[D'sP] The Five Islands - Chapter 359 (Patreon)

Ally smiles and leaves Doyle to finish the floor, happy that she helped him get around his block.

Doyle focuses on perfecting the five islands. Monsters can come later. For the moment, he wants to make this fit his vision first. It was nebulous at best when they started, but now it is clear to him.

Between the original island and the next, there would be a large slab of mountain stone connecting them. Both islands would be clear of trees, the eruption having cleared them. Also, the second island would be more of a crescent island anyway, with a lagoon in the middle. Give any delvers the option to go around the edge or try and swim between the tips of said crescent.

The third island would be biggest by land mass as it isn’t missing the middle. Instead, it would be a gentle hill covered in trees. To connect it to the crescent island, there would be a tall tree that was in the center which ended up dying and falling towards the volcano because it was damaged on that side.

Doyle pauses as an idea hits him. It wouldn’t be just a hill! Rather, it would be because of the tree that the island had a hill shape. It wasn’t some kind of world tree or anything, but its roots had certainly formed much of the islands above water mass and soil subsequently piled up. In fact, the rest of the trees would have been offshoots from it. The main trunk had died, but the root system was still surviving. It wouldn’t do anything mechanically since he couldn't make an actual living tree, but the story felt right.

Then, for the fourth island out, it would also have trees, but not like the third island. Instead, it would be like one of those classic island pictures you would occasionally see. A nice beach of sand going right up to the tree line. That being mostly because the trees are keeping what little soil they can get ahold of in place, but it looks nice. As for how to connect the two?

Doyle hadn’t wanted to do this for the crescent island because it would ruin the image he had, but here it would be fine. A nice sandbar between the two. The same would be true between the fourth and fifth island as well, with the fifth island being mostly bare. Some shrubs that would also be on the other islands, but besides that, not much else besides the entrance.

Of course, the exit would be in the center of the volcano’s caldera. While he could place it on the far side from the way in, that would provide a potential shortcut if someone has a way to make climbing the opposite side of the volcano easy. Better just center it so anyone coming in will have to deal with his fire breathing cattle.

That did leave the question of what to do with the quote unquote ocean surrounding the islands. Sure, it would be stupid easy to trick people and make it loop infinitely. However, Doyle wanted something else for this place, something wholly unnatural and yet more natural at the same time.

So, Doyle crafted the tides and weather. Everything led to the islands. And not just the islands, but rather, the first island. Anyone capable of getting a ship here and forcing it to sail straight to the volcano, will deserve it.

Now, Doyle didn’t want people to completely avoid the water, so he didn’t have some kind of extreme riptide or anything to drag them under. However, once you left where you can easily see the bottom, both the wind and water would be forcing you towards the entrance.

To set this up basically took a bunch of cheating on Doyle’s part. However, once set up, it didn’t take any extra upkeep besides what was already required for things such as his portals. Because it was exactly portals that allowed it to work. Out of sight, there were large columns of falling water that was split up to guide the rest of the mini sea’s currents. Same for the air, though that required a bit more work and involved using the water to help pump the air along.

Whether it could be called a sea? Doyle doubted it as he decided to skip out on the salt. It was all fresh water, more because he realized that none of his monsters, even the aquatic ones, could survive in salt water. Later, he would need to make sure to adapt his aquatic monsters for salt water. For now, he didn’t feel the need to do so. Plus, salt water is just tough on things in general and while funny, Doyle didn’t want to rust out his delvers this early on.

Satisfied with the scenery, Doyle turned back to the easier problem of populating it. Over 91 thousand points wasn’t going to spend itself. Though to start, he tried something different. Instead of worrying about the specific amount of points, first populate everything and then check what that comes out to before finalizing.

So two flocks of birds, one for each island with a forest. A small tribe of kobolds living under the fallen tree. They carved their home out of the tree with the entrance being under the water. Let them keep a herd of goats on top of the tree.

In the water itself, he only had the sea cows. Which he hoped would change, but for now Doyle could only spread out a few small groups. Also, why are they sea cows if they can’t handle salt water? That doesn’t make much sense and was likely just a translated pun.

The system overall seemed to do a good job of translation, but there had been some obvious mismatches when the wolfkin showed up. If these cows came from his planet, Doyle would have sighed as the reference was clear. They were cows that lived in the water. On the other hand, there are manatees which have the colloquial name of sea cows. Thus using that name for the sea cattle.

Except, this wasn’t a local name, but rather a system sourced name. While still possible that the original name came from a similar comparison, and this was how the system translated it. It was also equally possible that their original name was the word for a generic giant body of water and that translated to sea because that was the biggest designator for a body of water.

Doyle sighed and distracted himself by sticking a few Udoroots in the water between the crescent island’s two prongs. Make it so that the quick swim between the two isn’t easy nor as obviously dangerous as it would be if there were sea cows there. The phrenic plants don’t die from being submerged, but for the moment they certainly aren’t happy and stand out like a sore thumb. What with sunflowers not being something you normally see just sticking their heads barely out of the water. They would change with time and so Doyle ignored them.

Doyle pauses to consider the entrance island. He didn’t quite want to make the entire thing a safe zone. That was however what it seemed to lend itself most towards.

Doyle turns to Ally, ‘Hey, do you think the assassin vines can adapt to being aquatic? I know the Udoroot can, but they’re phrenic while the assassin vines are literally just plants. There’s even that whole thing with how they aren’t moving with magic like most plant monsters.’

Ally frowned, ‘Maybe? I haven’t heard of aquatic assassin vines. However, it is also possible that they exist under a different name. I know there are certainly a number of grasping and strangling aquatic plants, especially if you don’t mind something semi-aquatic. It is shockingly easy to drown low level beasts and such if you yourself don’t have to worry about breathing.

‘I say throw some underwater and see what happens. You’ve got time and unlike stuff like your goats, they won’t die within a minute or so of being submerged. So you have at least a glimmer of chance that they’ll survive and adapt. Trying to do the same with your goats would just be an unnecessarily cruel way of killing them.’

Doyle nods, ‘Fair enough.’

And then he added a limited number of them in the water at the edge of the entrance island. Even if they didn’t adapt, as long as they get placed there right before a group enters, it would work. Though if they do work? Well, Ally certainly wasn’t wrong about how easy it is to take down creatures that need to breathe when you don’t have to.

Doyle turns back to the forested islands. Birds are nice, but he had something that would fit right in, wooden goats. And so a few herds of them were added, along with a handful of the hexape golems in places that would allow them to hide. Stuff like stagnant pools of water. In fact, if anything, the chance glint of light off their crystal plates would tempt delvers.

That thought had Doyle also adding the chance for coins to spawn at the bottom of those pools. No fair having the illusion of money without the actual chance to get something. Or more to the point, what good is a trap if people never fall for it? Which would soon be the truth if they found nothing but golems in those pools. A mouse trap works best with bait, after all.

Then Doyle turns to the first, the last, the volcano island. Now Doyle could boil water on a large scale. And if you only needed to smelt a bit of ore? He could handle it with the right stuff set up. After all, the kobolds were processing his mithril.

However, if he wanted a small pool of lava, let alone a river? That was beyond him for the moment. Now, if he wanted to make a small pocket of magma? Sure, but that’s only if he sets up a bunch of insulation or actively burns power to keep the temp up.

The kobolds can manage it because they are using their own power and not just depending on a dungeon effect to smelt the ore. In fact, Doyle isn’t providing any of the heat. Rather, his part in smelting mithril is to keep a high enough concentration of world energy in the smelter.

So for now, the volcano is a prop. All the heat being sourced from monsters. However, he happens to have the perfect monster to provide it, the ashen cattle. They could breathe fire and had heat resistance. So while Doyle might not have lava lying around and the system would probably frown on too much boiling water. He could certainly crank up the heat ten or so degrees from the usual.

Though from there, he turns to the area around the volcano. The ashen cattle were all in the caldera and the crack through which delvers were meant to climb. Not that they would always do so, but that just meant he needed stuff to encourage it.

Stuff like more birds, cliff faces with golems there to throw you off, and of course some regular goats. None of them were too dangerous on their own, but the terrain changed things. Unlike the thirteenth, where there was a cliff that mostly got ignored if the delvers weren’t stupid. Here, trying to climb up outside of the intended path would bring the cliffs into the spotlight. Though even just a steep enough mountain side was dangerous.

Was that enough? And more importantly, did he spend too much? Doyle was more than happy to find the answer was yes for the first question and no for the second. In fact, he had spent well under his usual ten percent reserve. The only thing was, the floor might not be as dangerous as some of the others. However, being the first introduction of a large water element meant Doyle wanted to run it with a light hand.

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