"Jobs fill you pockets, but adventures fill your soul" - Jaime Lyn
The extent to which we know about this world has always been ever changing through out the ages. The ancient Arkkadians only knew of the Euphroites and Tibrics rivers and the surrounding lands, The Machadonican's knew only of Greese up to the Indesus river, The Ramans knew the entirety of what we considered to be the "Human" world, at least the occidental world that is. However we know that this is not the true extant of the world, there lies of many distant lands beyond the ones here in Europa. As such history has had a fair share of countless explorers and adventurers which have followed the call to the unknown and set sail and foot into the brave new lands beyond which our archives detail. Obviously the descent into the unknown poses many dangers and problems, many do not survive the perilous journey. Those who do, however, cement themselves as legends in the books of countless societies for their contribution to knowledge. Others, however, seem to do it more for the thrill of the experience rather the rewards which it brings.
Tycho, A Nekomimi hailing from the Lorca Region, is one such example of this. A destitute and steadfast Neko searching and lusting for adventure and exploration, sometimes to a point of complete obsession. Whilst buried underneath the words and books of other more well known, human, explorers many scholars, especially amongst the new generation, would consider the feats which Tycho achieved as an explorer to trump all current great explorers and even challenge that of some of the established greats. Though there is much contention on the verifiable nature of the claims and tales made regarding Tycho as an explorer.
For starters Tycho's crew on her adventures is always described as under crewed, even by the most barebones standards, meaning that there are few credible sources to corroborate her story. Tycho also uses her own names and descriptions of the lands which she explores, making it hard for readers to see if she is describing an unknown or known land, this wouldn't be a problem usually if she had used referenced descriptors of the lands rather than made up names. Lastly, though this point of contention is mostly resolved as false it still has a few merits which don't rule it out of reasonable possibility, there is very few official academic and archival evidence of a Nekomimi named Tycho being born at all, this maybe due to the official status of Nekomimis in the region of Lorca and the lack of care to record and census them, supporting the idea that of Tycho and her writings to be nothing more than a collection of false anecdotes or fictional stories.
The collections of the writings regarding Tycho began with her, mostly true and factual, descriptions of her adventures through the regions of Gaul, describing fantastical tales of battles and the daily lives of those living in her home region of Lorca and beyond. Her subsequent stories follow the usual format of her adventures throughout the region which she is exploring, detailing anything she would come across. The integrity/plausibility of her stories would start to wane regarding her explorations of Greese and her origins of her ship: The Advent of Discovery.
The text describes Tycho wandering into the village of Taksi near the coast being both warmly welcomed and coldly ignored by the locals, though she experienced worse in her adventures. As she was about to pass on by, assuming that this village was of no greater importance, she noticed the scent of Fish coming from the village; being inclined to investigate further as she noted, several times throughout her writings, that fish was amongst her favorite foods to eat. That led her to the docks of the village where colossal ships of both size and quality lined the ports of the dock; despite this being a rather insignificant seaside village.
This is the first point of contention on whether or not Tycho's writings are true, this is because the village of Taksi does in fact exist in the region of North Machadonica however, as you might know, this region is completely landlocked, so the existence of a port and access to the sea is impossible; making it more likely, if this story was true, that Tycho mistook this village as Taksi.
Tycho would then recount her explorations of the docks, seeing the vast ships adorned with gold, diamonds, and various other precious gems and materials. This would lead to her encounter with a man simply mentioned as "The shipwright", she notes that the man was likely into the final years of his life, seeing that his appearance and overall demeanor evokes one of such age. The Shipwright offered to build Tycho her own ship if she were to beat him in a game of 4 player chess just between the two of them; to this offer Tycho agreed. Unfortunately for her it has been recounted that Tycho doesn't exactly have the mind of scholar, due to her often simple and somewhat childish ways she chosen to write; as such The Shipwright easily beat her in 2 moves. Tycho would continue to challenge The Shipwright continuously in a multitude of games, all of which resulting in her defeat within a few minutes, or even seconds, into the game.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Tycho, after playing hundreds of games with The Shipwright, was nearing her limit as she described being exhausted after these games. However she noted that The Shipwright didn't appear exhausted at all, or even bored, just smiling at her asking if she wanted to play again. It was an odd reaction and Tycho brought it up to the man as such. The Shipwright simply laughed and offered to build Tycho a ship regardless of the fact that she has lost several hundreds of times before. Taken aback but really wanting a ship to explore beyond the lands of the upper Mediterranean she accepts and stays in the village of Taksi for "a number of days" before the ship was completed.
This is another part of the story which is clouded in mystery, whilst Tycho could be using the phrase "a number of days" as a stand in for a really long time, Tycho writes as if only 2-3 days passed, normally this wouldn't be impossible to do, even alone, but the major facts being that The Shipwright was in an olden state and the fact that Tycho describes not seeing anyone help The Shipwright in the construction of the ship is certainly odd. However what makes this a near impossibility, even giving benefit to the doubt, were the estimated dimensions Tycho gave for the ship, estimating it at 150 feet in length, it is certainly a mighty ship, but to build one from scratch within a few days is all but impossible for a single person to accomplish. With this major discrepancy left aside. Tycho is handled the bottle to christen the ship with by The Shipwright, eagerly. Things would go awry for Tycho as the bottle fails to break, a tell tale sign of a maritime curse, dating many centuries ago; to give the ship good luck on it's voyages so that it may not sink. So immediately things were not looking for the new ship in which she had acquired. Fortunately for the ship The Shipwright decided to christen the ship instead to which the bottle broke instantly; thus securing the Advent of Discovery from any danger.
From here she would leave her land expeditions and sail the waters of the Mediterranean, seeing countless sights on shore such as the great lighthouse of Alexandios, the great entrances to the mighty Nile, her homeland of Lorca, and many more places. However the Mediterranean's offer of adventure was too little for Tycho's now feasting hunger for the thrill of journey and discovery. It would be at this point in which she decided to leave the Mediterranean and venture into the unknown Alantica, despite the obvious dangers which pose from an unknown and vast sea such as the Alantica her thirst to discover the unknown proved to prevail even in the face of majority opposition from Tycho's already barebones crew.
It is at this point in which most scholars tend to disregard the factual basis of Tycho's accounts of her adventures. Due to the rather controversial assumptions Tycho makes on these discoveries of hers. With her describing a large landmass off in the distance in the Alantica ocean, and of grand crystalline cities on the coast which triumph over any city which she has ever seen or known. Whilst this maybe a product of the long time Tycho and her crew have spent out at sea and the associated fatigues and hallucinations which come with it her writing in this part of her records seems to remain the same and indicate no sign of change of the mind, suggesting that this was not a byproduct of the sea playing tricks on the mind but rather her simple observations as she saw them. This is the most controversial part of Tycho's writings Other disbeliefs by most scholars include her expeditions to the far North which she also discovered great unknown landmasses, and even, though hotly debated, the Flugel homeland of Flugelslied to due her mentions of beings like angles dancing through the air of these specific lands. Her expeditions to the far East which scholars are more able to back up due to the well archived past expeditions by other explorers to the far East.
All in all it is estimated, believing that Tycho's recounts of her adventures is true, that she has explored a good 50% of the world at this point before all mentions of Tycho abruptly stopped, this maybe due to her going on another expedition whilst others point to the more cynical answer of her untimely demise as most explorers, especially as reckless and mentally-challenged explorers such as Tycho herself face. The whereabouts of this great explorer, even removing the racial biases which permeate Human academia, remain unknown to us now, but one must imagine the tales Tycho has yet to tell and record, and whether or not Humans are able to take it at face value. Tycho, for all that she has been made out to be, still remains an unknown footnote in the history of discovery, hopefully in due time not only can her anecdotes be verified but her rightful spot amongst the greatest explorers of this world has ever seen is recognized and celebrated.