It's May 3rd 2024, the tally marks on the dirty cement prison wall to keep you in check with reality. Eventually, you'll end up running out of room on the wall since your sentencing is lifelong. Days pass and on a conspicuous day, you are given the utmost turn around opportunity for your life, but at a risk. Wardens offer you to inhabit an abandoned island for research upon the radioactive effects on humans and it's life extensions. You're unclear of what they're trying to explain to you but anything is better than the hell hole you're already in, or is it? A week later the day comes, you're taken out of your cell and given an injection. Some random concoction that have unnamed contents, all of a sudden your legs feel like cement, your hands become cold yet somehow still warm to the touch, and the room goes out of control. Lights out. You're placed on a boat with other prisoners who also agreed to the offering of a new life, a new start at their own will. There were no rules on this island and definitely no government. Only the incoming inhabitants and the animals that have flourished over the years along with the fruits and vegetables along the river sides. The scientists are heavily equipped when arriving to island but yourself and the other prisoners. You manage to get a glimpse on the boat, a large number of men in blue hazmat with an arsenal of guns, you can't make sense of it and you go back out. The scientists leave you and the other prisoners along the beach side, spread out, giving you all room to find your own way around, seeming as a common pattern on this island. Given that the island had been abandoned on the far southern hemisphere of the globe away from all other civilization, there somehow was large run down buildings, monuments of sorts. The scientists were at least nice enough to give you a rock and a torch. Welcome to Hapis Island. The beautiful scenery hides the darkest liars and the most savage of people, yet you can find yourself hiding within it too. Using your gifted rock, you begin hitting as many trees as you see, knowing that wood is the first resource in building. Time goes by so slow and you know others are around the island somewhere, unfortunately for you, they want what you have. You begin to get crafty with it, collecting stone you manage to make yourself a couple tools to further advance your resource gathering. Scattered around are little green plants, hemp, an easy source of cloth that can be used in numerous ways. Using your cloth and wood you craft a bow, making some stone arrows, you're now in the beginning stages of your days. After picking up your next hemp, you glance down and notice... well... I guess it depends on who/what you are. You use that cloth to craft some pants, shirt, and a head-wrap. Gloves and shoes if you have enough. This armor is really weak and would be absolutely shredded if someone, somehow, managed to get ahead of you and find disposed guns and gear from previous scientists and warfare. This happens, more than it's comfortable accepting. And you will get annihilated, no questions asked. This is also why it's kind of important to soak in the scenery of Hapis Island, sometimes it's the only peaceful thing left. Using your tools and the rich nature surrounding you, despite the island being a radiation zone; which, have decreased over the years, deeming it safe to live on to begin the radioactive research but only in some areas. You gather enough resources to start building a base, a place to call home, somewhere to reside at night when it's pitch black and difficult to see if anyone is sneaking up behind you. You throw together a building plan and lay out your soon-to-be home, but you'll need a place to store the valuables you've collected during your trek. Crafting a small wood box allows you to store the items you've collected. The wood pieces don't look like they're entirely together, and it doesn't really make sense how you can fit some of the items inside of such a tiny box, especially multiples of that one item, but it works. Like back at home, breaking into peoples homes was at a constant. It happen all over, all the time. It seems the people, and maybe yourself included, held onto that idea. Foot steps outside your base start creeping up, you can't see outside unless you built a window and have window bars to protect people from climbing through, or unless you have a shop front with a window, handy for making safe trades with people. Unknowing of who is outside your base, it's up to them whether they want to talk to you or completely ruin your stay. A knock on your wooden door, "Anybody home?" ... "I just need some tools, man" Now is the time to decide. Do you trust this random man that came up to your base that a) you can't see if he's well-equipped b) if he has another friend with him ready to ambush you or lastly b) that could be trying to bait you to, what's known as, "going deep" on your base. An easy bluff and unfortunate for those who fall for it, especially for those who don't really understand how to make a proper airlock with their doors. A tactic used to prevent other people from getting inside your base to your valuables. You can stay quiet and not move, maybe he'll run off thinking nobody is home; yet you may run the risk of him breaking down your door anyway. Though it may take some effort depending on the type of door you built, if it's made out of wood which would be the weakest door, or metal fragments, a stronger door. High quality metal is a resource found within Hapis Island as well, highly wanted and quite difficult to get in large amounts, yet it's the strongest resource of all. Giving you better armor protection, better base protection, and access to higher-tier things that you can manage to craft. Like all buildings, they decay, as your base will too. You'll need a Tool Cupboard to store your important and exclusive resources/materials. A couple important things about a Tool Cupboard is that one, you never want to let another person you don't want or trust, to get near it and especially don't let them gain access to your TC, they can easily do this if it isn't locked. Which is my next point, always, always lock your tool cupboard or it's an easy raid for them. They'll have to spend the extra resources to destroy the one you've created and locked. Let's say you decide to talk to him, maybe you do have a couple extra tools you can give him. Maybe he's somebody you can really trust. Teaming up is really helpful on the island because it just so happens to be true that quantity is better than quality. Luck is rare, but it happens. You can be completely equipped for battle and still lose just because another person had an angle on you that you weren't expecting. Being able to communicate with another person or having someone communicate to you the whereabouts of an enemy, can give you an advantage in battle. "Yeah, I think I got a couple, give me a minute," you run the thought through your head once more, here is where you should be thinking about a back up plan since you're getting set on opening the door to your base. Once you open the door, do you shut it immediately and run out? Do you open it, take him down and check his loot to make sure he didn't have an Eoka or a Double Barrel Shotgun? You open the first door of your airlock since you've managed to figure out how exactly they work. You can also make a move here as well, leaving your first door open and opening your front door will still prevent the enemy from getting in, but you cannot get out and this gives the enemy a chance to door camp you, meaning; constantly killing you as you come to your door or try to come outside. Pretty unfair and highly annoying but it's common if you tick someone off well enough, or if they're just terrible. Fast forward a while and you're nearing the ending stages of your days, but something is odd. Like, really odd. Every time someone has killed you or you've died to something within the island, you wake up at your sleeping bag. Was this what the scientists have been working on all along? Creating immortality for the human race with their radioactive DNA experiments? You're unsure of it because all you know is that you're on a mission with one goal; to survive. To be continued...