Story

The wrong side of the coast

The charts end where the trouble begins. Past the last safe harbour the water turns unfamiliar — pirate fleets working the lanes, storms that roll in without warning, and wrecks that were once ships like yours. Every expedition is a one-way push into that water, and the only way home is through it.

The ship you build

You don't respawn. You repair. The ship is a hull with slots, and what you bolt into them is the whole argument: plating, cannons, storage, a repair station, a ram prow, bracing for the bow. Seventeen modules across those six kinds, each with real numbers and a real cost, and no build that is good at all of it. Armour the hull and you give up the hold. Fit the prow and you have decided that ramming is a plan rather than an accident.

That is where a run is actually won, and it is why losing a slot hurts. Take a broadside to the wrong part of the ship and the system that lived there goes with it, until you limp back to port and rebuild.

Captains remember

Ships are replaceable. Captains are not. A captain carries what they have learned from one run to the next — a skill tree across Combat, Navigator and Commander that survives a lost expedition — so a bad run still leaves you stronger than it found you. Lose the ship and you rebuild at port; the captain sails on. Five of them, each with their own passive and their own three signature hands.

The hands you sail with

A crew is the quiet half of the build. Six roles — gunner, carpenter, navigator, cook, quartermaster, lookout — and a catalog of hands that opens up as you play, each trainable up through tiers with the supplies you bring home. A trained gunner lifts every broadside for the rest of the run, and it compounds with the captain skills pointing the same way.

Which is the real shape of the game: a hull you have kitted one way, under a captain who is good at one thing, crewed by hands who are good at another. Change any one of the three and the run plays differently. Sable's two gunners over a deck of cannons is not the same game as Voss soaking hits behind heavy plating, and neither is the same as a ram-prow build that only works with navigators fast enough to close the distance.

Survive the return

Reaching the far water is the easy half. The sea wants its loot back, and the storm is always closing behind you. Bring home enough and your next ship goes out stronger. Bring home nothing and you begin again with less. That's the twist: everything you win, you have to survive carrying home.