| Geometer's House | |
|---|---|
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Linked to |  Ashore in Visage
|
Geometer's House is a Sunless Sea Story Event.
Trigger conditions[ | ]
Geometer's House is triggered by doing the Visit the House of the Chief Geometer action while Ashore in Visage.
Story description[ | ]
"Now you have been invited to his home, at the time customarily appointed for him to receive those who are not his equal in rank, yet not so far beneath him as to deserve to be ignored. What ceremonial gift will you bring?"
Interactions[ | ]
Unless otherwise specified, taking a single action here will return you to Ashore in Visage.
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bring nothing It is impertinent for one of lesser rank to presume to show charity to a superior. |
No.
You arrive empty-handed. Already piled on his table are the wrappings of other gifts. They reprove you. You have erred. You have no choice to depart early, before someone thinks to have you re-masked in a more embarrassing part.
 +1 x Expertise in Parts (if ≤ 8)
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| Bring a string of rats Cobras like to eat rodents, surely? |
For the cat
The rats are accepted but immediately passed on to the household cat - a sleek black satisfied creature, in its own small mask of filigree gold.
Awkwardly, this leaves you with no other gift for the Geometer himself. You have no choice to depart early, before someone thinks to have you re-masked in a more embarrassing part.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Bring a necklet of lapis beads If they do not suit him, they may suit a wife of his; if they don't suit her, he can use them for an offering. |
Feeling blue
He gives them to a servant with orders that they be crushed, and the powder made to pigment, and the pigment used for painting. It is uncertain whether this is a deadly insult.
You aren't thrown out of the house, at any rate.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Bring a comb made of bone Perhaps he grows hair beneath his mask, which covers his whole head. |
For the cat
Flung away into a corner! Broken! He is disdainful. What use for a comb to a man whose head is covered in bare scales day in and out?
From a joker, for instance baboon mask, it would have been a very good witticism, but from you, no! Wholly out of place!
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Bring fresh candles You have heard that he likes candles. |
Expertise in Parts ≤ 5
 Foxfire Candles ≥ 1
|
Hunger set aside
The gift is suited to him personally: one can see this by the way that he hesitates regretfully before he performs the rejection that etiquette requires. It was thoughtful, but it is not the gift of Moth to Cobra. Therefore, wrong.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
|
You don't lose the candle. |
| Bring two honey cakes Isn't that the proper gift for lulling snakes? |
Triumph
He accepts; he approves. The cakes are placed on the front table of his receiving room so that the other guests may observe and appreciate the correctness of your gesture.
You are permitted to stand to one side and to watch the others arrive, but there is no one whose gift supplants yours in the place of honor. Not even the gift of a preserved lark, frozen in gelatin with a bubble of song rising from its open beak. When you depart the Chief Geometer's house, he presses on you a prediction: that one day when you have most need, the earth will swallow you in one place and spit you out in another. It is, of course, only a ritual saying. +1 x Expertise in Parts (if ≤ 8)
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| Bring a poem concerning snakes, copied on a new scroll 800 lines on the scaly denizens of the snake pit. |
Mixed results
He appears to be pleased by this gift, but it takes him aback, as well. Several times he remarks that this sort of merchandise is something he would expect to be brought to the island by a Bat.
It requires a great deal of chittering and wing-folding to persuade him of your Moth nature.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Do not go It is necessary for him to offer but incorrect for you to accept. |
Nothing lost but nothing gained
You sit at home, in a quake. When he sends a message to reprove you for your non-attendance, is this also part of the dance?
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Apis Temple | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Linked to | Ashore in Visage
|
Apis Temple[ | ]
Apis Temple is a Sunless Sea Story Event.
Trigger conditions[ | ]
Apis Temple is triggered by doing the Visit the Temple of Apis action while Ashore in Visage.
Story description[ | ]
"The priests gather around the bull, capturing its blood in cups."
Interactions[ | ]
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ask whether the bull will be all right It doesn't look well. |
Bad question
The question displeases the priests. How ill-omened, even to suggest that the bull might die!
If it does die, of course (says one in an aside), there will be another born with the same markings, if not on Visage itself, then somewhere around the Unterzee. Apis is never gone, but sometimes his spirit goes astray. To show you the sort of markings they mean, they lift its tongue, and show you the jewel-coloured scarab on the underside. It looks more like a tattoo than a birthmark. The bull rolls its eyes and pulls its head away. +1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Offer to sell them a new, undamaged bull You could arrange an import through the proper contacts. |
Perhaps not
The priests are not impressed with the offer. Moon-Moths are not supposed to partake in commercial or religious endeavours. Besides, it's plain from your offer that you don't understand the requirements for identifying the Apis bull, including the important rule that there can be only one at a time.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Collect some of the blood for yourself Perhaps it is a holy relic. Perhaps it could be sold as one to unsuspecting buyers elsewhere. |
The priests don't prevent you.
But they aren't precisely pleased, either. In fact, they are highly suspicious of why Moon-Moth would want such a thing until you explain that you need it to educate some especially ignorant and impious visitors.
Then they let you go ahead.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
 +1 x Outlandish Artefact
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| Leave a respectful token of offering Even wounded, it remains a god. |
Impeccable
The tokens are small and not very valuable, as suits your lower rank in the community. The priests arrange them on a table with other small items.
As you go out, you pass by the more impressive gifts: drafting tools from the Chief Geometer, scales from Jackal, a heap of foreign coin brought home by Crocodile.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
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| Observe and make notes The customs here may be worth reporting later. |
- | You alone may act
The priests would be suspicious of anyone else who did this. But you, as Moon-Moth, often have a need to narrate the rituals of Visage to newcomers. The explanations in the Library of Parts are not suitable for strangers, and therefore you are expected to compose your own.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
 +1 x Intriguing Snippet
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| Try to bandage the bull It is a shame to see it suffering so. |
Expertise in Parts ≤ 5
 Hearts challenge (125 for 100%)
|
Failed event | |
| Bellowing and goring
You try to bind up the wound, but the bull cannot bear to be touched, and you are forced to give up, as further experiments will end in your being gored as well. In any case, veterinary interventions are not a Moth-like function.
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| Successful event | |||
| Out of character, but no one minds
You do the task well. The animal stops the most distressing of its noises, and lies down.
The priests are suspicious. Medical knowledge is not a part of the etiquette of the Moth. On this one occasion, they are grateful enough not to have you removed, however.
+1 x Visage: Expertise in Parts
 +10 Fragment
|
| Beside the Face | |
|---|---|
| |
| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Linked to | Ashore in Visage
|
Beside the Face[ | ]
Beside the Face is a Sunless Sea Story Event.
Trigger conditions[ | ]
Beside the Face is triggered by doing the Visit the Side of the Face action while Ashore in Visage.
Story description[ | ]
"Up on the hillside, the buildings become scarcer and then vanish entirely, leaving you looking at the bottom of a great chin."
Interactions[ | ]
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Push a visiting Bat off the stone chin The visitor is wearing all black, and keeps reaching up to scratch under its bat-mask. |
Perhaps not
You approach the Bat. It takes a step sideways away from the cliff edge and cocks its head at you. "Ey there," it says. "You're not me executioner."
Perhaps it's not your role, then.
+1 x Expertise in Parts |
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| Deface the stone with new markings Imprint yourself on history. |
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Caught in the act
You ready your hand to write, but you don't get further than a few exclamatory glyphs before you're interrupted by a Jackal and led away for judgement. They don't take kindly to such interventions.
When you recover from the pain they visit on you, you're back where you started. No mask, no costume, no reputation for expertise.
 +1 x Menaces: Wounds
 +10 x Terror
Expertise in Parts = 0
 Visage: your Mask = 0 |
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| Silently observe the attitude of the visiting Lion It is paying obeisance to the face. |
Service and worship
You contemplate the Lion for some time. There is an arithmetic sequence to the count of bows that it performs to each feature: the eyes, the nose, each lip. It is hard to know whether Lion is meant to be her worshipper or her lover. Perhaps the two functions are not very distinct.
When at last the Lion's bows are complete, it passes you with a slight snap of its mask-jaws. It was rude of you to stand there watching. The Moth watches visitors. It does not watch citizens. To do so has violated the strictures of both of your roles.
+1 x Expertise in Parts |
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| Meditate on the meaning of the face It offers many forms of inspiration. |
Flourishing in eternity
The citizens give many meanings to the face: perpetual beauty; stasis; the idea of looking upward into an unyielding darkness. But most of all they speak of the idea of someone above looking down. The face is not convenient to view from down here. It would look its best from the perspective of the ceiling of the Unterzee, beyond reach.
+1 x Intriguing Snippet
+1 x Expertise in Parts (If Expertise in Parts ≤ 8) |
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| Look for the doorway into the Ear It must be around here somewhere. |
 Ritual Participant ≥ 9 and ≤ 12 |
Harder to find
You climb up along the side of Flourishing's cheek, following a staircase of worn steps. You don't remember the path being this difficult before.
The entry, when you come to it, is plugged with a substance fibrous as spider silk but slick and waxy to the touch. Is this new? Does it grow here? Do they clear it away every year? Is it a form of security? But it doesn't yield to your hand. |
|
| Offer instruction to the Frog that found its way up here That's the sort of thing your Moth would have done to you. |
 Pages challenge (85 for 100%) |
Failed event | |
| Attended by some awkwardness
You tell the Frog a partially true story about how this face was carved.
It replies with questions. Detailed, astute, scholarly questions, about who the original people were who inhabited the island and whether the present citizens are their descendants, and, if not, where the original inhabitants might have gone. It hasn't learned the role of stupid credulity at all. Caught off guard like this, you have a hard time answering its questions smoothly. You part with irritation on both sides. +1 x Expertise in Parts | |||
| Successful event | |||
| Creditable on both sides
You tell the Frog a partially true story about how this face was carved. The Frog replies with an amplified belch and a story it heard about the sphinxes known as the Salt Lions. It's really a very good Frog.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
+10 x Fragment | |||
| Study ancient marks Tiny pictures march across the stone. |
Pages challenge (170 for 100%) |
Failed event | |
| Old words
No matter how you hold your head, no matter in what direction you try to read the script, you can't make out the meaning. They're in too old a dialect. Not to mention that the ones near the bottom get smaller and harder to read.
+1 x Expertise in Parts | |||
| Successful event | |||
| Love and labour costs
The pictures tell a story: this is the face of a woman, Flourishing-of-Years, who once was loved by one of the nobles inhabiting this island. But then she - what's this pictogram? ascended? bloomed? flew away? And consumed with grief he assembled those-who-carve-great-things-from-stone and remade the whole surface of the island.
There are several more lines after that, which narrate the cost of the labour contract for the workers, and what was done with all the stone that was carted away, and the compensation given to those who had formerly owned houses on what is now face territory.
+1 x Expertise in Parts
+10 x Fragment |