X1 - Isle of Dread central dungeon ideas

[Lord Torath]

First off, Spoiler Alert! If you haven't already read or played the Isle of Dread, keep your nose out!
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Okay, so for those of you who've read the module, you know that at the center is a forgotten temple of the ancient Kopru. At this point, the kopru are just about gone. Much more interesting to my mind would be to have the kopru just starting to expand their empire.

Anyone have any ideas for what a functioning temple would look like? I'd still like to keep the Giant Pearl in there somewhere.

Thanks for your ideas!

[Yora]

If they are about to expand they also need to significantly boost their numbers.

Taking slaves is one option. The module implies something like that.

Or they use magic to spawn more of their kind. Perhaps the pearl in the giant oyster (you mean that pearl?) is really a gift from a dark good and actually filled with thousands of kopru egs ready to hatch into tadpoles. And within month they are grown up to serve the few remaining elder kopru. Since growing the big pearl takes so long, they could not hatch the spawn until now.

[Khedrac]

The first question is "what system are you planning on using?"
If you are going for BECM D&D or something similar try to get hold of a copy of PC3 - The Sea People

This lays out entire underwater kingdoms in the seas just South of the Know World (there's abyssal depths between them and the Isle of Dread itself).
Most of this will not be of that much use (expect as places for them to be about to enslave) as the Kopru don't really come into things much as far as I can remember.

However, one of the new playable race-classes is the Kopru, so you could have the big bad boss Kopru as a Kopru 36 - characters who go up against it early will just lose so fast their heads will spin.
Use of these classes will enable you to have Kopru as viable villans for more than a few levels.

As for a functioning temple - the island is volcanic - perhaps the temple was built underwater so the doors and windows are all in odd places?

[ScrivenerofDoom]

Are you familiar with Paizo's Savage Tide adventure path that played out over the last dozen or so issues of the print version of Dungeon magazine? It included adventures on and under the Isle of Dread in a few issues as well as that central temple complex. It might be worth having a look to steal some or all of their ideas.

[Lord Torath]

Are you familiar with Paizo's Savage Tide adventure path that played out over the last dozen or so issues of the print version of Dungeon magazine? It included adventures on and under the Isle of Dread in a few issues as well as that central temple complex. It might be worth having a look to steal some or all of their ideas.Sounds like a great idea! Anyone know where I can find a copy of the relevant Dungeon magazines? (Also, I'm playing mostly 2E AD&D)

One of my first thoughts was that one of the Kopru may have recently (maybe a year or so ago) charmed a red dragon that was exploring the volcano. This brought new enthusiasm and hope to the kopru, so they started charming the natives in the village above (who worship a deity of fire/volcanoes). Charmed people could bring uncharmed people to the kopru to be charmed, and soon they controlled the entire population of Taboo Island. Then they sent out raiding parties to capture people from the village of Mantru. After several months of periodic raiding (performed sometimes by those abducted from the village), the survivors packed up their things and moved up the slope and away from the lake. They're currently living in a stockade. Now the kopru have their slaves digging a tunnel through the wall of the volcano (Later Sauron will use this tunnel to forge the Ring of power! :smalltongue:), and they've started expanding their charm offensive.

So they're going to need to clean out their tunnels a bit, get some fire salamanders as an elite guard, and maybe some other flying or fire-related monsters as well.

[Yora]

Paizo still has a stock of many of the late Dungeon magazines which they sell on their website for $8 each. Since you're in USA, shipping shouldn't be an issue.
The whole adventure path is #139 to #150, the one with Taboo Island is #145 (City of Broken Idols). #144 has an adventure set on a new aboleth city (The Lightless Depths) that the kopru have taken over and use to make their own variant of magic pearls. Could be useful to you as well.