When the Black Tide Attacks You

Three things bring the Tide to your shore: a church that glows, a blow it remembers, and an idol it wants back. Each is a choice, each has a price, and each can be undone, though not always quickly.

Your church calls the Tide

The Tide is drawn to lumen, and a church is where lumen lives. A stocked reliquary glows on the map, and the Tide's raiders plunder glowing shores near their own waters. A shore with no church casts no glow, and they sail past it.

Every church you build, and every level you raise one, is answered. Usually within a minute, the Tide comes to that church's ocean. If no warband stands there, one appears on open water, as strong as the church that called it: a small church calls a small warband, a tall one a strong one. If one already stands there, it grows, its losses made good, and never comes back weaker. An ocean holds one such warband at most. The Tide never takes a Governor's island for it, and it waits while a Governor under newcomer protection holds an island in that ocean.

The storm is the real cost. While a warband holds an island, its whole ocean is under storm. Fleets sailing from your islands there sail slower, a caught plunder crew loses more ships, patrols are called back to port, and garrisons on the ocean's rocks drift home a few ships an hour. The sky clears when the last warband in that ocean falls. When the storm comes, every Governor in that ocean is told what drew it: a church built or enlarged there, or the Tide's own advance. Whose church it was is never said, except to its builder.

Your first church waits until you are ready. The Matron will not let you light your realm's first church until that island could beat the warband it calls. After that, every church and every level can be built at once, and she only advises. The Shrine shows the bar she asks.

Which warband each church level calls

The warband matches the tallest church in the ocean. Raise a church past a rung and the warband that answers is the next one up.

Going dark. Tear down your Church and the reliquary drains, the glow goes out, and the raiders stop calling. It costs the church and most of what you sank into it: no lumen, no blessings, no shrine. It does not end a grudge. Once you have struck the Tide, its revenge finds you, glow or no glow.

Master Quill: A lamp, not a curse

A church is the only path to a shrine. A realm without one is safer and poorer. Raise it when your fleet could break what it calls, and not a day before.

When you strike it

The Tide keeps a grudge against every Governor who strikes it. An attack deepens it by one step, however many waves you sent. Your battle report shows how deep the grudge runs and what the next step would bring.

A reprisal hurts, but it never takes an island. However deep the grudge runs, its waves can wreck buildings but never bring down your main house. The Tide claims only shores their Governor has abandoned.

A Rotsalt ward on the island you sailed from turns the answer away at the shore, and in the first two steps that is the only island it aims for. Later it sails round a warded shore to the next brightest, and the deepest steps aim at your weakest unwarded shores. It respects alliance protection and new-governor sanctuary at all times, and passes over long-absent shores.

The clocks. A grudge cannot deepen again for three hours after a step, nor by more than three steps in a day, however many attacks you send. It forgets a step for every two full days of peace, and each new strike adds a step to whatever is left: three quiet days and a fresh strike leave you one step below where you were, not two. Before you sail at a Tide island, the Matron reads you your standing at the top of the attack form. A reprisal never answers at an island you have since lost. A Governor who climbs it on purpose earns seals for it: The Tide's Grudge.

Master Quill: Pressure builds

The first reprisal against a fresh offender is light. Make a habit of it and the Tide settles into a campaign against you. Leave it be and it forgets, a step for every two quiet days.

The blackened idols

The Tide hoards blackened idols, dark treasures it guards on its shores. One falls into your hands only when you raze a Tide main house and free the island; a raid that leaves the main house standing takes nothing of it. The Tide wants every one back:

• Its raiders hunt stolen idols, and go first for the holders they can beat. A garrison too stout for their escort waits at the back of the line.
• A fresh patrol over your island keeps them away entirely. When the circling slows, the crew is tiring, and it is time to send fresh hulls.
• A raid that slips in carries off at most 10 idols and takes them back into the deep. An idol the Tide takes back is never seen again.

Master Quill: A weight worth carrying

One idol is a provocation. Four are said to open a way that no chart shows. Guard them well.

The Black Rot

A Tide fleet that attacks your island may leave the Black Rot behind; a stealth plunder run never does. For two days the Rot kills troops in the island's garrison every hour, more on a proud, high-prestige island, and sours its people. Each fleet is judged once its fight is over:

The ward and the patrol come first: a fleet that beats your garrison still brings nothing past them. Every fleet you fight off rolls again, so a long night of fleets beaten off can bring it even when each one fails. The Rot never stacks, and it never reaches a Governor in the first week. The patrol's grit bar marks the 50% line, your Tide battle report says whether the Rot followed and why, and the Desk tells you when it takes hold, or when Rotsalt turned a fleet away before any fight. A Medicine Chest spent at a church cures it.

Master Quill: Keep the watch sharp

Against a long siege, a fresh patrol does more than a tall wall: the wall can win and still let the Rot in, while a crew above the line keeps it out whatever happens on the beach.

Common questions