Puzzle Island

[Slueshy]

[Puzzle Island]
[Several bits of island that look like they were connected via land at one point in time.  It looks like a large puzzle when seen from above.  All the pieces are now connected via bridge, of which each bridge is at the shortest point of each puzzle like segment.]

Location: The South Blue
Size: The size of the center isle is a bit bigger than the isle of Shells Town.
Climate: The island is generally temperate, and more on the warm side.
Affiliation: The island is owned by the people of it, though they often do trade with the government and are happy to help them whenever asked, they receive no government protection.  They don't normally go out of their way to shun pirates though, more so that it's less their business.

Island Map: imgur.com/a/Z0J8wQv Just a basic, this is the shape of it, map.

Landmarks

• Barren Isle:  The top right isle is completely devoid of any life, it's mainly just sand and dirt sitting there in the ocean.  Nothing appears to grow there, and many efforts have been made to avoid it, most people tend to avoid the large waste of land.  You may find shanty's and shacks with people who would rather be left alone, or are trying to avoid contact with others out there.  The only thing of note are the two delivery marks that are on the connector segment.
  
• Unkempt Isle: The top left isle is overgrown with wild plant life, large trees, gigantic flowers, and even insects that are larger than usual (Not by much though)  Pirates usually use this overgrown area as a means to lay low for a time period.  This is also where a majority of the Daftwood Trees grow and a small lumber operation exists around the connector section of that island, which is the only area of tame land on that section of island.  There are also the two delivery marks on the connector segment.  

• Dockyard Isle:  The bottom isle is where most of the docks and shipyards are kept on the island.  It's also where the most fishing occurs, mainly on the river between it and the main isle.  The docks are mainly centered around the middle portion of the island where the connector piece to the main island is.  They do not extend out across the entire section of the island, but a lot of fishing does take place along that whole bottom island area.  This is also where all of the shipyards are, where ships are stored and maintained.  There are also two delivery marks on the connector segment.

• Center City:  A main city smack in the middle of the center isle.  Where most of the shops and businesses are.  It's not a very big city, but you'd be able to find most of the basic things there and a few oddities and local commodities.
  

• Doughnut Steppe: The entire area around Center City is devoted to farmland, split into thirds.  Two thirds of the ring are always set aside for crops, while one third of it is set aside for animals, every harvest season this rotates clockwise, shifting new plants onto different soil and rotating the animals to provide fertilizer for that section of land while letting the land have time to reabsorb nutrients for when it comes time to plant upon it again.
  
  
• One River: This is the one river that circles the entire island, it only ever flows clockwise, and it's too shallow for conventional ships to go on, smaller boats and vessels with flat bottoms are generally the only types of ships you can sail on this river.
  
  
• River Delivery Marks: Due to the nature of the single river surrounding the island, it's actually very easy to send things floating down, as that river flows in a constant clockwise direction, so deliveries that need to be made to parts around the outsides of the island are simply floated from one mark to the other.  These marks are all set up at the thin sections of the connector segments of the islands, where items are transferred from one side to the other.  Two of these marks are on Barren Island, purely for the purpose of keeping the delivery system in tact.  
  
  

Flora

• Towering Tulip: A large variety of Tulip.  Sometimes they are picked and the petals of the plant are used to make dresses.  The process of this involves taking the resin of the Daft Wood Tree and using it to help preserve the petals in order to make them last longer.

[/b][li]Daft Wood Tree: Apply named due to the wood of the Daft Wood Tree being incredibly dense, so much so it's impossible to make a ship out of it alone, or even using just a bit of it.  Though because of how dense it is, it makes it a fine choice as a building material for anything not expected to float.
[/li][/ul]

• Thick Moss:  A variety of moss that grows quite thick, carpeting some areas as much as a six inches deep, the reason it's so thick is that they way it grows makes it almost impossible to cut it with regular tools, so much so that it's easier to burn it in sections to remove it.  Due to this natural strength the moss is often used in clothes, nets, ropes, and other such products.
  

Fauna

• Bridging Centipede: A species of centipede so massive that they span the distance between trees, while being about as wide as one themselves.  They primarily feed off of the Thick Moss on the Unkempt Island.  They don't move much and if you'd never seen one, you might think it was dead due to how much it doesn't seem to move, since they only ever move much at all to eat, and that they do very rarely.

Inhabitants

• Puzzle Islanders: The people who live on Puzzle Island, which range in all shapes and sizes, though only of humans.  The main populace of which consists primarily of farmers and fishermen.  Though there are regular citizens who have a variety of jobs, as well as skilled craftsmen when it comes to lumber.
  
  The people who inhabit Puzzle Island are generally peaceful and view visitors with polite skepticism.  Since the local militia of the island is comprised of the islanders themselves, they don't generally feel too threatened by pirates when they do visit, but to that end pirates mainly only keep to the less noticeable parts of the island since they do trade with the government, so there isn't much worry of there ever being a disturbance from them.  
  
  Most days go by for these people without much happening, and honestly most of them like it that way.  Though there are plenty of ways to pass the time.  

Organizations & Groups

• Farmers Coalition: A coalition of farmers that makes much of the decisions when it comes down to anything involving crops and livestock.  The Farmers Coalition also happen to be adept hunters, and train people in self defense.
  

[/b][li]Puzzle Island Council: A group of islanders, mainly business owners, and a few dock workers.  One person of the Farmers Coalition sits on this council.  They basically decide how life on the island goes, but everything is fairly low key and most council decisions are either obviously what needs to be done, determining business hours, and cosmetic things like what plants to put in the city planters.[/li][/ul]

• Puzzle Island Militia: Puzzle Island has it's own militia, made of the populace of the island.  These people range from fairly inept fighters to quite skilled.  This is a voluntary service on the island.
  
  
• Mailmen: The mailmen(and women) of Puzzle Island are in charge of maintaining the delivery marks that mail and items are floated between.  They are also in charge of delivering items into the main city and the steppe.  Their other job is to keep watch of the water ways around the island to make sure nothing is happening to the items or people floating down the rivers.  

Culture

• Industry: A main export of the island is Daft Wood, while this wood is in no way good for building ships, due to the lumber being much too dense for anything feasible, the wood is incredibly useful for construction, as well as very fine and very sturdy wooden items such as furniture and tools.  Another item of note is the Thick Moss that grows on the island is used to make quite a few strong textiles, ropes, nets, clothing, and sails, which are all much sturdier due to the addition of being woven with the Thick Moss.  Other than this, Puzzle Island is mainly a farming island, because of this the island often has a surplus of food and animal products that they can then export out for other things they may need.
  
• Fashion: The petals of the Towering Tulip are handled in such a way that dresses made from them do not rot away and still retain a floral scent for quite some time, something that is worn on formal, or during party occasions.
  
  Most day to day wear is pretty light, it never gets too cold on the islands.  But it's all in vary subdued colors, light browns, light greens, grays, light blues, pale yellow, not strictly but quite often. 
  
• Cuisine: There is an abundance of different types of fish that frequent the islands due to it's river system, so fish dishes are quite common.  Some people go out and catch the bugs on Unkempt Isle and cook them in what they consider delicacies.
  
  
• Entertainment: The entire middle river of the island constantly flows in one clockwise direction, only ever slightly diverging on the rivers that lead out to the sea.  Because of this a lot of people tend to swim in the river, since it's quite easy to travel with the river, people also take boats on it and simply float in tubes and barrels as well.  

History

• No one quite knows how Puzzle Island got to how it looks now, it's always been in these pieces to everyone. Some tales tell of giants who shaped the island on a whim long ago, others say some creature carved the water through it just to suit it's purpose.
  
• The isle in the center was hard to reach with larger ships, due to the size of the rivers and the rocky outcrops within them.  People living on island from the start left the outer isles and crossed the rivers to the center one, where there was nothing but wide grassland.

• From this grass center, a town started in the middle, purely for the protection of numbers, being a large settlement far in from the sea was much better than several small ones spread out on the fringes.

• As time went on farming grew around the center isle until it got to the point of surplus.
  

•  This is when the other isles were looked at in favor of expansion.  The first isle to be re-purposed was the bottom isle, it had plenty of regular wood which allowed for boats to be made, many of the wooden buildings were made from Daft Wood, which they couldn't use for boats.

• There was an effort to try and cultivate the Barren Isle for more farmland, but nothing could be made to grow there.  Investigations are ongoing as to what to do with the small isle of dirt and sand.

• An effort was made to try and cull the large tree's and plant life of the Unkempt Isle, but it was deemed too wild to tame by regular means, it was eventually left to it's own devices when they simply decided to mainly only get the Daft Wood and take control of the connector segment there for those purposes.  
  

[Jade]

... Whoops. I've kind of left this whole approval area to rot for a while now, haven't I? If you're still interested in working on this island, I'd ask you to reply to this within seven days, Slueshy, so that I can give this a proper look over. Otherwise, I'll be moving this on over to the Archives.

... That said, if you want to continue working on this island after that happens, just shoot me a PM and I'll move it out of the archive and whatnot. And, also, I am super sorry for seemingly ignoring this for such a long period of time.

[Slueshy]

What should I do if I wanna keep working on it and you haven't put it in archive yet?

[Jade]

You should do nothing at all, except what you've already done! Anywho, my own bad jokes aside, let's give this island a quick look, shall we?

Right off the bat, I'm going to ask you to cut out the sections of this template that do not apply to this island. Most notably, this includes the Civilization Name, Log Pose Time, and Climatic Type sections. The way the Island Template is set up allows for islands to be created without filling in every single possible section; this is done because not every island needs all of those sections.

Next up... Are all of the different isles that make up Puzzle Island completely homogeneous? Sure, I can kind of see that with Barren Isle and Unkempt Isle, but is Dockyard Isle just one big dockyard? I suppose what I'm really asking here is... Is there really nothing of note on Dockyard Isle?

Getting into the Flora, let's see... Towering Tulips are kind of interesting, I suppose, and the Daft Wood Tree is neat. I do have to ask if Thick Moss is actually worthy of a spot on this list, however; does it have any properties that actually set it apart from moss you can find anywhere else in the world? Perhaps it grows unusually dense incredibly quickly, and the islanders have to cut or burn it away in order to prevent it from overtaking the farmlands, or maybe it has an unusually terrible odor, or maybe even the ability to pick itself up and move like an animal? Just some ideas for how you could add some additional flavor to it, or any of the other flora you've mentioned here, if you'd like. It's One Piece! Get zany and fun and weird with it!

On a similar note with your Fauna, I'm not sure "Large Insects" are deserving of a mention here. Other than being a little larger than insects you might find anywhere else in the world, does nothing else set them apart? Additionally, this section is intended more for actually unique, individual species, not broad categories like this.

I'd like to see you expand a little more on Puzzle Islanders. Sure, you mention that they're all humans, but are they all just farmers and fishermen? How do they feel about outsiders? What's their day-to-day life like on Puzzle Island?

Honestly, I could probably continue to pick at things like this throughout the rest of this island, but I'm going to leave it here for the time being. I'd recommend that you look through this whole island again, going over it for spelling and grammar mistakes, as well as checking for things like sentence fragments. There's a handful of problems like that strewn throughout... Oh, and there is one more thing. I'd like to see you cut out the conversational tone you've used throughout the island. You're the expert here, after all.

... Okay, I understand that that's a vague piece of advice. Here, let me give you an actual example of what I'm talking about and how to fix this. I'll borrow something that you wrote, and then fix it up to be less conversational.

Industry: Only thing of note is Daft Wood, a specific tree that grows here that has incredibly dense wood. Otherwise Puzzle Island is mainly an island of farming.

And here's how I would fix it up:

Industry: Daft Wood is Puzzle Island's primary export; the dense wood is incredibly valuable for building sturdy vessels, especially for those who cannot afford more expensive lumber. Additionally, Puzzle Island's rich Doughnut Steppe farmlands produce more food than the islanders can make use of, allowing them to export it out to less prosperous islands nearby.

All in all, I think you're on the right track here with Puzzle Island! You've built a fine base, it just needs some work to polish it up! Please let me know when you've finished the requested changes.

[Slueshy]

Alright, I've made some edits to the island.