User blog:3rdMercenaries/The Island

The Myth
The legend goes that a long time ago, at the dawn of the current Demon Lord's reign, four very wealthy and powerful men suddenly announced they were going on an expedition. Getting on a boat with people and supplies, they left.

About a month later, a ship docked at the same harbour, claiming to be from a newfound colony. It gathered more people and supplies, and then left, and was not seen again until a year later.

Each time the gap grew. A year. Two years. Three, four, five, until eventually the ship had not been seen in a century. It disappeared into myth, as well as the island and the four men themselves, people telling it as a bedtime story to their kids and making up all kinds of things about what the men found and what happened to them.

Now, hundreds of years later, rumour has come from sailors that have sighted a ship of strange design and flying unknown colours; and it's heading for the same harbour as in the tales.

Founding The Colony
The four men; Amadeus Arkham, Darius Dent, Cadmus Cobblepot and William Wayne, had left to found a new city that was, in their eyes, a new start. After weeks of sailing they eventually came across an island which they claimed as their own and, once they'd gotten themselves established, they sent a ship back to the harbour they'd set out from to get more supplies and people.

However, soon, there was a disagreement amongst the founders; particularly Dent and Cobblepot, which resulted in a small civil war. The result of this civil war was the four families splitting the island between them.

Amadeus set up on a mass of land which had been severed from the rest of the island by eathquakes and named it for himself; "Akrham Island." He would often refer to it as "An Asylum for those who wish to escape the bloodshed."

Darius, having a particular fondness of the ways of Zipangu, set up a district that would later be called "Zipan Town", where the buildings were build in the fashion of Zipangu and it carried elements of Zipagu's culture.

Cadmus took his part in the north of the island, where he built a place of industry. This district would eventually come to be called Jezebel Plaza, after Cadmus's last wife.

As for William Wayne, he decided to build a city to connect these districts together in the middle of the island; the place where the people would live, would grow, would work and would prosper. Once the city was built, he left the name and the rights of the city in the hands of the citizens who had built it. Wayne himself used his own plot of land to build a single manor, Wayne Manor, which he would live in with his wife, and would be passed down through the generations.

The citizens of the city gave it a name that would eventually carry over to the name of the island itself. They called it Gothica.

Becoming Myth
As they years went by, the people of the island found that actually, they could look after themselves. That actually, they didn't need supplies from the mainland.

However, the turning point for the mentality of the people came when one day, one of the voyages came back with not just humans, but with Mamano as well. The next couple of voyages came with Mamano and Incubi as well as humans, and the people became increasingly xenophobic.

With the chaos that the unmarried Mamano had caused (which resulted in a small war), the people forbade the Wayne and Dent families from sending any more ships out to the mainland by attacking workers who had been sent to the harbour to build the ship. Eventually, the families gave into the people's xenophobia and decided it would be best if the island became independant.

Plans for future boats were given to the Cobblepot family, who made the Iceberg for their own enjoyment and with no intent to take it to the mainland.

And so it was for many hundreds of years that the people of the island never forgot the mainland and feared it, but on the mainland the island became a myth, and the people with it.

New Voyage
Hundreds of years later, Thomas Wayne, trying to reform the island since it began to spiral due to increasing poverty, decides to restart the voyages to the mainland. Although met with opposition from many people, he begins building the ship. Unfortunately, he and his wife are killed before the ship can be finished; however, their son, Ben Wayne, takes a small, private boat to the mainland and disappears for several years.

When he returns, he continues the project to finish the boat that takes another two years to build because of resistance from the general populace.

Now, at long last, another voyage has set out to the mainland...

The Urban Legend
During the two years the boat was being made, something began to happen on the island. No one knows exactly -what- it is, but to most of the population, it seems that the shadows themsleves have begun fighting back against corruption.

Criminals have come to fear the night.

No one knows what it is, though some say it might be a Werebat, or it could be a new creature entirely, or perhaps it's the wrath of God. Though some sceptics say that this is just an Urban Myth and that the law enforcement is finally getting their crap together.