Isla Tormentos
Seven miles south by west of San Teodoro is Isla Tormentos, a single limestone rock - the Rock of Tormentos - that juts up out of the sea where La Boca de Cielo meets the Western Ocean. Life barely clings to the rock, with no natural water sources and sparse vegetation, but its strategic location makes it a gaping hole in the Montaigne blockade of the last free lands in Rancho Zepeda. Hundreds of yards of tunnels have been bored through the fifteen-hundred foot tall rock, turning the island into a natural fortress whose guns (assisted by natural elevation) range almost to the shore and threaten Montaigne ships far enough out to sea that they cannot effectively stop smugglers making for San Teodoro harbor. Fast ships seeking to supply the Castillian navigate for the Rock, running past Montaigne pickets until they are sighted by the guns in the Punta Grande battery. Then, as Punta Grande opens fire, the Montaigne cruisers inevitably turn away, leaving the Castillians supplied for a few more days of fighting.
Geography
Formed from a single limestone slab jutting up out of the sea, the few rocky beaches around the island's cliffs are just worn down pieces of the Rock itself. It has no natural harbor, but during the Crescent occupation of Castille the Crescents built a massive mole out into the sea, sheltering a few piers for fishermen and naval vessels.
The island's only settlement is San Simeon, a port town mostly dedicated to supporting the naval base in the rock itself and the small detachment of the Armada that is stationed in the harbor. A few fishermen call Tormentos home as well, with a native accent that still borrows heavily from the Crescents who first colonized the Island hundreds of years ago. Towering over San Simeon is the Alcazar, a medieval fortress built by the Crescents; today, it houses a garrison of marines and still mounts a few cannon, though the majority of the island's firepower is inside the Rock itself.
With no native springs, Tormentos relies on a series of cisterns high up on the Rock to collect and store rainwater. The cisterns aren't only features of the rock, however: two massive batteries have been dug into the rock itself, Punta Chico at the north end of the island and Punta Grande at the southern, seaward end. There are thousands of feet of dug tunnels, as well as further natural tunnels worn by nature into the limestone. The Punta Grande battery also has a military prison in some of the lower tunnels, used for captured Montaigne sailors before they are transferred to the Castillian mainland.
People
The Gubernador of Tormentos is Don Cruz Montoya del Velasquez, scion of a Zepeda family whose lands have been lost to the Montaigne. He is an older man in his 50s who sailed as a merchant trader before being appointed gubernador of Tormentos. Then the war began, and Don Cruz has done what he can to keep the lifeline to Zepeda alive while wondering what happened to his family - including his wife, who was visiting relatives - in occupied Castille.
His daughter, Zoya Villar del Velasquez, is 16 and considered a great beauty: not just the most beautiful woman on the island but though to be prettiest woman in Zepeda even before most of the Rancho was lost to Montaigne. Now, her father frets about whether to send her to San Cristobal for safety or to keep her with him so that he does not lose the last family member he has left.
Though Don Cruz is the island's governor, military command belongs to Commandante Juan Alfarez, a young officer still shy of thirty. A student of the Aldana school, Commandante Alfarez served as a captain of Marines aboard the Armada before his skill at math and artillery had him reassigned to Tormentos. He chafes a little at the enforced idleness of island life, wishing he could return to the blood and steel of shipboard combat.