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Well of the Wolf
Well purple ambience
Well of the Wolf (Sidebar)
Located in Albion
Ports None

The Well of the Wolf is a Discovery in the outer circle of Albion.

When nearby, it has the same effect on Terror as a Horror spectacle. When above the well, you will be prompted to "Approach" by pressing R, beginning the storylets.

Log Entries[ | ]

"Don't look into the well, captain. The thing inside looks back."
Mists spiral around the well's abysmal plunge. The movements induce intense nausea. A green-faced stoker rushes from your presence.
The well-winds pull at you. Your engine lurches. A crash of crockery from the galley.

"We're going in? We have to. I'll take the wheel." The Incautious Driver is delighted.
The Inconvenient Aunt sniffs melodramatically. "Is that brimstone? Or my imagination?"
The Princess admires the view. "We need one of these in London. It would make for a prettier sky."
The Rat Brigade's hair stands on end as you approach the Well of the Wolf. They refuse to hide, however.
The Signalman grimaces, lighting a cigarette. "Of course we'd poke around here. Why wouldn't we?"

Well of the Wolf[ | ]

Approaching the Well of the Wolf
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 290158


Approaching the Well of the Wolf[ | ]

A hole in the sky! Torrents of celestial mist pour into it. Shelves of black ice poke from its throat. One of the shelves extends over the well-mouth in a narrow spur. At its end stands a pitted, cast-iron bandstand.

Interactions

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Descend through the gale and land on a shelf of ice
The well-wind bays like a dog refusing to leave its master's grave. Your driver wrestles the rising winds.
Failed event

Advanced query needs investigation Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


Game note: You will land, but risk damaging your hull.

Tug o war
The well-winds drag insistently at you as you descend. You lurch forward, and your driver curses. The pistons thunder in resistance. The boiler roars. The mouth of the well blooms before you, black as schoolroom ink. It fills your windscreen. In desperation, your driver drops you precipitously. You strike the ice while there is still ice to strike, and grind to a battered halt.
Successful event
Descent
Your engine bucks like a dying pig. Its hull groans. Gritty black particulate clatters at the windows. With a last lurch, your locomotive crunches onto the grimy ice. Your driver exhales. A good landing; not a gentle one.
Descend, and land on a shelf of ice
The well is silent. Its winds are unpredictable, but not unmanageable. A direct approach is best.
Failed event Advanced query needs investigation

Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.


Game note: You will land, but risk damaging your hull.

A painful landing
Your descent is a jerky series of drops and halts. The winds harry you like sheepdogs, trying to drive you into the mouth of the well. A final dip, a painful crunch, and you are on the ice; battered but landed.
Successful event
Down and down
Your engine descends through the mists that whip and whorl at your windows. It is a rocky descent, but you make it through the buffeting winds to an unsteady landing.
Depart
You want nothing to do with this place.
Away
Your engine passes onward. You ignore the mournful wail of the well-winds.



The Well of the Wolf
Category Story Event
Type Story
Data ID 290161

The Well of the Wolf[ | ]

When you emerge from your engine, the winds push at you like a schoolyard bully. The cold bites. Beyond the lip of black permafrost, the well-mouth gapes, wide enough to swallow worlds.

Away from the edge, a cluster of hexagonal cave-mouths perforate an icy cliff-face. The yellow eyes of devils gleam inside them.

Interactions

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Attend the Happy Occasion
The Incognito Princess is ready to be wed. She's the bride. She's ready. It'd be rude to keep her waiting.

Game note: Once the ceremony begins, there is no turning back. Will you be a model guest? Or will you interfere?

Deposit the Abstemious Devil
She shivers as she steps onto the ice, and looks around at the bleak surrounds. "Perfect," she whispers.
Home
She pays the remainder of her passage. "Would you mind waiting a moment? There may be a further opportunity." You watch her trudge towards the caves. When she returns, frost in her black hair, she does indeed have a request.

"Long ago, the Many-Mouthed gave all but one of his voices to his creations. I require a single live chorister-bee. I've little of pecuniary value, but I do have this." She removes a book from her suitcase. It is titled The Choir-in-One and other Martyrs of the Cause. "As far as I am aware, this is the only copy outside Hell."

Game note: To capture a chorister bee you will need to defeat a swarm in battle. The Flower-field in the Reach might also provide an opportunity.

Deposit the Patchwork Devil
As she leaves your locomotive, the wind picks up. Her eyes retreat to opposing sides of her face to avoid the stinging particulate.
Acceptance
"Well, it's not what I'd call a drastic improvement, but—" she breaks off. The devils have emerged from their caves, and are crossing the ice towards you. They gather, in ragged suits and threadbare gowns, to greet her. Their examination is cursory. When they look at her face, it is with absolute disinterest. Then, wordlessly, one of them points towards an empty cave.

"This will do," she says. Her voice is hoarse. "One last request, Addressed As(SpeechFormal). I'll need a live chorister bee. If you can bring one, I'll pay." She shakes her bag, which clinks with bottled souls.

Game note: To capture a chorister bee you will need to defeat a swarm in battle. The Flower-field in the Reach might also provide an opportunity.

Deposit the Infernal Philatelist
He climbs from your engine, his caged bee tucked under his arm, and looks grimly around at the ice.
Retirement
"Now I'm retired," he says to himself. His tone is not happy, but it is satisfied.

The well's own devils emerge from their ice-caves, their yellow eyes on the Infernal Philatelist. He takes the bee from the cage and you watch as his jaw does something complicated, opening wider and wider and wider. The curious bee crawls inside, pushing unidentifiable organs aside to make room. Then the devil's mouth returns to less distressing dimensions, and the Philatelist sings with the bee's sweet, wordless voice.

Without a backward glance, he joins his new compatriots. He is part of the choir, now.
Give the Patchwork Devil her bee
It sings, expectantly, in its cage.
    • Devilshell icon The Patchwork Devil = 20 [She has asked you to bring her a chorister bee. You'll need to defeat a swarm in battle, lure one into a cage with nectar and return to the Well of the Wolf]

    • Choristernectar icon Caged Chorister Bee ≥ 1

The choir grows
You open the bee's cage. "Thank you," the Devil breathes. They are the last words she ever speaks.

Her mouth opens extraordinarily wide. As it happened at the time to be positioned vertically in the middle of her face, her whole head splits opens from top to bottom. The bee crawls frantically into the opening, down her throat, and nestles in her chest cavity. The Devil's mouth returns to its usual size, then emits a single seraphic note.

Before she returns to the cave that is her new home, she passes you her bag. Souls clink glassily within.
Give the Abstemious Devil her bee
She reaches, eagerly, for the cage.
    • Devilshell icon The Abstemious Devil = 20 [She has asked you to bring her a chorister bee. You'll need to defeat a swarm in battle, lure one into a cage with nectar and return to the Well of the Wolf]

    • Choristernectar icon Caged Chorister Bee ≥ 1

United
The bee is the size of a large terrier. It crawls happily into her arms. The Abstemious Devil strokes its thorax fondly.

Then her jaw unhinges, wide as a dustbin. The bee's wings hum in anticipation. She stoops towards it. At the last moment she realises you are watching, and decorously turns her back.

There are sounds of ingestion. The bee's song is audible throughout, although it grows muffled. When she has finished the Devil bows to you. Her throat still writhes as the bee gets comfortable. Then she turns towards her new cave, singing in buzzing plainsong.
Speak to the congregation of devils
They emerge, curious, from the caves. Once, they were dapper in pinstripe or delicate in brocade. Now, they wear rags. Their brocade has frayed; their pinstripe faded to porridgey grey.
New voices
You ask about their lives here. Silence. When you persist, one steps forward and opens his mouth as wide as he can. Plainsong emerges: sweet, with a sonorous drone. The devil's lips and tongue aren't moving – the song is coming from deeper in his throat.

You stand on tiptoes. The devil leans obligingly forward. You peer past his tongue, his tonsils, his gullet, and see a large compound eye – insectoid, iridescent – peering back at you from his chest cavity.

The devil steps back. That is all for now, it seems.
Approach a stone idol
A large fragment of sky-rock has fallen here. It has been graven – by the wind or by long-forgotten tools – into a bulbous shape, perforated by holes of different sizes. It moans. It whistles.
Approach the bandstand
A spur of ice juts precipitously over the well. At the end of it sits a bandstand, worn by the wind. There, the devils sing their hymns.
Help the Repentant Devil look for what he seeks
There was someone he wanted to find, somewhere in one of these caves.
He finds her
In body, she is an older, even motherly Deviless. She says nothing to him, though it's plain she recognises him with pleasure. He, for his part, sits with her a long time, telling stories of the Iron Republic, of London as it used to be, of Parabola. He talks the way one might at the sickbed of a beloved, unconscious patient: as much for one's own comfort as for theirs.

At last he runs out. "How did you ever reconcile yourself," he says, "to giving up the work?"

She doesn't answer. Before he can go, she offers him a document on papyrus, sealed with wax.
Help him sympathise with her
"I do not understand," he says, again and again, on the way back down the cliff. "Once she was an unstoppable force."
"Perhaps she has grown tired," he allows. "Perhaps she is gathering her strength again. I suppose that would be an understandable response."
Help him direct his rage
If he is going to be angry, let him be angry at those who have reduced Devils to this condition.
He grumbles. It was not useful to rebel against the Judgements before. That is what produced this result in the first place. But perhaps... He is moody and thoughtful for some time after this.
Leave the Repentant Devil here
He said he wanted to retire. He didn't mean he wanted to retire here. But does that have to be up to him?
He scowls
"I can't stay here," he says, in the same way you might say "I can't eat granite." The impediments are numerous and inherent. Place him here, and he will not remain any longer than he can help it. But you make him understand that he's no longer welcome on your locomotive. What he does next is entirely his choice.
Visit the formerly Repentant Devil
He may be finding it tiresome, having no one here to talk to.

Game note: This exchanges two Savage Secrets for a Selection of Immaculate Souls and a small amount of Terror.

He pays
He is still angry for being left here. But you are offering some diversion, some contact with the rest of the world, and that is a supply he ardently wants.
There is something inside the Well
Whatever it is, the devils would like it gone. Please.
Failed event
Here— Ow!
The devils trail you to the lip of the Well, their faces weighted with expectation. Something is yowling plaintively from the abyss, something mortal and odiously off-key.

You go on your stomach and lean over the edge, a hand thrust into the void. For moments, there is nothing, nothing but the noise, nothing but the cold and the sense you'd profaned something sacred. Then, your fingers brush against fur.

Surprised, perhaps, by the contact, the beast bites down on your palm and retreats. Ouch! This wasn't how it was meant to go.
Successful event
A new friend
The devils trail you to the lip of the Well, their faces weighted with expectation. Something is yowling plaintively from the abyss, something mortal and odiously off-key.

You go on your stomach and lean over the edge, a hand thrust into the void. For moments, there is nothing, nothing but the noise, nothing but the cold and the sense you've profaned something sacred. Then, your fingers brush against fur.

With considerable effort, you extract a round-bellied, snaggle-toothed, long-clawed lump of a cat. The devils are relieved at your success and insist you depart with the aggrieved feline as soon as possible.
    • Uselesscat icon Useless Cat = 1 [The Useless Cat is aboard your engine.]

Leave
You have seen, and heard, and perhaps done, enough. It is time to go.
Away
You return to your locomotive, do battle with the winds, and return to the sky.


Shops[ | ]

None

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