“We’ll be back in a year, just remember your job lad. The lamp is in good order, as is the horn. You’ve plenty of provisions, oil, and coal. You should be able to take care of any issues with the workshop. Stay sharp though lad, don’t get complacent. The storms will start up in a few more weeks, and Saint Brendan’s has a way of getting to you after a while. Keep your hands busy and stay on top of things though, and you’ll be fine.”

The Captain extends his hand, which you accept in a farewell shake. It is a weathered appendage, worn from a lifetime of voyaging across the seas and from his advanced age, but there is still a weary strength to it. He gives you a few firm shakes before releasing his grip.

“Mind the light and hold fast lad.”

With this final dispensation of wisdom the Captain turns and makes his way up the gang plank to his small tramp freighter. The Cape Rose is aged, covered in rust and barely worthy of the honor of being a ship. Black smoke rises as her boilers set to turning her screw, and a handful of her crew members wave at you as she slinks away.

They were the same men who unloaded the tons of supplies needed for you to see to your task on Saint Brendan’s Isle. To man the lighthouse that even now loomed at the periphery of your sight, ensuring that it warned off nearby ships from the jagged black rocks that surround and make up the isle.

You wave back to the men, they had done their job well and provided some company on the long voyage from the mainland. Turning from the small ship as she heads out to sea you take in the sight of your new home.

Saint Brendan’s is a relatively small land mass, made up of sharp volcanic rock that thrusts up from the ocean in dramatic cliff faces and curving coves. You are standing on a weather-beaten quay, made out of decidedly non-native grey granite blocks, in the largest of these coves. Dark sand makes up a miniscule beach around the edges of the manmade structure, and you had spied a few similar landings from the Cape Rose as she made her initial approach. But those shores were guarded by more of the volcanic stone, with menacing spires reaching from the depths, breaking rolling waves from the open ocean before they could assault the land proper with their full fury.

All manner of seagrass, kelp, and sargassum clings to these sentinels, bringing some dull color to the black rocks while barnacles and other mollusks add to their sharpness. While above the roiling currents moss and lichen lurk in crevasses along the cliff face.

Next to the quay lies a small boathouse, made up of the same granite and barred with a heavy metal door. It is a squat and thickly built structure, armored against the wrath of crashing breakers that presumably thunder against the landing during winter storms.