Story Help... save the island

[godthedj]

Hi all...

I'm writing a campaign which focuses around one of our new PCs... I want the story to be based around the fact that their home island is dying! Its a huge island but it will soon start sinking into sea. They need to find a way to rescue/revive it.

I'm imagining that there is some beating magma type heart in the centre of the island and they need to find 'something' to fix it....

I don't particularly want to base it around 'monsters have arrived and we need to kill them all' to break a curse... I'm thinking something a bit less 'evil'... like the island is literally ill or something.... does anyone have any ideas how this could work? Any suggestions would be welcome!

Their adventure currently starts off 'on the mainland'. They have the name of a cleric who may be able to help but when they get to her house it turns out that she's missing...

[Kaveman26]

The missing cleric is a dwarven forge master and master craftsman. The heart of the island is a sentient construct with lava for blood. Should the heart die and the machine die with it a cache of riches would be accessible. The cleric is bein held captive by hostile forces and the group must locate several important mechanical parts blessed by the gods and rescue the cleric to perform "surgery" on the island.

[godthedj]

Oooh. Mechanical parts... surgery... Sounds good!

[Traab]

Could steal a part of the plot from a video game, Legend of Legaia. To boil it down to its basic point, you find this cavern city that is collapsing into the abyss bit by bit. Going deep into the underground area you find a layer of magma and rock with all these pillars. These pillars are whats supporting the cave city. You also find a giant minotaur/centaur type creature bashing its way through the pillars trying to destroy the place.

So basically, have the enter through say, the dormant (ish) volcano in the middle of the island and wind their way downwards, dealing with all sorts of under dark style creatures, only to find some big bad is destroying the supporting structure holding the whole place up.

Yeah i know, you wanted something less evil. Hmm, how about this. We go with the ten hour island myth. Basically, the island is a living creature, normally a gigantic turtle. Your characters people built their homes on the back of this giant being and it coasts around the oceans doing its own thing. Unfortunately something has happened, like, a giant boat crashed into it at a location that wasnt easily visible so it went unnoticed. But it hurt the turtle really badly. Now your party has to go wandering the island untilt hey find the source of this injury and deal with it, hopefully keeping the living island from dying and sinking underwater. Maybe deal with the survivors of the boat crash as well. Lets say there is something valuable here they are after so they are mining or whatever and making things worse.

[MintyNinja]

Possibly a portal to another realm has been opened inside the island (or under it) and the heroes need to go plane-hopping to unhinge the "anchor points" of the portal.

[Honest Tiefling]

See, monsters have arrived and they need to kill them to lift the curse. The monsters are these humans who have foolishly inhabited a cursed island, and don't know that they are either manipulated or tainted by it. By removing them, the spells and rituals that lead to the island going into the sea will be halted, which was a last ditch effort to avoid having people settle the island.

If you combine it with the mechanical idea, you could have the players learn that the parts are from some nefarious plane, and they could try to find ways to replace the parts with ones that would purify the machine. Such as metals forged by angels or from the heavens...Which they might need to barter for, and secure the transport of.

[RazorChain]

Let it sink and watch the dismay on your player's face. Remind him regularly that he could have saved the place but he was too busy looting dungeons

[AkazilliaDeNaro]

This reminds me of a one-shot manga I read.

Gimme a sec...

Ah, here it is.

TL;DR:

Spoiler: Spoilers

Show

Village lives behind walls keeping a giant wall of water at bay.
Turns out the world didn't flood; they sank.
The water is actually only 2-3 feet deep.