Week 4: Islands and changes

The Islands

My changes last week were to cut "Reasons to leave", to add elements of confusion/damage/danger when I roll 2d6, and to add a new (fourth) feature type: Events. I kept those all the way through this week and also made a few adjustments/clarifications (see at the end, after the islands).

Vermouth Island

Elevation

280 m

Area

6.5 km2

• 3: Path: From afar we see: tarmac road coils round the crescent of the pale island, ink on cotton.
• 6: Focus: A stubby lighthouse on the docks nestled in the crescent. There's a bulbous sweet shop with street shelves bursting from the keeper's house.
• 5: Impression: The smell of gunpowder lingers, though all the guns are gone—or hidden.
• 8: Path: A cracked black spiderweb of roads leads us—eventually—to the maritime market, overlooked by five low towers. People are watching, stone-faced.
• 1: Event: A drunkard comes out of one tower, yelling and waving a rifle at us before being hushed and gently guided back inside by two children.

Reasons to return: To research the history here. To make peace? To see what the people here isolated on the Northern island.

Heracles Island

Elevation

910 m

Area

3.4 km2

• 4: Event: The tip of the island bursts into sparks and flame, like a little pyramidal firework blown up to a fearsome size.
• 1: Impression: Grim cliffs rise up haughtily against us the whole circumference of the island and in rank upon rank up the mountainside.
• 3: Path: A rock chimney running down to the sea affords sheltered passage by grappling-gun.
• 9: Path: Mossy paths threaten to slip us into the hungry sea.
• 5: Focus: A grove of berry bushes at a red-stained cave mouth. Bats lurk within; thorns hide on the branches.
• 6: Event: Boulders tumble from the top, smashing the path ahead to pieces.

Reasons to return: Investigate the pinnacle for signs of improper explosive disposal. Observe the habits of the… fruitbats? Vampire bats? lay warning-buoys for any future travellers.

Beak Island

Elevation

250 m

Area

6.1 km2

• 6: Impression: Joy floats on the air like pollen, drifting on the wind's whim.
• 1: Focus: Red arrowheads lodged in a tree, almost enveloped by bark—we barely notice them. Seven, arrayed like a constellation.
• 3: Path: A trail of char and salt through the trees, freshly-laid.
• 4: Focus: A dig site. Spades, mounds of earth, discarded shattered fossils—the curve of some great nautilus' shell exposed to the air, halfway.
• 5: Event: Birds rise from deep within the island; the rumble of drums.

Reasons to return: To continue the dig and expose the shell. To investigate that crevice seen from afar. To mark the area as inhabited.

The Albatross Pyramid

Elevation

85 m

Area

0.029 km2

• 2: Path: A line of rough handholds carved up the smooth stone blocks. Water pools in each one, and with it, life.
• 6: Focus: At the pyramid's point, a weathervane—more verdigris than copper—in the shape of a soaring albatross.
• 4: Focus: There's a human hand, thoroughly skeletonised, flopping from a minuscule crevice between two massive stone blocks near the top of the pyramid.
• 9: Event: By some infernal mechanism, touching the albatross opens the gap, revealing a black foetid smear of a carcass; an anti-protoplasm.
• 5: Focus: Glyphic carvings on the inner walls of the new passage!
• 10: Path: …glyphs infilled with the sorry muck of the dead explorer in a painfully-long trail down into the pyramid. Baubles of luminescent fungus grow off the death-matter, lighting the way.
• 1: Event: A lamplight flickers in morse code at the bottom of the shaft. R… E… M…
• Event: Creak… the wind changes. The albatross turns and the passageway closes shut just as we scramble out.

Reasons to return: Translate the glyphs, if they have any reference. Break the mechanism open. Contact—rescue?—whoever's inside. Take depth measurements to determine how deep the pyramid goes.

Whisker Island

Elevation

660 m

Area

4.6 km2

• 3: Focus: A conclave of cats on the docks, sitting in rapt attention to a suffocating fish.
• 1: Impression: Humid anticipation blankets this whole place.
• 4: Focus: We offend the harbourmaster by offering her a gift—she interprets it as a bribe and threatens to have us jailed.
• 5: Focus: Leathery, sagging arms grasping at nothing from the barred windows of the local jail.
• 11: Path: A wide-open sun-killed boulevard of white concrete and yellow grass leads up to the town hall.
• Event: A polyhuman leviathan erupts from the jail, scattering brick and iron in all directions; it lumbers toward city hall amid screams, assimilating those it passes into its colossal corpus. We get the hell out.

Reasons to return: To investigate why and how this happened. To interview the survivors(?). To make contact with leviathan.

Nil Island

Elevation

290 m

Area

9.7 km2

• 6: Impression: Chalk drawings stand out against the nearly-black hillside running most of the length of the island. Spiral fossils, human figures in rapt attention, birds with more than two eyes, an inverse whale, a tower with a boom arm…
• 2: Path: Arrows carved in trees. Ruddy, glistening sap.
• 11: Focus: We tread on a ghostly, beautiful flower, crushing it. A sigh escapes the mangled petals. Somewhere nearby, a bell rings.
• 4: Path: We breach the treeline and find a furrow in the earth leading up towards the chalk drawings. Something was dragged through here?
• 1: Impression: A captive hush, everywhere. No wind.
• Event: Our being here changes the calculus. Our noise sends a wave of sound that blows away the nearby chalk, so lightly was it spread on the ground. Through gesture, mouthed words, and delicate footsteps, we make our retreat through the trees.

Reasons to return: To carefully examine the drawings. To make right to the flower.

Carver Island

Elevation

13 m

Area

630 m2

• 3: Impression: Defiant foliage swamps the isle, the little cinder-block hut, green swallowing grey.
• 4: Event: Part of the dock sloughs into the sea; hungry moss glistens around the wound in the concrete.
• 7: Focus: A pile of diesel cans somehow punctured by bracken roots, bleeding fuel onto the ground, waiting for a spark that may never come.
• 5: Focus: Inside the hut, someone is taking dismantling a bulbous machine while telling it that they love it. We decide not to disturb them.
• 6: Event: The machine begins to groan and belch choking smoke even as the person wrenches it apart.
• Event: Sparks fly amid the billowing black smoke and we decide not to take our chances further; our attempts to rescue the person go unmet and unheard.

Reasons to return: See what remains, if anything does remain. Document the machine. Bury the dead.

Thoughts and Changes

So there were two other things I started doing during the week that I didn't mention at the top or at the end of last week. Firstly, I realised pretty soon that "harm/confusion/risk/damage/etc." from rolling 2d6 should go either way—maybe the island's dangerous, or maybe the explorers are dangerous. You can see that in a few islands this week, e.g. the gift that gets interpreted as a bribe on Whisker Island (kinda 2-way) or the ghostly flower that gets crushed on Nil Island. It makes sense to make it explicit, since a big part of the game's the kinda-blundering curiosity of fragile first contact.

Secondly, I decided that if I leave an island after rolling 2d6 instead of choosing to leave on 1d6 then I should add a final, un-numbered feature that's always an Event (and because I rolled 2d6 it should always involve some kinda risk, danger, harm, confusion, etc.). The first time I did this was at the Albatross Pyramid. This avoids awkward hanging ends.

I'm gonna carry on with those changes next week, and instead of changing the rules again I'm gonna try revisiting some islands for a week.