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Sleeping Griever
auto
Type Sky-Beast
Location Eleutheria

Sleeping Grievers are a type of Sky-Beast found in Eleutheria. (Quoting Failbetter:"...shine your light on them if you dare. That said, even with your light off they can sense your presence in other ways. We recommend you keep your Terror low when entering their territories. It’s not a good idea to bump into them either.")

Description[ | ]

When it awakes, it will fly towards your locomotive in an attempted kamikaze attack. If it is killed or makes contact with your locomotive, it will explode in a shower of bile that can cause serious damage.

A Griever, Defeated[ | ]

A Griever, Defeated
Bloody
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 299269

Several globs of Griever remain. They continue to spew livid ichor into the sky.

Interactions

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Extract the Griever's soul for the Diabolical Contriver
You order your driver to get as close as possible. It isn't easy. In its dying throes the Griever vomits up old, semi-digested spaces that it devoured long ago. One moment it is mere yards away, the next a mile.
The Devourers of Distance
The petite devil who the Contriver assigned to assist you opens an exterior hatch, and unwraps the implement she brought with her. Usually, the instrument used to extract a soul is the size and shape of a tuning fork. But this one is the length of a billhook, and triply-pronged. She thrusts it into the Griever's maw, twists – and drags out a soul like the memory lightning leaves on your eyes: jagged, ghostly and sharp. She wrestles it into a bell jar.
Examine its innards
Even in its last moments it spasms, violently, where the light touches it. But why?

Game note: Try to gain a Vision of the Heavens.

Failed event
A lost light
A crewman assists you. Unfortunately, his lamp provokes frenzied palpitations in the Griever's remains, causing an organ to rupture and spray him with ichor.

The substance inflicts a fatal episode of grief upon him. Contaminated by the Griever's anguish, too vast for a mortal to contain or understand, he raves about such parts of it as he can grasp. The Grievers mourn a light that died; one that they served.

Is that why they respond so violently to light? They wake, thinking it might be the light they worshipped, and then are reminded of their loss?
Successful event
The Devourers of Distance
It's the bones that catch your attention; specifically their marrow. A sigil is imprinted in it. Splitting a bone, you extract and slice the marrow. Every inch, you find a different sigil. Something has been written in the Grievers' bones.
Strip its hide to repair your hull
The largest gobbet is still half-covered in stiff, knobbled hide. It is probably sturdy enough to patch some fractured plating.

Game note: The higher your Iron skill, the more Hull you will repair.

Reinforcement
Its hide is wrinkled, the texture of baked elephant skin, and grimy with detritus accumulated during the Griever's long sleep. The creature must be centuries, even millennia, old. You flay the hide off, and stretch it over the cracks in your hull. That should do the trick.
Advanced query needs investigation

Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


Strip its hide to repair your hull
The largest gobbet is still half-covered in stiff, knobbled hide. It is probably sturdy enough to patch some fractured plating.

Game note: The higher your Iron skill, the more Hull you will repair.

Reinforcement
Its hide is wrinkled, the texture of baked elephant skin, and grimy with detritus accumulated during the Griever's long sleep. The creature must be centuries, even millennia, old. You flay the hide off, and stretch it over the cracks in your hull. That should do the trick.

Advanced query needs investigation Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


Excavate its digestive system
You will need the proper equipment, and a firm stomach of your own. But the oldest, most valuable things it devoured will be buried deep.

Game note: Search for Navaratine Gemstones.

Failed event
The Devourers of Distance
Rather than soil your engine with viscera, you perform the operation out in the sky. It's just as well. As soon as you cut into the Griever's stomach, the incision ruptures. Something huge begins to push its way out from inside. It is a slab of engraved masonry, which slides out and tumbles away into the sky. It is followed by an entire stone column, much longer than could ever have fitted into the stomach, and enough stone slabs to pave a town square. You barely manage to scramble aside before they crush or carry you with them.
Successful event
Gleaming in the gullet
Rather than soil your engine with viscera, you perform your investigation out in the sky. The Griever's stomach is impossibly cavernous, but a smaller organ attached to it – about the size of a pig ready for the butcher's block – seems swollen. Cutting through the muscled membrane, you find gemstones rattling it inside like a pocketful of gallstones. Hello. What are you doing here?
Dig in its throat
Might something of value have been caught in its gullet? Do you have the gumption to look?

Game note: Gain sovereigns. The better your Iron, the more you may find.

Failed event Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


Swallowed
You hold the mouth open while a crewman crawls in and digs splinters of precious stones from the throat. But he reaches too far, slips, and slides down the throat. His scream continues a long time, before vanishing into the distance – far longer than it should have taken to reach the Griever's stomach.
Successful event
Gifts in the gullet
A crewman holds the mouth open for you. You endure the meat stink and the gelatinous saliva and the bile-bubbles for as long as you can, digging gem-shards and glittering relic-fragments from the flesh.
Decipher the sigils in its bones
The Griever's marrow is laced with symbols. You have seen enough of the sky's wonders to attempt a rough translation.

Game note: Trade Visions of the Heavens for a Moment of Inspiration and Experience.

The Devourers of Distance
The Grievers are not one of Mr Darwin's cosmic accidents; they were made. The sigils, you believe, describe their purpose and their place. You identify a symbol of consumption, another of duty or responsibility, another of violation. As best as you can tell, when the laws of distance were broken – when there existed places that should not be – the Grievers were sent to correct the situation.


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