Geography

[eyelessgame]

Almost anything can vary from one archipelago to another.

Comments

[ross_teneyck]

A minor question -- where are you getting "archipelagae"? The dictionary claims the plural is either archipelagos or archipelagoes. The word is originally Greek -- arkhi, "chief" + pelagos, "sea" -- and as best as I can tell from online sources, the Greek plural of pelagos is pelagi, for what that's worth. Archipelagae looks like a Latin form, although if my minute Latin recalls correctly I would then expect the singular to be archipelaga.

[eyelessgame]

I just thought it looked cooler than "archipelagos". I suppose 'archipelagi' would work.

[yessod]

So - what happens to an archipelago when there's nobody there to observe it? It seems like a neat potential plot hook to have that be a relatively important question, and it gives a reason to include "lighthouses" in the setting - people who live on remote and largely uninhabitable islands so that the islands (and routes past them) continue to be stable and passable for trade.

[eyelessgame]

I like that a lot. It's definitely going in - what a great excuse for more "lighthouse" / isolated colony for Horta attacks / etc...

[yessod]

Also a convenient adventure hook for a couple of things:

1: Rediscovering a lost route, and finding islands which had been cut off long ago. "Plotting a new course to India".

2: PCs arrive at lighthouse to find weirdness - the stars have all vanished, the sun doesn't rise in the morning, particular concepts are gone, they're being stalked by things that vanish as soon as they see them. They get to the lighthouse and find all the inhabitants are gone, and the ocean ceased to exist behind them but the island hadn't collapsed yet. Now they have to stay in the haunted lighthouse long enough to make the world solid so they can sail out and get help, and the things that had started to encroach want them gone but evaporate if the PCs look at them.