{HEX 01} - Dino Dig Site - Large quarry on the edge of the jungle. Dinosaur bones are being excavated and reanimated.
{HEX 02} - Ancient Ziggurat - A cleared path leads through the jungle to the tomb which houses the undead founder of this island nation.
{HEX 03} - Decaying MechaSkeleton - The giant frame of a failed war machine lies rusting in the jungle.
{HEX 04} - Skeletopia - Thousands of skeletal rentiers spend their days on strange art and impractical architecture.
{HEX 05} - Calcium Mines - Undead servants mine to find important components for keeping ancient liches functional.
{HEX 06} - Lake Dextra - A fresh lake in an ancient crater. Surrounded by jungle.
{HEX 07} - The Cult's Hideout - A group of dissidents lives in the dense jungle and launch guerrilla strikes against the rest of the island.
{HEX 08} - Spirit's Valley - Forested river Valleys. The natures spirit of the island dwells here.
{HEX 09} - Castle Killmore - Primitive village surrounding a fortress, home to the rulers of the island.
{HEX 10} - Industrial Zone - A densely developed area. Skeleton powered machinery manufactures goods for export. A portal to the bone dimension is used to research new monstrosities.
{HEX 11} - Communications Spire - Bone-plated bovids graze in the grasslands. A very important spire stands above them.
{HEX 12} - Maxilla Ridge - Snowy mountain peaks. Skeleton athletes compete in extreme sports.
{HEX 13} - Gaptooth Cove - A sandy bay where skeleton pirates like to hide out. Surrounded by hostile jungle.
{HEX 14} - Graveyard - Underground labyrinth houses generations of undead. Traditionalists buried in dirt.
{HEX 15} - Farmlands - Pastoral farmland full of skeleton reapers. They reap wheat.
{HEX 16} - Lake Sinister - A polluted lake. Staging grounds for skeleton powered underwater boats.
{HEX 17} - Airfield - Hidden amongst the hills is an experimental airfield with skeleton-driven autogyros.
{HEX 18} - SLF Secret Clubhouse - A treehouse at the end of a path through the jungle. Meetings are held here by a group of skeletons infected with a magical memetic virus
{HEX 19} - Cathedral of Rebirth - A massive cathedral of bone. Center for religion and rituals.
{HEX 20} - Realport - A thriving and heavily guarded port town. Serves as a necromancy-free front for the island to trade with the rest of the world. The guards will prevent visitors from leaving town.
{HEX 21} - Bonesworth Academy - A cliffside academy building overlooking Realport. Educated visitors are hired as guest lecturers so that the island can produce more highly skilled skeletons.
What's the deal?
The island is basically covered in liches. There is a secret ritual which binds the soul to the skeleton, preserving the strength, knowledge, skills, and personality of the person who is transformed. Kasi* has been using this ritual on loyal citizens for hundreds of years, and have over a million skeletons ready for action.
The island keeps a stable population of the living and indoctrinates them in a religion of ancestor worship. In return, the skeletal ancestors care for the needs of the living. The living are 'harvested' at age 40, with the loyal and pious being raised as skeleton liches, while criminals, troublemakers, and skeptics are raised as mindless undead servitors.
In order to trade with the outside and thus leverage the economic potential of their vast undead workforce, Kasi maintains a potemkin port town, where the skeletons wear disguises and only the living interact with visitors.
Think North Korea but tropical and with skeletons.
An important component for enacting the ritual and maintaining the health of ancient liches is calcium goop. But within a few decades, the mines will run out and Kasi will become entirely dependent on trade for its survival. The rulers can't allow this to happen and so are planning to conquer other lands and capture their mineral deposits. In the meantime, they are ramping up imports and funding a league of skeleton pirates to weaken the navies of their rivals.
If you visit the island through official means, you'll find yourself in Realport (Hex 20), the aforementioned Potemkin village. (It really is a thriving port town though.)
Attempt to come ashore anywhere else and you will be accosted, either by the official navy of Kasi or by the skeleton pirates of Gaptooth Cove. Of course, a small vessel should be able to sneak ashore in the dead of night, but even then, the northern shores of the island is dominated by rocky cliff-faces, and the western and southern faces are dominated by dense jungle.
Travel Times:
If you ride out in the open along established roads, it's possible to travel about 6 hexes in a day. If you skulk through the underbrush, no more than 2.Factions of Skeleton Island
The Court: Long ago, a powerful necromancer king perfected a ritual by which corpses can be reanimated and bound to their former souls. He conquered an island nation and granted this form of eternal life to any who pledged loyalty to him. (People are resurrected as skeletons because the dead meat still rots.) Hundreds of years later, a silver-tongued courtier named Count Fibula was reanimated. Fibula used his wit to slowly gather power and influence over the centuries. Today, the Count is the de facto ruler of the island, although he insists that he is merely an adviser to the Dread King, who spends all his time in his library and is far too old and wise to bother with silly things like administrative minutia.
The Blessed Children: The living spend their days training and studying for their second life, conducting diplomatic efforts, walking around Realport pretending to be workers, worshipping at the spooky bone cathedral or simply relaxing as their ancestors care to their needs.
The Citizens: Those who prove themselves loyal to the court are resurrected in their full capacity. Some care for their descendants, some spend the days on complicated research or elaborate art. Others prefer to rest and are allowed to slumber away in the catacombs. However, in the event of war, every skeleton is sword to duty and will awaken.
The Cult of Eternal Rest: A religion/rebellion which believes that resurrection is a perversion of nature, and that souls should be allowed to leave the world after a person dies. They engage in guerrilla tactics and pulverize any skeletons they can get their hands on. They hide away in the jungle around the southern part of the island. They are at a technological and numerical advantage, but have the nature spirits of the island on their side.
The Skeleton Crew: Pirate skeletons! They roam the seas, attacking ships, stealing booty. They mostly do it out of love for the craft of piracy. Fibula's court directs them towards enemies and otherwise allows them to do their thing as long as they don't interfere with shipments to and from Kasi, and hand over the boring treasure like copper ingots and sacks of flour and whatnot.
The Skeleton Liberation Front: The product of a ritual gone awry. This miscast ritual was meant to make the skeletons more obedient by instilling a hypercharged and hyperfocused version of a single goal. Because the caster was thinking about raising obedient skeletons by using the improved ritual, Skeleton Zero was accidentally imbued with the desire to do the same. Then like a magical prion disease, this version of the ritual spread. The tainted skeletons have all the knowledge and skills that they gained in life, but have a single terminal value: make more tainted skeletons.
*The official name of the island as decreed by the Dread Lord is "Kickass Skeleton Island", but everyone else refers to it as "Kasi"
Note: Here's a WIP pdf. It's not even close to the point of usability. The TODO is:
- Write the detailed descriptions for the rest of the hexes.
- Write all the encounter tables. (This will take the longest to complete.)
- Finish the stats for the d300 list of skeletons. (Basically done. Already wrote a script to do the formatting. Just need to fill in the blanks on the spreadsheet so the script won't complain about missing cells.)
- Tweak the formatting for the skeleton list to make it more compact + add numbers so that the entire thing can be rolled on without consulting a separate table.
- Figure out how to format Skeleton Wizard Class to look decent on a page.
- Finish writing Skeleton Warrior and Skinny Weirdo classes, and add to file.
- Create silly doodles to intersperse among the skeleton stats.
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