Cof

X Worldbuilders:

GM James R

An overhead map of Cof (pre-colonization)

Cof is one of the seven Kiston Isles, most notable for being the first Kiston Isle to be permanently colonized from outside invaders.

Geography

The island was created by Mielikki and staffed with her custom-made guardian Chronepsis. The Island is primarily forests and beaches with one large and impossibly steep mountain in the center, Mount Warpwood, where Chronepsis resides.

Mount Warpwood was said to be "over 10,000 feet" tall in original exploration journals, but that height has been widely debated by residents of later colonies. From the base, it's a 4 day trek to the peak.

As one of the Kiston Isles, Cof orbited the central island, constantly in motion like a geographic ping-pong paddle, catching those who wished to visit the mainland.

Peculiarities

Like the other Kiston isles, Cof was home to a handful of cosmic peculiarities unique to the island. The names of the peculiarities are taken from Xender Pleth's final records.

Deadfog

The Deadfog was a massive field of mist roughly half the size of the island. Every night the field would move and warp, taking a new shape and affecting different parts of the island.

Besides limiting the vision of creatures caught in the dense fog, the Deadfog prevented creatures from drawing on the weave when inside the mists, preventing all forms of spell casting and magical power. Artifacts and enchantments would fail while in the fog as if under a field of anti-magic.

Doombringer

A creature known only as the Doombringer was witnessed by Xender Pleth, and again by The Best Around when they crashed in 691 PR. Others over the years also gave testimony to seeing the Doombringer on Cof's beaches.

According to all accounts, the Doombringer took the form of an armored paladin or blackguard, and patrolled only the beaches of the island. If the Doombringer caught you on his patrol, it was said he would attack with powerful psionic magic, leaving you defenseless against mental images of your worst fears, a lethal sense of dread that could only be escaped under the most rarest conditions.

Magnetic Stone

A large obsidian black stone in the middle of Cof's jungles was said to dispatch a very strong field of magnetism that unsuspecting victims would walk into, pulling them through the jungle at high speeds and beating them against the trees unless they relinquished the metal that drew them towards the stone.

The stone, now called the Magnitor Stone would become a popular tourist attraction after the establishment of Brakville on the island.

Night and Day

Because of Chronepsis's residence on the island's mountain, time on Cof never worked completely normally. At unpredictable times, Chronepsis could get peace by driving the island's residents forward in time up to 12 hours, throwing off sleep cycles by changing the night instantly to day and vice-versa.

History

The Vanderborens

In the 680s PR, a pair of siblings known as Lavinia and Verik Vanderboren heard rumors of Kiston's mainland housing massive crystals uncomprable to other gems. The stories of The Crystal City led them to buying several ships and boarding them with brave men and women willing to chase after what amounted to a fairy tale.

The first complete map of Cof, found at the site of Verik's original colony

While the Vanderborens never reached the mainland or the crystals within, they did manage to make several trips in which they were able to map the patterns of the Kiston Isles. On his fourth voyage, Verik successfully landed his ship The Queasy Couatl on Cof and set up a temporary colony.

The First Colony

Verik's first colony could only support about 10 people, as it was built with re-purposed ship wood. By not returning to Dolmvay Verik knew his sister would be following his trail soon, and decided to wait out the following month on the beaches with his small colony.

After 7 weeks, this colony would be ravaged by Yuan-Ti, who had discovered that fire-arrows could quickly burn down the wooden huts. Verik and final 3 survivors would flee south, hoping that Lavinia had arrived on the island.

Later Colonies

When her brother didn't make it back to Dolmvay, Lavinia quickly enlisted a growing party to follow the notes he had left. The four ships of the Vanderboren voyages would go down in history as the first conquerors of Kiston and are listed below:

• The Queasy Couatl (Verik's vessel)
• The Choking Cockatrice (Lavinia's vessel)
• The Manticore
• The Sea Wyvern

Another ship known as The Draconic Ravager would join the Vanderboren ships to establish a religious temple on Kiston dedicated to Kragnux (Deity). Although none of the ships reached the mainland, the first permanent church of Kragnux would be built in the original colony and would come to be a religious site of pilgrimage for dragon slayers.

When Lavninia reunited with her brother, they worked to form the basis a second colony which would later become Brakville, named after his first mate Brak.

Henric The Misfortunate landed on Cof as a stowaway in a grain ship. It was here that he worked for a short time as a bar hand and it is here that he managed to meet an attorney looking to find an apprentice.

The town known as Brakville would eventually become primarily inhabited by Warforged, becoming a new colony known as The Sky Net.

A neighboring human colony would pop up on Cof sometime in the late PR era to live alongside Sky Net, it was known as Teslex

Final Population

Long into the CR era, the population of Warforged had long evolved into something new and different...a society known as Alpha Complex, where machine, AI, and computer ruled over powerless citizens who are satisfied by the bread and circuses of their machine overlords. A population known as "The High Programmers" is the only class of citizen known to truly understand the secrets of Alpha Complex, and they remain shrouded in the shadows.

Unknown to most, but there were actually TWO Alpha Complexes on the island, each taking the form of a massive crystalline black dome nearly impenetrable from the outside. The two Complexes were unaware of the other's existence, but any event that allowed their two networks to communicate almost always led to oceans of violence, hacking, stealing, and chaos...at least until the complexes are able to brainscrub their citizens and restore the status quo.

Alongside Alpha Complex 1 and Alpha Complex 2, there were a few other notable locations that popped up in this era, including:

• Stuckey's, a gas station/convenience store
• PACE Studios, a recording studio

Residents

Chronepsis

The guardian of the island, Chronepsis was born, raised, killed, and born again on the top of Cof's lone mountain peak. Although Chronepsis almost never made itself known to the island's natives, her cavern would occasionally be visited by infiltrators who were almost always disposed of by either instant aging or temporal displacement. One notable instance included the displacement of The Best Around by over 100 years when they stumbled upon Chronepsis' lair.

Fire Yuan-Ti

A special tribe of Yuan-Ti existed as the island's native species until their extinction shortly after 700 PR when the island was colonized. The tribe had cross-bred with a group of Fire Salamanders, giving them abilities such as heated skin and fire breathing in addition to their normal poisonous biology. In 691 PR, they were led by the great salamander Shaneeks and his half-breed sons Mariss and Silass.

Colonists

The last castle Xender Pleth would build, and the site of his death.

The great explorer Xender Pleth (Person) was the first invader to have reached Cof, roughly around 150 PR.

Other Creatures

Occasionally, non-native creatures could be found on Cof, typically as a result of Chronepsis' tampering, including dinosaurs, ettins, and even a gelatinous cube.

The sand was also home to hundreds of lethal sand centipedes.