Your Own Vehicles
"A good pair of boots will take you anywhere. A good engine will take you there before the rain does."
When you choose a destination on the world map, the city plots a path across the hex grid and your character physically walks it, one hex at a time. Everything about that journey - how long it takes, what it costs, and what might happen on the way - depends on what you are travelling in and what lies between you and your goal.
Choosing a vehicle
Every trip opens with a Travel by picker. On foot is always available; every other option is a vehicle item you own. The picker shows each vehicle's estimated time for the chosen route and quietly disables any vehicle that physically cannot make the trip.
| Vehicle | Best on | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| On Foot | Any land | Always available, the baseline pace. |
| Bicycle | Roads, grass, sand, light forest | Quick and cheap on open land. |
| Car | Roads, grass, sand | Fastest on a good road; struggles off it. |
| Horse | Roads, grass, sand, forest, rocky ground | The all-rounder; handles rough terrain other vehicles refuse. |
| Jetski v2.0.0 | Open water | A water craft - waits on the opening of the sea lanes. |
A specific item can be faster or slower than the base vehicle: a tuned sports car outpaces a rusty runabout of the same class. Your vehicle's own quality is folded into the estimate you see.
Speed is a question of terrain
A vehicle is fast on the ground it was built for and slow everywhere else - it does not simply stop at the edge of a road.
- On its native terrain, the vehicle runs at full speed.
- On other passable ground of the same kind (a car on a patch of rock), it drops to a walking trudge but keeps going.
- Only a true mismatch blocks it outright: a land vehicle cannot cross open water, and a water craft cannot climb onto land.
So a bicycle crossing five hexes of road and five of rock rides the road swiftly and grinds across the rock at walking pace - slower, but never stranded. A single bad hex never cancels the whole trip; only an impossible one does.
A patch of walkable ground with no walkable path to it - an island ringed by lava or water - is treated as unreachable. The map will not offer it as a destination.
Energy
Personal travel costs energy. Each journey draws from your reserve, and a citizen with an empty bar must rest or recover before setting out again. This is the price of freedom: your own vehicles go anywhere, but your legs and your fuel are finite.
The transit network does not cost energy - that is the trade you make when you give up freedom of route for a fixed line. See The Transit Network.
Weather and the dark
The sky and the hour are part of the road. Personal travel slows when conditions turn against you, and the penalties stack:
| Condition | Effect on travel time |
|---|---|
| Rain | Slower going - mud and poor footing. |
| Fog | A lighter slowdown - you pick your way carefully. |
| Night | A lighter slowdown - and the road grows more dangerous. |
A rainy night is the worst of both worlds: the slowdowns compound, and the dark emboldens whatever waits along the way. The travel estimate you see already accounts for the current weather, shown beside the time so you know exactly what the sky is costing you.
Scheduled transit ignores weather and the hour - a train runs on time in any storm. Weather only ever touches your own travel.
Danger on the road
The open road is not empty. Travelling exposes you to encounters - and your choice of vehicle subtly shifts the odds. A fast, conspicuous machine draws more attention than a quiet pair of boots; a sure-footed mount draws a little less. If a power has marked your name, riding through its lands is riskier still: its watch reads every traveller who crosses.
The full account of warrants, the watch, and what can befall a wanted citizen on the road is told in The Roads and the Watch.