Week 7: Islands and changes

The Islands

I decided to use a simple oracle as inspiration for each island, but I didn't have one for this ocean/archipelago setting so I just used the one I already had for post-apocalyptic monuments for the original Stone Words Walk playtest rules.

Bell Island

Prompt: (FIVE_SPADES) a little god

Elevation

210 m

Area

0.14 km2

• 4: Impression: Reverence in abundance, and a creeping terror collecting like sea-scum at the island's edge.
• 3: Focus: There's a pipe jutting from the dirt and rock, pumping sickly-sweet liquid into the sea.
• 5: Path: We leave a trail of torn grass and loose dirt as we scale the orb.
• 6: Focus: Rows of lily-of-the-valley bend and toll like bells as we pass; we take care not to crush them with our lumbering footsteps.
• 9: Event: A rising tone from underneath us. The island shakes almost imperceptibly, shucking off a husk of greying dirt… the lilies quiver.
• 7: Focus: A circle of smokestacks poking through the foliage on top of the island, shooting white and black smoke into the sky; we get a headache just being within sight of it.

Reasons to return: Conduct a preliminary excavation. Investigate the effects of the island on the surrounding wildlife.

Spinner Island

Prompt: (QUEEN_HEARTS) hand- or footprints

Elevation

105 m

Area

1.1 km2

• 3: Path: Over-long handprints left in a solid cliff wall like it was wet cement; each finger a crevice for crabs and scruffy weeds.
• 6: Focus: Banana trees… with yellow bark and drooping fringes of leaves that hang almost to the ground
• 4: Impression: Handprints over everything. They start out curious, but the further we go, the more destructive they seem—smashed rocks, splintered trees.
• 5: Path: Over-long footprints leading in a hairpin path up the hillside, careful delicate footwork on muddy precipices.
• 7: Focus: A beacon of fractured quartz on the Eastern hilltop; a sconce for a small fire, and a small pile of ash-smeared jewellery.
• 8: Event: The ridge forms a perfect sine curve. Mathematically perfect. Then it shakes and snaps into a new, also mathematically-perfect configuration, knocking us to the ground in the process.
• 1: Focus: An eye on the hillside below us— reptilian, slow, watching.
• Event: We hear howling, the felling of trees, animal screams cut short. Everywhere becomes deathly silent. The eye closes tight. We scale the hillside away from the commotion while radioing for our ship to pick us up as far from the source as possible.

Reasons to return: Make contact? Investigate this leviathan species.

Rum Island

Prompt: (TWO_HEARTS) eyes

Elevation

240 m

Area

7.1 km2

• 6: Path: A trail of pockmarks up the side of the mountain, linked by bolted ladders and ropes—maybe sconces for torches?
• 4: Focus: A boy in the little dock on the South of the island. Red shoes dotted with barnacles. He just stares at our ship.
• 9: Impression: Nobody who lives here moves while we're watching them. Nobody so much as breathes. We try not to look for too long.
• Event: A blind man comes up the dock and, smiling, tells us to leave before we kill someone. We try to get an explanation out of him, but he just turns and disappears into an alley.

Reasons to return: Find out what all that was about. Try to explore the island proper from the other, unsettled side. Reach the peak where the holes lead.

Mourning Island

Prompt: (SIX_HEARTS) flags

Elevation

420 m

Area

6.3 km2

• 4: Focus: The mountaintop observatory, rimmed with red-and-bone flags, telescope trained not on the sky but the sea.
• 6: Path: Labyrinth of rumbling, clanking vessels in the little port. Oversized trawlers roped to shore.
• 2: Impression: An air of relief spritely running down the mountainside and drifting between the ships, hard to catch but ever-present.
• 7: Event: As we step ashore we tread in the path of a jubilant funeral procession. We make our apologies and it winds past us, drums beating, trumpets crying.
• 8: Path: Red-and-bone flags mark the procession's path through town from docks to mortuary, crossing busy traffic like it's nothing.
• 5: Focus: The lighthouse, in red-and-bone livery, moves like a searchlight… not a spinning beam to protect ships.
• 3: Impression: Every building in town has a cellar door directly off the street.
• 1: Focus: We meet a contact—a local jack-of-all-trades—to arrange supplies. First she smirks and tut-tuts us for blocking the procession.
• Event: The supplies include some exceptionally heavy equipment. We take it slow to avoid breaking our backs.

Reasons to return: Follow a procession. See what happens next.

Bellows Island

Prompt: (SIX_DIAMONDS) ancient guidelines

Elevation

580 m

Area

2.1 km2

• 6: Focus: A yawning missile silo opening, rusty metal, broken concrete, and rancid water.
• 3: Impression: Toads, toads everywhere, clicking and squeaking indignantly as we walk past.
• 8: Impression: Row upon row of radiation warning signs—veiled by tall grass or collapsed onto the ground, we don't see them until we're well into the layers of the onion.
• 11: Path: Two disguised furrows in the earth, heavily overgrown but bearing the unmistakable toothmarks of heavy-duty tires carrying an extremely heavy load. The grass even dies back in places, as if poisoned.
• 1: Path: A metal hatch, blown open by dynamite; stairs slick with water and shimmering oil lead into darkness.
• 5: Focus: Painted on the inside of the hatch: “EMBASSY PROOF”.
• 4: Path: A narrow rope-marked trail leading into the trees, up the mountain
• 2: Path: Graves between the tree trunks, a tortuous cemetery hidden from view down below or offshore.
• Event: We set off a tripwire strung across the path. Luckily, nothing happens—turns out the grenade the line was tied to had been soaked through by rain—but we decide against further exploration.

Reasons to return: Explore the silo. Determine its provenance. Reach the summit. Find names from the graves (if there are any).

Cordon Island

Prompt: (NINE_CLUBS) traces of artistic endeavours

Elevation

150 m

Area

0.043 km2

• 6: Impression: Hefty shell casings litter the island, disassembled, carved into sculptures: religious iconography in war materiel.
• 4: Path: Bright blue birds wheeling round the pinnacle, like ripples in the sky.
• 2: Path: Rope nets offer a way up from the jagged rocks and spray at the base of the island.
• 12: Path: A crevice that seems at first like a path through or up the island—but it gets tighter and sharper the further we go. Wherever it leads, we don't follow.
• 3: Focus: A shell for a mighty cannon, inscribed with a symbolic flagellation; men and women disembowelling themselves with bayonets.
• 1: Impression: A coppery scent, like having a penny under your tongue at all times.
• Event: The birds swoop down to attack and we see they're not birds at all but are, in fact, little skies. We fight them off and stagger back down to escape.

Reasons to return: Map the interior. Gather the artworks. Find their creators, or their remains. Observe the creatures—from afar.

Percival Island

Prompt: (FIVE_CLUBS) scars of sacrilege

Elevation

75 m

Area

0.057 km2

• 6: Impression: A stubble of tarred tree stumps.
• 10: Path: Minefield warning signs… one every fifty paces round the edge of the island, not more than ten metres ashore.
• 5: Focus: Broken bottles in a heap on the Eastern beach. Cheap whiskey and expensive ink.
• 7: Focus: A weather station near the top of the hill, little more than a shack, its walls mouldy and its windows shattered.
• 9: Path: Muddy bootprints leading to a crater in the minefield… and continuing on the other side. A possibly-safe way through?
• 3: Focus: One little sapling stands against the wind a little way up the hill, its bark the most vivid, brilliant red and gold you've ever seen.
• Event: The wind picks up and the dry, loose soil of the island begins to erode, flying at us like a cloud of sandpaper.

Reasons to return: Preserve the sapling. Try to take cuttings to regrow the woods. Link the minefield to a nation-state or other organisation. Follow the footprint trail past the minefield.

Thoughts and Changes

The oracle added something for sure, but it didn't have a huge impact. Probably still worth making a setting-specific oracle, though. The other option I wrote about at the end of last week's post was an oracle of general island details—name, stats, super-brief description (which could consist of prompts like the oracle prompts I used here), maybe even a broad-strakes shape of the island or even a more detailed drawing. I'm gonna wait a little before I try that so I can reuse all the islands I made so far as oracle entries, though.

That about does it for Stone Words Walk for now, I think. Next week I'm gonna move on to another game in the same set, maybe Sunbright Dynamo (temp title?), which is about mapping journeys! Next week's update'll be the current rules for Stone Words Walk and the starting rules of Sunbright Dynamo, and after that it'll be daily plays as normal. I might even make a new project for it, since it won't be about islands any more.