Story description
The cargo manifest looks respectable. The crew's expressions suggest you should read between the lines.
Join the Aetherwind in an interactive steampunk airship adventure above the fractured remains of the Aurean Empire. Eleven years after its collapse, cargo ships connect uneasy splinter states, and profitable routes often run through airspace somebody would rather keep closed. You are the newest member of a crew that mixes honest work with smuggling.
Earn your place aboard
- Take part in risky cargo runs where border patrols, rival crews, and inconvenient questions complicate the route.
- Learn when to trust a captain with an undisclosed past and an engineer carrying dangerous debts.
- Decide what kind of work you are willing to help deliver when the cargo has a moral cost.
Steam, brass, aether-boilers, charts, and mechanical ingenuity keep the ship moving. The navigator speaks plainly about your chances; the others may need more time before they speak plainly about themselves.
Learn the ship by living aboard it
The Aetherwind is a workplace as well as a route to adventure: cramped familiarity, the hiss of machinery, and the knowledge that everyone aboard needs the same engines to keep working. Captain Vashti Orlane runs it with quiet authority. Tobias Renn understands what keeps it aloft and has obligations of his own. Ilsabet Vray, the navigator, is willing to say when the charts and the prospects are both looking poor.
Earning their trust takes more than agreeing to the next job. How you respond to trouble, which questions you ask, and what you do when a crewmate's private problem becomes everybody's concern help define your place. The ship can become a home, with all the loyalties and frustrations that implies.
Look beyond the destination on the manifest
Every port belongs to a world still rearranging itself after the Empire's fall. Border authorities, rival crews, and Imperial loyalists have different ideas about who may cross which sky. A contract can offer badly needed income while putting the Aetherwind on someone's list of enemies. You might press to understand a cargo's purpose or focus on getting your people safely through. The consequences make the next journey part of the same life, rather than another job with everything reset.
A found family above a divided world
Life aboard offers camaraderie, dry banter, and the intimacy of depending on the same few people. Below, old Imperial loyalties and new borders make every job political. Choices on one run can follow the crew into the next port.
The gangway is waiting. What will it take for these people to become your people?
Characters
Runs the Aetherwind with quiet authority and a past she does not discuss - likely a former Imperial officer, though she has never confirmed it.
The ship's engineer, deep in debt to interests he will not name, which occasionally puts the whole crew at risk.
The ship's sharp-tongued navigator, the crew member most willing to speak plainly about their actual chances on a job.