The Back Story
Conquest of the Coastlands (CoC) is a role-playing game (RPG) with a science fiction/fantasy setting. Pursuing larger strategic objectives, the player character will be challenged with a variety of problem solving “quests,” which form the main plotlines of the interactive narrative and will provide the immediate motivations for player-character activities in the game. Each quest is designed to achieve specific learning goals.

The game takes place amid an ancient conflict between two sentient species and their struggle for dominance on a planet in another solar system. While not technologically sophisticated, the planet’s two rival sentient species have reached a turning point in their evolutionary history where it is likely that one—the Mruk-ma—will likely drive the other—the Sheft-ma—into extinction.

The Mruk-ma are an aggressive, sea-faring species, while the Sheft-ma are city-builders who make their home in “The Coastlands,” along the marshy seashores and river valleys of Mertis’ lone continent. For the vulnerable Sheft-ma, the strategic key to their self-defense is a deteriorating system of fortifications built in the coastal wetlands surrounding their cities. But these wetlands are mysteriously disappearing at an alarming rate, and the threat of invasion by Mruk-ma fleets is growing.

A decisive change comes when the survey ship of an advanced alien race crash-lands in the oceans of Mertis. Arriving in escape pods from their doomed spaceship, the strangers, called Cilati, are scattered around the planet. Now hopelessly stranded on Mertis, some of the alien crew manages to make their way to The Coastlands, where they are warmly welcomed by the Sheft-ma. The Cilati survey team brings with them precious scientific knowledge, technology, and methods that could dramatically shift the balance of power in the conflict between the two rival species. The survival of the Sheft-ma will depend on whether they can effectively utilize the science and tools of the Cilati to rebuild their crumbling forts and defend their disappearing coastlines.

The Cilatis are a highly advanced race of space-faring explorers. Extremely long-lived, they traverse the galaxy in pursuit of knowledge about other planets and other life forms. Cilati ships have visited countless worlds, quietly observing the species that inhabit them. Generally, they never interfere in the cultures they study, and they seldom even make their presence known.

However, it quickly becomes apparent that the Mruk-ma have adopted a radically new strategy in their struggle with the Sheft-ma: ecological warfare. By attacking the delicate environment on which their peaceful rivals depend, the Mruk-ma hope to wreck the Sheft-ma civilization and eliminate their species.

In the game, the student is the player character, a talented and courageous young apprentice who completes many challenges in order to preserve the coastlands, which are essential to the survival of the Sheft-ma species.

Game Environment
The player character resides in an independent city-state that’s more or less typical of the dozens of other cantons scattered throughout The Coastlands that comprise Sheft-ma society.  It was built on the broad, marshy delta of the Restless River.  This large, powerful river shoulders a tremendous load of sediments from the Uplands further north, washing downriver the rich topsoil and clay from high sloping hills within the continent. Its heavy freight of silt makes the waters of the Restless River appear somewhat murky and reddish, in contrast with the blue seas that it empties into.

The Restless River earned its name because of its stubborn refusal to stay in its bed; it regularly overflows its banks, piles up new land formations, washes away others, and carves out new courses and channels as it snakes its way southward to the sea. Flowing over the wide diverse delta it has built for itself, the Restless rolls through extraordinarily fertile prairie lands and alluvial plains, thick bottomland forests, dark twisted mangroves, and wide expanses of open grassy marshlands, all laced with a maze of small channels and canals that flow as distributaries from the Restless.

In recent years, the Sheft-ma of this region have taken advantage of a long lull in their constant warfare with the Mruk-ma, devoting their resources to building levees for controlling long stretches of the Restless River and protecting their settlements against its seasonal flooding.
The topography of the Restless River Canton is universally flat, except for one curious feature that’s fairly common to river deltas throughout The Coastlands: a single mineral dome rises from the surrounding marsh to form an island at a large fork in the river’s central channel.  Whereas the rest of the delta region is comprised of spongy marshlands, this mineral dome is solid rock under a layer of rich topsoil.  Although formed primarily of salts, a variety of other valuable mineral have been found and mined—in small quantities and with great effort—from within caverns deep in the dome.  No more than ¾ of a mile in circumference, the little isle rises steeply from the river some 300 feet above the surrounding topography, topped by a gently rounded plateau.  It is atop this rocky dome that the Sheft-ma of the region built their most sacred site, the Beacon Keep. It is here that the governing class of scholarly monks known as the Order of Erud (or “Erudites”) reside and conduct their studies.

Essentially an island in the middle of the Restless River, the Beacon Keep is connected to the canton’s capital city via a low, broad causeway that runs nearly a half-mile to a triangle of land between two channels where the river forks. The Eastern Fork is the shortest, straightest route to the open sea and thus serves as the main channel for shipping and commerce; thus, it has also been the most heavily fortified against attacks by Mruk-ma raiding parties.  The Western Fork meanders slowly southward along a twisting route down through a long corridor of alluvial plains and mangrove forests, branching into countless small canals and slow-moving distributaries.

The big triangle of land between these two channels is protected by levees, built within the last couple of generations, and Beacon City has prospered and grown to become one of the largest cities in The Coastlands, with some 30,000 people making their homes within its fortified levees and walls. South of the city are a number of smaller villages, built along the banks of the Restless and its distributaries, but still inside the levee system. The people of these settlements occupy themselves with fishing, farming, and hunting, but they frequently travel upstream to Beacon City for trade and commerce, and to make pilgrimages to the Beacon Keep.

Like all the Sheft-ma, the people of the Restless River Canton are peaceful and benign. They are satisfied with conducting a peaceful trade with neighboring cantons and villages, with perfecting their practice of various simple crafts, arts, and occupations; with fishing and cultivating the same regions occupied by their ancestors for uncounted generations. They love to explore their ancestral homelands, and they take great pride in having an intimate knowledge of the great River and its ways, along with the great diversity of creatures that occupy the surrounding marshes, forests, and bays.  But like all Sheft-ma, their curiosity seldom prompts the people of the Restless River Canton to venture out beyond familiar waters. And even the most adventurous never sail beyond the Great Reef or the Ridge Islands at its edge.

Opening Scenario
A pre-rendered cinematic has been created to set the stage for the game. The opening cinematic introduces the characters and setting, and provides hints about the overall goal of the game: to preserve and restore the fragile ecosystems in The Coastlands. View the opening scenario video below.

Quest Description
The quest begins with the player character being summoned before the Council of Elders.  The player character is charged with researching how the introduction of a strange creature, which was introduced to the coastal marshlands by the Mruk-ma species as part of the ecological war, is related to the depletion of Glim, a key staple of the Sheft-ma diet.