Quests and Story Progression

Quests give the player reasons to travel the frozen railway network, help settlements survive, investigate the old world, build relationships with factions, and decide what humanity’s future should look like. This page records the agreed high-level framework. Individual quest chains, rewards, exact requirements, and detailed mechanics remain open for later design.

The five quest categories

These categories describe a quest’s purpose rather than five completely separate systems. A local job may uncover a unique discovery, and that discovery may eventually become part of a faction storyline.

1. Local Jobs

Repeatable, usually short-distance tasks offered by settlements, stations, faction outposts, and passing trains. They provide regular work and make the state of the local region matter.

Possible jobs include:

Transporting Food, Embers, Parts, other resources, or passengers between nearby locations.
Scouting for missing people, survivors, or safe routes.
Deterring or dealing with local raiders and dangerous wildlife.
Inspecting damaged tracks, signals, bridges, and tunnels.
Delivering emergency supplies or helping repair a stranded train.
Recovering abandoned cargo or relaying communications.

Rewards may include Currency, resources, local reputation, and access to further jobs. Repeatable jobs should vary with the world state: settlements may need supplies, tracks may be damaged, and raiders or wildlife may move between regions. Repeatedly doing the same safe journey should not be as rewarding as responding to a changing need.

Threats should not always require violence. Players might scare wildlife away, negotiate with raiders, investigate why a route is dangerous, or choose another path. Not every small job needs multiple outcomes.

2. Expeditions and Contracts

Longer journeys with meaningful preparation and risk. These can be offered as contracts or arise from discoveries and storylines. Examples include:

Delivering large quantities of goods or transporting an entire wagon to a distant destination.
Carrying passengers, specialists, or a research team across dangerous routes.
Re-establishing communications with distant stations or repairing relay infrastructure.
Transporting researchers to old facilities or recovering experimental equipment.
Conducting major salvage operations to recover machinery, locomotive components, or a derelict train.
Following incomplete maps or strange signals to unknown destinations.

These quests can test cargo capacity, resource consumption, weather preparation, route knowledge, staffing, and suitable wagon equipment. Rewards may include larger Currency payments, rare resources, access to locations, technology designs, or new contacts.

3. World Discoveries

Unique, hand-authored quests found through curiosity and exploration. They may begin with an abandoned facility, an unusual signal, a survivor’s story, a forgotten railway branch, a damaged archive, or an unexpected environmental feature.

Potential discovery hooks include:

A silent locomotive containing unusual equipment or a rare wagon design.
A geothermal settlement with a distinctive approach to surviving the cold.
A damaged research archive containing evidence about the Great Forge.
An impossible signal apparently originating from a long-silent railway network, potentially connected to the mystery of Australia.

These are example hooks, not finalized quests or confirmed answers to world mysteries. Unique discoveries may grant special wagon blueprints, exclusive upgrades, crew members, permanent settlement benefits, visual customizations, new routes, Research Data, or information that opens new story choices. Rewards do not all need to be direct power increases; some should create new possibilities.

4. Faction Storylines

Each of the eleven major factions can have a substantial, multi-stage storyline reflecting its interests, internal disagreements, and preferred future. Faction quests can involve alliances, political conflict, military operations, resource demands, research, and decisions about the Great Forge.

The following are proposed story directions, not finalized faction quests:

Faction	Possible main-story direction
Craterborn	Decide who controls Great Forge salvage and whether its power should be restored.
American Continuity	Reunify surviving territories under a central government.
European Concord	Build a negotiated coalition through shared infrastructure and political compromise.
Eastern Directorate	Pursue coordinated technological reconstruction, potentially at the cost of individual freedom.
Meridian League	Build a distributed energy and trade network that supports regional independence.
Iron Compact	Decide whether industrial power serves the population or those who control production.
Hearthbound	Protect local autonomy and create a network of sustainable settlements.
White Wolves	Unite the gangs under a new order, remain independent, or become something different from raiders.
Church of the Last Flame	Prevent another technological catastrophe or reinterpret the faith’s position on restoring the Forge.
Pale Directorate	Investigate the explosion and determine whether the technology can be used safely.
Frostborn Clans	Protect the wilderness and traditional survival routes from industrial expansion.

Commitment and ending lockouts

Faction stories should have three broad stages:

Early faction quests: Introduce motivations, build reputation, and allow the player to help several factions. These should generally not lock out other endings.
Commitment quests: Present a major decision, such as handing over a unique discovery, pledging military support, or making an irreversible agreement. The game should clearly warn the player when a choice will close incompatible paths.
Final faction arc: The player commits to a faction’s plan for the future. Completing it locks out incompatible faction endings.

Simply accepting a delivery contract or helping a faction in an emergency should not accidentally lock the player out of an ending. The lockout should be tied to an understandable, deliberate commitment.

A non-aligned ending is proposed for players who avoid committing to a major faction. It should be difficult to achieve and explore whether humanity can choose a future that is not controlled by a single power. This ending is a proposal, not confirmed canon.

5. The Great Forge and Endgame

Major discoveries and faction storylines eventually converge on the question of what should happen to the Great Forge and the world’s heat infrastructure. The central dilemma is whether to rebuild a single enormous heat source, risking concentrated power and another catastrophe, or develop distributed heat systems that no faction can use to hold humanity hostage.

The endgame should be shaped by discoveries, alliances, commitments, and the player’s actions. It need not be a single linear final quest, and different faction endings may interpret the same evidence differently.

Quest outcomes and a changing world

Quests should sometimes change more than the player’s inventory. Results can affect settlements, trade, routes, communications, faction relationships, and which future quests become available.

For example, restoring a communication relay might reconnect two settlements, unlock new contracts, and improve their ability to coordinate supplies. Selling the relay’s components might instead provide Currency and Parts while leaving the settlements isolated.

Possible outcomes include:

Completing the requested task.
Finding an alternative solution.
Failing or abandoning a task, with consequences where appropriate.
Discovering information and deciding which faction or settlement receives it.
Accepting a reward while creating a consequence elsewhere.

Not every quest needs branching outcomes. The most consequential choices should be concentrated in faction storylines, unique discoveries, and endgame decisions.

Connections to other game systems

System	Quest connection
Technology tree	Engineering, Research, and Exploration quests can grant progress, discoveries, or designs.
Resources and Currency	Contracts may pay Currency or resources, require supplies up front, or offer a choice of reward.
Wagons	Cargo, Medical, Recovery, Research, Specialist, and Exploration wagons can enable or improve specific missions.
Crew and roles	Some missions may require Engineers, Researchers, Specialists, or Soldiers.
Weather and environments	Storms, mountains, tunnels, ice, and abandoned facilities can affect route safety and preparation.
Settlements	Helping communities can improve their survival, trade access, and future quest availability.
Factions	Reputation, alliances, and deliberate commitments influence available storylines and endings.

Design principles

Local jobs sustain the journey; expeditions expand it; discoveries deepen the world; faction stories shape its future.
Reward curiosity, preparation, and meaningful choices rather than distance travelled alone.
Use repeatable jobs to reflect changing regional needs instead of presenting an endless static checklist.
Let quests make use of existing resources, wagons, roles, weather, and technology systems.
Keep individual quest chains, names, exact rewards, requirements, and balancing open until they are designed in detail.