Ile de la Tempête Project - submissions – style and flavour

[Joël of the FoS]

Ile de la Tempête Project - submissions – style and flavour

As you all know, The Fraternity of Shadows is currently accepting submissions for our ongoing Nocturnal Sea Gazetteer-type project. There are five domains in this area and I’m the one covering l’Île de la Tempête.

As we did when we started the Souragne project, here are a few thoughts about Monette’s domain. To help keep a unified style, I would like to share my current vision of l’île de la Tempête. Articles that differ from this will still be accepted –there are always exceptions in every land - but I encourage people to work with it to create a uniform feel to the land (especially for a small domain such as l’île de la Tempête).

There is a basic description of Monette and l’île de la Tempête in the Darklords 2e accessory. Please read it carefully! Considering uncommon exceptions, your material should not contradict what is found in this description.

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Since the release of Darklords, most criticism about Monette is that he is a “one-shot” darklord, i.e. players go there only once. It’s often seen as a “let’s defeat the darklord and leave this place”. I’d like to change this perception and make the darklord and his domain more dynamic.

L’île de la Tempête (as currently seen by us) is a land of isolation. A lonely rock in the sea. Monette is (probably (?)) alone on his island, waiting to prey on the unfortunate whose ship wreck on l’île de la Tempête’s rocky and treacherous coastline.

His curse: Captain Monette is longing to go back on a boat, but it makes him very sick and he can’t stay long on waters (same thing when he flies over the sea as a werebat).

Bats are everywhere on the island, but Monette could not care less about them. He believes these animals gave him his werebat curse so he doesn’t like them or talk to them as say, the Lady of Ravens.

Other directions:

1) Physical description of the island. The following description is expanded from Darklords:

- Rocky island, kidney shaped, about 10 miles long
- harsh and rocky cliff coast on all side, except perhaps one rocky beach at the South
- northern side: Lighthouse over 100’ cliff (do not forget the special beam of light of this lighthouse can reach many places faraway, even in other planes)
- fauna – few (bats!), flora – rocky island (few trees, mainly scrubs)
- impressive tides (Monette is involuntary changing to werebat form on high tide)
- many humid bat caves

2) Shipwrecks description needed. There are many shipwrecks around the island and some can be interesting adventure hooks to bring people there for a reason. Greed? Rescue? Scholar research? Etc.?

3) Monette’s stats – expert/profession (sailor) / afflicted werebat
Background:
- date of domain creation? JWM in his timeline suggest the domain was around in 690, when a merchant ship named Dragon’s Gold wrecked on it, but it could have been created before this year.
- Background story (see Darkords), should be expanded
- Powers: manipulate currents around the isle – description of the mechanics of his control over water, vs sailing profession DC, etc.
- Closing the border: you face an endless sea when trying to escape the island, but you are back within minutes of the island when coming back toward it.
- His hope: the Ouragan crew can somehow save him from this curse. He always asks if anybody has seen this boat and its crew (possible dread possibility here!)
- Strategies to describe: First meeting, wreck creation strategies, hunting strategies as werebat, what if Monette as human is confronted? What if confronted by an able party? I do not see his as canon fodder against an able party – what does he do then?

(More to come as needed)

What I have written so far: nothing yet! I’ll keep you posted on the progress in this work.

Please discuss here of your ideas / suggestions on this domain, and what you’d like to write to add to this domain description. Do not forget, you can add adventure hooks and dread possibilities sidebars! Sight and sounds too!

Illustrators are of course more then welcome to submit drawings, or contact me for specific works.

Joël

[cure]

One fairly obvious suggestion is that the some of the wrecks be haunted by one or more ghosts (or like undead). And they may have secrets to tell about the lighthouse and its keeper.

[Jasper]

To give the Isalnd a reason to be (more or less) I would have it recetly be used as a pirate hideaway. As long as it has clean flowing water and a few etable plants/animals it would be a huge draw for pirates and the like. In addition the draw of the lighthouse would bring in many stray ships that would crash upon the rocks and be set upon by the pirates making it an ideal base of operations. Monette would be seen by the pirates either as a crazy old crank up in the lighthouse or if his werebat form starts infecting the band they could see him as a powerful leader figure whle he sees them as hidious abomiations.

It could even be the reason the frat ends up there. After thier ship runs aground on the isalnd and the Frat is taken captive by the pirates and offered as a sacrifice to Monnette. A few well placed spells and a encounter with the darklord later they could sneak away on one of the pirates ships and continue thier journey.

Now if this contradicts Monettes curse (Darklords is one of the few second ed books I don't have) disrgard this entire post.

[Little Ole Me]

I always find Monette and the Baron of the Eyrie similar in many ways, and making Monette dislike his bat companions/familiars only increase the similarity of the two Darklords. Is the Eyrie considered a non-canon domain since it's a one-shot creation for Dungeons?

I like the idea of Monette having a bunch of werebat pirates. He can use them to seek out his lost crew as well as to gain power/wealth or just to terrorize his neighbors out of spite. I can easily see him using his henchmen to terrorize the sea, disrupting the shipments of corpses to Meredoth, enraging the Lady of Ravens with their preying on her minions/familiars, looting the merchant ships headed for Liffe... an easy campaign hook will be anyone from the Darklords not happy with Monette to merchants can ask our heroes to investigate the mysterious leader of the pirates (which is, of course, Monette, our apparently harmless lighthouse keeper).

[Sorti]

I like the idea of Monette having a bunch of werebat pirates.

I disagree:

L’île de la Tempête is a land of isolation. A lonely rock in the sea. Monette is (probably (?)) alone on his island, waiting to prey on the unfortunate whose ship wreck on l’île de la Tempête’s rocky and treacherous coastline.

And I'd like it to remain on this line...
I'm preparing some ideas and I'll post them soon.

[Sorti]

First of all, I'd give Monette some control on his tranformation; he takes werebat form every day at high tide, but he also can control currents around the island, so I'd say that he can anticipate or delay high and low tide by up to three hours (so basically he can stay in a form for 18 hours if he wants instead of 12, or change more rapidly if needed).

Monette right now is a find-and-kill darklord: the PCs shipwreck on the island, find skeletons and rests of shipwrecks, are attacked by a werebat, send him away, go to the lighthouse, notice the man living there has the same horrible scar than the werebat, kill him, find a way to escape, end credits.
This is perfect for a Weekend in Hell, but we need something more for a Gazetteer.

Idea: three months ago a ship wrecked on Monette's island, and there were no survivors. The werebat went looking for someone to kill or something to use, but he found no living person, instead, he recognized one of the corpses as a member of his old mutinated crew!
(wether (sp?) this is true, is the DP's idea of a joke, is Monette allucinating o is a coincidence is not very important)

So, he thought, the bastards are still out there! Obviously he wants revenge for the horrible tortures they inflicted him...

Monette cannot leave the island, but luckily often some Poor Fool shipwrecks and survives, and can be used to trace his old crew's members...
Monette had an idea. Next time someone shipwrecked, he killed all of the crew but the two or three best fighters, and he captured this ones.
In his hybrid form, he bited them and injected some of his blood in their veins, thus making them infected werebats; he then told them he could cure them, but they had to bring him Tordlaine, his second mate. Monette does not know he's not in the First Material Plane anymore, so he thinks that with a description of the man and of his known friends and places he visits they can easily find him; so why in the great sea they had never heard about the Black Whale tavern, or Port Sangedon, or everything else?
Aren't they seamen like himself?

Enraged he killed the three mariners, but then he regretted it, because they perhaps could have been useful anyway for his revenge; he plans to repeat the curse with the next group he finds.

Now we have some scenarios:
1) The PCs are the next candidates as Poor Fools to be infected. Particularly likely if they're low level, but quite a railroading plot, since they'll have to lose the fight, survive, be captured, agree to do Monette's bidding... Not the best way to write an adventure.

2) Someone else gets infected and sent to the Core with the descriptions of Tordlaine and someone else of the crew; perhaps they contact the PCs asking for help, and they have to return together to the cursed island to help the poor mariners... Quite short and not very interesting.

3) One of the PCs is connected to the mutined crew; perhaps he's the son of someone of Monette's torturers and resembles a lot his father, or he's just unlucky enough to have the same name of one of them, or something like that. The PCs get attacked by werebats and kill some of them, but one or two are able to escape and return to Monette with the description of the unlucky PC and his comrades in arms; having no other way to find his crew, Monette starts sending people to try to kill them at first, but when they do not succeed, he sends them with syringes (sp?) of his blood to infect them, and have them need to find him...

just my 2 eurocents for now.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

I'd actually also like to see some things for this island to make it more open. Monette might be vicious and try to shipwreck most every ship that comes along and kill the people from the boat, but he's not omniscient. Surely there must be *some* boats that come in safely and/or leave safely, as Monette has to sleep at some point, not to mention that most bats hibernate during the winter months. Surely there must be some who have evaded capture.

Ideas:
- Underground community, taking greater risk in the bat caves, but since Monette doesn't speak with the bats, they evade notice as M is too busy looking toward the sea.

- Underwater community. Especially a seasonal migration of some aquatic lifeform, with goals of their own, that evades M's notice in the underwater caverns. What is of interest to these beings? And what is someone willing to pay for the information they may have?

- Iron/silver/mythril/etc vein or specialty herb growing on L'ile, pure enough that some are willing to risk capture as the payout is great. A necessary component for that resurrection spell? Some might risk their lives to bring back the one that makes it complete.

I realize these are crap ideas, but hopefully it'll get someone's ideas flowing.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

From above, though:

1) Do werebats, like regular bats, hibernate? I've yet to see an "ecology of the werebat," but it's an interesting idea, seeing as Monette really doesn't have anything better to do during the winter.

2) There are canon references to attempted colonies on Markovia. What about on L'ile de la Tempete and the Isle of Ravens?

1&2) How pissed would Monette be to wake up after a long winter's nap and find a tiny hamlet on his shores? He might find it a little nice to avoid the isolation, but the jealousy at their being able to sail and he being landlocked... How long would it take before he slaughtered them all?

[cure]

An immense system of limestone sea caves might be something to think about . . .

[The Giamarga]

Do werebats, like regular bats, hibernate? I've yet to see an "ecology of the werebat,"

There's "Bats That Do More Than Bite" by Ed Greenwood in Dragon #90, btu it doesn't go into much detail.

Other sources for werebats from the incredibly useful Monstrous Master Index are:

Name CR Source
Lycanthrope, Greater - Werebat 6 Twisted Lore
Lycanthrope, Werebat 4 Lost Empires of Faerun, Monsters of Faerun, Twisted Lore, Drow of the Underdark, Forgotten Realms 2 (MC11), Ravenloft (MC10), Master Boxed Set, Rules Cyclopedia, Monstrous Manual


I like the hibernation idea btw...

I always find Monette and the Baron of the Eyrie similar in many ways, and making Monette dislike his bat companions/familiars only increase the similarity of the two Darklords. Is the Eyrie considered a non-canon domain since it's a one-shot creation for Dungeons?

I have also wondered about the baron's Eyrie. Where is the Dungeon adventure placed? Will there be any connection between it and Monette?Perhaps they are from the same lycanthrope family?

[Joël of the FoS]

One fairly obvious suggestion is that the some of the wrecks be haunted by one or more ghosts (or like undead). And they may have secrets to tell about the lighthouse and its keeper.

All descriptions of shipwrecks around the isle welcomed

I see haunted ones, of course, plus others where the cargo held something valuable* for a specific party, who could ask the heroes to retrieve it (adv hooks here!).

* it could be gold and you can play on PC's greed, or more philanthropically, someone they know needs the money (for an hospice fundation, for a ransom, etc.)
it could be magic items of course, or important books / documents, etc.

[Joël of the FoS]

To give the Isalnd a reason to be (more or less) I would have it recetly be used as a pirate hideaway. As long as it has clean flowing water and a few etable plants/animals it would be a huge draw for pirates and the like. In addition the draw of the lighthouse would bring in many stray ships that would crash upon the rocks and be set upon by the pirates making it an ideal base of operations. Monette would be seen by the pirates either as a crazy old crank up in the lighthouse or if his werebat form starts infecting the band they could see him as a powerful leader figure whle he sees them as hidious abomiations.

It could even be the reason the frat ends up there. After thier ship runs aground on the isalnd and the Frat is taken captive by the pirates and offered as a sacrifice to Monnette. A few well placed spells and a encounter with the darklord later they could sneak away on one of the pirates ships and continue thier journey.

Now if this contradicts Monettes curse (Darklords is one of the few second ed books I don't have) disrgard this entire post.

This indeed contradicts the isolation feel of the domain. I'd leave the official pirate hideout of RL to Blaustein

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But Monette could deal once in a while with some of them for supplies,
and other things.

Joël

[Joël of the FoS]

I always find Monette and the Baron of the Eyrie similar in many ways, and making Monette dislike his bat companions/familiars only increase the similarity of the two Darklords. Is the Eyrie considered a non-canon domain since it's a one-shot creation for Dungeons?

What we make of Eyrie is what we make of it Its canon 2e for me, so we could use it.

However, it's moving the domain in another direction so an adventure hook / dread possibility would be fun option worth exploring, but for the moment I do not see it in the domain description.

I have also wondered about the baron's Eyrie. Where is the Dungeon adventure placed? Will there be any connection between it and Monette?Perhaps they are from the same lycanthrope family?

It was set floating over any RL land, far from a large city.

Joël

[Joël of the FoS]

I'd actually also like to see some things for this island to make it more open. Monette might be vicious and try to shipwreck most every ship that comes along and kill the people from the boat, but he's not omniscient. Surely there must be *some* boats that come in safely and/or leave safely, as Monette has to sleep at some point, not to mention that most bats hibernate during the winter months. Surely there must be some who have evaded capture.

Hibernating? Mmm...

Ideas:
- Underground community, taking greater risk in the bat caves, but since Monette doesn't speak with the bats, they evade notice as M is too busy looking toward the sea.

An immense system of limestone sea caves might be something to think about . . .

There could be a few survivors there, of course. Poor people ...

- Underwater community. Especially a seasonal migration of some aquatic lifeform, with goals of their own, that evades M's notice in the underwater caverns. What is of interest to these beings? And what is someone willing to pay for the information they may have?

Please send me this dread possibility, if you choose to develop this idea. If it's not used in Monette's domain, it could be in the Ncturnal sea.

- Iron/silver/mythril/etc vein or specialty herb growing on L'ile, pure enough that some are willing to risk capture as the payout is great. A necessary component for that resurrection spell? Some might risk their lives to bring back the one that makes it complete.

Fun idea. Anything else interesting to make this domain interacion other then "your shipwrecks, whar do you do?"

Joël

[Jasper]

With all the wreckage of many years of shipwrecks what do you think of having a few survivors (under 50) living in a sort of floating tent city built on rafts made of the wreakage. With only fish, seaweed and rainwater to sustain them you would think they would return to the Island but they all fear the "Monster in the light."

As Monnete cannot fly too far over the water they are safe from his hunger but without freash water and real food many have sucumb to Scurvy or even canabalisum. A number of brave sailors have atempted to sail thier small rafts back to the mainland but only a few have survived the ravages of the sea and even less with any shread of sanity.