Week 2: Islands and changes

The Islands

The changes I made last time were to add more detail to the maps (maybe) and to random-roll an elevation and surface area for each island before starting to draw it. I didn't do the first one and the second turned out to be a bit restrictive, so I changed it up a little: I drew the island, then rolled d1000 for the height (in m) and d10 for area (in km2), and finally put a decimal point wherever made sense for the island I'd drawn. This way, I get some stats, but I'm not beholden to them.

The other change I made was I ordered the details of each island by the order I rolled them in, so it makes more sense chronologically. I thought about doing this a while back in development; it makes more sense to read, but it means when you roll for a new detail you gotta check every previous detail's number instead of just looking at the one number you just rolled. In practice, since there's only 12 details max, it's not that much of a problem.

Cornucopia Island

Elevation

451 m

Area

6 km2

• 6: Path: A winding road of carefully-tramped dirt coils counter-clockwise round the peak.
• 5: Impression: Almost everything's slick with algal slime; it turns the stone slopes into deathtraps and the tracks into mud.
• 3: Path: To the South, a massive rent in the island; warm, rose- and copper-scented air gently drifts up and out. The broken rocks leading into the hole are more traversable, as the slime's melted away.
• 2: Focus: A stand of sandgrass, one of the few signs of plant life on the island. On closer inspection, it grows from the eyes and mouth of a human skull.

Reasons to leave: An echo from below: screams, fire, and then a bellow of a laugh and equally-loud whoops of delight. “Fee, fi, fo, fum! I smell the blood of a sailor man!” Screams intensify and are swiftly crushed.

Reasons to return: Maybe there's something we can do? Did someone try to destroy this place and only make a dent?

Mayday Station

Elevation

89 m

Area

0.4 km2

• 3: Focus: The massive, hooked boom arm looks incredibly unstable without a counterweight on the South side of the tower.
• 1: Impression: All brickwork, smothered by seaweed the further down you look, stinking like it rose from the seabed.
• 2: Path: Doorways and walkways around the base of the tower, festooned with electric lights. The lights are full of water… but still glowing.
• 6: Path: Spiralling stairs around the interior of the tower. Curiously, they're reflected into the ceiling—the tower could be traversed upside-down.
• 4: Focus: An orrery on the ground floor, mechanisms clogged with weeds, urchins, and an unfortunate octopus. Instead of planets: asteroids? Icebergs? …faces?

Reasons to leave: The tower begins to groan and twist and then, without warning, drops away, slowly at first, and drifting North while it sinks into the sea.

Reasons to return: Observe the seabed here. Record the tower's exact path. Work the orrery. Explore the upper towers. Is it inhabited?

Wyrm Island

Elevation

28 m

Area

3 km2

• 6: Focus: Cradled between spire and arch, a thicket of nut and fruit trees—unbelievable diversity.
• 5: Impression: Instability everywhere, from the arch that—in a trick of the sunlight—seems to sway in the wine, to the cracked and weathered spire. Everything feels too old.
• 4: Focus: A huge iridescent geode embedded in the island's tail, glinting under organic decay. Probably incredibly valuable.
• 2: Path: Trusty tree roots, whitened by salt, offer the only safe handholds up the arch.
• 1: Impression: The whole place seems to murmur and sigh with our exertions. Is it just the wind running through the arch?
• 3: Focus: Midway up the arch, the root-path narrows to a single tree upon whose branches a bird has made its fragile nest. We can't pass without disturbing it.

Reasons to leave: The sun's dying down, the wind's fading away, and in the silence we hear more and more the scattering and skittering of what must be falling pebbles and clods of dirt. This place may kill us if we linger.

Reasons to return: Recover the geode… perhaps. Catalogue the cornucopia below the arch's shoulder, yes.

Scuttle Atoll

Elevation

3.4 m

Area

4 km2

• 3: Impression: Frustrated vengeance; jagged rusty metal of some old war machine jutting from the sand to cut the feet of unwary explorers.
• 4: Focus: A name painted on an arc of half-buried metal: Benevolent Judgment
• 5: Path: The sands form a rough oval over the highest reaches of a sunken ship. It makes for easy walking, despite the hazards.
• 2: Focus: A dozen red-painted magnetic mines lie baking in the sun.
• 6: Path: On closer inspection, the centre of the atoll isn't a shallow pool, it's a gaping hole in the side of the ship—a wound that could be probed.

Reasons to leave: It's high tide and a trickle of rain announces the imminent arrival of a sea-storm—and as we tramp about the surface, we notice angular red crabs coming out of the sand to watch us. Waiting.

Reasons to return: Explore the wreck and collect data on what ordnance—or more exotic materiel—needs to be decommissioned.

Cradle Island

Elevation

977 m

Area

10 km2

• 1: Path: Our humble ship winds through the docks, between liveried industrial hulks and anonymous cruise ships.
• 6: Impression: Overcrowded; the island's single ring-shaped city occupies all the stable land not used for monoculture farming.
• 3: Path: Tour buses route through the wealthier half of the city, on the steeper side of the mountain; houses piled on each other, architects competing for supremacy.
• 5: Focus: A building signposted as…an orphanage for musical instruments?
• 11: Path: The stairs in the city hall lobby are studded with golden stars—or starfish. They make for awkward, painful walking.

Reasons to leave: City officials instantly refuse to sign our permits. They call security! Out come three burly men in suits and blank wooden masks. What the hell?

Reasons to return: Find out just what's going on. Get our permits signed by whatever means. See what they're hiding here. See what trade's going on. See what's above the city.

Grudge Island

Elevation

82.5m m

Area

9 km2

• 5: Impression: A surprising ambiguity; it's often hard to tell which spire you're looking at through the forest canopy.
• 1: Path: A rope line attached to pins hammered into the tallest spire. The top end hangs forlornly mid-way up.
• 4: Focus: A single, massive, heavy eigengrau feather on the ground, dusted with mushrooms.
• 8: Path: Deeper into the forest, overgrown, barely-defined paths become well-trod thoroughfares.
• 7: Impression: Statuary everywhere… carved wood sprouting with luminescent fungus. Hard to tell whether they're abstract or representative.
• 6: Focus: A fourth spire; a short, rugged smokestack, yet visible above the trees.
• 3: Impression: Faintly, a “tick-tack-tick-tack” noise comes between the trees—ever since we arrived.

Reasons to leave: A gunshot that just misses—a warning shot, or an old hand betraying a kill-shot? And as we rush back to the ship, the statues—the sun sets—they seem to come alive, weakly, jerkily, following us, glowing in the woods.

Reasons to return: Apologise, maybe? Or at least see if we can make some kind of concessions. Determine the mountaineer's fate. Observe the fungus further.

Barrel Island

Elevation

35.7 m

Area

8 km2

• 3: Impression: Stone walls of denial wreathed with hardy, leafless scrub; the most accessible route up to flat ground is still a difficult climb.
• 2: Path: A great coiling fossil of some ancient swollen sea-serpent, wrapped around the isle's rim.
• 5: Impression: Everything here is dead or alive-in-death, suckling on the teat of desolation.
• 9: Path: This place isn't a table mountain, but a pit, like an deep-cored atoll raised from the sea; the rim is the only walkable surface.
• 4: Focus: As we near a seemingly-lifeless bush, we notice its branches quiver—then it lunges for us like a trapdoor spider. Not so dead after all… but it's both rooted to the ground and desperate enough to ambush while we're at a safe distance.
• 7: Path: The pit—seemingly bottomless—has carven handholds and a well-worn belay line leading into the darkness.
• 6: Focus: …A flicker of light in the pit? If that's the bottom, we estimate it must be over 3 km deep.

Reasons to leave: The bushes gather round us—how did they uproot themselves? Even the muck of decay comes at us in little waves, creeping up our boots, and the fossil-bones rise and clack and clatter in anticipation of a good meal. We run.

Reasons to return: To compare the fossil with extant species; to identify when this place was formed; to mount a rescue(?) mission.

Thoughts and Changes

Instead of drawing extra details, I think I'm gonna stick with the current outlines, but draw separate outlines for each part of an island if there are multiple separate parts coming out of the sea. I'm gonna carry on with the stats the way I did them this time (see notes before the islands) and I'm probably gonna stick with the way I'm ordering each island's details (chronological, not by number).

Other changes:

• add another random-rolled stat: temperature (maybe day and night), probably picking a fixed amount (e.g. 15C) and adding 2d6 or 3d6 or something
• add a little table (d6 or d10) for weather conditions on arrival at each island

Just some simple stuff. The week after (week 4) I'll probably revisit some of the islands I've made so far.