The iron republic has a trade agreement with london, lots of coal is imported, and other things are exported. there must be thousands of the devils in london, and they even have an embassy.
The khanate’s relations with london aren’t exactly friendly, but they’re not in open war either. Khan’s heart allows foreign traders, albeit with some suspicion.
And isn’t the neq sequence supposed to be in hiding while they build power?
Why the heck then, do all these factions attack me on sight, while i’m trying to trade with their home nations :( this really makes no sense and it’s incredibly frustrating
The devils see humans as a walking soul so don’t think they can be interested and if they’re friednly is just to take your soul.
London took the place of the khanate after the fall, of course they’re hostile and they see londoners as surfacers, the new sequence has been brainwashed by the dawn machine so don’t expect a polite behaviour, they just want to complete the machine (and that’s bad, really bad).
The iron republic is just a bad, bad place in anarchy and populated by devils
I’m not too familiar with the history of privateering, but didn’t it occur even when the nations involved weren’t at open war? London would go broke fast if it sent out a battleship every time it heard a rumor of a Londoner’s ship sinking.
Remember, The Iron Republic is just a gaggle of anarchists and opportunists with a lot of guns and zero consistency. It’s established canon that they’ll harass shipping and even make raids on underprotected settlements, for reasons that are unclear. Hell, they don’t even have a consistent chain of cause and effect through time - it’s entirely possible that they’re attacking you in retaliation for the drubbing you gave them after they attacked you tomorrow. As for the Khanate, well, after the civil war between the traditionalist militarist faction and the centralising noble houses, the Khanate doesn’t have so much control over their warships as they’d like. I daresay they turn a blind eye to privateering - if the privateers succeed, they’re loyal subjects defending the Khanate, and if they fail, they’re lawless pirates from Khan’s Shadow causing trouble.
At Gaider’s Mourn you can encounter a Khaganian captain in an incomplete red and gold military uniform. He’s either an ex-military man whose gone pirate or a pirate pretending to be a member of the Khaganian navy. So those Khanate ships attacking you could easily be rogues. It is after all perfectly possible for the player to turn pirate and attack London’s merchant marine without serious repercussions from the authorities. But then, when a merchant ship goes missing whose to say it was pirates or Khaganians who took it and not a mutiny or a ferocious Zee monster? I think at Zee anything goes, let the traveler beware.
This actually has some historical precedent, albeit long before the latter part of the 19th century.
Nations who were ostensibly at peace would have hostile naval encounters all the time, ranging from the English privateer’s of Queen Elizabeth’s day to the press ganging of American & British crews during the War of 1812.
Captains know that it’s every man for himself on the open water and, oftentimes, what happens a Zee stays a Zee.
And remember, you’re not a HMS. You’re just some guy. Odds are what they did will never get back to land and you have so many sweet, sweet supplies to salvage!
By the time it gets back to the requisite diplomats in the appropriate country, cooler heads prevail and negotiations are made.
Sometimes it’s so bad that it leads to open warfare, and it might very well be coming in the Neath eventually, but more often than not countries are willing to grant their naval captains a lot of leeway because everyone is doing it.
Just know that your captain probably went to the Foreign Office and made a complaint which was promptly ignored. Your frustration is shared by countless merchant captains throughout history. So you’re in good company!