Lore
The ship leaves at the start of the day. By day's end, someone is asking for another song.
Around the station, crews settle into their favorite corners. There is news of a profitable voyage, an argument over a game, and a table where the conversation has drifted toward somewhere you have never been. You recognize the feeling before you understand the names.
Next some of theme, some of these people will spend a long time between ports. A few rooms, familiar voices, and whoever remembers how they like their drink will become the whole of home. Others will wake aboard the same station tomorrow, waiting the results of their investments and the stories behind them.
You could stay somewhere safe and earn a good living. Or you could stake your life on a voyage.
Out there, a captain has countless destinations to choose from, each offering different and sometimes unusual forms of wealth for us to discover together. Some may be unfamiliar; others may be things we know well, perhaps even take for granted. Certain pursuits demand adventure, combat, and risks to the crew. Others involve breaking Krakon's laws and putting the captain's reputation at stake. There are ordinary transport jobs, too—carrying goods, passengers, and tourists between places where the same commodity can have an entirely different value, and where tourism itself may take a form that changes how we understand it.
For now, the music is still playing. Someone at your table has been where you are thinking of going.
Ask them what they miss.
Krakon is a vast story universe where differences between civilizations and species make room for a wider variety of lives and stories. Through them, we begin to question what we once considered ordinary and notice what distinguishes us among those civilizations. The desire to explore may not arise naturally in a society that has no reason to seek anything beyond what it knows. The laws and restrictions we establish in our own world may have little relevance elsewhere. Krakon gives such possibilities room to unfold: each “what if” can take shape within a world where its existence has a reason and a meaning.
What if a society lived like a beehive? How would growing up within it shape people for whom the things we consider rare or unfamiliar are simply part of everyday life? And what pleasures might we discover as traders in a universe of strange and varied goods from countless sources—where an item may hold a value its seller has never recognized, and our profit lies in revealing that value to the right buyer?
When a ship reaches a new planet, the crew's first task is to investigate ownership. They search for a station known as the world's gateway, or a probe carrying ownership records and local laws. They may find only a warning left by previous visitors.
When they find none of these, they gather in the cockpit and look down at the planet.
“Are we the first to arrive? Have we discovered this world? Or did the last visitors land here and never make it back?”
The crew drifts between fear and hope. What might this world hold?
They represent no government. They are neither pirates nor an organization or corporation. The decision to approach or turn away is theirs to make.
Will they invade and plunder it? Help the people who live there? Invest in registering ownership, building a gateway, and paying for a deed? Will they make it a protected reserve, a tourist destination, a factory, or a colony supplying crew to other worlds?
So many possibilities—and so much they do not yet know.
First, they must discover what is down there. Is there anything of value at all?
If you were the captain, and this voyage were yours, what would you choose?
