The Crossroad Isles

CrossroadIsles.jpg The Crossroad Isles
An archipelago positioned advantageously near the New World, the Crossroad Isles have become a politically and logistically important location since their discovery.

Due to the position being so hotly contested, the isles themselves are a neutral zone - the amount of naval firepower or political influence that any one national entity can overtly bring to bear on the area is sharply limited by a Byzantine and Complicated selection of several dozen treaties and contracts. Naturally, this led to an upswing in piracy and mercantile influence, but the opportunities and rewards available in the New World still bring a tremendous volume of traffic through the Crossroad Isles.

The archipelago is a dense one, with hundreds of landmasses ranging in size from large islands down to tiny sandbars. This makes exploration an ongoing endeavor - and navigating away from the main routes is an extremely dangerous proposition.

The Crossroad Isles has the following Guidelines for this game (Word of Mod):

1. There's always another island. It is extremely unlikely that the entire archipelago will be fully mapped during the course of the game. There are some fairly large islands in the archipelago that do not appear on any official maps.

2. Distances and travel times are largely plot based, within reason. The last thing we want is to force everyone to take up navigation as a hobby and calculate how long it takes to get from Monkey Island to Blood Island. That said, some islands are close enough to Wayfarer's Point to be reachable by boats too small to be strictly considered "seaworthy," and certainly you can probably see the land of a few other islands from each Isle on a clear day. New World locations are a couple to several weeks away, Old World Locations are probably months away even by a fast ship.

3. The Islands are tropical or subtropical in climate. Lagoons, lakes, tropic/subtropic style forests, jungles, beaches, volcanic ranges, and even swamps and deserts are all valid descriptions of wilderness areas that don't require any special explanation. Tundras, Black-Forest style timber stands, Ice Lakes, Icebergs, etc. probably need a bit of magical help and some special explanation.

4. While national naval power might be limited, it isn't nonexistent. For instance, it's entirely feasible to say that the primary focus of civilization on Island X is, in fact, a Fortress-Port for the Tirac Navy.

5. There can be exceptions (there can always be exceptions), but please check with the other players before going outside these guidelines.