Thursday, August 26, 2010

Snake Island


I've always wanted to do a Dawn Treaderesque campaign with pcs hopping from fantastic island to island. Ilha de Queimada Grande off the coast of Brazil would be the model for one of them:
"Researchers estimate that on the island live between one and five snakes per square meter."

"The lancehead genus of snakes is responsible for 90% of Brazilian snakebite-related fatalities. The golden lanceheads that occupy Snake Island grow to well over half a meter long, and they possess a powerful fast-acting poison that melts the flesh around their bites."
I think there would have to be something astoundingly valuable on that island to get the players to brave the snakes.

ps: What's with Brazil!? First a fire tornado then an island of deadly snakes that I've read about today. They need to channel the tornado towards the island, haha.

via Neatorama.

9 comments:

  1. I do not want to go there.

    (But I like the island hoping campaign idea.)

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  2. Me neither.

    Hey, I just had an idea, what if there were one page island and people wrote a bunch of them. Then you might have a campaign that you could pick and choose from a variety of isles.

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  3. That's a great idea. It would work well as a collection.

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  4. Snake Island sounds like a good time! Perhaps there is a Yuan-Ti temple at its heart.

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  5. Thanks, Paul, Christian. Perhaps a jade snake the size of a house sits in the center of a Yuan-Ti temple.

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  6. I've being there. It's a wonderful island, but there are really thousands of snakes there...

    In fact I've never boarded the island, but I've sailed around it in the past. It is truly a great inspirational locale for a game.

    And I agree with the Yuan-Ti stuff. ;-)

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  7. Well, I missed this by 6 months, but where I do my research in Belize the same snake is known by the French term 'Fer-de-Lance' (usualy pronunced 'Fertile Ants'), meaning the "iron (or head) of the lance". Big nasty diamond-backed vipers, one of the few vipers anywhere that will go after you as you flee, and they have necrotizing venom that typically amounts to amputational injuries for most folks in villages without access to hospitals. As a consequence my friends down there kill every snake they find regardless, even the ones that have the exact proportions of a strand of linguine (aka baby snakes). That's what I would probably do too, in their shoes.

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  8. Scary. How would you incorporate that kind of poison into the game as a mechanic?

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