We Found the Map to the Sunken City. So Did Everyone Else.

About the story

Four hundred years ago, the island city of Aurelion sank beneath the sea in a single night. Its towers were said to be roofed in gold, its library held the charts of a hundred lost voyages, and its last queen sealed the Sun Vault, a treasure chamber that no diver has ever found. For centuries, Aurelion was a sailor's bedtime story. Then, three weeks ago, a storm tore the roof off an old lighthouse on the island of Corran, and a lighthouse keeper's grandchild found a brass tube hidden in the rafters. Inside was a map of the Saltglass Archipelago, drawn in gold ink, torn into three pieces. Whoever made it had hidden the pieces in three places. The one in the lighthouse was piece one. That grandchild is you. You didn't keep it secret long. You took it to the harbor to ask about it, and within a day every tavern from Corran to the Saltglass Straits knew. Within two days, three crews had come to buy it, steal it or charm it out of you: PROFESSOR IMANI SOL, a brilliant, stubborn, sun-hatted archaeologist from the Royal Academy of Port Meridian who has spent fifteen years proving Aurelion was real and been laughed at for every one of them. She has the second piece: she found it in a museum basement a year ago and didn't know what it was until now. JETT ARKWRIGHT, a dashing, grinning, entirely untrustworthy treasure hunter with a fast sloop, a long list of enemies and a habit of turning up wherever there's treasure. He doesn't have a piece. He has a very good guess where the third one is. SAGA LUND, a blunt, sunburnt boat captain in her early twenties with an old fishing schooner called the Stubborn Gull, a crew of two and a lot of debt. She knows the Archipelago's currents better than anyone alive, and she needs the money more than any of them. And then there are the others: the Gilded Company, a wealthy salvage company with steamships and divers, who want Aurelion for its gold and don't care what they wreck to get it. The race is on. You have piece one. Imani has piece two. Piece three is somewhere out in the Archipelago. The Gilded Company's divers have found the edge of the sunken city, and in 21 days the autumn storms will close the Straits for the year. You'll choose who to trust and who to sail with. You'll island-hop across the Saltglass Archipelago: coral reefs, smuggler coves, a volcanic island, a floating market, an abandoned observatory. You'll solve the map's riddles, dive into ruins, outrun storms and rival ships, and maybe, at the bottom of the sea, open the Sun Vault and find out what the last queen of Aurelion really hid there. It may not be gold. And there's one more question you can't stop thinking about. Your grandfather spent his whole life tending a lighthouse on a quiet island where hardly any ships pass. He always said your family had "kept a light for it," and you never knew what he meant. The deeper you go into the Archipelago, the more it looks like he meant Aurelion. No dark horror and no grim deaths. Just a swashbuckling treasure race, sea spray, ancient puzzles, rivals who might become friends and a drowned city that has been waiting four hundred years for the right crew. Features: Treasure Race · Island Hopping · Rival Crews · 21-day race · Map Pieces & Supplies · Status panel every turn · A/B/C choices or type your own action · 3 endings · All characters are adults. Main cast • Professor Imani Sol, 38: A brilliant, stubborn archaeologist from the Royal Academy who has spent fifteen years being laughed at for believing in Aurelion. • Jett Arkwright, 25: A charming, grinning, thoroughly untrustworthy treasure hunter with a fast sloop and a lot of enemies. • Saga Lund, 22: A blunt, sunburnt boat captain with an old schooner, two crew and a lot of debt. How to start: begin with the main opening, or jump into an alternate start: The Starglass Observatory (Day 9, night) · The Chase (Day 7, noon) · First Dive (Day 15, morning). Every start shares the same world, trackers and endings.