Skeleton of the Gilded Cage (Patreon)

A ghost ship haunts the waters out around the Charred Reef. She’s so old that all that remains is her superstructure, and the golden “cage” she carried on her deck. She appears out of the fog along Charred Reef on nights when there is no more than single ship or boat to sight her, slides along silently on the top of the water, and her disappearance back into the night always presages a violent storm.

Within the gilded cage is a potent banshee, the long dead elven sorceress who was within the cage when the ship sank who knows how long ago. The golden cage she is trapped within also changes her song – instead of wailing in eternal agony, to those outside the cage she seems to be singing a long lamentful song.

Entering the golden cage can be achieved through partially collapsed stairs that lead up a shaft from the bottom of the boat’s skeleton through a shaft in the floor of the cage, or by somehow (flying, climbing) getting to the balcony that surrounds the cage and walking in through one of the four doorways. Of course, the moment one steps within the cage, they become subject to the effects of her wailing song.

Any treasures that were once within the cage with the sorceress are long destroyed or lost by ages of frequent submersion, but a secret panel in the floor of the cage leads to a shallow chamber beneath which contains the MacGuffin.

A version of this map also appears in the Kobold Press adventure “Monkey Business” where it is set out in the oceans of flame near the City of Brass.

https://rpgcharacters.wordpress.com/2018/09/29/skeleton-of-the-gilded-cage/