Explorer

Explorers are true men and women of the sea. When they return to civilization, it always feels like they're only visiting.

— Bartender of a dockside tavern

Explorers are sailors and scholars who spend their lives on the ocean. While most sailors rely on navigational charts and landmarks, sailing known waters to travel from city to city, explorers rely on nothing but navigational tools and dead reckoning, charting the world, exploring distant shores as they find them, and expanding knowledge of the world beyond.

Becoming an Explorer

Most Explorer ships are owned by Adventurers of some renown, for few captains worth their salt would consider mounting such an expedition without knowing something of the history of their sponsors and trusting their combat skills to see the ship through any such difficulties that might arise. As adventurers typically ply their trade on land, they typically employ a captain to handle the details of selecting a crew and managing the ship's affairs. Given such expeditions are frought with danger, those who are both willing to take the task and able to assemble a crew tend to have a long history of captaining ships as well as a reputation for daring well in excess of what most merchants prefer in their captains.

Crew Members

The ship's crew is almost always hand picked by the captain. Most bring along 3 or 4 close friends to act as the senior officers, then seek out specialists (Carpenter, Purser, Doctor, and so on) from those available in port. Often, this involves enticing them away from their current crew, much to the dismay of merchant captains suddenly finding a valuable crewmember has sailed off into the unknown.

Seamen and topmen (deck and rigging workers, respectively) are most often hand picked by the senior officers. While technical skills are always considered, a less skilled sailor with a reputation for being steady and disciplined in tough situations will generally be picked over those with more skill who are known to be less resiliant or are untested, as explorer ships regularly face supply shortages, and have to be prepared for any sort of dangerous situation that might arise.

Scholars

While generally considered unnecessary on most ships, the inclusion of at least one scholar is essential on any exploration ship, someone who can document and study any unexplained phenomena or anything else not previously discovered. Ideally, an explorer's ship has enough scholars to study natural philosophy, cultural history, and arcana, but specialists in all three are rarely available. Many ships hire a generalist or polymath, someone with a broad range of interests, relying on them to do their best with all three areas of study. Some of these scholars can take on other roles, most commonly assigning a natural philosopher or arcanist skilled in healing magic to the role of Ship's Doctor.

Reputation

Explorers are widely celebrated by the public, especially in coastal cities like Caelester. Many dream of the life of an explorer, dreaming of the excitement of discovering new places and new things - all the excitement of a life of an Adventurer with none of the risk of actually fighting the terrible monsters they routinely face. Retired explorers often become popular figures at whichever tavern they frequent, having a wealth of wild tales featuring bizarre creatures, unknwon civilizations, and exotic environments, occasionally showing proof in the form of souviniers collected over the course of their adventures.

Dangers

Explorers face a wide variety of dangers, from unique and never before seen magical phenomena right down to the very simple problem of running out of supplies. Ships are regularly out at sea for a year or more at a time, reliant on ship stores and what can be gathered on uncharted islands and coastlines they encounter to feed the crew.

Navitational

Despite the dramatic stories, the single biggest threat to explorers is the simple difficulty of survival on the ocean. Even the best of navigational tools can only provide a rough estimate of a ship's location east or west of a previously known point, and as these rely on measuring the distance traveled from a known location, the error tends to accumulate significantly over time, so even a ship returning home to resupply can end up far off course. When searching for an island to resupply from, a ship can sail a dozen kilometers from a low lying island bursting with fresh fruit and natural springs without ever realizing it.

Ships far from home have the additional risk of misreading the ocean itself. In charted waters, sailors can use a sailor's almanac and observation of the weather to predict incoming storms, and can consult their charts to see reefs, shallows, and friendly ports of call. Explorers have none of these tools, and can easily find themselves in a squall or becalmed without warning or miss the subtle hints of a reef lurking below the waters ready to tear the keel from an unsuspecting ship. These dangers are why explorers greatly value any sort of divination magic - any warning of such threats can avert disaster.

Dangerous Encounters

Every time explorers set foot on land, they walk into the unknown. An island might be perfectly safe, or it might be the lair of vicious beasts, terrible monsters, or a people that regard those who set foot on their lands as trespassers to be killed rather than guests to be welcomed. All of these have been encountered numerous times - sometimes a landing party simply fails to return to the ship, as do any rescue parties sent out to save them. Only a handful of such islands have been reported, each time by crews that have decided to call off rescue attempts and head home. When found, these islands are marked on sea charts in red ink, signifying the island should be avoided at all costs.

There are also a number of dangerous creatures that dwell in the sea. The greatest of these is the legendary kraken, an enormous creature with a mouth so large it can be mistaken for a pair of islands jutting up from the sea.