Travel

Travel is a strategic activity. The party plans a route, chooses a daily schedule, prepares supplies, and advances time until it reaches the destination, stops at camp, or is interrupted.

Departure weather

Strategic weather is evaluated from absolute minute, coarse geographic cell, and elevation using a versioned deterministic authority. Conditions are clear, rain, or snow with bounded intensity. Recent intervals deterministically produce ground moisture and snow cover; there are no per-tile weather rows.

Routing snapshots the weather rules version, interval, precipitation, intensity, moisture, and snow cover at departure. The snapshot participates in route cache identity and is persisted with route authority. Rain may increase effective Wetlands before path search and add mud duration. Snow cover blends the party's Snow expertise into route checks and cost before path search, then splits (without duplicating) the road-discounted training budget. An active journey is never rerouted as later intervals pass.

Route planning

The settlement map shows historical roads, ferries, settlements, known exact case sites, and the party's current route. Selecting a destination previews the fastest route available to that party.

Routes account for roads, open ground, woods, hills, water, crossings, and directional elevation. A party with stronger Terrain skills may prefer a different path because its members move more efficiently through the terrain they understand.

The five Terrain leaves are Plains, Forest, Hills, Wetlands, and Urban. Native wetland coverage is retained beneath roads, so marsh crossings use and train Wetlands even when the road itself supplies the faster travel surface.

Players should make strategic choices about resources, danger, and timing rather than manually approximate the shortest geometric line.

The source and artifact contracts are documented separately:

• Viabundus covers the historical road and settlement source.
• Strategic route terrain covers compiled elevation, water, terrain, and routing facts.

Speed

Road travel is fastest. Open ground, sparse woods, deep woods, wetlands, steep grades, and off-road case sites impose progressively greater costs.

Off-road wetland movement is 0.5 km/h. A road over wetland trains the underlying Wetlands skill at 10% exposure, the ratio between 0.5 km/h wetland movement and the road's 5 km/h.

The party moves at the pace of its limiting members after attributes, encumbrance, fatigue, terrain skill, and route surface are considered. Overloading one character can therefore slow everyone.

Daily schedule

The leader chooses how many hours per day the party walks and whether that window is centered on daytime or nighttime. The remaining hours become camp and downtime.

A longer walking day reaches the destination sooner but leaves less time to recover fatigue, treat injuries, cook, train, or perform other camp activity. A member who cannot recover during camp carries fatigue into the next day.

The route preview shows five synchronized rails:

• food;
• water;
• fatigue;
• terrain;
• day and night.

These rails forecast both movement and camp time. Actual camps already reached remain part of the journey history even if a later rest changes the remaining forecast.

Camps and redirection

A journey longer than its current walking window stops at a persisted camp. While camped, the party can rest, treat injuries, manage supplies, or redirect the remaining journey.

Choosing a new endpoint changes the plan from the party's current physical location; it does not teleport the party or reuse an obsolete straight-line duration. The leader may also turn back.

If the leader becomes unable to act during an expedition, a ready party member may direct field rest and an evacuation journey on the party's behalf. This is a narrow rescue authority: it applies only while the leader is publicly unready and does not transfer leadership or permit the companion to accept quests, initiate ordinary travel, or command combat objectives. Incapacitated members remain with the party, consume ordinary time and supplies, and are carried along the existing journey rather than abandoned or teleported. Their body and inventory remain part of the party's burden, while staggered members contribute reduced carrying capacity and incapacitated members contribute none.

If no living member is actionable, ordinary action authority remains unavailable. At a coherent persisted off-settlement journey camp only, an alive authoritative leader may nevertheless attempt supplied passive camp rest when all condition statuses are known and nobody is critical. Publicly symptomatic members may convalesce this way. An unresolved encounter or incoherent party/journey/itinerary forecast holds before rest. This permission models the party remaining at rest; it cannot be used to continue the journey, choose an encounter response, pursue a case, manage a contract, or exercise leadership.

Food and water

Every living traveler consumes food and water over elapsed strategic time. Shared provisions are used before personal supplies. Settlement departure fills available water capacity, while field camps rely on what the party carried or can safely obtain.

Insufficient food or water creates durable need and condition penalties. Emergency alcohol may provide limited hydration, but its alcohol content caps the useful water and creates its ordinary drinking effects.

See Inventory for provision storage and Food and cooking for authoritative food behavior.

Stealth, detection, and interdiction

Strategic stealth determines whether nearby groups detect one another early enough to choose a response. Party size, member skill, terrain, light, speed, and the opposing group's perception all matter.

A detected party may be intercepted or forced into a slower, disorganized state. This prevents the map from becoming a consequence-free race in which a player can always pass through a hostile group.

Random encounters

Encounter checks occur at deterministic movement boundaries. Terrain, daylight, route position, and relevant nearby threats influence what can occur. Retries and different travel chunk sizes do not reroll the same boundary.

An interruption records its strategic time and route position and offers only the choices justified by the encounter. If combat begins, the tactical or autoresolve system owns the immediate fight; the journey retains only its validated interruption and result.

Case sites

Travel to an exact known case site may leave the road network and follow native terrain routing. Knowing or tracking the site is navigation state only: it does not accept a contract, progress an objective, reveal hidden enemies, or grant a reward.

After resolving or abandoning the situation, the party plans onward travel from its actual case-site location.

Training and exposure

Walking trains the Terrain skills corresponding to the ground crossed. Road travel still provides discounted exposure to the underlying terrain; camp time does not.

The active route stores its validated geometry and terrain mixture so a character's later training cannot retroactively change a journey already in progress.