Expeditions

Expeditions are story-driven voyages. Where a raid is a single engagement, an expedition is a chain of dispatches: Captain Thorne reports in, you give an order, the crew sails on. The route resolves over minutes, sometimes longer, and what comes home depends on the choices you sign off on along the way.

Settlement & Capital

Why expeditions only sail from the council seat.

Realm Governance

How choices at sea bend law, trade, and military.

Marketplace

Where the durable goods you ship and recover are traded.

Where Expeditions Sail From

Expeditions are filed at the council seat, not at any harbour you happen to own. Walk into the Harbour tab on a settlement that is not your capital and Captain Thorne will send you back to where Master Quill keeps the charter desk. Move the council seat and the desk moves with it: the ships, troops, coins, and supplies for a launch must all be on the capital island when the order is signed.

Only one expedition can be at sea per realm at a time. Other charters stay listed at the seat while a voyage is in progress, but they refuse to file until the ship is home.

Master Quill: Margin note

I file expeditions at the seat because the council writes the orders. If you want to sail from a different shore, move the seat first. The ship will not leave my desk until the desk is at the right harbour.

How A Route Resolves

A route is a sequence of stages. Each stage is a dispatch from Thorne: a paragraph or two of what the crew has just found, plus a choice. Some stages are short, some are silent waits while the ship moves between bearings. The dispatch arrives when the timer runs out and the next stage will not fire until you give the order.

• The countdown is enforced. A direct call to the captain before the dispatch is due is refused: the next page of the route does not exist yet.
• A choice can spend goods from the cargo hold, lose ships or troops, award durable goods, or shift the realm's governance. Choices may also unlock further routes, or, on the right routes, reveal a god to your shrine.
• Some stages cascade. Several dispatches fire back to back without a countdown between them, and the comedy or the disaster compounds before you have absorbed the last beat.

Manifest: What You Send

Every route lists a fixed or ranged crew assignment, a launch cost in coins, and a manifest of goods. The launch cost is a base harbour fee plus a per-ship provisioning charge plus per-troop wages. Required goods must be in the storehouse on the capital, or the route refuses to file.

• Required goods are loaded into the cargo hold on launch. They count as escrowed: if the route ends in total loss they are gone, otherwise the survivors come home.
• Recommended goods are listed because a stage may spend them on a choice. Sailing without one closes that branch and forces the alternative.
• Crew at sea is locked. Ships and troops on the route are deployed elsewhere as far as the rest of the game is concerned, so they cannot defend the harbour or join a separate attack.

Treasurer Mora: Treasury habit

Recommended goods are not optional decoration. A storylet that wants a rope will do something else if there is none aboard, and the something else is rarely the better outcome.

Recall And Retreat

A route can be recalled while it is at sea or while it is awaiting orders. Recall ends the expedition, brings home whatever survives in the hold, and files the route as recalled rather than completed or lost. Recall does not unlock further routes and does not settle the governance of the choices you skipped.

Recall is a real lever, not a polite cancel. Once a stage has fired with a fail outcome, it is too late: the crew is already gone.

Captain Thorne: Harbour read

Call the recall before the next bell, not after. If you wait until the choice that would have lost us the boat, the choice has already lost us the boat. I can bring back what is still aboard. I cannot bring back what is already over the side.

What Comes Home

On a complete outcome the surviving ships, troops, and any goods still in the cargo hold are restored to the capital. New durable goods awarded by a choice are added on top. A final report is filed to your dispatch ledger with the per-choice governance summary and the net effect on law, trade, and military axes.

On a fail outcome nothing returns. The route is recorded as lost, unlocks may still fire because the harbour learnt the lane exists, but god discoveries do not: discovering a god requires evidence carried home with the crew, and a fail is total loss.

Unlocks And Variant Intros

Some routes are granted: they show up in the picker from your first day at the council seat. Others stay locked until an earlier route completes the right terminal choice. A locked route names the route that opens it, but its narrative is hidden until the unlock fires.

Routes can change their opening dispatch based on how you finished the unlocking route. The same expedition reads differently depending on whether the previous voyage came home clean or limped back missing half its crew. The mechanics of the route are unchanged. The framing, the captain's tone, and the rumours in the harbour are not.

Reference

Common questions