SUBJECT: Line Mercenary (Carapace / Trilobite Rotation)

CONTRACT: Standard Flotilla Patrol

BUFFER DUMP: Ocular Feed & Neural Telemetry Log (24-Hour Loop)

Note: Sapper(from Armamentarium) was regular exile. Dance(from Dentata) hijacked 034-Halcyon west toward Aspadana the second Dastgerd was mentioned. Until now, nobody has filed a single report on how the company mercs actually survive out here. Consider this an unauthorized glimpse through the visor.

As luck would have it, the night I finished animating the Dreadnought, I had a dream that Traveller's Armamentarium had been turned into a visual novel. Something like this:

[c]A bowl of pasty slop sits before you, with an unidentified eyeball on the surface.[/c]

[c]Option A: Pinch your nose and bolt down two bowls. \[CONSTITUTION +1][/c]

[c]Option B: Slide it across the table to the mercenary opposite. (Triggers special dialogue: "That’s a mighty fine gas mask you’re wearing.") [/c]

[c]Option C: Inspect the eyeball closely to determine its taxonomic order...[/c]

[c]You fish the cloudy orb out with your spoon, turning it gently beneath the kerosene vapor lamp. [/c]

[c]Skill Check: \[BIOLOGY 42/80] — SUCCESS. [/c]

[c]You realize the pupil isn't even the double-slit of a cephalopod... [/c]

[c]It can only be described as concentric serrated rings, same array as the external sensory organs on that hull we blew apart last month. As the crystalline lens meets the acidic preservative in the broth, it contracts into focus—right on you.[/c]

[c]Quartermaster: [/c]

[c]"What’re you staring at? Fresh harvest from the salvage crews. Eat up, or pour it out and I'm docking you 5 ration points for wastage."[/c]

[c]\[DELIRIUM +1] \[MAX SANITY -5][/c]

Dry land has always enjoyed immense popularity because seawater is far too salty to drink, and it is notoriously difficult to level a dining table on the crest of a swell.

At long last, I can speak of what transpires ashore. Having watched countless developers over the years mesmerize themselves on Twitter with striking key art, only to spend the next three years asphyxiated by prose bottlenecks and systemic logic, I opted to chew through the grueling text and narrative event architecture in complete silence before bothering to furnish the façade.

Which explains why these visuals are only surfacing now: prior to this, it was all greybox austerity, manic drafting, and route-patching. It was an eyesore. Though over ninety percent of the shore system is built, much of it will likely only see deployment in the full release. Why the agonizing wait? Because the author’s wrists require rest, and one cannot render illustrations and character cards at 3x speed. After this, I still intend to score a separate OST, not to mention further soundstage sculpting.

In many neighboring works, making landfall entails steering a matchbox-sized pixel homunculus across an axonometric sprawl, inquiring of passersby with yellow exclamation marks pinned to their brows whether their stray cat requires locating, until inevitably wedged against a picket fence.

I refrained from this. Dastgerd is immense—vast to the point that were you made to traverse it stride by stride, scurvy would claim you well before you breached the Grand Bazaar. Human lifespan spans a mere few decades; forcing a sprite to wear out its boot leather across isometric masonry proves nothing beyond the commendable quality of their footwear. It possesses zero narrative tension. The hours saved were invested instead into "depth"—though nobody truly knows which jar depth is supposed to be decanted into.

To arbitrate these shoreside destinies, I deployed Monte Carlo simulations. While the moniker sounds suspiciously like an artisanal cured ham, Monte Carlo is, in truth, a Monegasque gambling enclave designed to relieve the wealthy of their yachts. In practice, I bred a stable of artificial-idiot captains, running routes around the clock. I engineered a lunatic captain who clicks blindly; a squirrel captain who hoards scraps of vellum like pinecones; a bloodhound captain who lunges at the scent of any stray lead; and a Patches-esque captain who would rather stab you in the spine than kick you off a precipice from the front. I cast them into the randomized event pool, calibrated the math against their respective mortality rates, tracked whether designated routes resolved reliably, and audited card usage against deck saturation. It is a thousand percent compliant with Darwinian natural selection. Furthermore, I'm convinced the Flying Spaghetti Monster never even bothered with Monte Carlo when playtesting humanity.

Landfall furnishes something known as an external frame of reference. Ablahshikar wallows outside the breakwaters of Darband, while your crew scatters like feral birds into the alleys to seek sleep, larceny, and nocturnal diversions.

At sea, you remain perpetually "the Captain," and they remain "the labor." Beyond the mutual suspicion customary between proprietor and proletariat, nothing transpires. Only when the city gates unbar do you encounter souls who owe no allegiance to the hull. The Horse-Archer does not give a damn what hour you blow the whistle for the watch; the Bloodletter answers solely to the canons of his craft; the Scholar does not deign to lift his brow.

Philosophers have never answered the question: once stripped of your captaincy, who remains beneath? Without land, the query is moot—for out upon the brine, save for this floating, hollow hulk, you possessed nothing to begin with.

Naturally, in playtesting, rigorous metaphysics collided with vulgar realities.

The Nishanchi was slated for a humming scene, yet stubbornly refused to hum during all simulation runs. Puzzled, I traced the logic, turns out an initial parsimony with silver caused the Nishanchi to abandon their post and abscond, deleting their branch. Fair enough; one can hardly fault them. Were someone to pay me three coppers a month, I too would decline to offer a capella recitals.

In the Piper's route, Pull of Yonder spiked absurdly high. I suspected an avalanche caused by the "Bottled Marid" vendor stall and spent endless runs chasing phantoms. The culprit? The Piper had pierced the Captain's ear, inflicting a lingering "Wound" whose counter refused to diminish. That one, regrettably, could not be pinned on bioluminescent medusae or the Bloodletter’s wickedness.

Should you wish to preserve the roster unmarred, glide past this section.

ROSTER:

• The Falconer (F)

• The Horse-Archer (F)

• The Bloodletter (M)

• The Scholar (M)

• The Alchemist (F)

• The Painter (M)

• The Nishanchi(NB)

• The Piper (NB)

• And one of the accompanying hands

All routes may be cleared without ever trespassing upon personal intimacy, yet pursuing closer bonds unlocks classified lore inaccessible through mere official transactions.

You might ask: "Author, you seem so adept at this! Why is there no romance aboard the vessel?"

Because, while the ship suffers no shortage of coercion, the agency of a subordinate within an iron chain of command remains inherently compromised. I possess zero appetite for non-con; therefore, disrobing must wait until each soul has somewhere else to flee. Furthermore, few souls here lean straight. Rest assured, whether you enlist an ally's hand rests entirely upon your finesse—bring matching leverage and hard coin to the negotiating table.

As for why implement romance at all? Certainly not as marketing bait, nor out of deference to prevailing templates. It is simply the inevitable consequence of stepping ashore; there is neither cause to posture nor reason to flinch from it. In many traditional RPGs, companion bonds are swept under the rug: skim two dialogue nodes, register *"ah, conquered,"* and march on. Granted, certain fleeting trysts here may follow that tacit rhythm. Yet a roster where companions offer nothing beneath their passive stat buffs flattens roleplaying into paper, squandering the rare occasion to truly decipher a human being. Fleshly or emotional proximity is merely the swiftest conduit to lowering shields and seeing what the other party truly hungers for. If one can clash along the flat of a blade, the maneuvers behind bed-hangings are merely an inevitable clause of diplomacy. Once daggers are sheathed, self-interest takes its natural course. Nothing more.

Honoring the sheer scale of the city was a chronic migraine early on. Several iterations felt lacking, until I resolved to treat them like tarnished antique daguerreotypes. For an author, nothing surpasses the visceral thrill of watching their architectural hallucinations solidify into tangible artifacts—with the subtle, covetous pleasure of philately. I am, for now, exceedingly pleased with the outcome.

This is a zurna. Its delicate reed has to be be steeped in moisture before it yields a sound. When shopping, I hesitated between a zurna and a Breton bombarde before settling on this. I doubt the game’s score will demand a zurna, but... one never knows. The proprietor is Tunisian, possessed of exquisite command over the oud.

Beyond the window of my lodging lies the opposing row of eaves. On clear days, the tiles and chimney flues stand immaculate; yet anyone tethered to a terminal twelve hours a day begins seeing all reality as an axonometric diorama.

Prowling down to the quayside after dark, greeted by a thicket of gaunt, leaning masts, it struck me that the Ablahshikar making port at Darband must resemble this wretched spectacle: crew utterly spent, shoreside taverns kindling their first oil lamps.

"Dastgerd at night is a city that has taken off its good fur and put on the stale fur, the one with the stains, the one it wears among packs. Turned uphill, hill dwindled and greeted me. Laundry hung between them on wires and fluttered and the shadows of shirts and trousers swung over the cobbles. A cat came out of a doorway in front of me and vanished into a gap between buildings too narrow for a body..." (Traveller's Armamentarium)

Freshly lacquered nails—thoroughly pleased. Who decreed that when slitting a purse-string in the bazaar or trimming the vellum of heretical folios, one’s fingertips ought not to shimmer?

I noted previously that leafing through folios restores one's sanity. This beloved 15th-century siege miniature hails from the Shahnameh crafted for the Timurid prince Muhammad Juki, completed circa 1440s in Herat, depicting the climactic clash between Kay Khusraw and Afrasiyab:

The King bade his hosts encircle the fortress, each general holding a quarter. Engineers versed in siegecraft were summoned to trench the perimeter, erecting mangonels and ballistas before every gate. Sapping beneath the ramparts, they propped the foundations with timber struts, drenched the wood in black naphtha, and set it ablaze. Hurled stones and shafts rained from above while bitumen burned below, till the bastion collapsed. The Iranian ranks breached the chasm, Rustam spearheading the assault.

As is fairly apparent by now, Ablahshikar is an ambitious undertaking.

Of course, the world suffers no shortage of projects that choke on their own grandeur—collapsing into either an unplayable, gargantuan half-measure or an open-world white elephant bloated with tedious traversal. Hence, I have practiced strict scope containment from day one. Case in point: there is only the city of Dastgerd. You will find no Orvenne, no Aspadana, no Septimontium, Malkharin, Caraviros, Ravnemoss, Mira Cruciate, or Herat; nor does it chart the Mer du Cinque, the Sea of Lumere, the Sea of Marasque, the Sea of Naumel, or any other coastline reachable from Thal-Drayem.

Inflating landmasses and scattering low-grade distractions merely to manufacture junk time is a practice I refuse outright. After all, a chessboard is not infinite either; yet the depth of strangulation possible within its sixty-four squares is boundless. To achieve shah mat, one must still internalize the rules and pay for every blunder.

(Btw, I originally set out to make Minesweeper. Minesweeper is genuinely brilliant.)

[c]Senior Developer: Samekh[/c]

[c]Junior Developer: Samekh after coffee[/c]

[c]QA: Samekh doing something they explicitly told the player not to do[/c]

[c]Field Recording Department: Samekh freezing near a fortress[/c]

[c]Narrative Department: Samekh[/c]

[c]Art Department: Samekh[/c]

[c]Maritime Theology Office: somehow also Samekh[/c]

[c]HR: Saint Tufan[/c]

[c]Occupational Health: Saint Nura[/c]

[c]Bug Reproduction Specialist: time-travel hammer, deceased[/c]

Chinese players lament: "Uniquely arresting prose; a pity my English cannot parse it."

Anglophone players report: "Uniquely arresting prose, but the mechanics are so forbidding I cannot tell if I will survive the voyage."

Across the breadth of Eurasia, universal player consensus on Ablahshikar has coalesced into two declarations:

1. "This game is truly singular."

2. "Gods help me."

Fair enough. At least the agony on everyone's faces is genuine.

[c]u/crew_groupchat[/c]

[c]\[11:43] [/c]

[c]Ismet: captain doing the thing again[/c]

[c]\[11:44] [/c]

[c]Feride: yeah[/c]

[c]\[11:44][/c]

[c]Gulendam: don't mention it[/c]

[c]\[11:44][/c]

[c]Slop-Master: soup?[/c]