Medusa [Ravenloft]

In a gloomy northern sea, past a notorious island of torment off a northern domain of science, lies a black rock sailors call Lastrock. Lovely singing drifts from it, but those who land seldom return, for it belongs to the medusa Ysmera.

Ysmera has a slender woman's body and a crown of venomous asps. Her face is humanlike but scaled, with beady black eyes and a lipless slit from which a forked tongue tastes the air. Her weak, light-shy eyes and keen nose balance out, so no surprise adjustments apply. She speaks the nearby domain's language with a thick accent; her origins are unknown.

Each round she can turn her gaze on one foe within 30 feet, who must save vs. petrification or become stone. She sees and petrifies creatures on the Astral and Ethereal planes as well. Her eyes stay deadly after death: viewers save at +1 per day since she died, yet a natural 1 always fails, so a 5% risk lingers for centuries.

A polished metal surface turns her gaze back on her, forcing a save, so she loathes mirrors. Nonmetal reflections and the gaze reflection spell fail against her, and another medusa's gaze cannot harm her, though a basilisk's can. Once petrified, she is no longer dangerous to look upon.

Her asps bite every round for 1 point, and the bitten must save vs. poison or die on the spot. They also spit at every enemy within 10 feet each round; failing a save vs. breath weapon means permanent blindness until cure blindness or similar magic is applied. She also uses a fine, nonmagical short sword worth 500 gp (1d6 against medium, 1d8 against large foes) and a short bow with a 150-yard reach (1d6), sometimes tipped with asp venom.

About 50 years ago a small merchant ship fleeing a storm struck something near the island and sank. Captain Henrik Vollmar and five men reached Lastrock, and his journal, later found adrift in a keg, tells the rest. They climbed 50 feet of crumbling cliff to a barren plateau, then found a crater of hot springs and lush jungle with no animals larger than insects. There stood an endless wall of white stone with a rune-carved arch. Inside was a maze of blank halls lined with lifelike statues, every face frozen in terror.

One by one the men became stone, each loss preceded by a shadow flickering across the walls. Last of all, Vollmar blindfolded himself so he could see no higher than a waist. Ysmera came singing and claimed she had chosen him, asking if he found her lovely. Her voice nearly broke him, but the hiss of her snakes woke him, and he stabbed and wounded her. She ripped off the blindfold and her asps spat into his eyes. She vowed him a slow death; he fled, and blind, he escaped easily, for the maze is as much illusion as stone.

Ysmera did not build the labyrinth and cannot leave it. Its classical style and unreadable runes suggest another world, and since older charts omit the island and its volcanic nature fits nothing nearby, it may have been torn away with her. Isolation has made her mad. Craving freedom and a mate, she marks one person in every party as her chosen and hunts the rest, though anyone who yields to her would not survive long. She has likely gathered the wealth of many castaways.

From the water Lastrock is a rough black cone; from its rim, a steaming jungle crater with the labyrinth at its center. The absence of larger animals hints at its unnatural history.

Unknown to the world, Vollmar lives on in a seaside cave, fishing to survive. He can now tell light from dark but sees no shapes. He knows every corner of the island and that Ysmera cannot leave her maze, and he helps visitors as he can, though decades alone make him seem a mad, broken hermit.