Casting Shadows

The entry this week for Serial Setting 1 for Ubiquity reveals one of the first and best kept secrets uncovered by the first Gast family member to set foot on the beautiful and deadly Windlet Islands. The Serial Settings series of posts is intended to provide usable setting material for busy GMs. Series 1 is for those looking to run Daring Tales of Adventure or Hollow Earth Expedition. To review the entire series check out the Serial Settings Archive Page. This series will end with Week 52, followed by a few posts and updates of key entries to offer statistics, NPCs, and additional plot hooks.

51) Bowl Rock, the interior, Greater Windlet Island

For reasons of human nature that we humans may never fully come to understand, the phenomenon of Bowl Rock was never passed on once discovered on that first expedition – even to the family – and if anyone alive now is aware of it, they are keeping that knowledge to themselves, just as tightly.

For those with access to, and the skill to survive in the interior, Bowl Rock is a familiar sight. Probably the remnant of a volcanic bomb from a past eruption the eponymously shaped mass of rock sits in a depression roughly 30m across. The rock itself is black and porous – ever filling, but never filled with the moisture and rainfall of the deep, humid jungle. It measures roughly 2m high and 4m across at its widest point, with its bowl smooth and neatly sized for a man to lay in repose as though taking a bath.

The small clearing in which it resides is less than 300m due East from the passage into the base of Mount Cairn last publicly explored by an ill-fated expedition of fake volcanologists in 1929. Although covered by layers of overgrowth, were anyone to search methodically, they would find trail markers of diamond-rich ball-shaped stones leading from the passage to this spot, with 1 every 3 m in a straight line.

The secret of the bowl if it is to ever be uncovered again is only likely to be regained by accidental discovery. If a living being lies in the bowl, dripping their life’s blood down into the rock, the effect bound into the rock will heal them (2N or 1L) at sunrise or sunset. Alternately, it will cure them of jungle fevers, or the virulent poisons of the venomous creatures of the island, providing they bleed into the bowl. With no blood from the person to be affected, there is no restorative effect.

An even more curious effect has become known to an islander, and it has changed his life. He has not realized that the bowl also heals the injured and cures the ill, the power he has discovered he has interpreted in darker ways, and he has attributed this power to the gods of the islands which are crowding his heart. Keoni, not many years ago, made a sacrifice of a jungle bird at sunset and placed the body of the bird in the bowl singing songs of supplication. As the last blazing rim of the sun slipped below the sea, blocked from view by the massive barrier of the mountain and its verdant jungle cloak, the bird exploded into life and flight again – forever changing the course of his life, causing him to take up the name Irawaru and start the work of religious revival he does under that name.

He has since worked the same miracle using much larger animals.

With each passing year, the desire to see the magic in action has grown within Irawaru, and soon he will include his followers and eventually Faipa in the ritual. Once this is done, it will ignite fires of fanaticism whose flames will burn out of control – changing everything.

Rumours: none