Adam's Way

Adam's Way
Adam's Way (Map)
Adam's Way (Gazetteer)
Located in	Adam's Cape
Ports	Apis Meet
Shops	Peleghast's Post
Shipyard	No

Adam's Way is a large inland waterway leading from the southern Unterzee into the Elder Continent. Its mouth is flanked by giant stone carvings of bees. The port is called Apis Meet.

Sailing south off the map via Adam's Way will reduce both your Hull and Crew to 1 and award you The Touch of the South, and Judgements' Egg.

Port description

"On a bed of monumental ruins, warehouses and waystations of shroom-timber rise."

Interactions

Near Adam's Way

All ships that approach Adam's Way are intercepted by the Gracious - the Presbyterate's splendidly head-dressed coastguards. A quaint but inviolable tradition governs entry: you must tell them one of three stories. In return you will be permitted to spend a single day in the port.

Actions	Requirements	Effects	Notes
A tale of a city, recently fallen The Gracious are always eager for news from London.	1 x Recent News	A new day Is their interest strategic? Or do they just enjoy hearing about London's miseries? Regardless, they permit you to dock. The day has just begun. In the town's square, a yellow-robed priestess plants a seed in a bed of black soil. No sooner has she patted down the soil than a tiny shoot pokes forth. By mid-morning it will be a sapling; by lunchtime a budding tree. By the evening's end it will wither and fall. You must be back on your ship before then. Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 1 [The Tree of a Single Day is a hopeful sapling, green and budding.] -1 x Recent News Triggers event: Adam's Way
An unfinished tale The Gracious lean forwards, avidly.	1 x Unread Log	A new day The log ends immediately after an intriguing discovery. Did the captain survive? Did she return to her sweetheart? The Gracious are unconcerned. "Endings always disappoint, don't you think?" The day has just begun. In the town's square, a yellow-robed priestess plants a seed in a bed of black soil. No sooner has she patted down the soil than a tiny shoot pokes forth. By mid-morning it will be a sapling; by lunchtime a budding tree. By the evening's end it will wither and fall. You must be back on your ship before then. Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 1 [The Tree of a Single Day is a hopeful sapling, green and budding.] -1 x Unread Log Triggers event: Adam's Way
A tale of Hell The Presbyterate has never explained its interest in devils. They are keen to hear what you learned in Mt Palmerston.	1 x A Port Report: Mt Palmerston	A new day An exchange of glances. Your ship is waved on, toward the long stone jetty. The day has just begun. In the town's square, a yellow-robed priestess plants a seed in a bed of black soil. No sooner has she patted down the soil than a tiny shoot pokes forth. By mid-morning it will be a sapling; by lunchtime a budding tree. By the evening's end it will wither and fall. You must be back on your ship before then. -1 x A Port Report: Mt Palmerston Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 1 [The Tree of a Single Day is a hopeful sapling, green and budding.] Triggers event: Adam's Way
Why are foreigners only allowed to spend a single day in Adam's Way? "For your own protection," one of them explains, kindly.		Unsafe The soil of the Elder Continent is dangerous to incomers, they claim. Those who linger can contract unfortunate conditions: hysteria, rapture, animescence. And the rumours that Presbyterate law offers no protection to foreigners after dark? "Arrant nonsense."

Adam's Way

To the south: the Elder Continent, and the seventy-two cornucopian kingdoms of the Presbyterate. Are the stories true - rivers of honey; castles of ivory?

Who can say? Foreigners (that's you) are forbidden from the interior. The closest most get is Adam's Way: a shouting, feasting, thieving riot of a port.

Game note: The options available may change as the day progresses.

Actions	Requirements	Effects	Notes
Assist at an animescence hospital It stands apart from the port, on a lonely zee-side bluff.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	A dusty track You climb the dusty slope. Triggers event: Assist at an Animescence Hospital
Visit an exhibition of Presbyterate curiosities For the insignificant price of a single echo, the Sober Showman will lay the wonders of the Elder Continent directly at your feet!	1 x Echo Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	A pleasant distraction You head towards the bright tents. -1 x Echo Triggers event: The Sober Showman's Exhibition
Attend a funeral feast A public square. A gathering of the bereaved, uncannily cheerful. A table, shining with cutlery, white china plates, tall glasses.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 4 [The Tree of a Single Day is withered. It's gnarled trunk groans.] Adam's Way: a Guest at a Red Table ≤ 0 Something Awaits You ≥ 1	Curiosity You move closer for a better look. Triggers event: Attend a Funeral Feast
Listen to a storyteller Ignore the gaudy entertainments, intended to defraud visitors. Pass the street-hawkers (they will only tell you what you want to hear). Shun the tavern gossip, most of which is fabricated by the Mithridate Office, the Prester's propagandists.	A Port Report: Adam's Way ≤ 0 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4 Adam's Way: a Guest at a Red Table ≤ 0	The buzzing of the bees Climb the stairs cut into the hill. Sit at the foot of the bee-capped stone columns. They will shield you from the southern Mountain-heat. Be quiet. Listen. Old storytellers share the shadow. The Prester is on the verge of declaring the Dawn Machine a blasphemy. London's bureaucracy is riddled with the children of the Thief-of-Faces. An expedition of foreigners recently put to shore to the west, then went south in search of the Garden. They were discovered. and given to the red river. +1 x A Port Report: Adam's Way +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Listen to a storyteller Climb the hill to the bee-crested columns. Sit in their long shadows, and listen to the storytellers.	A Port Report: Adam's Way ≤ 0 Adam's Way: a Guest at a Red Table ≥ 1 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	Tales An old storyteller is describing the red, running feasts of the Replete as you approach. He stammers into silence. You sit, and wait until another storyteller resumes the tales. London's Dilmun Club has appealed to the Presbyter for permission to approach the Mountain. Years ago, a director of the Mithridate Office resigned from his position and retired to the Shepherd Isles. Someone has been promising Snuffers forgiveness in exchange for service. +1 x A Port Report: Adam's Way +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Catch a nut that falls from the Tree of a Single Day Picking them from a branch is forbidden, but fallen ones are useless. You'll need to intercept it between bough and ground.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 2 - 3	Fruitless The branch is too far, the nut too small, your hand too slow. When it strikes the paved square, the nut bursts into brief, pointless life. Threadlike shoots squirm out, groping for water. Desperate roots claw at a crack in the stone. It's no good. Its strength spent, the shoot browns, stiffens, and expires. +1 x Lamentable Relic +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day	Game Note: A matter of luck.
		Rare event (20%)
		One in the hand An hour you wait, and another hour. In that time, nuts fall beyond your reach. You ignore them. Clack-clack-clack! There! A nut has fallen from a high limb! It ricochets from branch to branch as it falls. Your hand snaps out! The nut lands in your palm: glossy, smooth and brown. A number of passers-by cheer your catch. +1 x Outlandish Artefact +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Sit by the Tree of a Single Day and let the hours pass The day is young, and the tree is still only a sapling.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 1 [The Tree of a Single Day is a hopeful sapling, green and budding.]	Morning It is not tall enough to offer shelter, yet. You watch it grow, inch by hasty inch, and listen to its roots slide beneath the paved slabs of the square. -1 x Terror +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day	This is an extremely poor way to reduce Terror. Consider instead "Visit an exhibition of Presbyterate curiosities".
Sit beneath the Tree of a Single Day and let the hours pass Already so tall and strong! Its leaves are a mantle of green and gold.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 2 [The Tree of a Single Day is tall and strong. Its branches stretch over the rooftops.]	Lunchtime It topmost branches are higher than the houses, now. The trunk is broad, comfortably cradling your back. You look up into its leafy tangle of limbs. Buds begin to swell from the twigs. -1 x Terror +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Sit beneath the Tree of a Single Day and let the hours pass Its leafy branches reach across the square.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 3 [The Tree of a Single Day is flowering. White petals drift across the square.]	Afternoon You watch buds bulge into blossoms. White flowers burst across the tree like November fireworks. As the afternoon draws on, petals begin to detach themselves, spinning across the square like drifting snow. -1 x Terror +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Sit beneath the Tree of a Single Day and let the hours pass Its limbs are bare. The square rattles with dead leaves.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 4 [The Tree of a Single Day is withered. It's gnarled trunk groans.]	Evening The trunk groans at your back. Above you, withered branches scratch, spidery, at the air. A gnarled branch falls. The yellow-robed priestess sweeps it away. -1 x Terror +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
The Presbyterate Adventuress A tall woman in a salt-caked Royal Navy uniform is methodically shooting giant land snails off a chunk of fallen statue.	Presbyterate Adventuress ≤ 0 Learning About: The Presbyterate Adventuress ≤ 0	You approach She lines up another shot. Triggers event: The Presbyterate Adventuress
Go ashore with the Adventuress "I'll admit it: I would like one last look around. But we're not going inland. The College would sniff me out soon enough."	Learning About: The Presbyterate Adventuress = 100 [Help her Die Well] Presbyterate Adventuress ≥ 1 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	A distant light You both climb a hill to look out over the estuary. The zee curls below; smoke rises from chimneys; the Mountain glimmers on the horizon. "You call her Stone, don't you?" the Adventuress says. "The Mountain, I mean. It's as good a name as any other. We have too many names for her. One for every day of the year... I could never get them right. And I resented her. I still do. She has all that life to give, and none of it for me. Because my bloody father got greedy." She snorts. "The Bazaar is the Mountain's mother, they say. Or her father. I don't understand how these things work. I wonder if she ever complains about her parents." -10 x Terror +1 x Memory of Distant Shores +25 x Fragment Learning About: The Presbyterate Adventuress = 110 [Help her Die Well] +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
An Avuncular Broker has a commission His client has a task of modest - but scriptural - significance. He is conducting interviews.	Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem ≤ 0 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 2 [The Tree of a Single Day is tall and strong. Its branches stretch over the rooftops.]	Triggers event: An Interview with the Avuncular Broker
Accept the Avuncular Broker's commission He orders a plate of figs soaked in honey. "Tell me: what do you know about the disciples of the Thief-of-Faces?"	Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 100 [He has a commission for you] Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	Doing the Prester's work "Or 'Snuffers' to children and Londoners. Awful creatures. Eat candles. Steal faces. Erasing them is a sacrament. An associate of mine recently found one in Port Carnelian, but before he could expose it he disappeared. Maybe the Snuffer got him. Or perhaps one of the Port's spies - the place is stuffed with them." "Your commission is to root out Port Carnelian's Snuffer. Capture it. Bring it back here. I'd like to ask it a question or two." He pops a fig into his mouth. Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 200 [He wants you to catch a Snuffer in Port Carnelian]
Deliver the snuffer to the Avuncular Broker You have contained the creature in a barrel. You order it rolled to the Broker's door.	Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 300 [You have captured Port Carnelian's Snuffer and are to return it to the Broker in Adam's Way] Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	A job well done "Excellent! Roll it on in, my friend! I owe you another lunch, I think. But first, your payment." He hands you a large cream envelope. Inside is a chart, its folds stiff with zee-salt. The corner is stamped with the seal of the Empress herself. It is labelled 'First voyage of the Galatea, 1867' and shows a tenuous, roving course across the Unterzee. As you leave, the Avuncular Broker is keen to keep in touch. "Perhaps I will have another commission for you after a conversation with our mutual friend." He pats the top of the barrel. The thing inside kicks. Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 400 [He has another commission for you] +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day +1 x Revelatory Chart +1 x Extraordinary Implication
The Avuncular Broker's second commission His invitation is urgent.	Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 400 [He has another commission for you] Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	A complication This time he meets you in a private room. A lady in a neat, buttoned suit sits beside him, flicking through an English phrasebook. She seems quietly pleased. "Sit, sit," the Broker urges. His avuncularity is diminished. 'The Snuffer you caught was extremely surprised by its interrogation: it was under the impression that it was working for us. One of our London diplomats has decided that the expedience of using Snuffers outweighs the prohibition on associating with them. He is incorrect." He introduces his associate, a Hands-On Diplomat. "I'd like you to see her safely to the Presbyterate embassy in London. She will explain her colleague's error to him, and replace him in his position. Thereupon, she will pay you. The payment is generous. It covers your discretion as well as your service." Objective: The Avuncular Broker's Little Problem = 500 [You are to escort a Hands-On Diplomat to the Presbyterate's embassy in London] +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day
Ask storytellers about the Cladery Heart The Cladery Heir insists it was last seen in the Elder Continent.	Cladery Heir = 1 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4 Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 60 [Seeking knowledge of the Cladery Heart in Adam's Way]	The Cladery Heart? Yes, it was here. A previous owner zailed it as far up the river as it would go, and then submerged it and covered its resting place in reeds. There its ichor bled into the water. The river fish began to throw themselves on shore and hobble about on their fins. At first the local fishermen welcomed an easy harvest, but in time they came to dislike the disruption and the permanent rotting smell. Then... ah, but how the Heart departed and where it went are another story. The Cladery Heir listens without looking, her gaze fixed on the flowering of the tree. +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 70 [Gaining knowledge of the Cladery Heart in Adam's Way]
Ask storytellers about the Cladery Heart's departure If it is no longer in the river, where did it go?	Cladery Heir = 1 Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 70 [Gaining knowledge of the Cladery Heart in Adam's Way] Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	Hacked free The people who lived on the banks of Adam's Way brought the Cladery Heart to the surface and made it fit to zail again. But there was no one who wanted to voyage in her. So they chose a crew by lot and chained them to the deck, ordering them to zail north until they had left the Elder Continent, and then to keep zailing as far as they could go. The Cladery Heir is still looking into the middle distance, but the corners of her mouth have turned down. The storyteller is milking the story, and she knows it. +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 80 [Learning how to retrieve the Cladery Heart]
Ask storytellers about how to retrieve the Cladery Heart Is there any word of where she might be now?	Cladery Heir = 1 Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4 Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 80 [Learning how to retrieve the Cladery Heart]	Khan's Shadow One can't be certain. But ships that cannot zail any longer often find themselves huddled into Khan's Shadow. You might look there. Perhaps the presence of the Cladery Heart would even make those other broke-down ships eager to move again. +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day Learning About: The Cladery Heir = 90 [Seeking the Cladery Heart in Khan's Shadow]
Put a blemmigan ashore Surely a simple mushroom will not attract the attention of the Gracious.	1 x Docile Blemmigan Propagation: Adam's Way ≤ 0	An ecstatic exit The southern Mountain heat seeps around the slopes of the hill. The soil of the Elder Continent is rich and strange. If the blemmigan can survive in it at all, it should flourish. +1 x Propagation: Blemmigans Abroad -1 x Docile Blemmigan +1 x Propagation: Adam's Way Triggers event: Near Adam's Way	Doing this immediately will waste the rest of your visit.
Deliver Sphinxstone for Penstock A tilted temple squats in the shade of a gumheart shroom. This is where Penstock sent you. Your zailors drag the stones, complaining as zailors generally do.	Objective: Deliveries from the Salt Lions = 105 [Deliver Sphinxstone to Adam's Way, in the South] 1 x Sphinxstone Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≤ 4	The Temple of the Mountain's Mother The priestess wears Bazaar-black. Her eyes are lost in the snaking coils of her hair. "The altar is here," she intones. She holds out a bag of coins to you, and points to the floor. "Yes. That block. Place it here. Put the others in the sea. Only one is worthy.” A trial of blocks. A sacrifice of stones. How quaint! Then the priestess leans over, to whisper the reason for it: the Birth, the Heart, the Chain. Your head spins. You stagger outside to recover. The doors slam shut. Fortunately, you hung on to your coins. +Sphinxstone*50 x Echo The Gods of the Zee: Stone's Attention = 1 Sphinxstone = 0 +1 x Secret +100 x Objective: Deliveries from the Salt Lions +1 x Mirrors +1 x Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day	You'll be paid the number of Sphinxstone * 50 Echoes, e.g. 20 Sphinxstone = 1000 Echoes.
Bid farewell to the departing Aurelian He's been quiet for the whole trip. Even now, disembarked and sitting on the dock, he listlessly searches through his collection.	Undercrow: Incomparable Aurelian ≥ 1 Undercrow: The Almost Dead Man ≥ 100	A quiet farewell Without looking up, the Incomparable Aurelian tells you that your assistance has been appreciated. "Being present for the Most-Moth's hatching will be the highlight of my career," he says, miserably. "I'm sure Lorenzo would want to thank you, as well." Undercrow: Incomparable Aurelian = 0 +50 x Echo Triggers event: A fate worse than death?
Return to your ship The day is over. It's time to return to your ship.	Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day ≥ 5	Back to zee The Gracious comb the streets, ushering visitors politely back to the dock. Adam's Way: the Tree of a Single Day = 0 That's all for now Triggers event: Near Adam's Way

Nearby event - Sailing South

Actions	Requirements	Effects	Notes
Sail South of Adam's Way	Sail off the edge of the map.	Triggers the event Way Upstream	This is a very risk venture with dire consequences.