The Campaign Builder's Guild

[blockquote=Phoenix]I haven't really decided. I want to do a detail write-up for each island, but I on the other hand someone did advise me not to get too caught up in details for every land. Just enough to hint at depths. I'd like to see each island as physically different.[/blockquote]

Right, it's not that important to go into detail for every island. The minimal description you've got is more than enough until someone actually ventures there - at that point you'll want more detail, but beforehand it's not necessary.

What about making the porous mountains part of Kibu? And how about it's a combination of the other islands, but everything there is in black and white, possibly including those who make temporary visits? I think no color would possibly fit an isle of shades quite well.

I think the porous mountains could work well. Make it a singing isle.

While I like the basic idea of a B/W land, I'm not sure it fits with any conception of paradise, or fairyland.

(Shades are untainted ghosts, as opposed to spectres, should that clear anything up. Basically souls which remain self-aware.)

[ic=The Song of Orpheus]A shudder ran through me and set my insides to trembling when I dared look over the side of the skiff. Clouds surrounded us, but beyond them, the blue sky. The boatman navigated the skystream without worry, perhaps without enough caution. Another foot to port and we would plummet through that endless blue.

"Play another," the boatman commanded.

I had had little to trade for passage from Mag Mell to Hsuan. But when the faeries heard I was a musician, they produced a new lyre for me and bade me play for them. In a way, it was like coming full circle. I once again strummed my lyre as my means of navigating the underworld, earning the favor of its dead or undying denizens. But I exchanged oppressive shadows for awe-inducing sky and trees and mountains. As though every feature of the world were magnified and viewed through the veil of dreams.

And at last Hsuan, island of the emperor, came into view. Mist billowed off its turquoise mountains in the distance. A great many rivers flowed across the landscape, many ending in skystreams like the one I now navigated. But one plummeted from the floating isle without becoming a skystream. A great archway framed this waterfall, and before my eyes, a dragon swam up the fall and through the gate. From there it flew upward--though it had no wings--and toward the distant mountains.

"That's your destination, too," my guide said.

For a moment, as the boat entered the stream, we fought the current. Then the boatman navigated into a small harbor. And there he left me, in a land more strange than even the from which I had lastly come.[/ic]

[ic=The Song of Orpheus]My lungs burned like fire in the thin mountain air. Only a few more steps stood between me and the summit where the emperor's palace stood. But I could walk no farther. On my hands and knees, I crawled those final steps, then lay on my gasping.

Others passed me by, paying me little heed. Or perhaps they did notice me, but I was too dazed to realize it. After what must have been a half an hour or more, I rolled over and took my feet. A dull ache simmered throughout my body. I trudged through the palace doors, which must have stood fifty feet high. The main hall was decked with murals painted on banners hanging from the ceiling. They depicted the faeries warring against the corrupted fiends I had seen in Tartarus, or singing beneath the moonlight, or caught in the throes of passion. Had I been less exhausted and less awed, I might have blushed at some of the displays.

Ahead of me, a man--though of course he was not a man but some kind of spirit--sat at a desk with an enormous book before him. Quill in hand, he recorded information about each petitioner before me. "Name, rank, and business," he said when I approached, though he never looked up from the book.

"Orpheus. Ah, human. I need to see the emperor about raising the dead."

He looked up then. "Oh. Well that's a new one. I'll file that under special requests. Please have a seat. His August Majesty will be with you in one to twenty years."

"I cannot wait twenty years, nor even one year, sir. I am merely human, and my quest cannot wait."

The clerk snorted. "Well aren't you special, then." But he sent a runner to speak with the emperor.

The benches did indeed look inviting. But I feared if I were to sit now, I might never be able to rise again. So I stood beside the clerk's desk and I waited.[/ic]