About Campoon’s Island

Where chaos meets the ocean.

Hello! My name is Alexander P. Campoon, but my friends call me Lex. I am the only human inhabitant of Muenster Island—which technically makes me a monster by association.

Hey, hold on. It is only a name. We are not all bad. Some of the island’s creatures are friendly. Some are less friendly. Some are dolphins.

The Island and Its Curse

Muenster Island is cursed to emerge from the fog and reappear in the outside world at regular intervals. Most of its recent appearances near Cedar Key, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, have passed without incident. That was largely thanks to my grandfather, Colonel Perry A. Campoon, Earl of Muenster.

At least, that is the title recorded in the family history. The Campoon name does not sound especially Prussian, German, Austrian, or even Italian, and no one has ever fact-checked the old man. The internet signal here is not exactly reliable.

Time moves differently on the island. Perry supposedly discovered it in 1899, which should make him well over 150 years old, yet he remains energetic, curious, and remarkably capable. He has always been our steady hand—an explorer who can create purpose even when there is nowhere else to go.

How It Began

Perry arrived on the island in 1899 after leaving Europe to explore and claim new territory. Located in the Indian Ocean at the time, the island quickly became his obsession. He catalogued its plants, animals, and history, imagining himself as Darwin and Schliemann rolled into one.

After about eight months, he prepared to return home and report his findings. Then a pea-soup fog swallowed the island, sealing off every route of escape.

As Perry tried to understand what had happened, the animals began to change. They were no longer merely wary of humans; they were curious, aware, and able to communicate.

First Contact

Naturally, a macaw started the conversation.

“You’re one of us now,” the bird told Perry. “You’re not leaving anytime soon. That fog ain’t lifting.”

“Excuse me,” Perry replied. “Did you just speak to me?”

Fortunately, his diary records everything that followed, including the unpleasant details of the island’s curse. According to the macaw—who admitted this was all before his time—the island disappears into the fog every 26 years, leaves the known world behind, and eventually returns somewhere else.

Whenever it reappears, the islanders face three choices: remain hidden, assimilate into the new place, or reveal themselves and hope to be accepted. If they succeed, perhaps the fog will not return. Perhaps. The rules are murky, and no one seems to know who created them.

The Power Plant

The islanders did know how they had become self-aware: the power plant. That explanation would be easier to accept if the island had not apparently possessed a nuclear facility in 1899.

Then again, time behaves differently here. Maybe the island travels through time when it slips into the mist. Maybe time stops altogether. Or maybe there is a temporal-wave disruption, which sounds scientific enough to preserve in the family records.

Whatever the cause, Perry had 26 years to study the island, and he used them well. The animals had changed—mutated, even. Whether radiation, magic, or some rude combination of the two caused it, no one can say. Perry was unaffected, which weakens the sensible explanation and makes the whole situation even more annoying.

The animals, however, could speak, reason, and organize. At that point, were they still animals? The records call them monsters, though from their perspective, humans may deserve the same label.

The Island’s Bureaucracy

Everyone seemed to agree that the island’s other rules came from the FBBBICC. I still do not know what those letters stand for, but the organization appears often in the records.

Its members were excellent paper-pushers, so Gramps put them to work managing forms, indexes, dossiers, and every other document a bureaucracy needs to feel useful. They became the island’s official bureaucratic moles. I think they were moles, anyway—or at least something that burrows. Burrow, bureau: close enough.

With Perry’s help, they created a file for every species on the island. Those records are catalogued, indexed, and available at the welcome center in each zone, should you enjoy reading highly organized panic.

How I Fit In

None of that explains where I came from. According to the records, Gramps survived six fog cycles, which makes little sense unless time truly does behave differently here.

At some point, he met, charmed, lured, or—please, no—kidnapped the woman who became his wife. The records are irritatingly vague. Their daughter, my mother, was born in Portugal near the Azores, not on the island. Her mother later disappeared from the story, either because of childbirth or because she took one look at this arrangement and chose dry land. Honestly, who could blame her?

By then, Perry was bound to the island, which meant the people he loved were bound to it as well. That included my mother and, eventually, me.

Still, life here is not entirely bad. I have met plenty of interesting characters, although very few humans. My mother is one of them. This will be my first journey through the fog—my first arrival, my first port of call, or whatever dramatic phrase we are using.

A Plan for Our Next Arrival

Gramps was unprepared for the first fog. He did not know the legends were true or what waited on the other side. During the next five cycles, he mostly let the island choose for itself. The animals chose. Nature chose. Chaos chose. There was no coordinated plan.

For my first arrival, I want to try something different. I have gathered as many islanders as possible so we can decide together whether to assimilate, reveal ourselves openly, or stay hidden long enough to learn what might finally break the curse.

That is why I invited everyone here: to look around, get acquainted, and perhaps prove that familiarity can breed friendship instead of contempt. With luck, we may get along well enough to avoid vanishing into the fog again.

Muenster Island is becoming Campoon’s Island, and wherever we land, we have a Tidal Rave planned.

But I am getting ahead of myself. We do that here. Time is strange on Muenster Island—jumpy, even. Whenever things begin to settle down, something usually startles them.

So, welcome. This is your introduction to our community, our merchandise, and our very strange history.