Island Conditions

An island shows you how it is governed. Pack in more people than you have roofs, moor more hulls than the harbour can berth, or catch a rival's curse, and the island develops a condition: a visible, named state with a cause, a cost, and a cure. Conditions are never random. Most are consequences of the situation you created, and they clear the moment the cause is gone. A curse is the exception: it was put on you, by a rival at a shrine or by one of the Risen off your shore during a Lumen Rupture, and it clears when you lift it, when it runs out, or when the creature that laid it leaves.

Settlement & Life

Population, food, and happiness — the numbers conditions grow from.

Units & Berths

The harbour and barracks capacities the over-cap conditions watch.

Shrine, Blessings & Curses

Curses appear in the same list, and the shrine mixes their cures.

Where You See Them

Two places, both on the island itself. Your advisor raises every negative condition when you are viewing your island, each with a View button that opens the full account. And the Island State section in Settlement → Overview lists them: how serious each is, what is causing it, and — for a curse — the way to the cure. Tap any entry for the detail: what caused it, what it is doing, and what to do about it.

Notices Only, For Now — With One Exception

Conditions currently cost you nothing. They are notices: they name what is wrong and what would fix it, and they clear when you fix it. Nothing on the list drains mood or coin yet.

Starvation is the exception, and always has been. An island whose stores run dry does not merely display a notice — its garrison begins to die, every hour, until food arrives. That was true before this list existed and it is true now. See Settlement & Life for how fast, and who is spared.

That changes in a coming release, and this is the notice that grants you the time. Once consequences are switched on, a condition will pass through stages — Warning (no penalties yet), Serious (its effects apply), and Severe (they worsen) — with mood slipping by the hour and trade income cut on the affected island. You will always be told before you are charged: the Warning stage is exactly that warning. Put your islands in order while the list is only a list.

Some Conditions Only Tell You

Not every condition is a punishment. A full vault, a full Storehouse, full housing, an unwatched shore and an absent governor each raise a card that adds no penalty of its own. They name something the island was already doing to you quietly: coin and goods above their cap drain away over the hours, and a full barracks turns recruits away at the gate; a coast with no tower has always been blind; an island whose governor has stopped writing for long enough has always been fair game. The card exists so you find out while you can still act, and it stays a Warning however long it lasts. Where a card names a loss like this, the remedy carries buttons that take you straight to the place that fixes it.

Forsaken Means One Thing

An island is Forsaken when its governor has been away long enough for the world to treat the holding as unheld — rivals may liberate it, and the Black Tide may take it. That is the only thing the word means, and every surface now agrees on it: the card, the island on the map, the Upkeep reading, and the realm list. An island whose upkeep has merely slipped is Fading, not Forsaken, however far the score has climbed — its governor is still at the desk. Returning and ordering anything at all wakes it.

Fix the Cause, the Condition Lifts

No decree or payment clears a condition directly. Fix the cause and it lifts on its own, promptly: raise Housing and overcrowding eases, thin the fleet or raise the Harbour and the choked harbour opens, shed the surplus war engines and the weathering ends, spend the coin down and the vault closes. The island re-checks itself whenever you visit and once each morning, so a card can take a little while to catch up with a fix you have just made.

Putting a Warning Away

Some cards you have already read and already decided about. Open the condition and there is a Dismiss button at the top right: it takes the card off your Island State for two days.

It hides the card and nothing else. The condition is still there, still being re-checked, and whatever it costs you goes on costing you. An urgent or warning card keeps the island Troubled in your realm list, and that island's line there still names it. When the two days are up the card comes back, unless you have fixed the cause in the meantime. Dismissing is a way to stop being told; it is not a way to stop it happening.

What conditions can an island develop?11 conditions + curses

Condition	Raised by	Once consequences are on (starvation already bites)	Troubled?
No Room at the Hearths	Population at or over housing	Mood drains, worse at Severe	Yes
Hulls in the Roads	A fleet well beyond the harbour's berths, in port or at sea	Mood drains and trade income falls	Yes
Engines in the Rain	More war engines or hounds than crews and sheds	Mood drains	Yes
The Stores Run Thin	Empty stores still draining, on a Colony or larger island — or any island whose muster has outgrown its housing	Kills troops every hour, now, not later	Yes
The Vault Will Not Shut	Coin at the top of the vault	Nothing new — but coin past the brim drains away, which is the point of the notice	No
Nowhere Left to Stack It	A store at the top of the Storehouse	Nothing new — production pauses and the overflow drains, as it always has	No
No Beds Left to Give	Housing full, on any island. Once the muster spills past the cap, No Room at the Hearths takes over	Nothing new — you simply cannot raise another soldier here	No
The Tax Is Biting	A heavy tax rate on a town whose mood has already soured	Nothing new — the tax was already costing you goodwill. Left alone it climbs from Warning to Severe over a day	Yes
No Word from the Governor	The governor absent long enough for the island to count as abandoned — the same clock rivals use to claim it	Nothing new — rivals may already claim it, and the Tide may already come. It greets you once on your return, then clears	No
A Shore Worth Robbing	Raided again and again with no patrol standing over the water	Nothing new — but a shore nobody guards is a shore worth coming back to	No
Nobody on the Headland	No Watch Tower on a Colony or larger island, so nothing approaching is ever reported	Nothing new — you simply never see a fleet before it lands	No
Curses	A rival's rite at the shrine — or a creature standing off your shore, which needs no shrine and asks no rival	The curse's own effects; the cure is mixed at the shrine either way	Yes

A card marked Yes makes its island Troubled in your realm list and the morning paper, and the island's realm card names it. So does upkeep that is fading or food that is running out, card or no card. The other cards stay on the island itself.

Master Quill: Margin note

Islands below settlement rank are spared most of the ledger — a young colony has enough to worry about. There are exceptions, and they are the ones a young colony most needs: hunger reaches an island whose muster has outgrown its housing whatever its rank, because that is an army the island was never built to feed; the full-vault, full-stores and full-housing notices reach every island, because a new Governor is exactly who has not yet learned that a brimming vault leaks; and a levy heavy enough to sour the mood is told to every Governor who sets one, whatever their rank. It runs the other way too: the warning about an unwatched headland waits until Colony, because a smaller island has no tower to raise yet and nothing worth the sailing. And a condition that clears will not return the same day over a wobble; the island gives you that much grace.

When a card writes to you

Most cards simply appear on the island and wait. Two will also put a note in your dispatches, because you would not otherwise find out in time: Nowhere Left to Stack It writes once when a store first tops out, and The Stores Run Thin writes when hunger takes hold, since that one is already costing you soldiers. Each note names the island and opens straight to it.

A card that stays up does not write again. You are told once, when something changes — never nagged for leaving a card open while you deal with it.

Common questions

Do conditions destroy my ships or troops?

Starvation does. Empty stores kill part of the garrison every hour until food arrives — it is the one condition that takes lives rather than mood. The over-capacity conditions drain mood and trade income while they last and cost you no troops, though the world may grow harsher: a fleet left riding in the roads is living on borrowed time.

Can I pay to make one go away?

No. The cost of a condition is ongoing, and the only cure is the cause. That is deliberate: the island is telling you something about how it is being governed.

Why does my fleet at sea still count against the harbour?

Because it comes home. The harbour answers for every hull based there, in port or on a voyage — sailing the fleet in circles does not make the berths any less owed.