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Cache of Curiosities
Supplies
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 273949

Cache of Curiosities is a Sunless Skies Story Event.

Story description[ | ]

What could it be?

Trigger conditions[ | ]

Supplies icon A Cache of Curiosities ≥ 1
Area: Limbo
Frequency: Always (100%)

Interactions[ | ]

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
A clasped jewelry box
Something precious has been concealed.
A twinkle of gold upon a bed of velvet: a piece of worn jewelry. A name is incribed on it, too faded now to read.


Rare event (50%)
A sheaf of letters falls from a concealed compartment. The pages are rife with scandal.
A Distressingly-Odoured Barrel
No one is keen to get close.
The lid is gingerly removed. All breathe a sigh of relief when coke is revealed, black and precious. The Captain's truest friend.


Rare event (50%)
You pry the lid off. Dear God! What the blazes—? Your navigator pokes the thing inside with a big stick, until assured that it's dead.
An Intriguingly Bulging Sack
How pleasingly it rattles!
A stoppered vial falls out of the sack, after sufficient shaking. A collection of gathered disappointments that someone might be willing to pay for.


Rare event (50%)
Newly minted coins fall with a heavy thud from the upended sack. Bright imperial sovereigns. Her Renewed Majesty's many faces glare up at you.
A solid crate
Stamped and carefully sealed; it is heavy as a dead man's weight.
A windfall
It takes a wrench and your strongest stoker to lever off the lid. When at last the crate opens with a heavy thud, your crew gasp. Inside, the lustrous saltine crystals of ground hours, mined and refined for commercial use. This is the final product of London's greatest and most precious enterprise.
Rare event (50%)
Death's bounty
A gunner sniffs just before the lid is wrenched open. "Gunpowder," they assert, before assuming responsibility for the opening. Once the lid has been carefully prised off, the case's gleaming arsenal of ammunition, sealed powders and callous weaponry is laid bare. This will fetch a handsome price; the Heavens do not lack for murderers.
A Faintly Luminescent Cage
A light burns from within.
A silver idol rests inside the cage. Four wings extend from its hunched shoulders. "Made from moonstone," your navigator says in a hushed voice, "to amplify the light of the stars."
Rare event (50%)
The things being transported in this cage did not survive the journey, though they still glow faintly.
An Aromatic Casket
Something has been preserved.
Murgatroyd's Fungal Crackers! A rare treat in the skies. Newer skyfarers tend to disdain them as 'revolting', and 'abominations unto the Lord!' The taste has not improved with age, but the vintage provides a certain smug satisfaction.


Rare event (50%)
Dried tea leaves! Your crew gathers round. An argument breaks out over the provenance and blend. Fetch a kettle!
A Crate of Vegetation
"I 'ates greens," your navigator sniffs, distinctly put out.
A selection of obscenely large seeds, in prickly shells. A musky scent emanates, redolent of persimmons and guano. Your stoker moans as she puts one down, blood on her teeth, having mistaken it for a fruit.
Rare event (50%)
A cornucopia of vegetables, only recently abandoned. Gargantuan tomatoes, substantial onions, obscene parsnips. Soup will be the order of the day for the foreseeable.
A slim clasped box
The silver clasp gleams in your torchlight.
For love
Inside, a slim red volume. The bindings are leather; the covers are embossed with gold leaf. It is a book of love poetry; a collection deemed both acceptable by the Ministry of Public Decency and Her Renewed Majesty. A faded daguerreotype of the Prince Consort fills the inside leaf.
Rare event (50%)
The Chorister's prize
Inside, the box is unhappily sticky. The cause is a resinous block of nectar that sits in the box's centre like nougat at the heart of a piece of chocolate. Produced by the gargantuan flowers of the Reach, this nectar is zealously sought by the giant, hymnal Chorister Bees who haunt its skies.
A Marked Box
FRAGILE CONTENTS. DO NOT SHAKE, UPEND OR DISCOMMODE.
After much careful maneuvering and whispered cursing, the box is opened. A chorus of 'oohs' and 'aah's runs through your crew as the panes of starlight-stained glass emerge. A careful hand has rendered the sights of the High Wilderness into articulated swirls of coloured glass.
Rare event (50%)
A set of golden scales slides out of the knife-opened box. It takes three of you to lift, six to carry. Lapiz lazuli shines in the base. Complex diagrams of constellations circle the pans like the rings of planets.
A Sheaf of Papers
Crisp as freshly ironed shirts.
The pages are stiff as a new clerk's collar, and thin as a spurned lover's parting smile. The ink is rich and jade. The permissions are varied and wide-ranging. The signatory is surprising.
Rare event (50%)
New money! Violet notes printed in London displaying Victoria seated at her Throne of Hours on the face, and the HML Parzifal – the first London locomotive to fare the skies – on the reverse.
A Solid Crate
The box is gleaming, resinous, and heavy as King Bill's coffin.
"Cor. Bronzewood!" Your engineer is beside herself. "I took architecture classes back in Port Prosper. This stuff's hewn from trees thrice the size of an American redwood. They use dynamite to fell 'em. " She pats the crate. "And now it's a box."


Rare event (50%)
A sheaf of promises. Allowances for the unexpected, permissions for the unwarranted. Tacit approval for the dubiously legal.
A Faceted Decanter
Light and shade play in the shivered surfaces of the glass.
A sliver of exquisite fabric shrouded in shadow. It drinks light like a prisoner having his first cup of wine on freedom.


Rare event (50%)
Distinguished souls bob in a caul of vitreous fluid. These are the currency of the Judgements – the rarefied, the beloved, the brilliant.
A treble-locked case
Chains and clasps hang like garlands across this expensive looking case.
Revelation, dreaful
The last chain slides to the floor with a jangling thud, and the lid falls open. Your crew jump back in fear. Inside is a bound up creature: skin and bone and malformed clusters of organs, pulsing in time to its aggrieved lowing. Perhaps a native of some far flung reach of the Heavens, or perhaps an escapee from Piranesi. Regardless, your crew haul it aboard. Someone will be willing to pay for it.
Rare event (50%)
Plundered hoard
It takes boltcutters and wireclippers and lockpicks, at least one hammer and a whole hour, but at last, it is unlocked. The case lid falls open, and out spills a scarlet radiance, slow and inexorable as red wine on a carpet. Revealed inside are a hoard of stones: red sapphire and ruby and other, wilder gems. These are Navaratine: said to be the cooling sparks of creation's forge.
A Lacquered Trinket Box
Starlight plays on the silver clasps.
Once the clasps have been wrenched off, pinging off the far wall, a drawer full of violet emeralds clatters out of the tormented casing. "Sets off your eyes, captain," a hard-faced crewman says.
Rare event (50%)
A filigreed mirror has been stored aside. Something moves as you look into its silvered depths. The air is briefly filled with the sound of cicadas, the pouring of water, the hiss of a snake.
A Triple-Locked Case
Your engineer produces the wire-cutters.
The final lock falls revealing a device wrapped in chains. Warnings in a variety of languages have been scored onto the links. They all intimate a state of considerable failure, a general desire for the reader to avoid the contraption, and a specific desire not to press that button.
Rare event (50%)
A picture of two lovers holding hands sits in a brass frame. Something old and horned stands behind them, seemingly rubbing its hands in glee.
A Miniature Folding Bureau
The mahogany has been recently polished; the box reeks of money.
Your navigator wrenches open a miniature drawer and gasps. "Captain!" He demands your immediate attention. A map, glossy and richly painted, has been printed in the bottom. The navigator traces some very unusual routes marked on it with a shaking finger.
Rare event (50%)
This is because it is crammed full of freshly printed Sovereigns, with an obscene amount of loose coinage shoved into the drawers. The bureau is so heavy with riches it could happily double as a blunt force weapon.
A slim letterbox
Thin as a pauper's final prayer; delicate as a prince's health.
Her Majesty's Favourite
Sliding open the box, you uncover a single piece of crisp vellum. A formidable calligraphy covers the page: a declaration of favour from Her Renewed Majesty's own desk. It is sealed with wax in the shape of a crown; the wax has melted in such a way that the crown runs red upon the page.
Rare event (50%)
Old promises long remembered
The box slides open to reveal nothing. You shake it. There is a clunk and a rattle. Something is inside. Further investigation reveals a false bottom. Once you have disarmed the spring loaded poison concealed within, you unearth a sheaf of crumpled pages. The writing is poor, but their message is clear. A favour is owed to the bearer of these letters; a debt, they say, will not go unpaid.
A Nondescript Box
It is interesting only in its lack of any distinguishing features.
What's this? The air is singed, smouldering, searing. You call out a warning just as your stoker opens the drawer. Well, she's used to heat. Once her eyebrows are out, you examine the contents of the drawer. Well, well. The implications are both marvelous and disquieting.
Rare event (50%)
A sparkling tiara lies on a velvet cushion. A pilfered relic from a Judgement's Palace? A gift for a favoured servant? A convincing fake, constructed by a bored archaeologist? Who knows. The gold is real.

Links[ | ]

Links In[ | ]

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Links Out[ | ]

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