Vashtaar Island
Yo, scavengers! With Torn & Beyond finally announced, it's time for us to start sharing some information about what you’ll find as you travel the terrifying, beautiful, and at times disturbing World Torn Apart. In this blog series, we’ll be going over the five newly fleshed out regions that scavengers will find in Torn, and discussing a bit about the alien things you’ll see there.
All of the regions discussed in this blog series are also mentioned in the Scavenger: Nomads of Uncharted Worlds book as well, though only in snippets. Don’t let us describing these places stop you from remixing them with your own ideas!
Today, we’ll be talking about the legendary deathtrap of VASHTAAR ISLAND — WHERE IS PLAYED THE MOST DANGEROUS GAME.
When the scavenger ring first hears about Vashtaar Island, it will be through a fable given to them by their patrons. This fable has been constructed from those who once knew the enigmatic Vashtaar, who himself was a hunter famed throughout Akara for being able to find anything and anyone without issue. The fable, called the Road for the Lost, hints at the reality of Vashtaar Island, and what happened to its namesake, Vasthaar, too.
Getting to Vashtaar Island is hard. The scavengers will need to rely on the fable to give them loose guidance as they travel in between the spaces separating the Tainted Valley from its Merqual Thar cousin. But, should the ring succeed in finding the Road for the Lost, they will behold something none of them have ever seen before: the floating monstrosity that is Vashtaar Island.
Rising from its center into the sunless sky for dalham over dalham is a crimson beam of shardlight unwavering. It is like a beacon for the scavengers, beckoning them to approach this island, to somehow climb its vines up into the interior or to fly up to the island proper. Once there, they find a garden of alien flowers in perpetual bloom, trees and other flora too, all of it unknown to Akaran eyes.
Prowling in the distance, seen barely through the trees: a red silhouette, half-there, half-formed and mute in a way no living thing should be. It disappears behind the grey trunk of a blue-leafed oak plucked from some other Beyond, and when you step forward, you feel a wire through the underbrush pressing against your ankle.
A trap! Look around you. See the small disturbances here and there, how the twilight of this place catches wires criss-crossing all around you. The scavengers will know then that the fable was true in this regard, that Vashtaar did indeed leave here all manner of destruction for those who sought to walk the enshadowed path that is his legacy.
Then a voice afflicted and strange booms across the island, and so the most dangerous game begins. Vashtaar tells you, hidden somewhere else, that only suffering awaits those who trespass upon his island. Now you must be hunted by this crazed scavenger so that the secrets promised to you by the Road for the Lost can be found, and thus giving you a chance to move one step closer to the things you hope to find in Torn & Beyond.
Want to know more about Vashtaar, his story, and just what drove him into such homicidal and possessive madness? Check out Torn & Beyond next year, when we drop it on Kickstarter!
