---
title: Captain Paths
description: Relief, Gray, and Honor — three postures, three different lives.
sidebar:
  order: 3
---

## Three kinds of captain

The same world. Three different pressures. These are not classes — they are what your choices turn you into.

## Relief / Legitimacy

Convoy discipline. Trust-based access. Public consequence.

- **Earns through:** volume trade on legitimate routes
- **Strengths:** steady income, institutional trust, safe lane access
- **Weaknesses:** trapped by legitimacy, vulnerable to shortage and delay
- **Fears:** delivery delay, undercapacity, public failure
- **Crew fit:** Thal (Keth cultural access, emergency repair) + Ilen (Compact navigation)

Relief is the safest, most consistent path. It wins on reliability. The danger is that consistency becomes complacency — and when the supply chain shifts, the Relief captain has no fallback.

## Gray / Document

Paper leverage. Timing abuse. Institutional risk.

- **Earns through:** clever positioning, brokered goods, institutional gaps
- **Strengths:** flexibility, information advantage, cross-civilization access
- **Weaknesses:** thin margins, vulnerable to inspection and seizure
- **Fears:** seizure, exposure, paper closure
- **Crew fit:** Sera (Orryn broker access) + Nera (document expertise)

Gray is lean, clever, and survivable. It peaks early and then has to work to stay ahead. The danger is that the system starts remembering your name.

## Honor / Frontier

Direct confrontation. House politics. Reputation volatility.

- **Earns through:** combat salvage, direct trade, faction leverage
- **Strengths:** combat income, Veshan house access, tactical flexibility
- **Weaknesses:** crew injury risk, expensive ship maintenance, escalation pressure
- **Fears:** escalation, crew loss, thin support networks
- **Crew fit:** Varek (Veshan house politics, combat ability) + Thal (emergency repair)

Honor is combat-funded and volatile. One good fight is rewarding. Seven fights in a row starts costing crew health, hull integrity, and salvage value.

## Proved divergence

Dogfood simulation confirms: three postures produce different routes, different trade mixes, different combat profiles, different failure textures, and different captain identities. Credit ratio between strongest and weakest path lands in the 3-5x band — different lives, not equal ones.
