Keep on the Shining Isle is a

Pocket Dungeon written and

designed by Shel Kahn, published
in 2017.

This dungeon would not have existed

without the advice, assistance and
patient beta­reading of Chris Huth,
Jonathan Lavallee and Lillian Cohen­
Moore.

Index:

Setup pg 1
The Island pg 1
Getting There pg 1
The Surface of the Island pg 3
The Keep pg 5
The Crystal pg 7
The Map pg 10
The Tainted Food pg 12
The Crystal's Guardians pg 15
The Long Ones pg 16
Backstory pg 17
The Climax pg 18
The Escape pg 21
The Shining Isle is a remote but not
inaccessible island, in a sparse
archipelago of rocky, tilted islands.

Setup:
Send your PCs there after a pair of people
who’ve gone off alone to the island. Your
PCs could be trying to rescue them, to
capture them, could be in love with one of
them, whatever reason works best in your
campaign! We’ll refer to these two poor
souls as Lost Person 1 and 2. Name them to
fit in with your world.

The Island:
On the Shining Isle is an ancient keep ­ a
walled fortress, built into the bedrock of
the island. Nearby townsfolk know of it as
an island no one goes to anymore, but
there’s no clear reason why.

Getting There:
On their way there on a boat, have your
PCs spend the night in a foggy muck,
unable to navigate. While it is dark and
foggy, let a strange glow spread through
the water, growing ever brighter until a
large THWOMM is heard. Then the light goes
out.

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About a minute after the THWOMM, a huge
wave comes charging towards the boat,
forcing the PCs to fight to stay aboard.
Don’t kill anyone right now ­ but it’s a
good chance for some seafaring drama and
maybe a cold­water rescue. In the morning,
the fog will have lifted and your PCs will
be able to easily navigate to the Shining
Isle.

The island is lifted from the sea on huge

cliffs, with no beaches to speak of, just
a small dock built out from the rock at
water level, with some well­worn stone
steps carved into the cliffs to allow
people to travel up and down in single
file.

The visible islands nearby look almost as

if they had been tilted away from the
Shining Isle ­ huge cliffs face towards it
while the tops of them angle down towards
the sea on the far sides. Almost like a
weird crater.

There’s no boat at the moorings, but there

is a fairly fresh looking rope tied to the
moorings that has been torn, leaving
nothing but the frayed end of it.

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The single file steps are slippery and
damp, even towards the top, as if water
has been behaving strangely recently.

The Surface of the Island:

Upon arriving on the top of the island,
PCs find the keep, a road leading from the
steps to the keep, a dark forest of
strangely large trees for such a harsh
environment, a glowing pond with a small
swampy stream leading to a waterfall off
the side of the island, and not really any
wild animals to speak of.

The pond is an unearthly blue and if they

stare into it long enough they get the
sense that it's glowing. There is a large
rowboat on the pond, covered in algae and,
upon a close inspection, sprouting leaves
and roots itself, but still floating, with
a few ancient oars balanced inside. There
are fish in the pond but they are way, way
too big and many don't resemble any fish
the PCs have ever seen before. If a PC
falls in the pond the fish will attack.

There are no flying birds on the island ­

the forest is eerily silent and the pond
has nothing predating the fish in it.
However, there are feral domesticated
pigs, goats, chickens, and if they explore
the forest they will find a clearing with
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a small and long­overgrown patch of
vegetables.

The animals are strange, bigger than usual

with gleaming fur and tusks and horns and
claws, and they are beatifically calm
unless attacked, at which point they turn
on the PCs en masse.

The vegetables have overgrown, and look

incredibly healthy despite visibly not
being tended in recent, perhaps, decades.
There are apple trees with the biggest,
reddest, roundest apples any of the
adventurers has ever seen, and the forest
is full of nut trees that have grown to
twice their usual height, in between the
dark spruces and pines.

The enhanced feral farm animals are

stronger, more dexterous, and have no
fear. Their armor or ac is higher than
usual but they are extra vulnerable to
constitution­based attacks, like poison.

While a tracking skill might show that the

two Lost People were definitely here
recently, they seem to have gone into the
keep and not come back out.

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The Keep was built by an ancient
isolationist apocalyptic cult ­ if any of
your PCs have knowledge of magic, cults,
religions or the region, they should be
able to pull up a little information on
who used to live here.

The cult was closed to members and moved

out to the island, bringing enough food to
set up a self­sufficient farm, with
minimal trading contact with the outside
world.

The cultists saw something special in the

island, and put in the time and money and
energy to get it set up for the long haul,
but after a few generations they seem to
have all left or died out. Or otherwise
disappeared.

There has been no contact with them for

decades and decades.

The Keep:
The Keep is structured like your usual
walled fortress, with lookout towers at
the corners watching the horizon and a
big heavy and well­locked front gate.
Its inland half is enclosed by the
thick, verdant forest and to find a way
in the PCs will have to trudge through
the bush and then through the long
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overgrown garden to the back door, which
is much easier to break into.

The Keep has your usual selection of rooms

­ the upper floors hold living quarters,
disused and dusty or gone over to
windblown plants. Storms seem to have
broken the few glass windows there were,
and the shutters are long since broken and
fallen.

On the ground floor there is a small

temple room with imagery of glowing
crystals pointing to the sun, but it
has been locked off, as if forbidden
even to the cultists when they were
there.

There are kitchens with a few simple

implements, and they can see that the
recent visitors, the two Lost People,
have indeed tried cooking recently ­ a
small cleaned area and some recently
carried water from the pond on the
island tell the tale of some cooking,
maybe as recently as a few days ago.

It looks also like they set up camp in the

kitchen proper, by the big hearth, but
again, the bedrolls and chamberpot have
not been used in days. Otherwise the
kitchen itself has gone to seed, with vine
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plants growing across the stone floor and
walls, flourishing despite the limited
daylight.

Going downstairs, the PCs discover that a

certain amount of human sacrifice seems to
have been going on as they unearth a
charnel pit of skeletons in the basement
of the fortress.

This pit is right in front of what seems

to be a new Temple room, with imagery and
writing about the “Sweet Ones” and how
they were granting them food and drink
that was making them all better but at a
cost, and how they would come back for
them all if they could only become as
glorious.

The human remains seem tall, long, thin,

and while the flesh is gone ­ possibly
thanks to the pigs and chickens, whose old
mouldering feces litter the area ­ the
bones are untouched and seem eerily to
glow faintly, especially if the
adventurers are exploring the basement
without a torch, using dark vision.

The Crystal:
If the PCs explore the basement temple
room, they will find none of the usual
finery, but an altar carved from the black
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spruce growing on the island has been
shifted, possibly by the Lost People, to
reveal a trap door. If the PCs go in, they
find an ancient magical crystalline
megastructure.

They arrive in a sideways chamber, dark

and small, and inside it is a cracked
floor with light filtering up through it.
Going down into the glow they find out
that this crystalline structure beneath
the island is a farming complex that is,
in itself, growing, at a slow but pc­
detectable rate.

Inside the first lit chamber, there are

vegetable and fruit plants the PCs
recognize, planted in beds that seem to be
hanging from the wall, and sleeping
domesticated food animals they are
familiar with, but the PCs can’t wake them
up despite their best efforts. Fruits
grains vegetables and animals are all
larger than usual, more beautiful than
ever seen before.

Each chamber the PCs go into is a tapering

hexagonal prism, and at first, they find
chambers who seem to have fallen over and
are lying sideways, with plants hanging
from beds on what is now the wall and
animals all sleeping against that wall.
8
Weirdly, the plants are still growing as
if the top of the chamber was "up" ­
possibly because that is where the
beautiful light is coming from. And it's a
weird light, beautiful and somehow more
pure than the cold clouded sunlight they
know is above the island.

The whole sideways "ceiling" is alight but

it's cool to the touch, and it's easy for
the explorers to go through a roughly made
opening cut in the "ceiling" to the next
few rooms of the crystal structure they're
in. This sideways branch is mostly plants,
but the farther along away from the centre
of the island that they go, the more
narrow the chambers get, the less they
recognize the species and the more
strange, beautiful and enticing the plants
are.

This is the place where the cultists were

getting their food, for sure ­ in fact,
they can see the plants were recently
pruned, probably by the Lost People.

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10
The Map of the Keep on the Shining Isle
11
The Tainted Food:
The PCs will be tempted to eat the
beautiful food ­ roll against wis or con
to see if they resist. If they ate food
from the surface, keep track, but don’t
make them roll at the time. Anyone who’s
eaten surface food will immediately be
tempted by crystal food, but everyone will
be tempted as they move further into the
structure. Food will be increasingly
tempting and also increasingly dangerous
as they explore into older crystalline
structures.

Tainted food can have a few effects.

Immediate effects are a small bonus to
strength and dexterity, and a small loss
to Constitution or a similar stat. Each
new food they eat once they've tried it,
they must roll against their diminished
con, and if they fail, they get no
benefits and lose increasingly large
amounts of health. If they succeed, they
get stronger and more dextrous but lose
further con, making them more vulnerable
to the deadly effects of the food. If they
hit a grey result, they gain what the food
gives and the lose what the food takes at
the same time.

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The sleeping animals are unwakeable and
can be killed and butchered without a
fight, and just like the plants, the PCs
are very tempted to do so, as they look
delicious.

The Central Hub:

If the PCs follow the structure towards
the centre of the island, into larger
chambers instead of smaller ones, they'll
find more animals in this one arm of the
crystal, sleeping and beautiful, until
they reach a central hub and find one of
the Lost People.

They are huddled at a locked door ­ a

strange portal in the wall that seems too
tall and thin but otherwise resembles a
door. They were asleep upon the PCs
approach but easily wake up, clutching
real and improvised weaponry to themselves
and whimpering about the Long People and
how they have to keep them out or they'll
get taken too.

With some reassurance, comfort, kindness

or charisma rolls the PCs can sooth them
and get them to talk about what has
happened. Eventually it comes out that the
other Lost Person they were sent here with
is gone, pulled into the depths of this
crystalline structure, which they describe
13
as "huge". They were pulled in by a pair
of exceptionally tall, thin humanoids who
were silent and implacable.

The PCs can choose to try and escape with

the Lost Person remaining, they can choose
to book it without them, or they can try
to find and rescue the other Lost Person.

Much of the crystal network is sealed, but

if they want to break in further or get
through this door, they'll need: magical
destruction spells, magical strength
bonuses, magical destructive weapons or
some other supernatural method to counter
the uncanny strength of the crystals.

If they manage to break through the

crystal walls, the shattered pieces each
start to glow with their own light and PCs
can collect them as treasure.

The central hub is divided into an

outer ring chamber, with platforms. On
those platforms, are sleeping people
who resemble the normal local fantasy
races or ethnicities, who were
presumably cult members as they are
wearing the cult’s clothes, who have
been set up on crystalline platforms
like beds, and are sleeping that same
impossible sleep. They seem to have
14
become taller, stronger and more
beautiful than the PCs thought possible.

If the PCs explore this ring­shaped

chamber, they will find the second Lost
Person, not much changed yet but fast
asleep, and just as they find them, the
door to the central room will open and in
will walk two Long Ones.

The Crystal's Guardians:

The Long Ones look strange and blank and
beautiful. They are a good foot taller
than the tallest person the PCs have seen,
thin and lanky and generally humanoid but
with strange proportions. They don’t seem
to be naked but the PCs can’t really tell
if they are wearing clothing or just are
vaguely shaped in general, they glow with
the same eerie beautiful light as the
crystal ceilings, and they are hard to
look at for very long.

They speak in a low, reverberating melodic

voice that seems to come out of both them
and the walls around them, and if anyone
touches them, they feel as crystalline as
the walls, despite their fluid movement.
They arrive distressed and try to stop the
PCs from trying to wake up the Lost Person
who is asleep on the platform.

15
Anyone who has eaten the food on the
island can understand the long ones. If no
one has, the long ones will try to offer
up food in hopes of turning someone into a
translator.

If the PCs attack the long ones, they will

find their ac is Very High, but they only
attempt to put the PCs to sleep, not to
hurt them. They use a standard sleep spell
to do so, singing it in their
reverberating voices. PCs who seem able to
do damage to them will quickly be
physically restrained by the Long Ones,
whose strength is Very High and are
difficult to escape once grabbed.

The Long Ones:

Strength: High
Dexterity: High
AC: High
Armor: Very High
Vulnerabilities: Constitution based
attacks like magic poison; magic damage;
can be pushed by force spells or hard
physical hits but do not take damage in
those situations
Spells: sleep
Goals: to put the PCs to sleep.

16
If the Long Ones end up close to death,
they will hide back in the central
chamber, and PCs will find it much much
harder to break into than the outer ones.
If the PCs break into it, or continue to
try to wake up the Lost Person, there is a
huge flash of light and they are all
knocked out.

Once all the PCs are asleep, the least

contaminated (those who have eaten the
least of the tainted food) will wake up
first. The long ones will have restrained
any that were likely to wake up, are
standing nearby, and will force someone to
eat the food to become a translator if the
person who wakes up is not able to
understand them.

If the PCs do not attack the long ones,

skip right to conversation wherein the
following is revealed:

The Backstory:
The long ones call themselves Alroyav, and
they explain that this is not their home
plane or planet. They have been using this
island as a refueling station for their
planar travels, and had set up a hidden
greenhouse to grow the things they need

17
underneath. The was only a slight
destruction to the natural geological
structures when they did this.

They have been here for a Very Long Time,

and it has recently (to them) become
obvious there was an... infestation of
locals. Locals planted their own plants
and animals in the Alroyav greenhouse and
ate some of the Alroyav food and were
changed. Alroyav light has leaked into the
upper island through the soil and pond and
transformed the plants and animals up
there, but much less.

Some of those locals changed too much to

live under their home sunlight, and died,
so the Alroyav started to try to take
those who were gone too far and put them
to sleep until they could be taken to live
out their lives in the Alroyav plane, but
were not fast enough and many people died.
They ask the PCs how to stop this leak and
infestation.

The Climax:
While they are talking, one Alroyav seems
to pause as if listening, then turns away,
works some sort of invisible interface on
the inner hub’s wall, and a loud vibrating
sound starts. The light intensifies, the
PCs feel the whole island seem to resonate
18
with that huge THWOMMMM sound, and if they
are really good at hearing they can hear
crashing of waves, and they briefly pass
out.

When the light comes back down there are

four new Alroyav looking oddly at the PCs.
They speak unbelievably fast to the two
known ones and then calm down. One of the
two that were stationed there explain that
finally, someone is passing through who can
take a few folks with them to safer planes.

The visitors go to grab two each of the

sleeping platform people, including any
still­sleeping PCs and the sleeping Lost
Person. PCs have to talk themselves out of
getting abducted and must fight to get their
comrades woken up, but the Alroyav insist
the Lost Person sleeping on the platform has
eaten too much tainted food to be okay on
this plane any longer.

At this point, if they haven’t been with

the party all along, the other Lost Person
bursts in. They insist the sleeping Lost
Person is woken up and the situation
explained. The sleeping Lost Person upon
awakening looks both glorious and not
really okay anymore. They admit they no
longer feel like themselves.

19
Maybe they both leave together with the
Alroyav? Maybe they say a tearful goodbye?
Maybe the sleeping Lost Person prefers to
live what time they have left on their
home planet? Meanwhile all six of the
Alroyav now quiz the PCs about how to
better seal off their greenhouse.

Whether or not the PCs can help the

Alroyav, they do let them and the less
tainted Lost Person leave without a fight
­ UNLESS: if a PC has reduced their
constitution to within one point of the
lowest possible, the Alroyav will try and
convince them to come with them to their
home plane. This is essentially character
death, functionally, but a really cool
one.

The Alroyav do insist that the PCs not take

ANYTHING from the island back to the
outside world, though. They are very VERY
firm about it. Everything there is faintly
tainted, and the longer it’s been there the
more tainted it is. They force the PCs to
empty their pockets of the crystal shards
and it will take a VERY HIGH sneaking
hiding or deception check to keep shards or
any other treasure from the island.

20
The Escape:
Upon returning to the surface of the
island, the PCs can see the sea is churned
up, and indeed, their boat is GONE,
leaving only a torn rope. If they go back
up to grab the rowboat, an Alroyav
attempts to stop them.

Under the light of the sun, the Alroyav

are more vulnerable to physical attacks
and their AC is lower. Play them like they
are poisoned ­ each round under the local
sunlight chips away at their health. They
will attempt to simply take the rowboat
from the PCs and will try that sleeping
spell again, especially on the most
tainted PCs.

When they are close to death they will

give up and flee back below the surface,
leaving the PCs to take the rowboat
carefully down the stone stairs and ride
in its living wood back to civilization.

21
The Keep on the Shining Isle is
a system­agnostic dungeon
featuring a haunted ruin, a
mystery cult and some very
tempting apples.

Pick this up to send your home

campaign on a memorable sidequest,
or try out your favourite new system
with this 1­2 session scenario.

Written and published by Shel Kahn as

the first of many Pocket Dungeons.