Ile de la Tempête Project - submissions – style and flavour

[Joël of the FoS]

With all the wreckage of many years of shipwrecks what do you think of having a few survivors (under 50) living in a sort of floating tent city built on rafts made of the wreakage. With only fish, seaweed and rainwater to sustain them you would think they would return to the Island but they all fear the "Monster in the light."

As Monnete cannot fly too far over the water they are safe from his hunger but without freash water and real food many have sucumb to Scurvy or even canabalisum. A number of brave sailors have atempted to sail thier small rafts back to the mainland but only a few have survived the ravages of the sea and even less with any shread of sanity.

You mean an island like a mile or two from île de la tempête? My problem is any eventual ship passing in the area will rescue them? How could it be made permanent?

Joël

[Mangrum]

Sounds like Saragoss to me.

(Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with islands like Demise and Ile de la Tempete being lonely, one-encounter ponies. Had Gaz VI and VII reached production, that's likely how they would have been treated.)

[ChrisNichols]

(Personally, I don't think there's anything wrong with islands like Demise and Ile de la Tempete being lonely, one-encounter ponies. Had Gaz VI and VII reached production, that's likely how they would have been treated.)

I'm going to agree with John here. Sometimes a one-trick pony is a one-trick pony.

Chris Nichols

[Jasper]

You mean an island like a mile or two from île de la tempête? My problem is any eventual ship passing in the area will rescue them? How could it be made permanent?

Joël

I mean within sight of the shore at all time no farther then the outer ring of rocks. The Island current would keep all the flotsam and jetsam near the isalnd while the currents just outside the rocks would pull any rafts far out to sea and any passing ships into the rocks. By the time any passing ship gets close enough to even see the raft city it would be too late.

[Jester of the FoS]

I've been debating whether or not to share my brainstorming from the private FoS forum where we're debating the organization and overarching theme of the Gaz and other issues.

I came up with one idea (also suggested in the Adventure Hooks. Joël never actually responded to in our private forum ) for Monette and the land to give it just a tad more life.

Okay, Monette has a lighthouse whose beam penetrates other lands and sucks people into the Mists. The land was also created as an alternative method to bring people into Ravenloft other than the Mists.
Now, as the light cuts a swath through the Mists, perhaps it acts as a corridor anywhere there is a body of water.

Monette would be able 'see' lands and places all around, possibly speaking with the local bats and rodents (whom he still despises). Monette becomes a source of hard to come by information. He can see anywhere and influence anywhere. Of course, there are some lonely places he cannot reach, those landlocked areas or lands devoid of bats. And Monetter might pay handsomely for information from those places.

Additionally, as the light cuts a path through the Mists it serves a twofold purpose. One, it can bring anyone on the boat to the island. Two, perhaps it can take them back. It might even be able to leave the Mists!

Need some hard to find information? Come to Ile de la Tempete, Monette will know (he's a pirate of facts and raider of knowledge). In a hurry to get someplace and the Vistani are unwilling (how often do they travel by sea anyway)? Visit Ile de la Tempete, Monette might be able to arrange passage... for a price. Desperate to track down someone or find an individual. Try Ile de la Tempete and Monette will bring them to you.

[Joël of the FoS]

I’m not sure. It somehow doesn’t fit with the Monette character: a rough unsophisticated sailor. To be willing / liking to learning about other places isn’t how I see him for the moment.

Dread possibility idea: perhaps he knows his beam can also sent people elsewhere (but not himself of course). But similar to the Gundar blood gate in Hunadora, he doesn't know where they go (even if he could lie that he does.). Good way to get rid of powerful / annoying visitors?

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One trick pony or limited scope encounter, call it what you want, indeed. But I'm looking to enrich this geography (within its limits) and giving Monette strategies so he becomes a tough pony, or a fun one to play.

Joël

[Jester of the FoS]

You're trapped on a tiny island with bats for company. Wouldn't you get bored and do anything to kill the time?

[Lord Cyclohexane]

You're trapped on a tiny island with bats for company. Wouldn't you get bored and do anything to kill the time?

Well, yeah, how else did he get the Lighthouse?

("Since coming to Ravenloft, Monette has built for himself a large lighthouse that he calls the Eye of Midnight." Darklords, p66)

But that brings up an interesting idea too. As per canon, Monette built the lighthouse from scratch. What other building projects might he have completed by now, just to keep himself sane? He does sound like the industrious type and not the thoughtful type, so he'd busy himself with projects to pass the time and keep himself from thinking about his current situation.

More interestingly, though, is that the Lighthouse is powered by a magical item. Canon merely states that Monette placed that item in the Lighthouse, but it carefully says *nothing* about who created it, where it came from, etc. It's obvious that Monette couldn't have created it, so it beggars the question, is there someone else who *could* have created it? Are there other such interesting finds to be found? Etc.

Also, which of Monette's other potential building projects are also powered by magical items he's found upon the island?

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Oh, and to clarify one of my ideas from far upthread:

Regarding the Markovian colonies tried by Dementlieu and Lamordia, I was thinking of a similar thing for L'ile. I wasn't thinking anything big, perhaps like a 20-person mining camp. L'ile doesn't sound big enough to support an actual settlement and definitely doesn't sound to have good enough soil to grow any crops, but the rocky island may have some kind of mineral resource like iron or mythril that'd be worth tapping by Liffean or Grabbenite companies.

And like the Markovian colonies, the mining camp could have been decimated without a trace, with the company sending in the PCs to 1) find out what's gone on, 2) obtain some more ore for them, 3) recover the bodies for the miners' families, 4) eliminate threats to future mining operations, 5) do a survey of the area to determine the financial feasibility of future operations there, or, if they don't even know the camp has been decimated, 6) do a run of food and other goods to the miners, as nothing can be produced locally.

And if you want to mix in some of the above, the mining camp could have moved in during the winter (while Monette is hibernating) and set up camp in the odd stone hamlet they've found (created by Monette in his boredom). The PCs come in safely but find the hamlet empty... But no surprise, the miners are likely doing some work down in the mines. But as the time lengthens and no one arrives... Time to investigate.

But what happened to the miners? Is it a simple cave-in of the mine shafts? Have they cut into partially underwater caves and run amiss of other inhabitants there? Has Monette awoken due to Spring's approach? Or has something else happened entirely???

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Please ignore the size issue above. I went purely from the description in Darklords but didn't look at the map.

Mind you, I'm still very, very surprised! I really thought L'ile was small, but as per the map, it's actually bigger than Forlorn! That really should make it difficult for Monette to cause real problems, seeing as he's got no way of really surveying his land. Tristan ApBlanc can at least see through his goblyns' eyes, but Monette has no such information system at all.

So something really should be done with the island; just because it *was* a one-trick pony doesn't mean it should be consigned to the glue factory. Let's teach it some more tricks.

[Lord Cyclohexane]

Actually, now I'm curious... How big *is* L'ile de la Tempete? On the map in RLCS, it's frikkin' huge, a little larger than Forlorn is. On the map in DoD, it's as tiny as I originally figured from the description in Darklords (10 miles long).

Or is it silly for me to be looking at the maps to judge such things?

[Lord Cyclohexane]

- Underwater community. Especially a seasonal migration of some aquatic lifeform, with goals of their own, that evades M's notice in the underwater caverns. What is of interest to these beings? And what is someone willing to pay for the information they may have?

Please send me this dread possibility, if you choose to develop this idea. If it's not used in Monette's domain, it could be in the Ncturnal sea.

Hmmm, starting to have ideas... Rather than keep crashing the boards, I'll try to write up a base idea and PM you when it's something decent. I may relate that with the opening of another Dread Possibility I have in mind.

[Joël of the FoS]

Actually, now I'm curious... How big *is* L'ile de la Tempete? On the map in RLCS, it's frikkin' huge, a little larger than Forlorn is. On the map in DoD, it's as tiny as I originally figured from the description in Darklords (10 miles long).

Or is it silly for me to be looking at the maps to judge such things?

You are right in that the RLCS map (with the suggested scale of 20-25 miles / inch) gives a much larger size for the island (18-22 miles long), which is larger than the Darklords 10 miles scale.

I haven't set my mind definitively on it yet, but 10 miles seems big enough for the moment.

Joël

[Igor the Henchman]

Actually, now I'm curious... How big *is* L'ile de la Tempete? On the map in RLCS, it's frikkin' huge, a little larger than Forlorn is. On the map in DoD, it's as tiny as I originally figured from the description in Darklords (10 miles long).

Or is it silly for me to be looking at the maps to judge such things?

You are right in that the RLCS map (with the suggested scale of 20-25 miles / inch) gives a much larger size for the island (18-22 miles long), which is larger than the Darklords 10 miles scale.

I haven't set my mind definitively on it yet, but 10 miles seems big enough for the moment.

Joël

I asked about L'Île's size on the Ask Azalin board once. The answer I got is that the sea islands on the maps aren't on scale.

[Joël of the FoS]

Ah thanks. And JWM's comment on the NS thread suggests the same.

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So let's use the 10 miles Darklords reference.

Joël