Tales of Catan

Be Warned: this tale is NOT for the weak of heart.

Once upon a time there were four friends who sailed across the Great Ocean to the mysterious and undiscovered island of Catan. Their dream was to build up great cities and settlements connected to one another by long roads, to farm wheat and sheep and to mine in the ore and stone mountains of Catan. But it did not take long for the four friends to realize that what was most important to their survival, on the island, was the accumulation of resources so they could each build bigger, better and faster. So within months the four friends had split up and had begun building their own settlements along mountain ranges, beside wheat fields and on the edges of forests. Each chose a colour to represent their settlements and the once peaceful, untouched Catan was now dotted with brown, green, orange and red roads, cities and settlements. They sent news to the outside world asking for help and offering good homes, lots of food and water and an endless supply of resources. Not long after that people arrived and chose to help whichever one of the friends they thought was most prosperious and strong. Soon one of the friends had a large army of knights, another had the longest road that touched the most land, another had several cities looming over the island and the fourth had such an abundance of wheat and wood that they could trade and build as much as they desired.
And so Catan was no longer peaceful. It was no longer untained and pure but inhospitable and cold. Several successive droughts destroyed sheep herds and wheat fields, the collapse of a mine in the mountains ended one of the friends' accumulation of stone and ore and soon the friends were no better than bitter enemies.

Then one day, as the sun rose of over the mountain tops, one of the friends hammered the last of his nails into the last and largest of his cities and declared himself ruler of Catan. His army was too strong for anyone to resist, his cities and roads to expansive and wealthy and the three friends dragged their tired legs to his capital on the beach and bowed down to him, prisoners of his will.

For years he ruled successfully and his tyranny went unchallenged. Until the day he died no one dared question his power but in the months after his death Catan exploded into an island of never ending war and crippling devastation. Now it is a waste land of broken roads and burnt down cities....so let this be a lesson to those who wish to sail across the Great Ocean in search of Catan. For you will only find terror and unhappiness on the island that once meant so much to those four, fool-hardy friends.

The End.