Bulan Point (Mount Belinda, Montagu Island, South Sandwich Islands)

Population: 190

Background:

No one is really sure how the citizens of Bulan Point actually settled there. There was no population Montagu Island before the end of the world, and the island was certainly not easy to reach after humanity retook the surface. However, there are people there nonetheless. The city center was born on the leeward side of Mount Belinda, where ash slopes and jagged ridgelines shield a narrow strip of coast. There was no soil worth farming, no forests worth cutting—only stone. The settlers built low and tight, carving homes into the rock and stacking basalt into walls that could take a gale. From the sea, the city looks like a seam in the cliff: a handful of lights, a dock that disappears when the surf rises, and watchtowers that double as weather vanes.

They called it Bulan Point after the pale moon-fog that pools at the mountain’s base and makes night landings possible only by guesswork and prayer. For generations, it remained a survival outpost-- until someone found the first bright vein in the cliff face and realized the island wasn’t empty; it was locked.

Resources:

Bulan Point’s primary resource is stone, and it has learned to treat stone as both shelter and currency. The island’s cliffs provide dense basalt for construction, but the true wealth comes from what the mountain hides: raw ore pried from exposed seams, fractured scree, and half-buried pre-Fall cuts that re-open after storms.

Because the settlement is small and the environment unforgiving, Bulan Point’s economy is built on speed and volume rather than refinement. They export what they can move before weather closes the sea-lane: raw ore. Most manufacturing is minimal by necessity. The island has little timber, little food, and little spare labor; almost everything not made of stone is imported—iron fittings, rope, preserved grain, resin sealants, medical supplies, and ship parts. Their docks are built to load fast, not to look pretty: stone ramps, iron rings, and wide-mouth chutes that can pour ore into holds like water. All that they do build themselves are the tools required to reap the raw ore from it's stony prison.

Culture:

Bulan Point is isolated by geography and shaped by urgency. Its culture prizes weather-sense, discipline, and silence—because on Montagu, the loud and careless don’t last long. Conversation is short, plans are written, and every decision starts with the same question: what does the wind allow?

The city’s identity is tied to its role as an emerging supplier in a wider Atlantic trade network. Bulan Point does not charm; it delivers. Success is measured in completed shipments, intact hulls, and a ledger that proves the Point is worth the risk of the voyage.

Their faith—if it can be called that—is practical. The mountain is not sacred; it is dangerous. The closest thing to ritual is the First Cut, a communal opening strike at the start of each extraction season, performed only after the weather-watchers declare the skies “honest.” When a ship departs heavy with ore, the city observes a tradition known as Stone-Silence: no cheering, no farewells shouted across the water—only a raised hand, because sound carries poorly in fog, and pride carries poorly in a place that can take everything back overnight.

Soon, the map will not show country borders or roads.