World
a charted corner, and thousands of islands still in the fog
The Shallows
The Shallows is the starter archipelago — four ports, always visible on the map, with idle sailing between them. Each port has a Trader (NPC buy/sell and standing), a Tavern (officer recruitment), and a Shipyard (upgrades, parts, and repairs).
| Port | Character | Specialty |
|---|---|---|
| Gullport | starter town, tutorial | fishing waters, basic tavern |
| Ironreef | industrial, sooty | salvage fields, shipyard discounts |
| Saltmarsh | swamp traders | cooking ingredients, ration demand |
| The Meridian | wealthy, naval | best tavern (officer pool), gear demand |
Travel between ports takes roughly 10–30 minutes on a Shallop with no Sailing Master aboard (current design value — better ships and a hired Sailing Master shorten it). Because each port has its own specialty, prices form a gradient between them: hauling goods from where they're cheap to where they're wanted is genuinely profitable, which is why plotting a voyage matters and the market actually breathes instead of sitting still. See Trading for how standing at each port changes what you're offered.
No faction screen sits behind any of this, but two off-map powers are why these ports behave the way they do. The Crown is the distant monarchy The Meridian flies its colours for — it's never sent a ship further, and it's the authority behind every official letter of marque. The Fathom Company is the chartered trading house Ironreef answers to instead, not to any king's writ, which is exactly why the yard is cheap and nobody there minds where a hull came from — it issues its own, separate letters, and isn't subordinate to the Crown. Neither has a territory or a mechanic of its own; they're just the reason a black flag means something and a haven doesn't ask questions.
The Thousand Isles
The Shallows is only the charted corner of a much bigger archipelago. Beyond it lies the Thousand Isles — thousands of islands still in the fog, procedurally generated from hand-tuned templates so exploration never runs dry and charts stay a living, tradeable commodity. Every island that generates rolls a type:
| Type | Share | What's there |
|---|---|---|
| Inhabited | ~15% | Towns with a tavern (fresh officer pools, the reason to visit), NPC quest-givers, and unique NPC vendors. No player market here — trading stays at the main ports so liquidity never fragments; town goods have to be hauled back, which keeps Sailing and cargo relevant. |
| Wild | ~50% | Treasure: rich salvage fields, dig sites, buried caches, rare fishing waters. |
| Feral | ~35% | Wilderness combat: beasts, feral hogs, and the drowned dead — same fiction family as Ghost Ships. Resolved with a hunt-focus leg, same as any other target. |
Generation uses seeded templates: size, biome, 2–4 content nodes, and a danger tier set by distance from The Shallows. A handful of hand-crafted landmark islands carry story beats and legendary officer encounters. v0.1 ships with the generator and a modest active radius (hundreds of reachable islands, thousands implied) — the radius widens with future content patches rather than every island being hand-built up front.
Discovery & naming
The first captain to chart an island names it — picked from a filtered wordlist with a generated fallback. The name is permanent and shown to every captain who ever lands there afterward: the strongest free vanity reward in the game, and it costs nothing to hand out.
Charts
An explore-focus voyage leg pushes into the fog instead of sailing to a real destination: 1h, 4h, or 12h, gated by your ship's tier and available rations. It costs rations plus a small port fee that scales with how long you'll be gone, on top of whatever the trip itself turns up. A successful leg either discovers an island (the longer the leg, the deeper and richer the tiers it can reach) or turns up a partial find — salvage, gold, a flavor event.
Discovering an island yields 1–3 chart copies for it. Consuming a chart grants your character permanent access to that island. Charts are tradeable. The explorer who found the island sells access to the crafter who needs its teak. That one exchange carries most of the player economy. Fog is tracked per-character, but islands themselves are shared world content: everyone eventually lands on the same map. Repeat expeditions to an already-known island still yield occasional extra chart copies, so supply keeps flowing and price finds a natural level rather than drying up after the first discovery.
Being the world-first to chart an island is worth more than the naming rights above: it charts the island for you immediately, no separate step needed. You're standing on it, in effect, the moment the "Land ho!" event fires. You still walk away with your chart copies too, free to sell them like any other explorer would. Anyone who reaches an island after it's already been discovered doesn't get that shortcut — they still need to spend a chart of their own to unlock it, which is exactly why charts stay worth trading long after the first landing.