The Burning Beach

Forlorn Rift: Below the waves, a deep rift stretches into the darkness of Khyber. Aquatic horrors abound in its depths, but the most common threat is a clutch of chuuls that prowl the upper reaches of the sea crater. Rumor has is it that a powerful sea drake king named Kaarlgrun the Usurper makes his home inside Forlorn Rift, but the cantankerous sea dragon has not been spotted for a hundred years.

Smoking Sand Warrens: The smoke that pours from the black sand rises from a nest of vents and dark tunnels. This dizzying network of underground passages serves as a warren for a feral band of magmin led by their chief, Sizzralg (male magmin barbarian 9). The superheated gases in these vents deal 1d6 points of fire damage per round to any creature traversing them.

Bones of the Usurped King: This well-worn sea drake skeleton was once Kaarlgrun’s elder brother, the rightful king of Forlorn Rift named Haagbarl, before the younger sea drake’s treachery ended his life. According to the firebringers’ tales, Haagbarl crawled from the sea and thrashed his last on the Burning Beach while calling upon the stone dragon’s head to curse his traitorous younger sibling. Many believe Kaarlgrun’s disappearance is the result of Haagbarl’s dying devotions to the petrified red dragon.

The Prayer Platform: Every new moon, when a holy one offers to be bathed in the dragon god’s breath, a host of firebringers ascends this platform to writhe and chant along with the ceremony. The warriors of the clan engage in self mutilation with burning brands—they scar their arms and chests both to prove their might and supplicate themselves to the red dragon god. Tribal youths are sent to the Burning Beach as a rite of passage, where they must spend 24 hours here alone and sleep on the platform. They often dream of themselves as powerful dragons, kin to their great god. Anyone who sleeps upon this platform dreams similar dreams and is immune to the frightful presence ability of all dragons for the next week.

The Pyre: This obsidian dais rising 30 feet off the ground is positioned directly beneath the petrified red dragon’s maw. When blackfire is hurled into the dragon’s magma core, gouts of lava erupt from the maw, showering any creatures positioned here and causing 20d6 points of fire damage (DC 25 Reflex save for half). The fire is presaged by a sputtering sound and a slight tremor on the round before the eruption.

Shaman’s Alcove: A passage at the base of the red dragon’s neck is a well-kept secret of the firebringer shamans, passed down from father to son. The shamans have always controlled the breath of the dragon from this secret chamber, where they hurl blackfire into the depths before ascending to the top of the dragon’s head via the secret stair noted on the map. The eruption usually takes a few rounds to build up.

he current shaman is a twisted, malformed young man named Ulthig. Ulthig is in love with the chief’s daughter, but she is promised to a great warrior named Kintergos (and is repulsed by the drooling shaman’s deformities in any event). Ulthig has violated the sacred code of his ancestors and now scorches every single warrior who presents himself to the dragon god on the pyre (working his way through the ranks to Kintergos). Unless someone intervenes soon, Ulthig is bound to decimate the entire tribe with his obsession. Besides wiping out their bravest and strongest, Ulthig’s unremitting eruptions have awakened fell fiery monstrosities long slumbering deep in the magma, whose ire could destroy the firebringers to the last clan member.

Hazy black smoke rises off the beach night and day, and it covers the entire stretch of dark sand in an otherworldly pall. This smoke grants concealment to any and all who wander there. The smoke thins to nothing about 10 feet off the ground (thus the raised pyres and prayer platforms are not shrouded in it). The beach is difficult to access by land or sea. Treacherous ridges descend from cliffs above, and the churning shoals smash inbound ships to driftwood and offer up their passengers to a host of coastal predators. A successful DC 30 Swim check is necessary to avoid being raked over razor coral on the way in, and failure results in a character taking 2d6 points of slashing damage per round until she succeeds on the check. A successful DC 30 Climb check is necessary to descend to the remote beach from the 180-foot-tall cliffs above without falling.

A volcano was ground to pebbles here by the eternal onslaught of wind and sea. Now a haze-filled beach of glossy black sand stretches out below crags of volcanic rock. Rising from the sand is a tremendous statue of a dragon’s head, and its obsidian toothed maw opens wide. Before the beastly visage stands a stone pyre with a set of carved steps leading up to it. The only sound is the lash of the sea against the shoals and the howl of a haunting wind.

Terrain Features

A strange, chalky, black mineral called blackfire grows on the cliff walls behind the Burning Beach. Blackfire is highly combustible, and when heated it explodes into a gout of flame. Blackfire deposits around the beach make carrying torches dangerous, so anyone moving about the area with a source of flame runs the risk of detonating the unstable mineral (4d6 points of fire damage in a 10-foot-radius blast). If blackfire is added to the material components of any spell that inflicts fire damage, there is a 30% chance the spell inflicts an additional 1d6 points of fire damage.

Blackfire is harvested by the firebringers’ shamans and used to make the petrified dragon’s head “breathe.” In truth the fiery outpouring from its maw results when blackfire is tossed into the magma well roiling deep beneath the beach. An eruption belches out fire very soon after that.