KRAKEN'S COVE (month 1, days 5-8)

Kraken's Cove serves smugglers well, for the entrance to this secluded rift in the coastal cliffs that line the eastern shore of Blood Bay is riddled with dangerous reefs and submerged threats. As a result, only sailors who know the region or possess charts of the waters dare approach the cliffs here - the ship the Tropic Thunder has access to has neither.

Without charts, the safest option was to put aground a few miles north of Kraken's Cove at a secluded beach. From there, it was a fairly short hike up to the cliff tops and then south along a narrow path that eventually reaches the cove itself.

Before the Tropic Thunder reached Kraken's Cove, they realized something was horribly wrong. Plumes of smoke rose into the sky above the cove, visible from a mile away. Worse, as the heroes approached, swaths of dead wildlife, from parrot to gull to monkey to snake, lay dead on the ground, their bodies horribly distorted and deformed. What few wild animals remained alive were similarly deformed, and shockingly aggressive. The Thunder witnessed animals tearing each other apart numerous times on their approach, and at some point before they reached the cove, a clutch of five deformed monkeys attacked them as well.

The five deformed monkeys flopped and writhed down from the trees or across the ground with shocking speed. Their jaws were filled with tiny fangs, and their bodies were covered with open sores from which hooked bonespurs protruded. The deformed monkeys fought to the death, and could be effectively harmed only by magic weapons.

When a deformed monkey died, it immediately made a bite attack, snapping at any one creature in reach just before it succumbed. Once this bite attack was resolved, the deformed monkey's body melted into a puddle of acidic goo, leaving behind only its skeleton. Any living creature within a five foot radius of a melting deformed monkey took acid damage - this acid damage affected only living flesh. The deformed monkeys themselves were resistant to acid. A pool of acid remained on the ground, taking up a space equal to the monkey's space while living - it dealt damage to any creature that moved through the area. The acid dried to a harmless green powder over the course of one minute.

A deformed monkey fought without penalty while disabled and dying.

A creature bitten by a deformed monkey could contract a supernatural disease. The incubation time of this disease was 1 minute, after which point the victim's flesh broke out into a terrible black rash that caused short bony protrusions to extrude from the affected area; the victim also took Intelligence damage. Every day thereafter, the victim took more Intelligence damage as the terrible rash spread and his mind grew more and more bestial.

Since Vicros and Quarion's wolf were afflicted with the disease, the Tropic Thunder returned to the fishing boat, where Quarion successfully treated them both.