(NON LEGGETE QUESTO)

The Medusa's Temple (Short adventure for level 4 PCs)

BACKGROUND - The Temple of Shelyn (or replace her with your own goddess of art and beauty) used to stand proud along the coastline, with pilgrims coming and going to rest and partake of the performances held within. However, for the good part of a century no word has been heard from the temple: clerics and mercenaries sent to investigate haven't returned, and when the area was partly flooded and turned into swamplands by a nearby river the area around the temple became hard to traverse, discouraging further exploration.

THE TRUTH - The source of the disaster came from within the temple. The clerics and denizens came to adore their muse, an elven artist gifted with stunning beauty named Isvera. Their adoration soon became blasphemy, however, when they decided Isvera was such an icon of their temple they replaced the goddess' statue in the outer courtyard with one of her, provoking Shelyn's ire. She cursed Isvera, turning her into a medusa who, in horror at her transformation turned her fellow blasphemers to stone when they came to attempt to help her. Filled with bitterness and spite at the goddess for what she considered a petty revenge, Isabelle turned the temple into her lair, killing or petrifying any passing pilgrim and acolyte who came to investigate the temple, until the flood gave her respite by stopping most adventurers from daring into her territory. However, the last one to seek her, a holy paladin of the goddess, managed to overcome her defenses and burn her eyes off with holy fire before succumbing to her dagger. Now deprived of her greatest asset, the medusa has taken to using her charms on local wildlife to turn them into guardians for her lair.

1- COURTYARD
When the PCs arrive they should spot the temple from afar. It is built at the foot of a seaside cliff, with the terrain being made muddy by the frequent floods. The courtyard has a dais with large cracked flagstones surrounded by muddy terrain: everything outside the dais is difficult terrain.
The dais sports Isvera's statue on a pedestal. Being made of bronze, it stood the test of time and its features are still recognizable. Some statues (Isvera's petrified victims) litter the temple's surroundings, mostly cracked and in pieces. A Craft check confirms most of them have been sitting outside for at least a decade.
MONSTERS - Two Medium venomous snakes and an Amphisbaena Isvera manaaged to charm into guarding the temple dwell here. The Medium snakes attack as soon as the PCs step on the dais or approach the temple's door, retreating under the muddy water once they successfully bite a PC to let their venom take hold, then waiting for one round after coming back out to attack again. The amphisbaena lies hidden to the side of the dais, and only attacks if a PC looks weak tnough to overpower or if the PCs approach the temple doors.

2-Temple Nave
This is Isvera's main lair. The pews have long since rotted away, and a dozen humanoid statues stand inside. A stone pulpit takes up the far side of the room, with a baptismal font at its feet and a broken pillar where the altar used to be. Isvera can be found here during the day.
MONSTERS - Isvera keeps three spitting cobras in the nave. They hang from the rafters and attempt to spit their poison in the PCs' eyes to blind them. If Isvera is encountered here, she uses the snakes as distractions and fights the PCs as detailed later. If the snakes are fought alone and combat goes on for more than 3 rounds, Isvera wakes up and joins combat on the next round.
TREASURE - The baptismal font contains enough unholy water, despoiled by the temple's desecration, to fill 5 vials.

3-Temple quarters
Most of the rooms are dusty and unkempt, but Isvera's lodgings are still kept with some decorum. Five of the rooms still house the petrified bodies of the clerics and pilgrims Isvera petrified on the day she was cursed, while the sixth served as the medusa's room for the last century. It sports a soft bed with repeatedly mended patches and a dresser where Isvera keeps her valuables.
TREASURE - Isvera keeps an ivory comb, a silver pocket mirror, and various jewels in her dresser.
MONSTER - Isvera's eyes have been burned out. Despite the snakes on her hair allowing her to partially remedy her loss of sight, she's lost her petrifying gaze and treats every creature as if they were concealed (her attacks have 20% miss chance and creatures can always use Stealth to hide from her). She fights with her longbow and arrows dipped in spitting cobra venom, prioritizing open worshippers of Shelyn, while trying to make her enemies think she can still petrify them, Bluffing by threatening to add the PCs to her statue collection "like many before them". Players who get within 30 feet from her recognize her face as being identical to the one on the statue on the outside: faced with this fact and humiliated by the PCs knowing of her fate, she is distraught and disheartened, becoming shaken. Players who noticed there are no recent statues around the temple gain a +4 circumstance bonus on Sense Motive checks to call her bluff, and those who get within 15 feet can substitute the Sense Motive check with a Perception check to notice her burned out eyes.

Isvera fights until she either falls below 15 hp (30 hp if she's shaken) or a PC successfully calls out her bluff, by which point she throws down her weapon, kneels down in despair and begs for a swift death. If spared and interrogated, she relays her story and the fate of the temple, punctuating her tale with her long-festering bitterness directed at Shelyn.
In this state she may be receptive to an offer of alliance with the PCs, as long as none of them chastises her for her actions or openly worships Shelyn. Before she agrees to become the PCs follower, though, she begs them to help her in destroying the old statue of Shelyn in the temple cellar, claiming the curse keeps her bound to the temple as long as the statue stands (she herself is convinced of that, even though it's mostly her unresolved bitterness and anguish that keeps her bound).

4-Temple Cellar
The cellar is accessed by a short stairway from the temple's nave. After a small room whose contents are mostly rotten shelves and empty bottles (mostly wine which Isvera has snuck out over her cursed existance) there is a large, ruined door to a second room which contains a  few still untouched items, including the large bronze statue of Shelyn that once decorated the temple grounds. The carcasses of many small snakes, rats and other small animals litter the ground.
MONSTERS - The cellar is now home to Erva, Irva and Ira, collectively known as the Three Sisters. These three lyrakien (Bard 1), butterfly-winged denizens of Elysium, were once bound to the temple to serve as guardians and entertainers. When Isvera came to terms with her transformation, in her rage she attempted to go down to the cellar and destroy the statue, but the celestials fought her off. With their immunity to her petrifying stare, they prevented her from accessing the inner cellar over the decades. Even though they initially attempted to persuade her to repent, over time they became spiteful and scornful of the medusa, periodically taunting and mocking her with chants via ventriloquism and setting up traps for her on the occasions she braved the temple cellar, taking to killing vermin for sport when they grew bored of her not answering their provocations. They are now Chaotic Neutral and if the PCs enter the cellar they become hostile to them, either because they allied with Isvera or because they killed her, depriving them of their main source of fun.

They lie in wait for their traps to damage the PCs, using ventriloquism to make the dead animals appear to be speaking to them (the traps are a shallow pit trap made by removing the floor tiles in the partially flooded outer cellar, another made by sabotaging the inner cellar's door so that it breaks off and crushes whomever tries to open it, and a tangle of rubble precariously tied to the ceiling and rigged to fall on whomever walks under it) and then swoop in to attack, one of them supporting the others with her bardic performance, a second trying to harm PCs with Ear Splitting Scream or her Starlight Blast, and the third hanging back and healing the others as needed, shifting the roles around as needed and trying to position themselves to lure the PCs into the remaining traps. They fight until slain.
TREASURES - The Inner Cellar holds several holy paraphernalia and divine potions/scrolls Isvera never had the chance to plunder.

5-The Statue of Shelyn
If Isvera still lives, she urges the PCs to destroy the statue or does so herself. Doing so brings her closure and, if she agreed to join the PCs, becomes their follower. The difficulty of bringing a monstrous humanoid along in their travel and potential risks in restoring her eyes, and trust issues regarding her, are left up to the DM to play out in the following adventures. Generally, Isvera is proud and demanding, cherishing the chance to have companions but too warped by her curse and anger to act positively upon that.

A religious PC may instead attempt to reconsecrate the statue by praying to it. Doing so enrages Isvera, who either attempts to attack them one last time or goes into hiding to plot revenge against them. In time, if they purge the surrounding area of monsters and help pilgrims reach the temple, the PCs may aid in its restoration and eventually use it as a safe haven, at the DM's discretion.