This continues a long-form campaign, Zen and the Art of Caravan Maintenance.
Emmett & Joshua are exploring a brand new mystery island in the Cirle Sea. They’ve landed with Spiral and his servant, and are in an abandoned village.
Story
The party of four sleep in one of the abandoned houses. Watches are taken, although Spiral falls asleep in his. Nothing bad happens despite this.
The next day is grey and dull. Nothing further is found in the village, and they proceed into the island. The grass stops and it gets hilly, quickly. And as it gets more mountainous, the wind stops, and the ground falls silent.
Absolute quiet.
No gulls, no mice, no plants rustling. Just rocks, silent.
A clatter of rocks fall, and everyone looks to see what caused it. Nothing is revealed; and after a pause, the party moves out to the coast, towards a lighthouse they saw on their original approach.
As they get closer it’s more of a generic round tower on the coast, with windows at the top. After pushing the door open, the party ascend the stairs, and find lot of consoles, unpowered. They can find some references to Engineering, but trying any controls does nothing.
The view is nice, though. They can see some of the tourist boats giving their tours.
At the bottom they wander round more of the tower, and find withered flowers left at the bottom of it. No signs, no tunnels, nothing else.
Frustrated, they give up, and start moving along the coast clockwise, to see what the (small) forest holds. It turns out to hold someone failing to hide very well whilst watching them. As well as failing to hide well, this watcher also then fails to spot when the tables are turned, and when he finally tries to run he’s easily caught.
Once the old man’s calmed down, he explains his name is Tim, and the village is (was) a fishing village. It’s been running a few years out of Oranje, which he believes is a short distance away. He’s not convinced when he’s told it’s the other side of the Circle Sea, and he’s near to Violet City now.
Anyway, the weather on the island turned bad a month ago and waves crashed all over the shore. People started to panic, and increased their floral tributes to the tower. He went to the mountains as he’d always been suspicious about them, but when he returned, he’d been abandoned. All the ships had left.
He’s been here, the only human, since. “But not alone,” he says. “We need to leave here before They come.”
And with that, they retreat to the village.
Tools
Unchanged.
Lessons learned
This writeup is pretty uneventful and I was worried the players were bored, or frustrated. As seen, not much happens, apart from meeting one NPC. The players had a few theories which they tested and were found inconclusive.
However they had a good time, and enjoyed the quiet puzzle. I guess that’s been the theme of this campaign for a while!