice first that
there’s blood everywhere. Blood has flooded
the top platform and is running down the
steps in all directions. Then, you notice the
throne itself.

The throne is made of that horrific yellow-red

steaming pelurskite, with veins of granite
running through in a three-directional criss-
cross - and you are looking at the back of it. It
is ancient, rough-hewn, simple and geometric,
and the back is high enough you can’t see
who’s sitting on it. But you know someone is,
because the grinding, shrill, howling voice is
coming from there. And when you are close
enough to touch the back of the throne, the
voice stops.

Then it vibrates in a wheedling tone:

“Who’s there? Who’s there now? Who has
come to save me? Save me from my cruel
fate?”
It doesn’t stop. The wheedling is constant and
grating.

When you walk around to the front you see:

46
The Pelurskite King.
Dwarfed by the throne is a small humanoid
figure. He is craning his neck around, as if to
see or hear, which he must not be very good
at, as all the orifices on his face except his
mouth have been overgrown with steaming,
glowing yellow and red pelurskite. His arms
move freely, though plated in layers of
crystal, and he extends them, pleadingly.
They are covered in blood. Blood runs down
from his mouth and has splattered onto his
torso. You could call him naked, but he has no
skin, no muscle definition—only a creaking
shell of pelurskite. You can see what you think
is his heart, glowing deep red inside his chest.
His lower torso, his legs, his feet have all
seemed to grow into the pelurskite of the throne
—they are barely distinguishable. He is
steaming like the throne, and the blood on his
face, torso, arms, has cooked into a viscous
mucus. Dried strands of it dangle like morbid
drool. He cannot seem to see you, but he
knows you’re there, reaching wildly around
trying to grab you.

If you fail a mid-level DEX save and come

within reach of his arms, take 1d8 heat damage
from the grab, and roll a high-level STR saving
47
throw to escape before he brings you to his
mouth. If he gets a bite on you, take 1d10
burning bite damage and also take the time to
admire his perfect crystalline teeth.

If you can stay back from him, you have time

to notice that there are what you might call
small things, fingers, toes, a button, a belt-
buckle, small hand-whittled wooden toys,
scattered around the platform. When you
touch one of them, The Pelurskite King stops
raving and starts to ask you to give him that,
give him what you’ve found, he is so hungry.
Mid-level DEX roll if you choose to get it to him
without getting grabbed yourself. Whatever it is
—clothing or dismembered digit, he puts it
in his mouth and thoughtfully chews it.

If anyone descends down to the front of the

dais, on the swampy ground in front you find
a man’s head—the same man you saw as a
ghost. You can tell that he was chopped apart
with the machete as the cuts are clean and
vicious.

The Pelurskite King seems to know the second

you find it, and begs you to give him the head.
He’s just so hungry.

If you use the head or the small things as

collateral, you can get him to talk to you. He
will tell you he is young, he is just a child
—and indeed his size is small for a grown
human - but he doesn't know how long he’s
been on the throne. He can’t remember much
48
before the throne, but he remembers a kind
man who came to feed him. He ate bones, he
tells you, and it was never enough, he was
always hungry. The kind man gave him toys,
though, and he would play with the toys until
he could eat again.

If you ask him where the kind man is, he

starts giggling. He tells you she killed him,
when the man tried to stop her from hurting
the Pelurskite King. She chopped him up like
the bones. And then the Pelurskite King stops
his story and starts to laugh, first slowly,
then building. “And I took his bones, and I ate
them! And I took his f lesh and I ate it! And I
took his clothes and I ate them! And I took his
toys, that he had carved for me, and I ate
them! And I have never been SO HUNGRY.” And
the whole island shakes for a moment with
the force of his laughter.

At this point, pity does nothing. He doesn’t

believe you care for him, he’s just HUNGRY.

If you ask him where she went, he says he

has trapped her on the island, just like he has
trapped you. He says she will come to him to
be food when she has given up, just like you
will. He laughs and says “my eyes saw you,
my hands held you, I have breathed in your
stench as you walked through my forests, I
have tasted your blood and cooked your f lesh
and now I will not let you leave!”

49
He doesn’t know who she was or where
exactly she is now, but he reluctantly
confirms there’s someone else alive on this
island. He doesn’t know why the pelurskite
crystals are hot now, he doesn’t care, but if
you give him the head or any other parts of
the dismembered body you see him grow
hotter and redder as he eats them. He does not
want you to leave the island, and his sole goal
now is to eat you all. He doesn’t seem able to
do much but wave his arms and head around,
though—his spine seems locked against the
back of the throne, and the person/stone
threshold becomes blurry and
indistinguishable. But you hear the distant
grinding of the stone eyes opening, and
realize that beyond the central swamp, the
island is ready to attack.

If you try to leave, roll as usual for random

hexes and then on the required GHOSTS and
RUINS tables, but roll on the Island Attacks
tables on every hex. If you fail your WIS roll to
navigate, the adventurers always find
themselves moving back towards the centre.

50
Fighting the King.
If you choose to try and kill or destroy the
Pelurskite King, no sword or knife can cut him
save by stabbing it down his throat, and
magic cannot change his substance or shape.
Shattering or crushing spells and bludgeoning
or blunt damage work the best. He has three
times the HP your highest HP character has and
he heals 1d10 hp every time he bites one of you. If
he can’t reach you to grab and bite, he will
cause the ground to shake, making everyone
roll a high-level DEX save not to fall, and the
person closest to him will burn themselves on
the throne or fall into his clutches if they don’t
succeed. He will howl and require mid-level
CON saves not to lose 1d6 from hearing damage.
When he is “bloodied” or close to defeat, his
own blood, thin and watery, will ooze between
cracks in the crystalline skin. Sometimes he
licks it for 1d4 healing.

If a magic user in the party can roll a

particularly high WIS or related skill roll, they
can figure out how to channel the magic of the
perfect, flawless pelurskite dais that glows
beneath them, and triple their damage on any
crushing or bludgeoning spells, or triple their
healing effect on any healing spells. Each time
they do this, they lose 1d10 hp to the mental and
spiritual strain of it.

51
When the Pelurskite King finally dies, the
shell containing him will creak and crumble and
flake, letting off a disgusting blast of steam.
There will be a hissing sound, as the throne
dramatically cools and loses a lot of its colour,
the dais starts to diminish in its light and turn
bluish, and all the pelurskite embedded within
the island starts to dull and cool. A cold breeze
will blow in, starting to move the fog around.

If you stick around atop the dais to see what

happens, and root around in the remains of
the Pelurskite King, a preteen boy will be
there, underneath the rubble of the
crystalline skin. He is slim, he looks
malnourished, and his skin has a gray pallor,
but he takes a shuddering breath when you clear
the crystal residue from his mouth. He initially
feels unbelievably hot to the touch, but quickly
cools to a slight fever temperature. He is
wearing nothing but simple pants, and if you
take the time to revive him, his eyes have a
yellow tint to them at first, but it passes. There
are quickly scabbing wounds up and down
his spine. He is fairly insensible but you can
get him to drink some water. He will have to
be carried if you’re going to get him off the
island.

If, for some reason, one of you chooses to sit

on the throne, any exposed skin that touches it
will start to freeze to it, and small icy
pelurskite crystals will begin to creep from
the point of contact across the skin itself to
begin to encase the person sitting there. 1d4 cold
52
damage for each small area of exposed skin that
is touching the throne, and 1d10 cold damage if
any part of the spine is exposed and thus
touching. If this damage is at risk of killing
the character, they are only knocked
unconscious and require other characters to
free them by pulling them off the throne. If
they are conscious, they can roll mid-level STR
or a related skill to free themselves, requiring
an average success to do so. Each time they fail
and must reroll, they retake the above cold
damage. If they choose to stay on the throne
until fully encased, the player will lose control
of the character as the pelurskite works its way
into their spinal column, and when the
creeping crystal has encased everything but
their mouth, it will open and tell anyone still
watching “I’m so hungry.” If it gets left unfed,
this still counts as a victory. If they, for some
reason, feed it human f lesh, the Pelurskite
King is resurrected and they and the island
attack once again.

Escaping the Island.

If you go looking for the woman the
Pelurskite King mentioned, or if you head
back to the shore, the island no longer requires
a WIS roll to make progress in the direction of
your choice. The ruins and ghosts are still
active, so keep rolling on the HEX, RUINS
and GHOSTS tables - but the island does not
attack ever. The owl will hoot and guide you if
53
you are paying attention, and the mist will
gradually clear. If you have not made it back to
shore in 6 hexes, the fog has cleared and you can
see a straightforward path through the trees.

The woman is in the 3rd hex you enter. She is

curled up in a ball in a shallow dugout, a
damp fire pit in front of her. She is terrified of
you when you wake her up and it will take some
charisma to get her to calm down and trust that
you’re not more ghosts.

Her name is indeed Margi Belinn, she’s a

young adult wearing town clothes, and she
does not look like a hardened adventurer. She’s
been living off pine bark tea and mushrooms
and the dead amphibians and birds that wash
up on the shore of the island and she looks like
she is in rough, rough shape. When pressed, she
will admit that she killed Orig, but she insists
she didn’t come here to do so. She will
happily let you lead her off the island. She
stares at the boy and if you tell her he came
from the Pelurskite King she is quite
frightened of him.

As you row back in your boat, you can see the

water of the lake is cooling. The mist is mostly
cleared away and the stench has definitely
lifted. It’s finally dawn, and a large group of
loudly angry people are waiting at the shore
for you.

54
Worried by the audible mob, Margi tells you
desperately that she knew, she KNEW there
was something wrong with the island—while
she was at school she researched how it could
exist, this island that just makes incredible
magic crystals, and she was CERTAIN that
human sacrifice was involved. She came home
secretly to go find out for herself—she knew
the townsfolk wouldn’t let her go if she
brought it up. She made a raft from her
mother’s table and rowed out on a dark night
and somehow Orig found out and came after
her. She’d grabbed the machete to try and free
the person from the throne, but the
Pelurskite King was so horrifying to her
even BEFORE his corruption, that when Orig
tried to stop her she was so upset and
angered by what she had seen on the island
that she murdered him then and there, and
when she saw what she had done she fled and
threw the machete into the swamp. But by
then the Pelurskite King was enraged and
wouldn’t let her leave, and she’d been trapped
on the island for a month.

She begs you to protect her from the mob.

At the front of the mob are Linn, Belo and

Agi. They are trying to keep folks back from
the edge of the water as you land. You can see
that the corrupted pelurskite on the shore has
also started to darken and fade and crumble.
Belo is overjoyed to see Margi and starts
crying immediately; Linn and Agi go to help
you out of the boat. When Linn sees the child,
55
and she reaches out saying Losef?! and then
faints.

The anger of the mob is somewhat derailed by

the family reunion going on. You get a
protective crew that carries you all to the
Belinn and keeps the angriest folks away,
where you will have a chance to tell them all
what you saw, or not. Losef is now in the
hands of Linn, who is weeping constantly,
and Belo is desperate to feed Margi.

Then Mac Asgrel comes stomping in,

demanding to know what you’ve done to the
island. He’s holding the perfect pelurskite
sample he kept on the chain and you can see
even now that it’s turned blue—it’s giving off
light now but no heat - it’s suddenly flawed.
He is purple in the face and demands to know
if all the pelurskite is now ruined. Mac Asgrel
then sees Losef, cradled in Linn’s lap, sipping
broth, and his face goes white. He asks where
Orig is. The townsfolk react appropriate to how
much you’ve told them.

If severely pressed, Asgrel finally admits he

and Orig kidnapped Losef, decades ago, to sit
on the throne of the island when the prior
Pelurskite King finally died. The previous
island-feeder, Elb, had told them she could
not condone any further children being
brought to the island, so he and Orig staged
her suicide. How long the island has required
human sacrifice to provide for the town isn’t
something he knows - it’s just always been like
56
this, Asgrel insists. He can’t tell you anything
about the cult that seemed to be on the island
millennia earlier, and in fact it sounds like
he’s never even personally been to the island.
He just profits off its crystals, and, a savvy
character might think as they look at the
tears coming from his eyes as he clutches the
failing pelurskite crystal, relied on their
powers in some significant ways.

Treasure available to our adventurers are the

tools and weapons they picked up on their
travels on the island, heat or light pelurskite
(there’s no flawless left—globally, it’s all
turned blue or yellow, and the island’s recent
corrupt pelurskite seems to be quickly
crumbling to dust) and, if Mac Asgrel is
taken down by the townsfolk, some of the
riches from his manor. Also in his manor you
find a strange bathtub/altar with a space you
are confident is for his once-flawless pelurskite
crystal.

Also you broke up a horrible ancient human

sacrifice ring, so, you know, enjoy some good
feelings!

57
The Corruption of Pelursk is a system-
agnostic mini hex-crawl, with a
dark mystery lurking at its heart.

The Isle of Pelursk sits at the center of the

Black Lake, where strange magics have
sustained a community for time
unmeasured - but something, somewhere
has gone wrong. It's time to journey
against all taboo to the Isle itself.
But once you've entered its clutches, it
does not want to let you leave....

This is a Pocket Dungeon, designed to fit

easily as a sidequest into an ongoing
campaign or stand confidently on its own!
You can run this dungeon with a simple
paper map and paper hexes.

Learn more about all the other

Pocket Dungeons at
pocketdungeons.portablecity.net