Initial Setting:
"Don't forget the sound of the waves"
You wonder how long it took some poor, forgotten inmate, by now certainly long-dead, to carve those words into the stone wall across from you. The greasy scrawl betrays an uneven hand, likely starved for food or for proper tools, who felt it necessary to remind all future neighbors to never forget the explosive crashing of ash-dark waves upon the Blackshore's craggy rocks. Of course, you muse, what might it imply if, perchance, you did begin to forget even that all to slim connection to the world beyond your gloomy walls?
171 days - that is your last official tally in your sentence, though according to some of the more talkative inmates that number is either off by either 4 days ahead, or 13 days behind. It's taken this long for your wounds to finally heal, and the young strength of muscle and bone to finally return.
For you, time has become an oddly malleable thing. Your days are split into shifts, time either spent asleep, out in the prison's courtyard for "leisure," under the watchful eyes and sights of the Black Wardens in their towers, or, worst of all, deep in the island's pit mines. Whatever it is they have you sifting for down there, you are beginning to fear it's not fit for human contact - a sentiment, and sediment, shared by most all of the aforementioned talkative inmates, several of whom have begun to crust and discolor by sheer exposure.
With four and a half more years left on your illegitimate sentence, a conviction has finally settled like a burning fire in your belly. You must get out - there can be no outlasting the Blackshore. It would kill you before you would ever get a chance to leave.
Inmates on Blackshore Isle, a small strip of land hardly worthy of the denomination "isle" that lies about three leagues off from Capitol's vast, urban sprawl, have shared with you what they have divined of the island's tricky position. Separated from the Alban landmass by deep, violent currents, the originally volcanic Blackshore has served as a local prison for Capitol for the better part of two centuries, though nearly since the completion of the prison structure you now reside in it's occupancy has far exceeded it's capacity, nearly by a margin of two to one. Since the near-death of natural light across the world, banished beyond occult, occluded skies, some years before, that ratio has only increased as more and more turn to crime to make ends meet. Between war, plague and the near-certain death of civilization imminent, you'd like to think that most people simply cannot care any more to do good in a world that has so utterly abandoned them.
The main barrier to escape is certainly the ocean - a small royal warship patrols the nearby seas with revolting determinedness, keeping a watchful eye on the few prison transports regularly ferrying new workers to the mine, and its malefic produce out the city's soot-stained factories.
Beyond the simple natural barrier, your neighbors inform you that the guards are outnumbered by at least four to one on the island itself, though this advantage is nearly pointless since the Black Wardens keep to themselves in a small fortress adjacent to the docks, equipped with arms and armor enough to depopulate the inmates on command (a command which has been given on several occasions, you are reliably informed).
Light mounted patrols, accompanied by large-shouldered war hounds, stir each of the three crude camps (Dross, Powder and Shard, respectively) into action each dawn in an unceasing pattern of toil and misery.
Each camp is unofficially run by its own gang, following most all of the same rules and understandings as gangs found anywhere else in Capitol, with one exception: no one touches the Wardens. The gangs enforce the rule of law, after their own fashion and to their own tastes, and so long as the mine keeps producing, it seems the Wardens are content with the arrangement.
You, however, are not. You have to get out - to get away from the waves and the ash and the creeping dread of ossified skin and burn-blind eyes staring lidlessly into the empty Beyond. You have to get out.
What will you do?
OOC: Welcome Ghurkal! I hope you enjoy this little foray into some (hopefully) grimdark fantasy! Your overall mission, at this moment and for this experimental one-shot, is to escape the island alive. How you do that is up to you, but if I have understood the mechanics of the game correctly, you will need to plan out your escape step by step, creatively solving problems and consequences as they appear until you have achieved victory! I've been playing a little bit of BitD with from friends IRL recently, and I've noticed a very entertaining natural pattern of "failing forward," as it were, so I hope that you will find a similar degree of fun! Let me know if you have questions about how to navigate the system, but from what I understand of it, it begins by stating your immediate objectives and identifying an ability rating that you would like to use to move towards that objective. When you have that in mind, go ahead and roll an appropriate number of D6's based on your rank in that ability rating and whether or not you would like to push yourself to extra effort (taking on stress if doing so!) Then I will narrate back the results of the attempt. Thanks for trying out this experiment!
