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Sallak
Updated: Sept. 17, 3:22 p.m.
This island is a canonical part of the DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND setting. You can still edit it, but aware that the admins may revert your changes if they don't align with the overall vision of the setting.
Summary
An island of augurers who have discovered the art of divination via entrails, with the most accurate divinations coming from intelligent creatures. The priestesses and their tribe are low in military might but highly knowledgeable, allowing them to outwit and manipulate their foes.
It is a terrible thing to have foreseen your own destruction.
The primitive priests and priestesses of the Tanae tribe on Sallak Island learned the art of haruspicy more than a century ago. Reading the intestines after a ritual disembowelment provides hints of the future to one who is trained to read it. The smarter the victim, the more accurate the divination, although what is seen is closely linked to the origin and fate of the victim.
The Tanae’s first haruspex killed a foreign sailor and saw a glimpse of the tribe’s possible destruction at the hands of the foreigner’s people. Since then the haruspex have tried to learn what might be done to prevent the tragedy, but their sacrifices require a victim of the same clan as the foreign sailor. As the Tanae have no idea what clan this man was in, they kidnap and sacrifice every foreigner they can acquire. Forearmed with knowledge from their divinations, they lay traps near the sites of future shipwrecks and know of their prey’s plans long before their prey even considers how to escape. For a primitive people, the Tanae are brutally effective.
There are several ways to use the Tanae of Sallak Island in an adventure:
- A shipwreck or deliberate landing on Sallak Island could lead to the capture of most sailors, while the adventurers are herded and chased through to the jungle to a confrontation that the Tanae haruspices have already foreseen. The PCs must find a way to alter fate and save their sailors from vast wooden stockades before their allies can be sacrificed for knowledge.
- Priests and priestesses of the Tanae have spread out to other islands, hoping to find a victim from the same clan that is destined to overthrow Sallak Island. They become superb masterminds, always staying one step ahead of the PCs due to their divinatory powers.
- The PCs are hired to kidnap a Tanae priest by someone who wishes to know the future. Will the PCs do so, knowing that an innocent must be sacrificed for the augury to work?
