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An Encounter in the Blue Kingdom
Maskedshade
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 302139

An Encounter in the Blue Kingdom is a Sunless Skies Story Event.

Story description[ | ]

"Airs of the Blue Kingdom(encounter_text1) "

Trigger conditions[ | ]

Area: Limbo
Frequency: Always (100%)

Interactions[ | ]

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Look to Litigator: the Cowled Loquacitor(name)Litigator: the Embittered Devil(name)Litigator: the Nameless Spirit(name) for guidance
Should you be kneeling as well?
Appropriate etiquette
"A Servitor of the Blue Kingdom," murmurs Litigator: the Cowled Loquacitor(name)Litigator: the Embittered Devil(name)Litigator: the Nameless Spirit(name), gently pushing you to your knees and handing you a stick of chalk. "One of the Sapphir'd King's most trustworthy servants, only a step below the Logoi. There are many possible obeisances, but the simplest is to scrawl your name in the gutter and sweep it out as it walks past." You do as instructed. The Servitor doesn't so much as glance your way; in moments, it turns the corner and is gone. All around you, spirits clamber to their feet and resume their business.
Continue walking, eyes averted
You're a visitor, and they cannot expect you to know the appropriate rituals. Right?
A breach of etiquette
The tall spirit glances your way, expressionless, and points. A smaller spirit detaches from its side and rushes towards you, wielding a clipboard like an executioner's axe. "No, no, no!" An exasperated voice echoes from the clay jar on the smaller spirit's back. "You have failed to correctly perform your rituals of obeisance before the Servitor! Quite irregular behaviour, not to be tolerated. The customary penance is to donate a year from your memories."
Pay the penance
The Auditor lifts a smouldering censer and blows thick, pomegranate-scented smoke in your face. Your eyelids shut...

Game note: This will reduce your Experience.

When you regain consciousness you find the Auditor holding up a vial to the light. Inside, images you only vaguely recognise flicker and repeat. "I took the best year you had," says the Auditor without a hint of apology in its tone. "So that next time you'll remember your place."
Flee
The auditor-spirit will make a note of your name, and underline it several times.

Game note: You will lose an Indulgence, or gain Terror if you don't have one.

Every single spirit follows as you run. By the time you arrive back at your engine, you are pursued by a horde of the civic-minded dead. When your door slams, they disperse. But the Blue Kingdom's institutional memory is practically infinite. Your fine-dodging will never be forgotten.
Fade into the background
You're Invisible, after all. The larger spirit shouldn't even notice you.
An escape
The spirit walks past you without a second glance, and vanishes around a corner. All around you, spirits clamber to their feet and resume their business. Sometimes, it's useful to go unnoticed.
Attempt to mimic the surrounding spirits' obeisances
They are holding up trinkets, and scrawling symbols, and making complex gestures, almost too fast for the eye to follow.
Failed event
A breach of etiquette
The tall spirit glances your way, expressionless, and points. A smaller spirit detaches from its side and rushes toward you, wielding a clipboard like an executioner's axe. "No, no, no!" An exasperated voice echoes from the clay jar on the smaller spirit's back. "You have failed to correctly perform your rituals of obeisance before the Servitor! Quite irregular behaviour, not to be tolerated. The customary penance is to donate a year from your memories."
Pay the penance
The auditor-spirit lifts a smouldering censer and blows thick, pomegranate-scented smoke in your face. Your eyelids shut...

Game note: This will reduce your Experience.

When you regain consciousness you find the Auditor holding up a vial to the light. Inside, images you only vaguely recognise flicker and repeat. "I took the best year you had," says the Auditor without a hint of apology in its tone. "So next time you'll remember your place."
Flee
The auditor-spirit will make a note of your name, and underline it several times.

Game note: You will lose an Indulgence, or gain Terror if you don't have one.

Every single spirit follows as you run. By the time you arrive back at your engine, you are pursued by a horde of the civic-minded dead. When your door slams, they disperse. But the Blue Kingdom's institutional memory is practically infinite. Your fine-dodging will never be forgotten.
Successful event
Appropriate etiquette
Glancing from side to side, you kneel and bow and wave your hands at the appropriate times, like a newcomer at a dance-class. The tall spirit seems to find your efforts satisfactory. In moments, it turns the corner and is gone. All around you, spirits clamber to their feet and resume their business.
Make the writhing spirit as comfortable as possible
As you kneel, it fiercely grasps your hand.
Gone
"Be careful," mutters the bureaucrat, stepping back. "You might catch something."

The spirit clutches at you, and moans, and whispers incoherently. Its back arches. It begins to wither, to unravel, spools of thread uncurling from its robe and winking out of existence.

"Now it will never get a chance to pass through the Door," says the bureaucrat, shaking his head. "It will just be gone. Oblivion. Nothing."

The spirit is almost vanished now. Only a wisp remains in your palm. And then—

"Nothing," repeats the bureaucrat. "Ah, well."
Offer a mystery to keep it rooted to the world
You kneel and whisper something in its ear.

Game note: You will not be rewarded for this kindness.

Words that fasten and bind
As your words sink in, the spirit's unravelling form coalesces. Its writhing ceases. It lies inert in the gutter, contemplating what you have said. "It'll survive a little longer now," says the voice from the bureaucrat's jar. The bureaucrat lifts the diseased spirit and props it up against a wall. "Maybe even long enough to pass through the Door, with a bit of luck. Well done."
Rare event (5%)
Words that fasten and bind
As your words sink in, the spirit's unravelling form coalesces. Its writhing ceases. It lies inert in the gutter, contemplating what you have said. "It'll survive a little longer now," says the voice from the bureaucrat's jar. The bureaucrat lifts the diseased spirit and props it up against a wall. "Maybe even long enough to pass through the Door, with a bit of luck. Well done."
Hurry quickly away
Nothing to be done.
Oblivion
As you turn your back, you hear a keening lamentation. A single glance back confirms that the gutter is empty, the spirit is entirely gone. The world bustles on without it.
Walk on
There is nothing to be done.
by the grace of God
The Weary Spirit shuffles past you clutching its jar tightly, as though for companionship. The voice in the jar is that of an infant, and it sobs and gasps as the Spirit hurries away. The dead bureaucrats following the spirit bow once, in respect for your knowledge of your place in the great order.
Help the Weary Spirit
It quivers behind its mask, and the voice in the jar burbles beseechingly.
No rest for the Yoked
You play decoy for the Spirit when a pair of dead bureaucrats appear, carrying a list of duties undone and burdens as yet unlifted. The spirit hides as you profess your ignorance, but the bureaucrats quickly tire of you. They find the Spirit's name in their book and in so doing, compel it to emerge. The Spirit watches you from behind its mask as it is led away backwards.
Help the Weary Spirit
You have permission to effect its release.
Release
A pair of dead bureaucrats appear, bearing ledgers of documentation. They begin to harangue the Spirit, citing its violations of its edict and its misdemeanours against the one who holds its bonds.

You produce your Testament to satisfying effect. The Spirit's voice in its jar burbles in delight. The bureaucrats open their book and thumb through the pages, searching for the Spirit's name. At last it is found and excised.

The Spirit collapses into a burbling, hissing disintegration, Invisible once more. Only its mask is left behind.
Admit you can't be of assistance
The Forge of Souls is dormant. You cannot help.
A disappointment handled gracefully
The servitor bows once, stiffly. After considering a moment, it hurls the scrolls and diagrams in its arms across the garden and stalks away.
Agree to help the servitor
The Lamentation won't be happy. You risk breaking the Amaranthine Edict. But you want to help.
Gratitude inexpertly expressed
The servitor looks to see if it can find your heart. Confused that you are not carrying it, it seems at a loss as to how to thank you.

It fumbles in the pockets of its robes and produces a surfeit of sovereigns. The voice in its jar tells you that it had been collecting these useless curios and hopes you will not be offended but it is all it has.

It hurries away, in the direction of the Lyceum, its scrolls clutched tightly.
Refuse to help the servitor
The risk is too great.
A favour for a favour
The servitor's voice screams to such a pitch that its jar cracks. Evidently mortified, the servitor hurls its diagrams to the ground and hurries away. Later, a messenger appears from the Lamentation. The scribe conveys her gratitude and requests you accept this gift, which she is sure you'll be able to find a use for. The Lamentation considers it a sign of your ongoing cooperation for your mutual benefit.
Sell the art dealer a Testament of the Feather
Claim it's a love-tablet.

Game note: This will exchange a Testament of the Feather for Navaratine Gemstones.

He can't read
"Here," he says. "I believe that is the ancient Blue Kingdom expression of undying admiration for the reader's beauty." You glance at the line he's pointing out. It reads, "This section to be filled out by receiving office. Do not mark."
Sell the art dealer a Testament of Roses
Say it's a sacred history of the Blue Kingdom that describes the birth of the Western Judgement.

Game note: This will exchange the Testament for Navaratine Gemstones.

Highly gullible
Making the sale is quick enough. Afterwards, though, you have to hear out his own theories about how the Blue Kingdom was founded, and where the Forge of Souls came from. He gives you ten minutes on an industrial dispute amongst spirits that you are reasonably certain never happened.
Attempt to do business
Something you have will probably interest this fellow.
    • Wind icon Airs of the Blue Kingdom = 5

    • Pastscandal icon Flickering ≥ 1 [The devils of Carillon claim to be experts in the assessment and improvement of the soul. They would describe yours as intermittently tantalising with an aftertaste of disappointment.]

Exorcised
The art dealer sees you approaching. "No! Flickering soul! Get away from me, I won't be tricked by your kind! My former wife was a Flickerer, I know what it looks like!"

Then he reaches into his cart and pulls out some sort of local amulet, to ward you off, as if that would work—

A sick and sideways thing happens to your innards, as though you'd been stabbed with the shard of an unflattering mirror.

The sensation passes, but by the time it does, the art dealer is gone.
Construct something from a few odds and ends
The dealer doesn't look especially canny.
Failed event
Ten seconds of belief...
...and then he gets a good look, and curses your lying kind, both now and at the hour of your death. May you be turned back at Death's Door after a hundred thousand years of waiting, he says. May all your documents go unstamped. May you never be able to complete the last ritual of application. May you be assigned a voice that squeaks and may the other spirits laugh at you and may you get lost in the House of Days... Probably none of it will stick. But you get away as fast as you can.
Successful event
This old thing?
What do you have here? It's... a rag. But in your hands, with a bit of invention, it becomes the remnant of the shroud of a long-dead Queen, who passed this way centuries ago. Someone with good eyesight could still pick out the words of a blessing woven into the fabric. You're not surprised he can't make it out: the language is an obscure one, known only to the very learned. You should have known he wouldn't recognise its value... He practically snatches it from you in the end, paying you in gemstones and indignant looks.
Wrangle a deceased elephant
It isn't listening to the Yoked spirit-herder.
Failed event
Can you move quickly?
The elephant spirit does not care to be wrangled. It makes that very clear.
Successful event
Silent trumpeting
You get hold of the end of the red string tied around the elephant's tusk, and pull.

This should have no effect. It should snap. The elephant should be too strong for you. But the thread is stronger than it looks, and the elephant is lighter. You are just about able to bring it in line and tie it back into place.

The Yoked hasn't got its voice with it, but it offers you a wordless reward.
Trick a monkey's ghost
It will get back in line if you're clever enough. This will be more difficult than the elephant.

Game note: The Yoked will pay more richly if you succeed.

Failed event
Laughter
Your clever trick is not clever enough. As it turns out, even the shades of monkeys tend to fling things at their enemies.
Successful event
Cunning
It takes a well-placed macaque call and a fraudulent scent of ripe pear, but the monkey rejoins the spirit procession, and even voluntarily puts its paw through the red cuff. The Yoked rewards you with a selection of souls.
Use this as the basis of a report on the demographics of the Blue Kingdom
There's plenty of evidence before you.
Failed event
A failed census
While you're trying to count the goose spirits, the elephant spirit nearly tramples you, and you're forced to abandon the attempt.
Successful event
Counting is easy
You copy down the numbers of each creature, with notes on their conditions, and the division (as far as you can tell) between male and female creatures. The leopard spirit looks wounded; might it have come from a circus? Add a paragraph or two of summary and 'interpretation', and you have a document you might present in the guise of a Port Report.

Links[ | ]

Links In[ | ]

Locomotive Death's Doorstop, Maskedshade Urd, BarrelofUnseasonedHours The Court of Dust, Locomotive The Porch of the House of Days

Links Out[ | ]

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