Thurstle Island: The Willing Few, Smuggler Faction Focus

The Tree Fort

Yet another post-it map. 

To keep intruders from stumbling onto their cave-cliff hideaway, Thurstle Island's smugglers have fortified the trail through the Old Forest that leads to their base with traps and an arboreal watch post. Tricky to attack or defend, depending on how the player's allegiances develop. 

• Guards: 3d4 smugglers will be present at any given time. Stats as bandits or pirates.
• Battlements: Guards with javelins and bows guard the path from hoardings built in the tree. They have excellent cover and field of view. Rope ladders can be lowered to access the fort.
• Ready Room: The happening hangout spot and a convenient place to retreat if the action on the battlements gets too hot. Games and snacks. If you root around, roll on the "Search the Body" table. 
• Stores: A few quiver's of arrows, 2d6 harpoons, flask of lockjaw poison. 
• Living quarters: Another option for retreat, higher up in the tree. Not visible from the ground and only accessible from a rickety stair and a narrow bridge. Easily defended. 
• Crow's Nest: Very high up, above the surrounding canopy. Gives a good view of the Cliff Path, the Sword Meadow and the Fog Cliff, as well as the entrance to the cave hideout (map) and the trail up to the Fort. Contains a few signaling flags and a spyglass.
• Harming the Tree: Setting a fire or starting to saw will quickly draw a horde of angry druids. The players should know that this is suicide.

More about the gang, its members and modes below.

 The Gang and its Modus Operandi

• Several years ago Skarde the Boneless found a hidden inlet accessible via a system of caves. He recruited friends to help and together they make enormous profits circumventing the Governor's taxes and importing contraband. They have a sideline manufacturing berserker drugs derived from the island's ice snakes.
• Like Skarde himself, his gang, "The Willing Few" are a scrawny, scrappy bunch. 
• Mostly armed with cheap glass weapons which they frequently smear with lockjaw poison.
• Lockjaw Poison: Save vs. Con (or paralysis) or muscles go ineluctablely tense, paralyzing your body. On a successful save, just drop to bottom of initiative order (as if you rolled 0). If you're a user of berserker salts, you have advantage on this save.
• Each member of the Willing Few has a snake tattooed on their left palm.

• Mead for the Hall: The governor bans strong drink on the island but the gang brings it in by the shipload. They supply Harald Halfjaw's mead hall and so the viking leader provides them cover in Cove Town. Harald doesn't know that they are behind the berserker salts.
• Blood for Passage: Getting around the island without traversing the Forest is impossible, so the smugglers have purchased both passage and concealment from the Druids by providing them with live sacrifices for their rituals. One of the Few, Svedka, is seeking a fresh target when the players arrive on the island.
• Berserker salts: The gang distills a potent drug that grants a user super strength and resistance to pain for a short time (effect as a barbarian's rage). 
• The drugs are rendered from the brains of ice snakes or (in much greater quantities) from the corpse of roid ogres.
• The gang deliberately over-doses people to trigger feral madness and begin the transformation into wendigos and roid ogres. They let them loose in the City of the Ancients' ruins, and, once they mature, hunt them to make more salts. 

Rival Adventuring Party

The players may encounter smugglers hunting in the City ruins. They definitely won't start a fair fight, but you'd best not look like a target of opportunity. 

Terg the Rogue: You'll never hear him coming but he smells terrible. Nervous and shifty. He seeks disproportionate revenge for the smallest perceived slight. His glass seax is definitely poisoned. Also carries a short boar spear and a garrote. 

Vogle the Brute: Strong as an ox and not much smarter. A powerful grappler. Fights with a mallet. Carries a net and a harpoon (with a grappling hook on a wire) for subduing ogres. Carries a packet of salts in the hem of his sleeve and will hulk-out if hostilities commence.

Svedka the Archer: The brains of the operation. Friendly, but with ulterior motives. She's a good tracker and skilled with her bow. Her iron axe is engraved with Loki's snake. The map she carries leads to a trap, one last middle finger to the one who kills her.

Belum the Snake-handler: Crazy eyes and a tongue he forked himself. Speaks parseltongue. Definitely carrying a bag of baby ice snakes and he seems to have some control over them. He's also a salt user and, when under the influence, fights wildly with a knife in each hand.

If you need a replacement or want to give them a boost: 

Hel the Druid of Loki: Shaggy and shy. His god grants him miracles: Charm Person, Forgetting (like Invisibility, but everyone just forgets he exists) and he can transform into a swarm of rats at will. He has his own agenda (he wants to crack open the Barrow of the Wyrm). 

Byleist the Champion: Scarred face and missing eye. Helmet, chain-shirt and a big pile of hit points. Fights sword & board. Hardened by his work, but honorable in his way. 

Search the Body (multiple options in case of re-roll): 

1. d6 doses of berserker salts
2. Jug of mead / flask of honey
3. Bag of baby ice snakes
4. d4 war darts with lockjaw poison
5. d6 pickled fish rations
6. Snake brain in jar /severed wendigo hand
7. Gold Loki broach / gold armband
8. Sharpening stone / file / chisel
9. d4 torches / lantern oil
10. Manacles / net / harpoon
11. Metal tongs / frying pan
12. Crude map of part of the Old Forest: