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| Wreck of the Boatman | |
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| Wreck of the Boatman (Sidebar) | |
| Located in | Albion |
| Ports | None |
Wreck of the Boatman is a Discovery in the outer circle of Albion.
When close to the wreck, you will be prompted to "Approach" by pressing R, beginning the storylets.
Log Entries[]
A black hulk in the mist - an old necropolis train. It's a long way from its route.
Wreck of the Boatman[]
| Approaching the Boatman | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 288283 |
Approaching the Boatman[]
"A wreck drifts just ahead. Fierce winds rock it like an empty cradle. Its black and silver bulk gleams in your lights as you search for its nameplate: the Boatman. Done with the boatman(Root)"
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Prepare to board the Boatman
Your signaller crosses himself.
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Drawing close
Your pilot grazes the wreck's hull, and has to reverse. Your navigator's hand slips while winching the locomotives close. A clang resounds throughout your engine.
When you've finally docked, you select a few of your crew to join you. The outer door to the Boatman is rimed with frost. The bolts shriek as they are pulled across. Inside, your torchlight reveals a narrow corridor in sombre black, opening onto darker doorways; likely the crew cabins. There is a long moan from somewhere deeper in the engine. "Probably the boilers," your stoker whispers. Pressing forward through the cabins, you hear the rattle of something that might be chains. "A bolt loose in the chassis," your stoker suggests, less confidently.
 A Ghastly Engine
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| Speak with the Happy Dead
The Deceased Stoker leads a group of corpses eager to be off among the stars.
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A skeleton grin
The Stoker adjusts his jaw to make his speech more intelligible. "Good to see you again, Addressed As(SpeechFormal). As you can see, we're just getting ready to move off."
He considers the state of the engine around him. "Might be a while, mind. Got a lot of work to do." He shakes your hand and shows you to the exit. "Please don't let me keep you."
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| A Ghastly Engine | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 288285 |
A Ghastly Engine[]
The Boatman is as dark and cold as the grave. Gaslights flicker on the walls, none substantial enough to illuminate more than the empty doorways ahead. A shattered window in the galley is responsible for the merciless cold. The source of the faint but insistent knocking is less clear.
Trigger conditions
Trespassing on the Boatman ≥ 1 ≤ 1,
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Breach the hold
It is the obvious next step. You've read enough penny dreadfuls in your time to locate the source of the trouble.
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A stern door
You've heard the stories sky-captains tell each other in warm inns, when the fire is low, and the winds are howling. You've seen things that would freeze the hearts of lesser captains.
The door to the hold is secure against everything but your determination. And this crowbar.
 A Grave Mistake
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| Read the captain's log
It must offer hints as to the goings on. Something unnatural abides here.
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Failed event | ||
| Plunged into darkness
Your light gutters and dies. You hear footsteps nearby. Your crew? You stumble in the dark. A cold hand takes yours, clammy like the bottom of a pond. "Let me help you." Your light flares again. The pallid, bloated face smiles, like an overripe peach splitting.
Your navigator finds you some time later. "Why was your lamp out, Captain?"
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| Successful event | ||||
| Under time pressures
Reading the captain's log provides a few clues. '11th September, 1903: Line Manager insists we shave a day and a half from the round trip. Navigator plotted new course. 12th September, 1903: Set to make Memoriam in good time. 13th September, 1903: scout reports wefts of unravelled time on our bearing. Have instructed pilot to hold the course, and our schedule.'
You haven't found a single coffin, and the hold is locked from the outside. The captain would have her keys with her, but you've not found her body. Either the captain felt the need to lock the hold before abandoning her engine, or she's inside. The door to the hold is secure against everything but your determination. And a crowbar.
A Grave Mistake
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| Partial success event (100%) | ||||
| Under time pressures
Reading the captain's log provides a few clues. '11th September, 1903: Line Manager insists we shave a day and a half from the round trip. Navigator plotted new course. 12th September, 1903: Set to make Memoriam in good time. 13th September 1903: scout reports wefts of unravelled time on our bearing. Have instructed pilot to hold the course, and our schedule.'
You haven't found a single coffin, and the hold is locked from the outside. The captain would have her keys with her, but you've not found her body. Either the captain felt the need to lock the hold before abandoning her engine, or she's inside. The door is locked tight.
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Force the door
The door is made of lead and sealed as tight as Death's own dominion. Explosives will be required.
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Tinder is lit, and for a few seconds, the burning of the torch as it approaches the crates of explosives is the only light on the Boatman.
Then the wreck is rocked with incandescent fire as the door (and several coffins behind it) are violently expelled from the engine. When the smoke clears, not everyone is intact.
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| Plunge through the corpse-chute
Follow the progress of Albion's dead. A riskier proposition for you, a safer one for your crew.
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Coffins brought to Necropolis Line ships are deposited through the corpse-door, which opens onto a narrow chute leading into the hold.
The metal groans with the weight (and movement) of a live body. Tormented fixings buckle. Your crew bang on the sides for you to get a move on. It's quite a squeeze, as the chute narrows like a throat, but with a final groan, you are expelled.
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| Explore the Boatman
What happened here?
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No sign of life
Light in hand, you wander the empty cabins and carriages. The floor of the boiler room is scarred with scorch marks. The captain's cabin is littered with pieces of furniture. There are bullets in the walls. There are no coffins aboard, but the hold is locked. A great groaning emanates from within.
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| Flee!
This is an unhallowed engine.
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Away!
Your crew do not need to be told twice. Back through the freezing carriages, back past the shattered window and the empty cabins, back through the creaking door, and away into the heat and light of your own engine.
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| Investigate the captain's cabin
At the end of this black-walled corridor, the captain was afforded some measure of privacy from her crew.
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Few home comforts
The room is spartan. The bed looks uncomfortable. Someone has arranged her pillows (and a surprising number of mouldering stuffed toys) beneath her sheets, in the semblance of a sleeping form.
The only other furniture in the room is a barren writing desk, with a journal and a pen abandoned upon it.
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| Investigate the galley
Something rattles inside.
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Abandoned
A pot has been left on the hob, boiling away. Inside— Teeth?
A sudden hissing. Your stoker stifles a scream. It's just a pipe giving out in the cold, steam pouring from the rupture like smoke.
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| Rare event (50%) | ||||
| Abandoned
A carelessly opened cupboard expels an array of personal effects. Brass cuff-links, a conductor's whistle, pewter mugs embellished with memento mori, brass polish (for the coffin fixtures), charts of the routes to Memoriam: the standard equipment of Necropolis Line staff. But where are the crew?
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| Investigate the engine room
Heat emanates from within.
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Still active?
The air is as hot and dry as the heart of a workworld. The incinerator has been switched on. Something is burning inside. Peering in, you can make out the remains of a bundle of black and silver uniforms, smouldering into ash.
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| Investigate the crew cabins
The gaslights reveal only darkness. You can see nothing inside.
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Uncomfortable quarters
The crew cabins are charmless and cramped. Crew slept two to a cabin. In some cases the division of space was ruthlessly enforced: here a sheet has been pinned to the ceiling and floor, neatly halving the room.
Someone knocks thrice on the wall in the next cabin. All your crew are behind you. A hasty scramble for the door reveals the next room is locked and barred from the outside. You order a burly stoker to bring down the door. Inside, the cabin is like the rest: empty. Empty, that is, aside from the skeleton laid out on the bed, in a cassock rather than the Necropolis Line uniform. The chaplain?
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| Rare event (50%) | ||||
| Shattered
You pass a mirror and glimpse a skull where your face should be. The rest is mantled in shadow. Returning to the mirror, you see the glass is broken; there is a hole in the wall.
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| A Grave Mistake | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 288566 |
A Grave Mistake[]
"Trespassing on the Boatman(Grave)"
Trigger conditions
Trespassing on the Boatman ≥ 5 ≤ 10,
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes | |||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Open the coffins
Ignore the protestations of your crew.
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Prised open
With the aid of a burly signaller, you raise the lid of the nearest. A piteous groan emerges as you do.
The lid clatters to the ground, revealing the coffin's occupant. A living woman, in the silver-trimmed uniform of the Necropolis Line. Her captain's rank insignia gleams. She is gagged. From what you can see of her face, the skin around her mouth is coated in something brown. It looks like dried food. Your crew set to opening the other coffins. Similar discoveries are made. The captain struggles in her bonds, and moans from behind her gag.
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| Explore the hold
There are signs of a fight.
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Black as death
You move through the hold, which is as large as a wealthy family's mausoleum, casting your light before you. Shadows flee, revealing chains holding some of the coffins closed, scuff marks on the floor, a few shreds of black and silver cloth.
An insistent scratching comes from a coffin. Knocking from another. Your signaller startles, and stumbles – falling face first onto a coffin, which rocks angrily. The lid slides off to reveal the Boatman's captain: gagged, bound and still very much alive.
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| Look at the figures
Who are they? What do they want?
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An unsettling crowd
You raise your torch, illuminating the figures in the door. This provokes shrieks from your crew.
Sallow-skinned, hollow-eyed, decaying corpses are blocking your escape. Bloody ribcages, broken skulls, exposed bone and sloughing flesh: cadavers.
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Reach for your weapon
Walking corpses! They cannot mean well.
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You reach for your pistol. The cadavers take a step back. "Please!" the nearest rasps, a tall tattered man in a stoker's uniform. "I'm not sure these bodies could survive any more damage."
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| Pray
What good are weapons against the walking dead?
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Distressingly, the cadavers join in, mumbling, rasping and otherwise mangling the words. When you finish, the leader, a tall tattered man in a stoker's uniform, thanks you. "Very grateful to you for leading us in that, Captain."
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| Approach the corpses
They are key to whatever befell the Boatman.
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A greeting, of sorts
The leader extends one bony hand, its limb shaking from the weight of yet-unsloughed flesh.
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Introduce yourself
It's only polite.
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The corpse nods stiffly. Its fingers close around your own. There is an uncomfortable moment where you almost leave with more fingers than you started with, but eventually, and with many a courteous "Excuse me!", you extract yourselves.
"We're glad you didn't run away," the skeleton says.
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| Pull off the ridiculous corpse mask
Enough of this farce! Walking corpses? Staged tableaux? This theatrical display may fool lesser minds, but not you.
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The leader lowers his rotting head. The flesh is chill as meat left on the butcher's block overnight. Aha! You grab two handfuls and tear—
Flesh sloughs away like mouldering wallpaper, revealing polished bone, white as snow. "Are you done?" the corpse says. He pauses while he ascertains that you're not about to run away. "Would you like a brandy?"
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| Hear the Deceased Stoker out
He has more to say.
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Articulate, for a dead man
"I should apologise," he says. "We've not had any visitors since the mutiny. Couldn't predict how you'd react. Driving you off with a haunting seemed safest."
"Almost had you," a decaying lady cackles. The fruit in her hat has fused with the exposed parts of her cranium. The Stoker clears his crumbling throat. "While our bodies were being transported, the captain steered us through a carelessness in time. Things have gotten tangled, you see. As far as our minds are concerned, we haven't died, but our bodies beg to differ. Vociferously. The last thing I remember from when I was alive is saying farewell to my husband, then heading to the station." He looks down at the captain in her coffin. "She's getting agitated again. We've been very decent, considering they tried to throw us into the incinerator the moment we climbed out of our boxes! Anyway, we thought we might face the same treatment elsewhere, so we set out into the wild. But here we are, stuck without fuel. We'd appreciate help."
 The Wreck of the Boatman
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| Flee!
This engine has been claimed by the dead. Let them keep it.
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Away!
Away from the mocking sunken faces, and indifferent hollow eyes. One hand, bone shrouded in flaps of skin, reaches out as you pass by – in supplication? Or to grab you?
Back through the freezing carriages, back past the shattered window and the empty cabins, back through the creaking door, and away into the heat and light of your own engine.
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| The Wreck of the Boatman | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 288295 |
The Wreck of the Boatman[]
The Boatman was the victim of an unfortunate accident. It is now crewed and captained by dead who were jolted awake by the collision with loose hours. The engine is out of fuel and supplies. Its living are trapped in coffins. Its dead are torn between returning to London and seeking a new home. Theirs is not an eternal rest, but rather, an unhappy intermission.
Trigger conditions
Trespassing on the Boatman ≥ 20 ≤ 39,
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Speak with the Happy Dead
The Deceased Stoker leads a group of corpses eager to be off among the stars.
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A skeleton grin
The Stoker adjusts his jaw to make his speech more intelligible. "D__nable thing, really. Last thing I remember from life before this is wishing him goodbye." A sigh rattles through his skull.
"I wouldn't want him to see me like this." He gestures to the assemblage of cadavers behind him. "It's the same for all of us. No idea what we'd go back to, or who, or if we'd even be allowed. Better to have a fresh start."
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| Speak with the Unhappy Dead
The Behatted Chaperone speaks – rasps – on their behalf.
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Grievances in death
"I had a nice tea shop in London. Opened it with my Bertie. We had word of a new strain coming in from Eleutheria. Last I know, I was on my way to the station to pick it up." She pauses to pluck a wax peach out from the fracture in her skull.
"All this," she gestures at her skeletal form, "Is just an inconvenience. Coming back is an opportunity, and one I'd be a fool to miss. And I'm not the only one who feels this way."
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| Speak with the living
The captain and crew are restrained in coffins. Their mouths are stained with the residue of corned beef, which the dead have been feeding them.
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Desperation
The moment you remove the gag from the captain's mouth, she bursts into speech. "Get us out of here! They close the coffin lids on us! I cannot bear another second!" She pauses to regain a degree of self control.
"I know we were a bit hasty popping them in the incinerator. But it was horrible – coffins busting open, shrieking bodies wondering where their tea was or why they couldn't see." She shudders. "But, please: this is a nightmare!"
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| Arrange to take the living home
"We'd appreciate having our coffins back," the Deceased Stoker says.
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A happy solution
You haul the captain out of her coffin. The dead keep their distance, perhaps sensing their help is unlikely to be appreciated. "B___y saviour, you are," the captain whispers. "Come on, lads. All aboard the Captain's train. We'll sort out what we're going to say to the Line Manager on the way back."
The crew of the Boatman leave their train for yours. Your Quartermaster can arrange the details of their crossing and provisioning.
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| Arrange to take the grumbling dead back to London
The Behatted Chaperone is making pointed remarks about the contents of the Deceased Stoker's skull. The happy dead won't leave until they have the engine to themselves.
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Eagerly accepted
The Chaperone gasps. "You would? Oh, I can smell my old tea shop already." Her voice gives out, but she conveys her feelings via a sudden crushing embrace. Bones crack before she releases you. Fortunately, only hers.
Your Quartermaster can arrange the details of their trip back. Your Quartermaster's expression suggests that they did not appreciate the reminder that the new passengers won't require supplies.
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| Return to your Locomotive
You have done all you can here. It is time to get back under way.
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Cheerful parting
The Stoker waves. "Your visit was well timed. We were running out of corned beef. Without our guests, we can burn the spare coffins. That'll get us far enough to refuel."
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Game note: Return to London and the Mausoleum, for your rewards.
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| Board the Boatman. Speak with the Happy Dead
The Deceased Stoker leads a group of corpses eager to be off among the stars. They don't seem to have got very far.
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A skeleton grin
The Stoker adjusts his jaw to make his speech more intelligible. "Good to see you again, Addressed As(SpeechFormal). As you can see, we're just getting ready to move off."
He considers the state of the engine around him. "Might be a while, mind. Got a lot of work to do." He shakes your hand and shows you to the exit. "Please don't let me keep you."
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| The Boatman's Last Voyage | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 288301 |
The Boatman's Last Voyage[]
Crewed and captained by the dead who were jolted awake by an unfortunate collision with the wreckage of hours, the Boatman was the victim of an unfortunate and improbable accident. With the living and the unhappy dead gone, the dead passengers of the Boatman are making preparations for a journey further into the Wilderness, free from the prejudices of the living.
Trigger conditions
Trespassing on the Boatman ≥ 40 ≤ 30,
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Observe the preparations
What do the dead need for a journey?
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The Deceased Stoker is all about the engine, prodding this navigator or inspecting these charts, or examining the store-rooms, though his joints are giving him some trouble. "So glad you're back. A rare example of a forward-thinking pre-deceased personage!" He gives you a quick tour. He will be taking the captain's cabin for the moment, but the duties of captain will be determined by rota, so everyone has something to look forward to. The store cupboards are filled with games, cards, and unexpurgated literature. The beds have been removed from the cabins so that the dead may decorate them as they wish. "On our way soon, Captain," the Stoker says, before bustling away.
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