Casting Shadows

This is the 20th installment of this year’s Serial Setting project; a tropical island setting in the South Pacific intended for use with Hollow Earth Expedition or Daring Tales of Adventure. Ostensibly a corporate holding off the usual shipping lanes, known to savvier career sailors in the region as a possible refuge between Pitcairn and French Polynesia, the Windlet Isles strangely represent both peaceful community living in an island paradise, and secrets perhaps best left unexplored. This series of entries reveals some of the landmarks on the islands, and continues to flesh out the many mysteries to be found in the interior.

20) Mount Cairn, Interior, Greater Windlet Island

This reportedly extinct volcano is, at first glance, the most prominent feature of the islands. Towering over the jungle below, it rises gracefully in  a broad cone, projecting an image of unthinkable, slumbering force. Signs of past violence are mostly covered by the verdant green of the voraciously expanding jungle, but the north face of Mount Cairn, blown away in a past cataclysm long before settlers first set foot on the island, leers with jagged stone teeth out to sea, showing all those who approach, the true face of this place.

Most of the approaches to the summit are too steep and treacherous to be developed, but the enterprising engineers of the Company have managed to blast a wide, more-or-less stable roadway up to and into the crater at the top. Due to the unrelenting dangers of the interior, the road must be girded by the same high fence as the other areas set aside for settlers, blocking the spectacular views the approach yields. Fortunately for residents, Administrator Gast has begun looking for engineers able and willing enough to construct a facility to serve as a Look-off and Observatory.  Only the best, and bravest will do. Current inhabitants of the islands feel that the project is too demanding, and too dangerous. Gast does not agree.

Aerial view prior to construction of the Airship and Radio Center

Related Articles

• Serial Setting 1: Ubiquity ~ Week 8 (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Settings 1: Ubiquity ~ Week 19 from Casting Shadows (runeslinger.wordpress.com)
• Serial Setting 1: Week 18 ~ Ubiquity (runeslinger.wordpress.com)