X9: Savage Coast
X9: The Savage Coast is an adventure module for Dungeons & Dragons Expert line, released in 1985. Merle Rasmussen set this on the Masters Set's "Southold". Merle redubs this the Orc's Head Peninsula, alias the Savage Coast, just west of his very own X6: Quagmire!. He co-authored this with his wife Jackie; also newly-promoted (and newly-engaged) editor Anne Grey (McCready) is here as a third co-author. Many chefs for this stew.
X9 is a 32 page wilderness crawl, like Isle of Dread... again. The entire plot can literally be summed up like this:
In the safe, seaside town of Slagovich, the player characters set anchor and stay at the inn, where they hear stories of Orcs Head Peninsula. Lost cities full of hidden treasures, terrible beasts and cannibals roaming the coast, gold ore piling up at the mouths of rivers, and a secretive religious sect. What would motivate the adventurers to enter the uncharted jungles of the Savage Coast—curiosity, a desire to help others, or simple greed?
To the extent there's a theme, it's El Dorado. The city is Risilvar, ruled by the wraithlike Sacrol, a "dravish" in life whatever that was.
On the way characters encounter some of the beastfolk races native to the region: tortles, aranea and cay-men, and orcs and phanaton. Lupins are in the Lawful Alliance; pagans and rakasta, in the Neutral Alliance. There's no politically-correctness here: natives are natives.
Legacy[edit]
The region would be fleshed out in Advanced Dungeons & Dragons; first in passing as the Red Steel setting, which actually takes place in a specific part of the Savage Coast, and then as part of the Odyssey line, which would release a Savage Coast campaign setting splatbook (with Monstrous Compendium Appendix) and a pair of Orc's Head Peninsula splatbooks (the Sourcebook, which combines an atlas and rules for generating native PCs, and a book of adventures).