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| Douser | |
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| Type | Sky-Beast |
| Location | Eleutheria |
Description[ | ]
A locomotive, supports Liberation of Night. Will see you as enemy if you have your light on. Looks a little like the Empyrean's locomotive, difference being it has a smokestack/circle near the back part and will have its light turned off.
Guns shoot out multiple shells at once, similar the weapon Cotterell & Hathersage's 'Emanation'.
A Douser, Defeated[ | ]
| A Douser, Defeated | |
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| Category | Story Event |
| Type | Story |
| Data ID | 299207 |
"The ravaged vessel is silent. Its flags have been torn off; its name obliterated with lampblack. The Dousers are fanatical devotees of the Liberation of Night. They attack any engine that dares poison the dark with its light."
Game note: Dousers will be hostile if your engine's headlight is on.
Interactions
| Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Scavenge its plating
Your crew are afraid to approach the lightless vessel.
Game note: The higher your Hearts, the more Hull you will restore. |
Failed event | Advanced query needs investigation
Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.
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| Arguments in the dark
Work is slow. Your engineers fumble at bolts, stumble on the dark hull, slip and let a perfectly good section of plating go spinning into the night. Then, for no clear reason, their lamps go out.
The engineers scramble back to your engine, and refuse to return to their task.
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| Successful event | ||||
| Salvaging the night
Your crew works by lamplight, prying plates from the engine's skin while trying to avoid looking into the interior. They do not want to know what crimes the Dousers did in the dark.
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| Partial success event (5%) | ||||
| Disagreements in the dark
The lamplight flickers as your crew work. They are nervous, and with shaking hands come mistakes, and with mistakes, arguments. The ruin of the Douser groans, ominously. Is there still movement inside?
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Call your engineers back
The job is only half finished, but it will do.
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As the clamber back aboard, you see the relief on their faces. You leave the Douser, and anything that survives in its lightless corridors, to the cold sky.
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| Order them to finish the job
Or you'll give them something to be afraid of.
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Your engineers scurry over the wreck. Some have to go inside to unfasten an armour plate from the inside.
You never get a full account of what occurred in the pitch dark of the Douser. You learn only that your crew quarrelled, and the quarrel turned bloody. Not everyone returns.
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| Help personally
Even though it means going over to that benighted engine yourself.
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Your presence gives the engineers courage. But as you pry at the plates, your own unease grows. A rank stench pours from within the Douser. And was that a hand, pressed for a moment against the inside of the window beside you? Was that laughter you heard from within?
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| Plunder the Douser
Enter. Search its dark, if you have the belly for it.
Game note: Who knows what you might find. |
Failed event | Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.
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| Death in the dark
You – and such crew as will accompany you – inch through the pitch dark of the Douser's corridors. Your lamplight is pale and pitiful. The dark is luxurious and swallowing and grand; primordial as the first night before the first dawn.
A sudden groan in the hull; a squeal of distressed metal. The vessel buckles and splits. The corridor is crushed by tons of twisting steel. Some of you, at least, make it back to your engine.
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| Successful event | ||||
| Experiments in the dark
"Black as the lining of the Devil's waistcoat," a crewman mutters, as you clamber – sky-suited – into the Douser's lightless interior. Your lamp-light is frail. It is enough, though, to see that every inch of the walls, floors and ceilings have been painted with squirming shapes like woven eels.
In a room that reeks of acid and ammonia you find vials, bottles and beakers of glutinous substances. And you find cages. And you find corpses.
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| Plunder the Douser
Enter. Search its dark, if you have the belly for it.
Game note: Who knows what you might find. |
Failed event | Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.
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| Agents everywhere
With a few hand-picked crew, you search the darkened interior of the Douser engine.
One of your crew leans close and whispers something to you. You can't make it out. What did they say? They lean closer still, their face pallid in the feeble light of your lamp. "Liberation," they whisper, their breath hot on your ear. Then you see the spanner in their hand. They swing; you dive. Another engineer tackles them. A gunshot! Another! When you make it back to your locomotive, there are fewer of you than set out.
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| Successful event | ||||
| What you are in the dark
You can hear dripping water as you explore the lightless engine. A cracked pipe perhaps. Yes, perhaps.
The bridge is a wreckage of glass and bodies. Here, peppered with glass, is the captain's log. Not, as is usually the case, a record of their travels, but a mix of poetry fragments, sketches, meandering theories, and ambitious schemes to overthrow the Empyrean.
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| Plunder the Douser
Enter. Search its dark, if you have the belly for it.
Game note: Who knows what you might find. |
Failed event | Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.
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| What remains
You – and such crew as will accompany you – inch through the pitch dark of the Douser's corridors. Your lamplight is pale and pitiful. The dark is luxurious and swallowing and grand; primordial as the first night before the first dawn.
A sudden groan in the hull; a squeal of distressed metal. The vessel buckles and splits. The corridor is crushed by tons of twisting steel. Some of you, at least, make it back to your engine.
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| Successful event | ||||
| Forgotten gods
The cargo hold has been cleared to make room for a weathered stone altar, presumably salvaged from some forsaken ruin. A pig has been butchered on it, and the organs removed, handled, and arranged elaborately at the altar's foot.
Haruspicy is popular in Eleutheria, where people say the future is closer. This stone knife and bowl, attached by a chain of amber rings, are certainly of old Eleutherian make. You retrieve them, clean them, and return to your engine.
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| Plunder the Douser
Enter. Search its dark. If you have the belly for it.
Game note: Who knows what you might find. |
Failed event | Advanced alteration value probably needs examination.
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| Taking you with them
The Douser is steeped in midnight. You turn another corner, to be met with a sudden flash and clap of thunder. A gunshot! And a second, and third!
The last, dying member of the Douser's crew is determined to extract a toll from its plunderers. After he is dealt with, you carry your dead back to your engine.
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| Successful event | ||||
| A survivor, temporarily
You hear the ragged breathing before you turn another corner. It belongs to a member of the Douser's crew, badly wounded, who shies from your lamp with a cry of anguish.
Their wound is unquestionably fatal. They promise to tell you a truth they have learned in their journeys, if only you'll let them die in the dark.
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