Paradise Lost

Editors note.

The following manuscript was discovered during a recent site excavation on the Archipelago. The author is unknown but analysis of the ink and some blood spatters indicate it is from the late 15th century. There are five captains named in the document and interestingly enough we have been able to identify a cluster of what appears to be their present day descendants in their country of original origin. Unfortunately it has not yet been possible to interview them as they all seem to be involved in some ongoing police investigations.



"How did it come to this? I can hear the screams and smell the smoke as I sit here writing. Where did we go wrong? I remember my grandfather telling me about the day the five great captains Peacock, Plum, Mustard, Scarlet and Green set sail with their families to search for Paradise in the New World. Each of these great leaders had their own secret vision of Paradise as well as a shared vision they all embraced.

The journey was perilous but time does not permit me to dwell on this. Suffice to say that eventually they discovered the Archipelago and decided to make it their Paradise. That is where the real story starts. The five captains immediately spread out to explore the Archipelago. At times this was hard and ended up in absolute failure. Many times there was great joy and success as resources and native workers were found. Markets were created to buy and sell goods and ports built to ship them abroad.

As the wealth of the Archipelago grew we could not understand why many of the natives were turning sullen and disrespectful. Had we not given their lives meaning and purpose? Sure there were far too many of them to provide full employment but was that our fault? Of course we experienced many natural disasters over the years and we did try to help the natives as best we could but remember there was the bigger picture of our secret dreams and divine destiny so we could only do so much. We built roads and saw mills and many other improvements. We even built Pyramids but that seemed to make the natives even more rebellious. Naturally for the good of everyone we had to tax them from time to time but they just failed to grasp the idea that this was in their best interest. We did build temples and religion seemed to help it may not have made them happy but some of them started to believe in better things to come - just not in this life.

The air was good and so we reproduced and though we saw more and more rebellious faces in the crowd there were always even more smiling happy ones. Years passed and the no of colonists grew even as the sullen angry faces became more numerous. All the time the descendants of the original captains kept to their secret dreams with perhaps even more fervor than before. The Archipelago became famous we could have had our own Archbishop and even a Pope. They would have helped reduce the rebellious element in the population but we had choices to make and as you might understand we had to follow our own dreams and so we spurned them in favor of other more beneficial personages such as recruiters and exporters. There were other possible dangers such as pirates and thieves who could steal from you. They would pretend they were working alone but we knew they had a very wealthy patron in the background.

We did not see the Karma in what was happening as each time we seemed to take a progress step forward there would be some kind of Archipelago event most of which were bad and some with immediate and deadly consequences. But we all seemed to be reaching our secret goals and as you can understand just did not have the time or inclination to use all our precious resources to deal with these problems. There was also some rumors circulating that 1 of the founding families was secretly helping the growing rebellion in order to become crowned king if it succeeded. This I am glad to say proved unfounded. Yet here I am today with our dreams of Paradise going up in smoke and with death and destruction all around. Sure there were a couple of very bad calamities and maybe we could have done a tiny bit more to prevent them but to wake up one morning to find more rebellious faces than friendly ones - how fair and reasonable is that? Particularly after all we did for them and just on the verge of finally having a paradise of our dreams. How did it come to this?”

Editor’s addendum

Further investigation leads us to believe that the chronicler is a Joshua Black and from where the manuscript was found in the ruins we believe he was murdered in the Kitchen most likely with a dagger.


Archipelago is a medium/heavy civ game which plays 2-5 (best with 5).There are 3 game lengths available ranging from 2+hours to 5+hour.there is a semi cooperative element which may not be to everybody’s liking as all players can lose (as happened in our last game!)

South Dublin BoardGamers can be found here

http://games.groups.yahoo.com/group/SouthDublinBoardgamers/