Correspondence & Contacts

No Governor rules in isolation. The archipelago rewards those who cultivate relationships — forging friendships, exchanging intelligence, and coordinating through written correspondence. This chapter covers the management of contacts and the dispatch of messages.

Alliances

Formal pacts, shared defence, and alliance correspondence.

Espionage

Reconnaissance missions that reveal rival Governors.

Contacts & Friends

A Governor's contact ledger records known acquaintances across the archipelago. Some contacts are discovered through the course of conflict or espionage; others are added deliberately through a formal friendship request.

Discovery

Governors may become known to one another through several means:

Espionage — Dispatching spy ships to a rival's shores reveals that Governor in the contact ledger.
Combat — Both the attacker and the defender are revealed to each other following a battle.
Alliance membership — Joining an alliance grants mutual discovery with every existing member.

Discovery is mutual — if one Governor learns of another through battle, both parties gain the knowledge.

Friendship

While discovery reveals a Governor's existence, friendship is a deliberate bond. A Governor may send a friendship request to any player by name. The recipient may accept or decline the request from their contacts ledger.

Friendship is always mutual — both Governors appear in each other's contact lists.
Pending requests may be cancelled by the sender at any time before a response.
A Governor may maintain up to 50 friendships at a time.

Friendship remains useful even where correspondence is already open. It marks trusted rulers clearly in the ledger and on the chart, which matters when fleets begin to move.

Envoy Vale notes

A well-kept contact ledger is worth more than a fleet. Know who rules the neighbouring islands before they come knocking.

Direct Messages

The most common form of correspondence is a direct message between two Governors. To compose a new letter, open the correspondence ledger and address it by the recipient's name. Any Governor in the world may be addressed this way. If a previous exchange exists, the conversation resumes where it was left.

A Governor may withdraw any message they have sent. The message is struck from the record, though its former place in the thread remains noted.

Alliance Correspondence

Every alliance maintains a dedicated correspondence channel, established automatically when the alliance is founded. This channel serves as the central forum for alliance affairs.

All members are added to the alliance channel upon joining.
Arrivals, departures, and removals are recorded as activity notices within the channel, keeping the membership informed of roster changes.
Alliance leaders and officers may rename the channel to suit the alliance's character.

Departing an alliance revokes access to all alliance correspondence. A Governor who later returns to the same banner regains access to that shared ledger, including the record kept during their absence.

Master Quill notes

The alliance channel is the quickest way to reach every member at once. Urgent matters — incoming threats, coordinated strikes — belong here rather than in scattered private letters.

Common Missteps

Correspondence failures rarely come from writing too little. They come from writing the right message in the wrong place.

Sending urgent alerts by private letter — Incoming fleets and strike timings belong in alliance correspondence where all officers can respond at once.
Leaving requests unresolved — Pending friendships and invitations clutter the ledger and slow diplomatic decisions. Resolve them quickly.
Relying on memory instead of records — Confirm battle and spy outcomes in the reports ledger before issuing new orders.