Isle of the Angry Apes

An adventure for characters of levels 5-8. Wow, those apes are angry! Smoking Island, in the Cymru Islands off the northeast coast of the North-lands, was, is, and will be destroyed. That which cannot be slain was slain and the island exists in several times at once. Recently, or perhaps a few decades from now, a cadre of legionaries serving the Three Kings of Smoking Island captured a Northlander longship and put to sea only to discover there was no way back to their home time. Led by the Centurion Talkithis, the grey apes established a base on Young Island, scraping what living they can amidst the jagged rocks beneath a sulfurous sky. While exploring the volcanic wastes of Young Island, Talkithis contacted a tendril of the Sleeping Fire, that ancient entity that inhabits Smoking Island and whose death shattered time. The Sleeping Fire needs souls to power its escape, and Talkithis provides them in exchange for the might to save his crew. Yet, as the months have passed the Sleeping Fire has corrupted the grey apes. No longer content to simply tend weedy gardens, they have taken to raiding shipping far and wide, taking loot for their own use, prisoners to work as slaves, and sacrifices for the Sleeping Fire. No longer castaway soldiers, they are becoming fiendish warriors and loyal servants of an evil flame that longs to awaken. Its heat burns in their veins and clouds their minds, and these piratical apes are so very angry.