Some of the best settings in fiction are often inspired by real places. Once a week I'm going to post a real place and some commentary on how GM's can use those places as a basis for story locations within their own game. This week's gem is the extinct volcano Aogashima off the coast of Japan. A small island at 3.38 square miles (8.75 square kilometers), less than 200 people currently dwell on the island.
[Blocked Image: http://68.media.tumblr.com/b8811a912963931fe8350304461c80eb/tumblr_mmkb0dCzOr1qemajro1_1280.jpg]
In the Visedi Sea, this could be the ancestral home of an obscure house and sleeping dark power from even before the Twilight Wars. Maybe this island is located in the Darhsán Ocean, somewhere between Klinráh and Háthiyar and yet appears on no map. The Klin live in a peaceful paradise with other Vajrah yet a terrible secret binds all who consume even one small morsel of food grown upon the island. Perhaps this green caldera seems to have appeared overnight in the Gulf of Bhütai, with inhabitants and all and may yet disappear again when called back to the Edge of Heaven.
Adapt Aogashima to suit. The caldera could easily have its own natural lake with forgotten temple at its center. Fortune may favor the bold, but is that fortune good or bad? Whether it's hungry ghosts, forgotten horrors, unholy terrors, or the more mundane problems of peasants, poison intrigue, or pirates,... small islands are useful story elements.
For a closer look at Aogashima:
https://goo.gl/maps/ZjgbLL6CGvj
[Blocked Image: https://eugene-kaspersky-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2015/04/aogashima-island-japan-2.jpg]
[Blocked Image: http://68.media.tumblr.com/b8811a912963931fe8350304461c80eb/tumblr_mmkb0dCzOr1qemajro1_1280.jpg]
In the Visedi Sea, this could be the ancestral home of an obscure house and sleeping dark power from even before the Twilight Wars. Maybe this island is located in the Darhsán Ocean, somewhere between Klinráh and Háthiyar and yet appears on no map. The Klin live in a peaceful paradise with other Vajrah yet a terrible secret binds all who consume even one small morsel of food grown upon the island. Perhaps this green caldera seems to have appeared overnight in the Gulf of Bhütai, with inhabitants and all and may yet disappear again when called back to the Edge of Heaven.
Adapt Aogashima to suit. The caldera could easily have its own natural lake with forgotten temple at its center. Fortune may favor the bold, but is that fortune good or bad? Whether it's hungry ghosts, forgotten horrors, unholy terrors, or the more mundane problems of peasants, poison intrigue, or pirates,... small islands are useful story elements.
For a closer look at Aogashima:
https://goo.gl/maps/ZjgbLL6CGvj
[Blocked Image: https://eugene-kaspersky-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/files/2015/04/aogashima-island-japan-2.jpg]