How Islejarl works

You are a jarl

A jarl (say it: YARL) is a chief, and in this game, that's you. Here's the goal: grow the strongest jarldom you can over one season. When the season ends, every jarl gets ranked, and the jarl who did the best wins. That's the whole game. Everything else on this page (your isles, your ships, your deals with other jarls) is really just a different way to grow your jarldom and climb that ranking.

Long ago, a king ruled all the isles. One day his ship was lost at sea and he never came back. Since then, no one has sat in the High Seat, the king's empty chair. Each isle picked its own leader to hold it for him. You are one of those leaders. You are a jarl.

Everything you rule is called your jarldom: your isles, your people, your ships, your gold. Jarldom just means "everything a jarl rules."

Ruling is not only fighting. Most days you will fish, trade, and make deals. Fighting is one more tool, and often not the best one.

Finding your feet: Fosterage

Fosterage is an old word for a child living for a while with another family, to learn and grow safely. New jarls get their own kind of fosterage too, and while it lasts, no one can attack you, spy on you, or raid you. Even the sea raiders leave you alone.

Fosterage has two parts:

• Sheltered comes first. You can't attack anyone yet, and you can't trade or make deals with other jarls yet either. This is where you learn your home isle, your first way to earn gold, and how to defend it.
• Apprentice comes next. Now only jarls close to your own size can touch you, and any hit you take is much softer than normal. You can trade, make deals, and raid a small pirate camp.

If you attack someone first, your Fosterage ends right away. If you leave it alone, it ends on its own after a few days, and you're out on the open water like everyone else.

Your isles and how they earn

Your jarldom is made of isles, and each kind earns gold in its own way.

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  Fishing Isles dry fish in the cold air. This dried fish is called stockfish. Every jarl needs stockfish to feed their people, and it's also the good every jarl wants to buy.
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  Bog-Iron Works dig bog iron from wet ground. They pay a small amount, but they pay it steadily, hour after hour.
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  Market Isles hold trade fairs. They earn a lot when times are calm and peaceful, and almost nothing during a storm or a war.
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  Tar Works turn wood into tar, used to seal ships. The more jarls build Tar Works, the less each one is worth.
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  Forest Isles grow trees. The trees clean up the smoke that Tar Works make, and they sell a little wood on the side.
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  Harbor Towns are where your people live and grow, slowly at first, then faster and faster.
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  Hall Isles are guest halls that draw new settlers, no matter how big you already are.
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  Naust Isles are boat sheds. They build ships and warriors for less gold than buying them outright.
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  Longhouse Isles are home to your Captains, who lead your fleets, and your Informants, who gather secrets. These isles cost gold to run and don't earn any gold themselves.
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  Wayfinders' Isles send out scouts. Given time, these scouts find new isles and new routes across the sea.

Every isle type has a weak spot. Storms hurt some. Raids hurt others. Fire and sickness hurt different isles in different ways. That's on purpose: no single plan wins every time, so you always have to choose a mix.

Your isles sit in one of two lands. The Wall Isles are steep, rocky, and narrow. They're great for fishing, building ships, and defending your home, but bad for farming. The Green Isles are lower and greener. They're great for wood, iron, and growing your people, but easier for enemies to raid. Between both lands are skerries, small bare rocks where no one lives. You can find salvage and salt there, but sea raiders hide there too.

The bigger your jarldom grows, the more gold it costs to run each hour. That cost goes up because of how much you own, not because of the prices you pay in a shop. Growing big costs you in upkeep, not in shopping.

The Harbor Exchange

The Harbor Exchange is the market where every good gets bought and sold: stockfish, bog iron, tar, wood, salt, and furs. Prices are not fixed. They move up and down based on what everyone is buying and selling that day.

Three rules keep this market fair:

• Your gold does not buy you a better price. A rich jarl and a poor jarl pay the same price at the same moment.
• Buying a lot at once costs the same, per item, as buying it in small pieces. There's no trick to splitting up an order to save gold.
• Buying and selling always costs you a little. This is called the spread. It means you can never buy something and sell it right back for a free profit.

New isles go up for sale over time too. If you sell one back, you only get part of your gold back, so jarls can't buy and sell isles just to make easy gold.

The Salvors' Union buys goods that jarls find in shipwrecks near the skerries, at a fair, steady price, so one lucky find doesn't crash the whole market. It also sets a floor price, so goods can never get too cheap.

The Counting House works like a bank. It pays you a little gold for saving with it, lends you gold if you need it, and sells short, safe bonds that grow your gold slowly over time.

There may also be a small daily prize draw. You earn tickets just by playing, never by paying real money, so no one can buy their way to a better chance of winning.

Trading with other jarls

You can only send gold and goods to jarls you've made a deal with, called an Oath (more on Oaths below). You can never give away ships or isles.

When you send goods, they travel by ship in what's called a Knarr convoy. Like any ship, a convoy can be attacked along the way.

The Harbor Authority, the group that keeps order across the isles, takes a small cut of every trade you send. If you and your trade partner share a special deal called a Free Harbor Oath, that cut gets smaller.

Fleets and the three fronts

Your strength at sea comes from five things:

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  Housecarls are your foot soldiers. They fight on beaches and docks.
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  Faerings are small, fast rowboats. They strike at the narrow mouth of a harbor.
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  Beacon Forts are forts built on the shore. They never move, and they can never be sold or given away.
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  Longships are your warships. They fight out in open water.
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  Knarrs carry your soldiers and cargo, but never fight themselves. How many Knarrs you have decides how many soldiers you can land on an enemy's shore.

Your Drekar is your one great dragon ship. It grows stronger every time it wins a fight. If it loses badly, it can be sunk for good.

A real attack is fought in three places at once, so no single kind of ship or soldier wins every fight by itself:

Longships beat Housecarls in the open. Housecarls beat Faerings on the beach. Faerings beat Longships in tight water. It goes in a circle, the way rock-paper-scissors does, so no single choice always wins.

Win two of the three fights and you win the whole battle. Each fight you win gives you something different. Win the Deep and you can block ships and steal cargo. Win the Narrows and you can loot their stores and damage their forts. Win the Strand and you can take one of their isles. It's the only way to actually capture land.

Attacking someone much smaller than you earns very little, and it costs you respect. Attacking someone close to your own size earns the most. You can still raid someone much bigger than you, but you can't launch a full attack on them.

Strandhogg: a small jarl's best trick

A Strandhogg is a fast hit-and-run raid on the coast. The old word means landing, grabbing what you can carry, and leaving fast.

A Strandhogg gives the enemy no warning, and their friends can't get there in time to help. You can never capture an isle this way, but the smaller the target is compared to you, the smaller your reward. That makes it a fair tool for a small jarl to strike a much bigger one. The raiders do risk getting caught and named in public.

Contraband

Contraband means banned weapons. No shop sells them. Sometimes your spies, called Informants, hear about a secret dealer selling some.

There are three kinds. Fire burns down buildings. Blight poisons food and slows a jarldom's growth. Dread spreads fear, which makes an enemy's fighters weaker for a day, without destroying anything.

The moment anyone uses one, everyone finds out. It gets written down in public, with the user's name on it, in the Harbor Authority's public record. There is no way to use Contraband and stay hidden, and it always costs you respect.

Sailing out: expeditions and travel

Sending your ships anywhere takes real time, whether you're raiding, trading, scouting, hunting sea raiders, or helping a friend. While your ships are away, your home has less to defend it.

Ships travel through narrow channels, open sea, or a famous, dangerous whirlpool called the Maelstrom. The Maelstrom is a fast shortcut when the water is calm, and a real gamble when the water is rough.

Weather and how much daylight the season has both change how long a trip takes, and how easy it is to spot a raider coming.

Oaths and Felags

No king rules the isles anymore, so nothing forces two jarls to keep a promise. Instead, the Harbor Authority just writes down who kept their word and who didn't, for everyone to see.

Jarls can make different kinds of deals with each other, called Oaths. A simple Truce Oath just means you won't attack each other. A Free Harbor Oath also makes trade between you cheaper. Other Oaths promise to help defend each other if attacked. Once you make an Oath, you're bound to it for its full length. You can break it early, but it will always cost you.

Help from friends is not instant. When your home is attacked, any friend who promised to help you sails over to fight for you, but they only make it in time if they're close enough. Neighbors matter more than far-off friends.

A Felag is a small team of jarls who work together. It comes with its own hall to talk in, and a shared reward at the end of the season if the team does well together.

Informants and covert work

Every Longhouse Isle is home to your Informants, or spies. They also defend you from other jarls' spies. Sending a spy on a mission costs some of your daily Orders (see below), and spies can never target a jarl who is still new and protected.

Spy missions range from simple, like just asking around about a rival, to sneaky, like talking some of their soldiers into quitting. One trick even lets you raid someone while making it look like a different jarl did it. But if a mission fails, everyone finds out who sent it.

Outlaw Crews

Outlaw Crews are sea raiders. Some call them Bilge Rats, but never to their face. They live in hidden camps on the skerries, and they raid nearby jarls on a schedule everyone can see coming.

They never make deals, never take bribes, and never hold a grudge against any one jarl. If you hunt down and destroy one of their camps, you win back loot and gain respect.

Renown and the Harbor Authority

The Harbor Authority works like a referee for the whole game. It used to serve the lost king, and it kept doing its job even after he was gone. It runs the sea lanes, keeps the law, and keeps the record straight. Its public voice is called the Lawspeaker's Log, and it always explains its rulings out loud, for everyone to read.

Every jarl has a score called Renown. It shows how much other jarls, and the Harbor Authority, trust you.

Using Contraband, breaking an Oath early, or picking on someone much smaller than you all cost Renown right away, in public. Hunting Outlaw Crews, planting trees on a Forest Isle, and simply paying what you owe all build it back up. Over time, Renown drifts slowly back toward the middle, so old mistakes and old good deeds both fade.

If your Renown falls low enough, you start losing things. Trade gets more expensive, and eventually you get shut out of the market and out of teams entirely. But the rules for this are always public, and the Harbor Authority never kicks a jarl out of the game just for low Renown.

Jarls with good Renown and small jarldoms also get a small daily gift of gold, paid for by everyone else's fees and fines. It's a small boost to help newer, smaller jarls catch up, and everyone can see exactly how it works.

Time, Orders, and staying away

Your gold, food, and upkeep all keep moving in real time, even while you're away from the game. Logging in more often doesn't earn you more. It just lets you react faster to what's happening.

Big moves like raids, spy missions, expeditions, and Oath deals all cost something called Orders. You get a new Order every so often, even while you sleep, up to a cap. Check in once or twice a day and you'll usually have a full set ready to spend.

If you stay away too long, your jarldom doesn't fall apart right away. It slows down and gets extra protection instead, and it's never turned into an easy target. Only after a long time away do your isles go back on the market for someone else to claim. If you know you'll be gone for a while, you can plan ahead and mark yourself away, which keeps your jarldom fully safe until you're back.

Seasons and the Moot

A Season is one full round of the game. It lasts 28 days, about four weeks. It ends with a gathering called the Moot, where the Harbor Authority adds up every jarl's whole season and names a winner.

The winner gets to sit in the High Seat, the king's empty chair, until the next Moot. This is an honor, not a power: no extra gold, no extra soldiers, no edge in a fight. It's a title, and that's the whole point of it.

When the Season ends, the whole world starts over. Your jarldom, your gold, your ships, and your Renown all reset to the start. What you keep is your profile, your history of past seasons, and a short list of your best moments.

You won't know exactly where you stand for most of the season. The full standings only show near the very end, so nobody can pile onto whoever is winning too early.

New jarls are grouped together in what's called a League, so nobody has to face season veterans on their very first day.