Check below the list for the story with each prompt as well as an interactive element to the story.

You kneel at the base of a headstone on Weeping Walls, placing a token: a rusted compass that no longer points north, but once led you both through storms and blood. It’s all that’s left of them. That, and the secret they carried to their grave, whispered with their final breath:

“The Lost City… it’s real.”

They died for that truth. Now, you carry it. You press your hand to the stone. You swear an oath.
And your next voyage begins.

You’ve spent months hiding in the shadows of Shattered Mast, haunted by the failure that cost your fellow crew dearly. After your captain’s death, you wandered into his quarters, once forbidden, then too silent. Upon collapsing in grief to the floor, the floorboard shifted, revealing something impossible: the map to the Lost City.

But you haven't just been hiding; you’ve been planning. Months gathering your crew, rallying those willing to chase legends and face the unknown. This isn’t just about treasure anymore. It’s your chance to prove yourself, honor your captain’s final secret, and claim what the sea has long kept hidden.

You were born below deck, raised on salt, smoke, and the scrape of a blade. But the Drifted World doesn’t care where you came from, only how far you’re willing to go.

Now, you walk the marble halls of Orchard Crown not as a pirate, but as a soldier in borrowed colors, a name forged in ink and lies. The kingdom may have won the Blood War, but beneath the harvest and gold lies something far older, something your late captain swore was real: the Lost City.

Rumors swirl in the court like smoke from a cannon, of vaults buried in time, of ancient maps locked in military archives, of officials who speak of the city only behind closed doors. When the Crown needed someone expendable, someone bold (or foolish) enough to chase a myth, they looked to you. 

You’ve been given the quest. A royal seal. A ship. And a crew that doesn't know you're more cutthroat than commander.

You’ll find the Lost City, but not for the Crown.
For yourself.

Sailors say you can’t reach the Lost City without giving up an offering.

The Temple of the Silent God is not a place of worship. It’s a place of warning. The priests there speak no words. They ask none in return. But they know things, things buried in your past, and things that may bury you if left unanswered.

You stop there not for prayer, but for permission. To receive the mark that lets you pass the sealed waters. To leave behind something precious, a memory, a vow, or a name, as tribute.

No one reaches the Lost City whole.

👁️‍🗨️ Learn what you left behind:

The path to the Lost City is said to be veiled in enchantments older than any kingdom. And you don't have the means to break the wards guarding it...

But myth has it that Veilstone Monastery does.

Buried in its unwelcoming halls might be the secrets of unbinding magic, masked as scripture, guarded by monks who serve something far older than the crowns of men.

They don’t take visitors. They certainly don’t help pirates.

You seek another myth: a forgotten cave said to house a sharp-toothed pixie who prowls the hidden halls in search of what you desire. But beware: her price is rarely measured in coin, and often paid in bone and blood.

But if you can’t break the magic protecting the Lost City, you’ll never reach it.

👁️‍🗨️ Learn what you paid the pixie:

Your crew set out with little more than daggers and bravado (which might be enough for tavern brawls and back-alley skirmishes, but not the unknown cursed islands you'll be passing). 

Your journey winds through haunted waters and ruins laced with ancient magic; steel alone won’t save you when the dead don’t bleed and shadows strike first.

Burning Crown is the only place that forges weapons meant to wound the unnatural. Here, blacksmiths are taught the craft with dragons at their sides: blades, pistols, and bullets meant to tear through spell and shadow alike.

You stop here because going forward without weapons born of fire would be suicide.

But Burning Crown doesn’t welcome pirates with open arms. To get what you need, you’ll have to slip through smoke-choked alleys, barter in whispers and favors...

👁️‍🗨️ You leave the Cradle of Cinders with weaponry and:

You didn’t mean to come to Blackwater Bog. No one does willingly.

The fog rolled in fast. The stars vanished. Then came the singing.

Your crew swore they saw lights in the water, familiar voices whispering promises. By the time you realized what was happening, it was too late to turn back. The sirens had already wrapped their song around your sails.

You tied half the crew down, ordered the others to plug their ears, but you weren’t so lucky. The song had gripped you. 

Whether by fate or accident, you stumble through the roots of ancient tress, landing across a half-sunken shrine. A stone is broken loose, revealing a wrapped item buried inside. It hums when you touch it. 

The sirens stop singing and you hear a hiss beside your ear: "The old gods have claimed you." 

You run back to the ship before they change their mind.

👁️‍🗨️ What did the Mistbinders bury long ago:

You sailed a little too far east and managed to stir the waters of Leviathan's Rest...

You barely escaped the jaws of Friday*, the sea serpent whose name sends shivers through every captain’s crew. Your ship limps onto the shores of the Isle of Thorns & Rain, battered by salt spray and thunderous waves. You feel compelled to leave immediately. If only you didn't need supplies after the attack.

The island is a tangled nightmare, thick with sharp brambles and twisted vines that drip perpetually with endless rain. The air is heavy, thick with the scent of wet earth and something older, almost like sorrow.

But the worst part? The silence. It’s broken only by the rustle of unseen things moving just beyond sight, reminders that you’re not alone. Legends tell of cursed guardians, creatures bound by ancient pacts, waiting for trespassers.

Lost City forgotten, your only goal in the moment is to survive the night. 

*Friday - named after FridayThing after charity incentive met.  In Lore, Friday is a day steeped in bad luck and ill omens, when deals go sour, storms gather, and fate turns cruel. This black and yellow streaked serpent earned its name for striking ships almost exclusively on Fridays, dragging entire crews beneath the waves just as the sun began to set. 

👁️‍🗨️ What do you leave in the morning with:

You don’t just arrive at the Mirage Crown. You have to earn your way in.

From the outside, it looks like a small run-down city, but those who carry an invitation know better. Only then does the illusion peel back, revealing the true city of gilded streets, glowing halls, and merchants who trade in magic, mirrors, and things that shouldn’t exist.

The problem? You don't have an invitation and you aren't even sure what it looks like. Is it a riddle, a mark, or a plain ticket? 

Whispers on the wind lead you to a woman wearing a silver mask. She gives only her name, Chelsae*, and claims to put you through the trials. Upon completion, she hands you a glass coin, the symbol shifting in the light, bouncing between your worst fear and greatest desire. She tells you this will grant you lifetime access to the city before disappearing into the dunes. 

*Chelsae - named after caffinatedsanity after being the largest donor for charity event.  In Lore, Chelsae is one of the three Faceless Keys. They are the only ones who can craft the invitations to Mirage Crown. They wear silver masks to protect their identities, given their large power and duty. 

👁️‍🗨️ You peer through the coin and:

Even sailing near the Howling Sea invites trouble. The waters twist, the sky darkens, and before you can turn back, you're caught in a storm.
With no other choice, you steer your ship toward Howler’s Rest Ruins. You fight the current into the ruins of a once-proud city. 

The crew lit no fires. No one spoke above a whisper. The ruins loomed in the mist like broken teeth, jutting from now overgrown streets.

Sometime past midnight, you heard it: howling. Far off, then closer.
Your crew clutched weapons, wide-eyed and pale. One of them started crying. Another swore he saw his mother (dead ten years at least) standing in the doorway, smiling.

You lasted the night but not without something to show for it...

👁️‍🗨️ What happened at Howler's Rest:

After weeks of storms, monsters, and salt-rationed meals, Hollow Crown rose on the horizon like a promise kept.

The city of golden arches and velvet streets, where merchants trade in silk and candied rosefruit, and music spills from every window like a spell. Tonight, you intended to feast like a legend. You've earned it after all! 

You docked with coin in hand, boots polished, and crew eager to drown their fears in wine and excess. The city welcomed you. It always does.

But back at the docks, someone else had their own celebration planned. You’d trusted them. A quiet deckhand. Good with knots. Always first to volunteer, always last to speak. You shouldn't have trusted their quiet manner...

By the time you stumbled back to the pier, belly full and boots soaked in spilled wine, the ship was full of activity: sails wide, the wake carving into the moonlit harbor, anchor being pulled up. They were leaving without you! 

Panic turned to fury. MUTINY ON YOUR SHIP?!!?!

👁️‍🗨️ What happens upon seeing the mutiny:

The Red Market isn’t marked on maps. It doesn’t keep hours. It shifts location like it’s trying to outrun something. But pirates whisper of it in hushed tones: a place where the rare, the outlawed, and the impossible are traded. 

Which is fortunate for you because you’ve found yourself in a bit of a bind...

A tavern brawl turned dice game turned "I-owe-you-how-much?" situation.
And because you couldn't pay your debt, you were given a task instead: Find a vial of Moonbound Ink.

The stuff is basically a myth. Said to vanish from sight unless touched by the skin of the one who placed it. Your debtor wants it for a very specific purpose: to tattoo maps onto pirates at Shattered Mast, visible only to the ones who paid for them.

It’s genius. It’s lucrative. And it’s damn near impossible to find.

But the Red Market might have it.

If you pull this off, your debt is cleared. Maybe you even turn a profit. If you fail? Well... better to vanish into the fog than face the collector again.

👁️‍🗨️ Do you find the Moonbound Ink?:

Weeks ago, buried in the folds of a dying man’s coat you found a half-burned map, drawn in faded black ink and sealed with wax.

Scrawled beside Widow's Flame on the map:

“The Widow grants sight to those who know where not to step.”

And now you're nearing the very isle that houses the lone lighthouse. Surrounded by a whirling sea, there is no way to it. Except, that isn't what the map is showing. There, a narrow, shifting seam in the funneling waters. 

Part of you knows it is a mad man's quest. Is there truly god-power sealed inside that isle? And if so... will it grant you something more? Or take something you’re not ready to lose? 

👁️‍🗨️ You approach the lighthouse and:

You've heard rumors that someone you once left for dead was spotted wandering on the coast of one of the Blighted Isles. 

You know what the Isles are: rot and ruin and whispers that peel at the edges of sanity. But this can’t be a coincidence. Because not long after you heard the rumor, something was found on your ship, something you immediately recognized. In your quarters: a bloodied telescope, their initials carved into it. Was it a warning? A message? 

You’re going. Even if the Isles breathe sickness and threaten to twist you into nothingness. Even if it’s a trap.
Because if they’re alive they have something you desperately need to get back.

Using their telescope to track the way, you manage to survive the infected terrain, narrowly avoiding the twisted ghosts and feral beasts that stalk the lands. And you find them... or rather, what remains of them.

Their body is their human shape, but the voice that greets you is fractured and layered, as if something ancient speaks through their breath. The Isles have taken them, changed them.

Yet, as you turn to run, you notice a spark of the real them in their eyes. You watch as they extend their hand, offering you the item you seek like an offering of forgiveness. In their hand, the heart beats, glistening and pulsing. Your heart. 

The heart you had naively tried to trade to cheat death. The heart you thought lost when you watched them die trying to steal it back for you.  Somehow, impossibly, they are returning it.

But the thing that has overtaken them isn't giving it up so easily...

👁️‍🗨️ As your fingers close around the heart:

It started as a dream. Not yours but your quartermaster’s. Then your cook. Then three more.
The same dream, each time: A tower slicing the sky, a voice beckoning from the clouds, promising release from the curse. She whispers the answer over and over: “Make me seen.”

You tried to ignore it but then the crew stopped waking up. A quarter of the crew lies with eyes open, breath steady, but unresponsive. And now she comes for you...

To save your crew (and yourself) you must go to Dreadspire to speak with the witch who was struck from time. You are certain it is she who is cursing your crew and whispering in their dreams. Unfortunately, you're just as certain that she can not be freed. 

Which means if you want to break the curse, you’ll have to outwit the witch who once outwitted the gods. 

👁️‍🗨️ At the tower:

You’ve survived more than you should have. But barely.

Every haul comes at too high a cost. Every ally is one betrayal from turning. And though you’ve outwitted storms, curses, and sea serpents, deep down, you know your luck is running thin. You can't risk losing all your luck if you are to find the Lost City.

That’s why you seek The Lost Altar.

You want impossible luck, the kind that seems to warp the world around you. Perhaps a god who gave without cost, who gifted truth, healing, and freedom, could grant that to you. 

It’s said that if you stand before it and speak without a single lie, the god will hear you.
And if they approve of your truth, they’ll grant what no one else can.

So you step forward at the alter.
No blade. No bribe. No oath.

You hope the truth of what you ask is enough.

👁️‍🗨️ The exiled god:

There’s someone you can’t complete this mission without. They sailed beside you for years and even before were known as a storm-hearted legend with a tongue full of riddles and a map’s worth of secrets behind their eyes. You spent long nights at sea listening to their tales, each one more outlandish than the last. But one tale has stuck out to you since starting this course and you're certain they know more about the Lost City than they let on then. Hell, you’re certain they know more than anyone still breathing. Maybe even more than some who don’t.

Unfortunately, they’re rotting in Ironmaw Prison. No one has ever escaped its gates. Not once. Not in truth, not in rumor.

But what’s one more impossible task?

👁️‍🗨️ How does the heist go?:

You're not completely cold-hearted, so when you hear that the cook's wife is dying of illness back at home, you know you will find a way to travel to Sporepatch. 

Legend has it a mushroom that grows there can heal anything. They say it only grows once every decade, deep beneath the island’s tangled canopy, in a grove so humid it sweats memory. The fungus glows silver at its peak, and if eaten raw, it can purge poison, illness, even curses.

And finding cook's wife cure is reason enough to go.

Okay. Okay. Let’s be honest, you’re a pirate.

 The price it would fetch in Shattered Mast, Red Market, and oh! Oh the riches it could bring in Orchard Crown... you could fund a fleet with one harvest.

Machete in hand, lungs wrapped in cloth, heart caught between gold and guilt, you march into the glowing and twisted vines of the island. 

But everything on Sporepatch seems to be alive.

👁️‍🗨️ Deep in the island of spores:

The Lost City, half-drowned and dreaming, rising from the mist like the ghost of a kingdom that once ruled the sea. 

Inside, you pass broken vaults and barnacled thrones, gold spilling like sunlight through cracked temple floors. But it is the inner sanctum that calls to you, a chamber choked with moss and silence. At its heart is a gilded stone. Two names carved side by side. Yours and your lost mate's. A fate that had always been determined. 

You don't return to your ship. No one sails back from The Lost City. But now, when the fog rolls low and the sea holds its breath, sailors swear they see two shadows on the horizon standing side by side at the water’s edge. If they listen closely, a whisper carries on the wind:

“This was never about gold. It was always about coming home.”

You set foot in the Lost City as the sun bleeds red into the horizon. The air crackles with ancient power, the kind that shifts fate and crowns royalty.

Gold and jewels lie scattered, but they’re mere tokens compared to what you’ve truly come for: the trident carved from coral and bone, the legacy your captain died protecting.

And now, you are the rightful ruler of this forgotten empire. You raise the trident high. The sea whispers to you, asking for guidance.
You are no longer just a pirate lost to the tides, you are the storm that commands them.

The legend has only just begun.

The Lost City rises from the mist like a memory, vast, broken, and beautiful. Older than the kingdoms squabbling above the waves. And at its center, a throne untouched by time, waiting for someone bold enough (or foolish enough) to claim it.

You stand before it not as a soldier, but as what you truly are: A pirate. A liar. A survivor.

The moment your hand touches the throne, the city stirs. And then, it answers.

You don’t send word back. Why would you? Orchard Crown sent you expecting a myth or a grave. Instead, you found a kingdom buried in silence, begging for a new name to rule it.

Now your flag flies from crumbling towers. Your name is whispered in every port as reckoning.