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The Last Minute
Clock
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 307475

The Last Minute is a Sunless Skies Story Event.

Story description[ | ]

Ambition: The Martyr-King’s Cup – Stealing Time from the Tower of Chimes(heist_description)

Trigger conditions[ | ]

Martyrkingscup icon Ambition: The Martyr-King's Cup ≥ 14 ≤ 14,
Area: Limbo
Frequency: Always (100%)

Interactions[ | ]

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Attach the chain yourself
You'll descend with the chain, hook it, and return. Hopefully you'll keep a tight enough grip to avoid flying out into the emptiness.
Failed event
A foot wrong
As your boots touch down on the clock-face, you hear glass creak ominously. With as much alacrity as you can muster, you hook the chain to the minute-hand.

Unfortunately, in your haste, you tread a little too heavily. Your boot goes crashing through the glass, showering splinters into the tower. Somewhere far below, you hear a stomach-churning screech.

The chain seems secure. Lifting yourself free of the broken clock, you begin to climb back up to your engine above.
Successful event
A successful mission
As your boots touch down on the clock-face, you hear glass creak ominously. With as much alacrity as you can muster, you hook the chain securely to the minute-hand and begin to climb back up to your engine above.
Send a duo from your crew to retrieve the minute-hand
You don't want to venture out yourself.
A qualified success
Holding the heavy chain between them, the pair of engineers leap out into the bitter dark. As their boots touch down on the clock-face, glass creaks ominously. Working fast, they hook the chain securely to the minute-hand.

Unfortunately, in their haste, one treads a little too heavily. His boot goes crashing through the glass, showering splinters into the tower below. From somewhere far below, a stomach-churning screech echoes.

Panicking, they begin climbing back to the safety of the engine. One loses her grip in a sudden blast of wind; she goes careening off into the High Wilderness, reduced in moments to a distant speck.
Heave-ho!
Fire up the engines.
Something terrible emerges
Your engines roar. The chain snaps taut. The minute-hand buckles and bends.

Just as something seems ready to snap – chain or hand, you cannot tell – the clock-face shatters. Glass scatters like confetti.

Something hunched and tattered crawls from the broken hole, its limbs unpleasantly long, its movements erratic. Shaking powdered glass from its leathery wings, it hooks one claw around your chain.

It raises its head. Its screech is the sound of death in the dark.

With swift, purposeful movements, it begins to clamber up the chain toward your engine.
Call upon moonlight
You would rather face this with the help of the Unseen. A knight, surely, is better-equipped to battle a monster. Even one such as this.
A pale prayer
Moonlight answers.
Stay rooted in reality
You will face this thing in the here and now.
It comes
The hunched shape continues to climb the chain, wings sweeping behind it. It meets your gaze with a furious glare. There is nothing behind those eyes except an intense and sincere desire to murder you and everyone you know.
Kill the creature
You will need as many of your crew as you can persuade to emerge from under their beds. And guns. Plenty of guns.

Game note: If you fail here, you will die.

Failed event
An abrupt ending
A claw taps a playful tune against glass. Shave-and-a-haircut—

Then the window shatters. The abomination slides into your locomotive, thrashing, scrabbling, unfurling until it fills the corridor. Its screeches lash you, scar your mind. Bullets merely crumple on its hide. In a single swipe, it eviscerates an engineer. A boiler-woman advances, her rifle cracking. Affronted, it methodically dismembers her.

Nothing can kill it. Nothing can stop it. It takes your crew apart, one by one, and then it comes for you.
Successful event
Behold and tremble
A claw taps a playful tune against glass. Shave-and-a-haircut—

Then the window shatters. The abomination slides into your locomotive, thrashing, scrabbling, unfurling. Its screeches lash you, scar your mind. Bullets merely crumple on its hide. In one swipe, it eviscerates two men. A boilerwoman advances, her rifle cracking. Affronted, it methodically dismembers her.

You drop your useless pistols and draw the Minute to Midnight from your belt.

As it advances, you dodge one swiping claw and drive your sword into the centre of its leathery mass. A burst of sizzling black bile; a surprised screech. You drive the blade deeper. Thrashing, moaning. The monstrosity expires.
Blast it with your most powerful weapon
If you manoeuvre the engine just a little, you will have a perfect shot right between its hateful, hateful eyes.
Fire at will
Your weapons roar and thunder. The locomotive, still anchored to the Tower of Chimes, shudders unpromisingly as it absorbs their recoil. As the smoke clears, the hunched abomination is reeling in the air, its now-tattered wings flapping drunkenly. With a final mournful screech, it swoops away.
Blast it with your most powerful weapons
If you manoeuvre the engine just a little, you will have a perfect shot right between its hateful, hateful eyes.
Fire at will
Your weapons roar and thunder. The locomotive, still anchored to the Tower of Chimes, shudders unpromisingly as it absorbs their recoil.

As the smoke clears, the hunched abomination blinks a few times, and then resumes its climb. It appears unharmed.

Game note: Your weapons are useless.

Cut the chain
Don't be fooled. You have no choice.

Game note: You will lose a significant amount of Hull.

Desperate measures
Barking orders, you unscrew the chain from its winch. With the tension suddenly released and its engines still roaring, your locomotive goes spinning out into the darkness, crashing and bouncing between sky-rubble.

Both chain and monster drop like stones. As the dropped chain reaches its full length, there is a squeal of tortured iron; the minute-hand is finally yanked free. It too falls into the darkness and out of sight.

There is a thoughtful pause.

A bat-like silhouette swoops up from the site of the impact. It circles for a moment, glances up and seems to consider you, then glides off into the unknown.
Search for the minute-hand among the rubble below
On a grander scale, you've almost perfectly managed to recreate the conditions of trying to find a needle in a haystack.
Failed event
A tireless search
You drop altitude and search the field of sky-rubble below the Tower of Chimes. Spending too long here is acutely dangerous – if the debris shifts, you could end up with your locomotive squashed flat between a pair of mountain-sized rocks.

Unfortunately, the minute-hand proves frustratingly elusive. You search for days, and your hull weathers continuous impacts from the surrounding debris.

The crew lets up a ragged cheer when you finally find it, stuck point-first into a boulder, surrounded by coils of shattered chain.
Successful event
A tireless search
You drop altitude and search the field of sky-rubble below the Tower of Chimes. Spending too long here is acutely dangerous – if the debris shifts, you could end up with your locomotive squashed flat between a pair of mountain-sized rocks. Fortunately, you manage to find the spot where the minute-hand landed after only a day of searching. It has stuck point-first into a boulder, surrounded by coils of shattered chain.
On second thoughts...
You aren't yet ready to attempt to steal the minute-hand from the Tower of Chimes.
Turn and leave the Tower of Chimes far behind
The heist proved a little more eventful than you'd hoped.


Links[ | ]

Links In[ | ]

The Beast

Links Out[ | ]

The Beast


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