Letters
Letters from villagers, soldiers and your family catch up with you at sidings and depots. Some ask for something. Keep the promise or miss it; the war goes on either way.
Shellfall tells its story through letters, the radio and the crew. Letters from villagers, soldiers and your own family arrive at the sidings and depots you pass, and in the quiet hours. Some bring news from home. Some ask you for something.
Where letters find you
A letter catches up with Old Marta wherever she stands. As you travel the The rail network you pass villages and depots, and the post finds you there. New letters wait in the Letters tab of the gunner's notebook. Each one shows the sender, the first words and a postmark that says where and when it reached you.
| From | Postmark | First words |
|---|---|---|
| Anna Halloran, Velde | Brennhof, 11 Nov | "Light up the sky on the 14th…" |
| Sister Ilse, Altwasser hospital | Altwasser, 9 Nov | "We moved the wounded at night…" |
| Your sister, Margit | Home, 2 Nov | "The pear tree finally fruited…" |
Small requests, kept or missed
Some letters ask for something small. "Don't shell the orchard, it's my grandfather's." "Light up the sky on the 14th so my son can see it." These are optional side requests. They reward restraint and care as much as accuracy, and keeping one often means being in the right place at the right time.
Light up the sky on the 14th so my son can see it. He is in the line at Velde and he writes that the nights are very dark there.
Anna Halloran
To keep Anna's promise, Marta has to be in range of Velde on the night of the 14th with a star shell loaded. A star shell lights a 200 m circle at night. See Shells. On that same night the Rustcoats may be massing somewhere else, and only you can choose which pull to answer. See Operations and requests.
When a promise is missed
A promise can be missed for good. There is no fail screen. The letter fades in your notebook and takes a Missed stamp, and later another letter acknowledges it.
You are in the east on the 14th. The night passes without a star shell over the western village. Weeks later the mother writes that she heard the guns that night, and does not say whether she saw a light.
Losses are told once, gently, and without blame:
The orchard at Velde is gone. Anna's letter came anyway.
Letters and the story
Letters also carry the larger story. When a story operation is lost, the people in it may write about what came next: after Brennhof falls, the nurse's next letter describes the retreat. When your side retakes a place, a letter can be part of the short aftermath. Letters are always written by people, in their own voice; the game never rewrites them as objectives. See The crew and The campaign: four seasons.