Week 13: Islands and changes

The Islands

Last week I re-used previous island names, sketches, and stats (where they had stats); this week I did the same thing with a different set of reused islands, but added a few fresh oracle prompts to each one.

Beak Island

Prompts: (JACK_CLUBS) marks of exorcism, (JACK_SPADES) repulsive scents, (THREE_HEARTS) names

Elevation

250 m

Area

6.1 km2

• 2: Focus: On the shore, a tumbled-down monument of black stone and silver lettering—some kind of stubby memorial. It looks like it was deliberately kicked over.
• 5: Impression: A bitter stench that grows more hellish the deeper into the island we go. It smells like an abattoir swathed in compost and has an almost physical presence.
• 1: Path: Ropes and salt criss-cross the forest in a labyrinthine path that almost—but doesn't quite—loop back into itself.
• 6: Focus: A stash of dynamite nestled in a crag, crusty with blood, a few dry sticks here and there.
• 7: Impression: The wind howls triumphal through the island's “beak”, a cry that can be heard even from the ship and is almost deafening on the slopes.
• Event: Something stirs to life under the soil, then twitches, breaking the island, then returns to dead-slumber. Fortunately we make it through the sudden geographic trauma alive with the worst harm being a few broken bones distributed among the landing party, but we decide not to take our chances in disturbing this place any further.

Reasons to return: To recover and dismantle any remaining weaponry or explosives, because they obviously didn't do much good here, whatever happened. To chart the tremors with oneiroseismographs. To deploy an early warning system for the worst case scenario.

Bellows Island

Prompts: (TEN_HEARTS) weapons, (TWO_DIAMONDS) a message left for someone like you, but not you, (QUEEN_HEARTS) hand- or footprints

Elevation

580 m

Area

2.1 km2

• 4: Event: Cannonfire from the peak—smoke rises like a lazy dragon.
• 5: Path: Barbed wire and empty surveillance towers encircle a landing zone in the low expanse to the East; the ensemble funnels us towards the peak.
• 2: Impression: A hush, an awaiting presence, an alien hope.
• 6: Path: A concrete wall runs under an embankment on a road up the peak, smeared with blue paint—a rain-eroded message in a language we don't understand, but clearly left for someone who arrived after this place was officially abandoned.
• 10: Focus: A handprint in red paint on the concrete wall. It has six fingers. The middle one is extended.
• Event: The cannon fires again; it's deafening, a wave of pain and catharsis. We decide there's no point exploring this place any more. It's done. It's finished. It's over.

Reasons to return:

Wyrm Island

Prompts: (NINE_HEARTS) books, (ACE_HEARTS) stars

Elevation

28 m

Area

3 km2

• 6: Path: We make landfall at night. The shape of the island seems mirrored in a coiling constellation above, and as waves crash on the shore, the corresponding stars twinkle sympathetically.
• 5: Focus: Under the arch, a half-buried iron chest of waterlogged books and a swarm of crabs who're disgruntled at our intrusion and flee into the shadows.
• 1: Impression: Something new will be born here.
• 4: Event: The stone arch slowly shrugs and twists slightly, cracking rock and dislodging soil, but not severely enough to dislodge any of the trees.
• 2: Focus: Picks and shovels hanging from the branches of a dying fruit tree halfway up the arch.
• Event: The dawn comes and its light reveals delicate, scale-like carvings on the rocks. The warmth seems to energise whatever's causing the subterranean groanings and vibrations. We leave, and as we turn back the final time, we see the island's slipped silently into the shimmering waves, and the constellation's swamped in the sunlit sky.

Reasons to return: Recover the chest of books. Tag the creature-island. Determine whether there really is a link between the constellation and the land below.

Barrel Island

Prompts: (TWO_HEARTS) eyes, (SEVEN_DIAMONDS) measurements and experiments

Elevation

35.7 m

Area

8 km2

• 5: Impression: The whole island's studded with power transformers strung with loose cables. It seems hastily-assembled, but it's overgrown with moss.
• 7: Focus: A delicate machine whose glasswork we disturb as we enter the little corrugated-steel shack that shelters it. We can't quite re-connect it exactly how it was before.
• 4: Impression: There's no old life here, just new things.
• 11: Path: The rim of the nearly-island-wide crater has crude plastic barriers erected, but they could never stop people from falling in.
• 6: Focus: Something's watching from the pit. Not with hostile intent, but…
• Event: …when the giant six-fingered arm rises from the darkness, with its supernumerary joints and horribly-burnt patches of skin, we don't take our chances on the island.

Reasons to return: To take the risk of making contact. To seek the machinery's provenance. To try and fix what we broke, or perhaps break it completely.

Seamstress Island

Prompts: (FIVE_HEARTS) bottles

• 6: Focus: There's an old wooden lifeboat perched on the lower peak, all rotting moss-flecked wood, no name or number to be seen on its side from the shore below.
• 3: Path: A trail of old bottles—mostly green wine bottles—all full of seawater, leading on a difficult but navigable route up the greater peak.
• 5: Event: The lifeboat shatters and falls from its perch; a few little red-and-white birds squawk and scatter just before it falls.
• 9: Event: An old woman wearing a grey-green anorak appears on the peak above, yells at us in a language we don't know, furiously waves us away, and makes threatening motions with what looks like an antique wooden rifle.
• 1: Focus: We leave a metal water bottle sitting on a cracked, table-like rock as a peace offering and back away down to the lower slopes.
• Event: A few minutes later, we hear the first of several warning shots, interspersed with coarse, but obviously declarative yells. None of the bullets strike close or even hit anywhere they could ricochet into us—the old woman must be a good shot.

Reasons to return: Discern any relationship between the two peaks and their occupants. See if our peace offering was accepted.

Carver Island

Prompts: (TEN_CLUBS) cracks and repairs

Elevation

13 m

Area

630 m2

• 3: Path: A wide crack of broken earth and rock runs in a crescent around the core of the island, as if something pushed up the centre from below with horrible force.
• 4: Impression: Futility lies close to the ground here, choking the scattered grass and weeds.
• 1: Impression: The small hut at the middle of the island has clearly been carefully maintained over the years, wood and metal walls repaired and replaced like Theseus' ship only made of flotsam and jetsam.
• 7: Path: Bullet casings litter the ground in a row. In the absence of any pockmarks, we assume someone here was firing out to sea… at what?
• 5: Focus: Inside the hut, a map of the nearby ocean floor marked with dates—from decades ago at minimum—and names that sound like boats or planes.
• 6: Path: Electrical cabling leads to a sheltered generator a little way off from the hut; it's just about empty.
• 8: Impression: The whole island's littered with builders' refuse sacks, tied up with broken rubble inside… spattered with blood.
• Event: In the distance, a motorboat engine cracks like a gun.

Reasons to return: To investigate exactly what happened here. To determine what the inhabitant or inhabitants are after. To better contain the eruptive force below.

Fort Pompeii

Prompts: (THREE_SPADES) a labyrinth with no minotaur

Elevation

74 m

Area

2.4 km2

• 6: Impression: Clotheslines criss-cross the fort's half-finished superstructure, drying off-white bedsheets in the breeze. They look like sails.
• 1: Focus: A smiling stranger meets us on the stairway that connects the fort's interior to the sea. Their beard's grey like ash and their eyes are black like coal, with a twinkle of light.
• 4: Path: The stranger guides us around abandoned construction machinery and into the guts of the fort, shooing away the curious children that follow in our wake.
• 9: Focus: An armed guard bars the staircase that leads underground, and not even our guide's words can get us through. It seems they're not in charge after all; only they are allowed below.
• 3: Impression: They have all the amenities of life here, even high tiers of planters with all kinds of fruit and vegetables, layered over the bulk of concrete and rebar.
• 2: Event: A wiry woman emerges, accompanied by the guide. She brusquely takes our mail delivery, backed by the guide's apologetic smiles, and returns below ground.
• Event: A third “official” emerges, a young boy with white hair, wearing a too-long coat that trails behind him. He hands us our pay—a bundle of maps—and disappears again.

Reasons to return: We'll come back when they get another delivery.

Thoughts and Changes

As you can see, over the week I used fewer and fewer prompts. In practice each pre-generated island would have maybe 3 prompts that you'd probably pick 1 from (maybe more, maybe 0). Three and sometimes even 2 prompts felt a bit constricting, 1 felt about right most of the time.

The first time I tried the oracle (back in week 7) I felt like it didn't really have a huge impact, but I can see it being handy to have a few prompts if each island's already partly built.

The last major thing I wanna try is the second idea I mentioned last week: instead of rolling and choosing Foci, Paths, Impressions, and Events, each location would get 1 of each, and then a short history (maybe as one historic vignette for each detail type). This'd be a very different approach to the game, framing the player as a more traditional omniscient narrator instead of a traveller exploring on the ground. I'll try that for at least one week, maybe more, testing different approaches to making each island's history.