Editing Tailspins & Tiki Gods:Smoots Guide Porte Cochere (section)

=== The Old Fort: ===
A Frenchman named Bellerose designed this in the 1800s as a stronghold for the French. He used local ‘conscript’ labor as well as an Engineer detachment from the Legion to build it. (Both still have grumbling institutional memories of this.).

Bellerose was something of a paranoiac. Or at least a huge pessimist- there are redundant protective walls, tunnels going down and out, out so far as into the mountains, to God-knows-where in the unlikely event of a siege. Even the current occupants (the Foreign Legion delegation) doesn’t know everything it has or hides.

In truth, the main defense of Ile Trouve in general is costliness. Until the advent of the plane, it was simply too inconvenient to send troops to, and not profitable enough to hold as unfriendly territory.