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A Homestead
Homestead ambience
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 274999

A Homestead is a Sunless Skies Story Event that begins when interacting with a Homestead discovery.

Story description[ | ]

Settlers who live so far beyond the edge of civilisation relish the hardships of solitude. They will fiercely defend their small territories – but occasionally welcome company and trade.

A Discovery!(Homestead)

Trigger conditions[ | ]

Area: Limbo
Frequency: Always (100%)

Interactions[ | ]

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
An Opportunity! Offer to trade for their surplus of seeds
The Reach has recently enjoyed one of its frequent, unpredictable harvests. This homestead's gardens and fields burst with unlikely vegetation.
Eat your fill
Hospitality is important on the frontier. The settlers invite you to join them for a meal.

Game note: This will reduce Terror and, if you are starving, buy you some time.

Breaking bread
Spin them a yarn of your adventures
New customs spring up quickly in the High Wilderness. One of the most widely-observed insists that a good story must be repaid with gifts.

Game note: Trade a Sky-Story for Supplies.

Stranger than fiction
Your host is eager to hear of your adventures in the sky. Before you leave, they press a heavy bundle into your arms.
Share gossip from civilisation
New customs spring up quickly in the High Wilderness. One of the most widely-observed insists that a good story must be repaid with gifts.

Game note: Trade Salon-Stewed Gossip for Supplies.

Precious as gold
Your host is desperate to hear news from New Winchester and London. The scandals, the fashions, the feuds. They listen intently, like an avaricious relative at the reading of a will. When you leave, you discover a generous bundle left on the footplate of your engine.
Trade them some of your supplies
They're proud, and insist on making a fair trade.

Game note: Trade Supplies for Bronzewood.

Tit for tat
They are timberers, sawing 'twigs' from the great bronzewoods of the Reach and selling them to passing traders. They offer several gleaming logs in return for your supplies.
Trade them some munitions
The ragged steam-trails of Marauders have scarred the skies of late.

Game note: Trade Carefully-Packed Munitions for Bronzewood.

A fair trade
The settler assesses the armaments with a seasoned eye, offering several lengths of good, freshly-bored heartwood in exchange.
Search the abandoned homestead
Perhaps the settlers left something behind?
Failed event Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


A harsh end
You recover food-tins and old wax-stoppered bottles from the house. During your search you found signs of struggle: broken plates, toppled chairs, a bullet dug into a lintel.
Successful event
Booty
You find bottles of homemade wine in the cellar, pots of meat pickling under the soil by the doorstep, and salvageable tools in an overgrown shed. Modest treasures that could mean the difference between life and death if your fortunes turn.
Search the abandoned homestead
Perhaps the settlers left something behind?
Failed event
A final inhabitant
The house is empty, except for a stinking corpse laid out on the kitchen table. A tablecloth, rapidly discolouring, has been laid over it for modesty. Boxes under the table contain old crockery, which must have been imported through the Avid Horizon in the first days of the Empire's expansion.
Successful event
An unwanted wedding gift
The house has been stripped of its valuables, except for a dresser containing an apparently complete collection of blue-glazed crockery. It is decorated with saccharine scenes of Old London. Shame to see it wasted.
Search the abandoned homestead
Perhaps the settlers left something behind?
Failed event Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


A fetid clue
The homestead has already been pillaged. However, an odious smell leads you to a loose floorboard, where someone has concealed a bundle of blood-caked valuables. The rings are still attached to severed fingers, and the ear-rings to ears. Hence, presumably, the smell.
Successful event
Hidden treasure
The house has already been plundered, but the plunderers missed the patch of turned earth beside the back door. The settlers buried their valuables here, presumably intending to return.
Return fire
You'll not stand for that!
Failed event
A strategic withdrawal
It's no good. The house is practically a fortress, and the inhabitants are well-armed. When an impeccable shot drops the crewman beside you, you decide to beat a retreat.
Successful event
To the victor the spoils
Your rounds ring off the house's iron skin, and find the gaps between its makeshift plates. Eventually, someone waves a white bedsheet from the window and throws out a satchel that clinks with jewellery and silver.
Partial success event (5%)
Spiteful incandescence
Your rounds ring off the house's iron skin, and find the gaps between its makeshift plates. There is an agonised scream; a spray of blood; the sound of a gun's chamber locking. They must be on the verge of surrender, surely? Then you smell burning. Someone's lit the steading ablaze. A door slams. You can see figures running through the smoke.
Enter the steading
Recover what you can before the flames consume it.
You take a handful of stokers (whose lungs are used to smoke) and hurtle into the smouldering homestead. Posters of Tackety Jack blacken and peel from the walls; ramshackle leather roofing crackles like sausages in a frying pan. An intrepid stoker dares the fire-choked kitchen, and emerges black-faced but laden with barely charred provisions.
Pursue the villains!
They'll be making off with their valuables. They're desperate. With desperation comes danger.
You order your crew forward, racing around the smouldering homestead and through the billowing smoke. There! A shadow ahead— A bullet whizzes through the choking smog. You are lucky; your signaller is not. Blood runs through the smoke. There is more gunfire. There are more bodies. You recover a hefty bag of coinage from the slightest corpse.
Bring a colony of ants aboard
The Phlegmatic Researcher of Leadbeater & Stainrod requested a sample of the little dears.
A few shovelfuls of dirt into a glass tank, and you've thousands of the crawlers to bring him.
Bring a colony of ants aboard
The Phlegmatic Researcher of Leadbeater & Stainrod requested a sample of the little dears.
A few shovelfuls of dirt, into a nice glass tank, and you've thousands of the crawlers to bring him.
Explore a cavern beneath the homestead
Those living here dismantled their locomotive to build their home. The bridge – now windowless – has been transformed into the front porch. Tied to it is a large wooden sign: 'TOURS AVAILABLE'.
Failed event
A grisly attraction
The woman who welcomes you beams and directs you into her cellar. A tunnel is cut into its walls, braced with old pipes and coupling rods. The ceiling is low, and the woman's lantern casts an eery crimson light which illuminates the bloodstains perfectly. "Ghoulish ain't it? Legend says this is where Tackety Jack made his last stand against the Windward Company, before they done 'im in seventy times with an axe. This axe—" She indicates an implement daubed in scarlet. You make your excuses.
Successful event
A scintillating grotto
The woman who welcomes you beams and directs you into her cellar. A tunnel is cut into its walls, braced with old pipes and coupling rods. The ceiling is low, and it's a while before you can straighten. Your guide raises her lantern. The walls coruscate – gold, cerulean and verdigris.
Tell the men to stop
They roll on the floor, grasping for purchase and shouting complaints.
Ignored
The men are greying and scarred; their arms are brown as teak and knotted with muscle. They strike indiscriminately, but – thus far – ineffectually. As far as you can tell, they're fighting over what colour to paint a shared outhouse.
Forcibly separate the pair
This is nonsense. They are too old to be settling their problems this way. Especially out here, far from medical aid.
Neither man thanks you, but they are more sulky than angry. Even on these far, lonesome rocks, men still find cause to fight. You suppose the consistency is reassuring.
Advanced query needs investigation
Steal supplies while they're distracted
They should consider this a sound moral lesson in peaceful co-existence.
You make away with a box of vittles. Perhaps, when they realise what's happened, it will help bring peace. They'll realise there are worse things than each other in the sky. There's you, for a start.
Invite one to join your crew
Perhaps they'd be happier apart.
The settler you left behind makes rude gestures as you depart, while your new crewman grins. Despite his age, he is limber, and his experience compensates for his early nights and occasional lumbago. He also tells a good yarn, once you've got some whisky into him.
Tell the men to stop
They roll on the floor, grasping for purchase and shouting complaints.
Ignored
The men are greying and scarred; their arms are brown as teak and knotted with muscle. They strike indiscriminately, but – thus far – ineffectually. As far as you can tell, they're fighting over what colour to paint a shared outhouse.
Forcibly separate the pair
This is nonsense. They are too old to be settling their problems this way. Especially out here, far from medical aid.
Neither man thanks you, but they are more sulky than angry. Even on these far, lonesome rocks, men still find cause to fight. You suppose the consistency is reassuring.

Advanced query needs investigation

Steal supplies while they're distracted
They should consider this a sound moral lesson in peaceful co-existence.
You make away with a box of vittles. Perhaps, when they realise what's happened, it will help bring peace. They'll realise there are worse things than each other in the sky. There's you, for a start.
Approach the workers
Perhaps they have supplies to trade.
Unwelcome
The farmers frown when you near, and turn away. They have no interest in conversation – grumbling over the dry dirt. A child, sitting on the lowest step of a porch, calls you over. "They won't talk to you. They're too busy. They're always too busy." She has been drawing with a stick in the dirt. She adds a spiral, digging deeply. The stick snaps. "Do you want to hear a story?"
Listen to the story
You are in no particular hurry.
She smiles coyly. She'll only tell you if you move close enough to hear a whisper. "It's a true story. You aren't allowed to tell anyone else. You won't tell, will you?"

Of course you wouldn't. Only a monster would betray the confidence of a child.

You listen closely. Wait. That can't be true. Can it?
Look at the child's drawing
It spans the width of the house. She's been working on it for hours.
"No, you have to look at it from here." She insists you stand on a rickety chair, perched precariously on the top step. It takes a moment, but you see it: that pebble is the homestead, then that line marks a path not unlike the one your locomotive took to get here. But what might those circles be?
Investigate the home
Perhaps the inhabitants are at dinner, or keep odd hours.
Abandoned?
The door and windows are boarded up from the outside. Judging from the lack of dust on the porch, the inhabitants only departed recently. It is easy enough to get in – the nails are only loosely hammered in.
Plunder the pantry
It's probably not theft if the property is abandoned.
The pantry is sparse, but will provide a few meals of salted meat and hardtack. Food fit for the frontier.
Investigate the property
There's no one here, and there's no indication where the occupants could have gone. What happened?
No furniture is upturned. There are no bloodstains. But it doesn't seem the occupants had much time to plan their departure. There are bundles of unwashed laundry. There is a pile of children's toys in one room. A Bible lies open in the kitchen, by the knife rack. Psalm 109 has been excised.
Trade with the collector
A florid gentleman invites you into his home. Precariously stacked crates form a corridor to his living room. The couch is occupied – by pots of exotic plants. One snaps as you walk by.

Game note: Trade an Uncanny Specimen for a Cache of Curiosities.

An eager swap
The collector holds your specimen up to a lamp, furrows his forehead, and grunts approvingly before shoving the specimen into a wicker cage. He leads you out of his home and gestures to a large crate on one side of the porch. It's for you.
Join the celebration
The dancing is focused around a young pair, wrapped in each other's arms. To one side is a table, replete with Reach harvest: several swollen gourds, what might be a large purple melon, and some definitely-not grapes.
Welcome
A child tries to pull you into the revels. Her father smiles and apologises for her forwardness, but reiterates her invitation. Guests are helping themselves to the food, others are dancing.
Dance with them
The homesteaders are uncoordinated, but happy.
The dance is informal and no one seems to have agreed on a style. This couple are doing what might be a mazurka, while that one is perhaps attempting a polka. Eventually, you manage to find someone doing something recognisably a waltz.
Eat wedding cake
It's huge. Over-catered is an understatement.
A harried groomsman cuts slice after slice. "Please, take it. Or I'll be eating it for months." Well, it's the least you can do.
Speak to the matriarch
An old woman observes the celebration. From the way the guests speak to her, it is clear she's in charge.
"Never would have thought my daughter would have settled for this 'un." She gestures with her chin at the groom. "God knows how he makes her this happy. If I was her, I'd have given him a clip round the ear and sent 'im packing, but the youth of today have very low standards."
Quickly dispose of a Death in a Jar
You could bury it somewhere in the homestead's grounds.
A needle in a haystack
There are a thousand flyspeck homes like this scattered across the Reach. Even if someone searched this one, they'd never think to dig in this unassuming patch of earth. The jar is as safe as if it were in Hallidge's vault.
Leave swiftly
Perhaps you'd rather not risk encountering hostile strangers. Perhaps you want to avoid small talk.
Depart
No one who lives in the wild is likely to welcome strangers.
Leave swiftly
Perhaps you'd rather not risk encountering hostile strangers. Perhaps you want to avoid small talk.
Depart
No one who lives in the wild is likely to welcome strangers.
Eat your fill
The homesteaders welcome you to their repast with a toothy smile.

Game note: If you are starving, this will buy you some time.

Rich and fresh
The homestead has a remarkably well-stocked meat larder – a surprise, given that their livestock consists of a single mangy goat. The meat is gamey and rich. Seared and salted, with a thick slice of bread, it makes a delicious meal. Hunger(BiteToEat)
Eat nothing and leave
The homesteaders have plenty to share, they assure you. Repeatedly.
Unconcealed disappointment
The homesteaders insist on showing you their meat-larder to prove that you would not be imposing. It is crammed full – a surprise, given that their livestock consists of a single mangy goat. When, despite this, you leave without pausing for refreshments, their smiles turn to grimaces.


Links[ | ]

Links In[ | ]

Verdantseeds An Opportunity: Seeds from a Steading

Links Out[ | ]

Supplies Cache of Curiosities, Verdantseeds An Opportunity: Seeds from a Steading


Template:Navbox story events

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