“This is the day I finally listened to my dreams. I climbed the ladder to the attic. The box was there in the farthest corner. In the dream I had opened it and the crows had poured out like a black fog, but of course that was nonsense… there was nothing in there but the map, and the lamp. And my father’s sword.”

Shipwreck isn’t necessarily the end. If you’re very lucky, your captain might survive the wreck of the ship and make it home[1]  although if they’ve lost their crew, their ship and their cargo you may want to leave them to drink themselves to a melancholy death in a Wolfstack public house and start over. But even the permanent death of your captain isn’t always the end of their story.

The Unterzee eats ships and their captains. Again and again, your character will die, or disappear, or lose her mind, or be hollowed out and filled with candle-wax and haunt a cliff-top chapel… but their legacy may survive.

Your next character may be a daughter, a student, or just someone who found an old ship’s log in a curiosity shop. The risk of death remains, but that sting of frustration that makes you rage-uninstall will be softened. You’ll keep a little of the progress you’ve made, retaining a favoured quality or officer or resource, and perhaps more importantly, build up your own story across generations of zailors who braved the Unterzee and lost – or won…

[1] Or die and make it home anyway. Death is uncertain in the Neath.