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Stonestare Island
Updated: Aug. 20, 6:22 p.m.
NOTE: This island is NOT a canonical part of the DINO-PIRATES OF NINJA ISLAND setting. That means it doesn't show up on the main page of the setting. But it DOES show up in searches and in the "Assigned-To" lists for components. If you think this island SHOULD be canonical, please contact the setting administrators and maybe they'll agree with you.
Summary
A small, lonely island filled with dense jungles, crumbling ruins, impossibly lifelike statues, and one mysterious inhabitant that can petrify with a glance.
Stonestare island is fairly well known along the seaways but remains unexploited. That the island was once settled by an advanced culture is evident- stone towers just from the dense foliage, and atop the island’s single peak, a temple of sorts can be seen, with a wide stone stairway leading to the pillared, crumbling structure at the top. Some believe the island is called 'Stone Stair’, and credit the temple at the peak as inspiration, but a spyglass sweep of the peak reveals figures trapped in stone, most in postures of terror or flight. They are too perfectly captured to have been carved by any craftsman. Even the bravest of explorers, upon spotting the petrified figures, give this place a wide berth.
It is true that an ancient and deadly menace once haunted the place- a gorgon of great size and stupefying age. In recent times, that beast has either died or has fallen into a slumber so great that it no longer threatens visitors. This is not commonly known; sailors still fear the place and explorers will command sizable hazard pay to tie off at one of Stonestare’s ancient jetties- some adorned with petrified forms of what were once fleeing men.
Still, something deadly remains. Scholars and sorcerers will occasionally hire buccaneers or explorers to visit the island and return with one of the statues. Their objectives are varied- they seek to learn the process of petrification, or perhaps to reverse it: some of the statues are very old and those souls, if returned to life, could reveal many secrets of the past. But these missions always fail, most never returning at all.
Several ill fates befall visitors here. The island has been settled several times in its long history, always by those fierce enough to survive the hazards of the jungle and the traps and mechanisms left behind by previous residents. A necromancer once dwelled here, and his lifeless experiments human, dino and demon still roam the jungle trails. Another reclusive wizard bred a unique species of mushroom wanders the jungles at night, releasing shimmering clouds of deadly spores. Sunlight kills them, but in the dense jungle, they are numerous enough to claim all but the wariest and hardiest of buccaneers.
Stonestare is all the more dangerous because visitors may come prepared for one threat but then face another- mirrored shields are little defense against hungry ghouls or deep hidden pits set with razor spikes.
And of course, the gorgon, may not be as dead as this chronicle relates.
