| Festival of Flourishing | |
|---|---|
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Linked to | Ashore in Visage |
Festival of Flourishing is a collection of closely related Sunless Sea Story Events. See contents for details.
Trigger conditions
Festival of Flourishing is triggered by doing the Enter the Hollow of the Ear action while Ashore in Visage.
Festival of Flourishing
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Fall in line with the others, secretly bringing a flare with you Perhaps you will need it, in the darkness where you are going. |
 1 x Flare
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Ritual disobedience
It is a risk to bring it, but it would also be a risk to go without. You conceal the flare in the folds of your robe and fall into the procession. "May your sins weigh as stone," says the man in the jackal face, as you fall into line ahead of him.  Ritual Participant = 1 (Carrying a flare)
Triggers event: Inside the Hollow of the Ear
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| Fall in line with the others
How else will you discover what lies within? |
- | Among your own
You go as though you were truly one of them. You carry nothing with you but your mask and your costume. "May your heart be as light as a feather," says the woman in the lotus-blossom mask, as you fall into line behind her. Ritual Participant = 2 (Empty-handed)
Triggers event: Inside the Hollow of the Ear
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| Strip off your mask and prepare to depart
With everyone distracted by this festival, your departure would not even be noticed. |
- | Farewell to this island
When the procession has passed, you strip away your mask and costume and leave them on the floor in the Customs House. The arms you fold neatly across themselves in the fashion that is appropriate for this particular robe. Perhaps someone after you will care to take up your role.
 Visage
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This is your only chance to get out before you're locked in until the end. |
Inside the Hollow of the Ear
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Try to run
You do not really know what this festival is or what it means. |
- | No escape route
You try to stop and turn, but there are hands on your shoulders, and steady feet behind you. The passage is narrower and the stone walls are closer than you had thought they were. You cannot go out. There are too many people in too little space. And if anyone were to roll a boulder into the ear of Flourishing-of-Years, then you would be trapped here and there would be no recourse. "Steady on," says Bat-mask beside you. His accent is the accent of Wolfstack Docks. A moment later there's a pungent ammonia smell, as though he's cracked open smelling salts for you, though in this pure black you can't see a thing for sure. +2 x Ritual Participant ('Carrying a flare and nervous [3]' or 'Empty-handed and nervous [4]')
Triggers event: Deep Within
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| Continue
There is a secret in the dark. |
- | In line
The footsteps of the people are steady and synchronized, and you go together. For how many years has this been done, and for how many will it be done in the future? "Watch your step here," says Bat-mask to you in an undervoice. Its accent is the accent of Wolfstack Docks. "Floor is about to get squishier." And sure enough it does. +4 x Ritual Participant ('Carrying a flare and brave [5]' or 'Empty-handed and brave [6]')
Triggers event: Deep Within
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Deep Within
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Wait, listen
There are things here to learn, perhaps to your advantage. |
- | Not much for blackmail
You move stealthily through the dark, hearing one knot of conversation and then another. The secrets exchanged do not offer much leverage. You can't see the owners of the secrets. Here and there you catch the smallest fragment of something that might serve you on a future occasion: the memory of a voyage east, a half-rumour about the Carnelian Coast, a muttering about the Admiralty.  +100 x Fragment
Triggers event: Ritual's End
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| Tell one of your own secrets
All this time under the mask. It would be freeing. |
 1 x Lamentable Relic
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Strangely liberating
You begin to speak. Certain weights lift away. You have been in the wrong from time to time, but it is forgivable. -10 x Terror
+10 x Fragment
 -1 x Menaces: Nightmare's Strength
Triggers event: Ritual's End
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This doesn't take the Lamentable Relic. |
| Fight the urge to panic
The room may have got bigger, but you are still trapped like a bug in a bottle. |
Ritual Participant = 3 or 4 (Nervous, with or without flare)
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Grace
The trouble is, once you've realized that you're trapped, it's hard to unrealize it again. Someone squeezes your wrist. Grounds you. The panic goes out again in a rush. -10 x Terror
Triggers event: Ritual's End
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You'll be nervous if you tried to run Inside the Hollow of the Ear |
| Fight the urge to giggle
What curious practices they have here. |
Ritual Participant = 5 or 6 (Brave, with or without flare)
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Suppressed
You manage to stifle yourself. The only thing that comes out sounds like a sneeze. Here and there people are talking around you, telling of childhoods in padded nurseries, silenced under the Scarab-shaped baby mask. Other pasts, too, not all lived on Visage. +100 x Fragment
Triggers event: Ritual's End
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You'll be brave if you didn't try to run Inside the Hollow of the Ear |
| Receive the confidence of a stranger as holy
Those who come as spectators may remain as participants. |
- | Truths
In the deep shadow you hear things that you will never repeat. They are not the most dreadful of secrets or the most evil things you know, but they are entrusted to you as confessions. You needn't guard your face while you listen, because no one can see you. You needn't scheme about how to use the information, because you do not know whose secret this is: it has no use to you, except as a token of connection. -5 x Terror
+50 x Fragment
 +1 x Memory of Distant Shores
Triggers event: Ritual's End
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Ritual's End
| Ritual's End | |
|---|---|
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 168628 |
Festival of Flourishing is a Sunless Sea Story Event.
Story description
"The hour of confidence is drawing to its end. If there is anything else you need to do, now is the time."
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set off a flare, allowing you to see everyone
You will see everything. |
Visage: Ritual Participant = 5 [Carrying a flare and brave]
|
Ouch
The light is so sudden, so searing, that someone screams. All around you are... all sorts of things. Some are human, but you see other faces: rubbery, clay, some unrecognizably altered. The Chief Geometer, with his mask off, doesn't seem to be bothering to wear a face at all. Many faces are wet with tears. No one welcomes the blaze of light. Someone throws a cloak over the flare: a mistake, because of course it only begins to burn. After that someone manages to douse both flare and cloak. (Who in this crowd was carrying a bucket of water?) But it is put out, and someone's hands are clamped firm around your wrist. And that is the last that you see of Visage. You are taken blind back to the docks, your face covered in a black cloth that is no mask at all. Visage: Ritual Participant = 10 [Violator of the Sacred Mysteries]
 Visage: your Mask = 0 [Unmasked]
 +1 x Searing Enigma
-1 x Flare
 +1 x Secret
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| Set off a flare, lighting this place up
You will see everything. |
Visage: Ritual Participant = 3 [Carrying a flare and nervous]
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Out, out out
The light is so sudden, so searing, that someone screams. All around you are... all sorts of things. Some are human, but you see other faces: rubbery, clay, some unrecognizably altered. The Chief Geometer, with his mask off, doesn't seem to be bothering to wear a face at all. Many faces are wet with tears. No one welcomes the blaze of light. Someone throws a cloak over the flare: a mistake, because of course it only begins to burn. After that someone manages to douse both flare and cloak. (Who in this crowd was carrying a bucket of water?) But it is put out. You do get out, though. You're escorted back up the tunnel, double-quick, and no business about having to wait your turn in an endless file of people. The cold sea air is on your face. Visage: Ritual Participant = 10 [Violator of the Sacred Mysteries]
Visage: your Mask = 0 [Unmasked]
+1 x Searing Enigma
+1 x Secret
-1 x Flare
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| Shine a light on the bat-faced figure
Really it's just him you want to understand. |
Visage: Ritual Participant = 5 [Carrying a flare and brave]
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Bat
You hood the flare inside a lantern, but it's still distressfully bright in here. You shine the light on your companion. A man only, with a broad nose that looks like it has been broken repeatedly, and a missing tooth, and scars about the neck as though he has been executed many times. He gives you a sad, sheepish grin. "Nothing to see here," he says. "And they'll be putting me to death again soon enough, so you needn't have bothered." Already the others are swarming on him. Before your light goes out, you catch a glimpse of a noose, ready in someone's hand. The bats are not welcome here, it seems. Though after your violation of the mask-darkness, you aren't welcome either. Visage: Ritual Participant = 10 [Violator of the Sacred Mysteries]
+1 x Searing Enigma
Visage: your Mask = 0 [Unmasked]
+150 x Fragment
-1 x Flare
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| Do nothing |
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Last Bell
At the end of the hour there comes a woman with a feather of shimmering silver, which she tucks into your hand. Symbol of the innocent heart that will not be eaten by the jackal. Then a bell rings and the time of speech is over. You all begin to put your masks back on. It is possible - you cannot know for sure - that in this cover someone has exchanged a mask with someone else. It is an orderly and perfect line that emerges again from the ear of Flourishing-of-Years. If anyone watches from above, they must surely be satisfied. Visage: Ritual Participant = 9 [Respecter of the Sacred Mysteries]
 +1 x Captivating Treasure
+1 x Secret
Triggers event:  Ashore in Visage
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