Ashore in Visage | |
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Category | Story Event |
Type | Story |
Linked to | Visage |
Ashore in Visage is a Sunless Sea Story Event.
Trigger conditions[ | ]
Ashore in Visage is triggered by doing the Go ashore action in Visage.
Interactions[ | ]
Choice of masks[ | ]
Masks in an assortment of shapes and colours await.
Every time you go ashore, you'll head to the customs house (see below), and have to pick a mask. This will make Expertise in Parts = 2 (if ≥ 3). This effectively restarts your journey each time, with a small bonus after the first. As soon as you select a mask, you'll return to Ashore in Visage
Actions | Effects | Notes |
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Ask to go about without any mask Your own fair face will do for you, thanks very much. |
No?
Moon-Moth unfolds and folds its wings. "Not suitable," it says. "On Visage everyone is masked. To walk on the island with your own face would give scandal." |
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Ask the significance of the masks Maybe there's more to it than a question of aesthetic taste. |
Assorted pestilences Moon-Moth explains: each mask declares a different intention towards the denizens of Visage, and must be accompanied by suitable behavior. The Frog is for visitors who, though perhaps clumsy and unfamiliar with local etiquette, have come in order to observe local ways and to make uncouth comments about them. The Locust is for those who seek profit in Visage and would carry away as many goods as possible. You prompt about the Bat. Moon Moth hesitates. "Bat is an ill-omened visitor. Sent as a messenger or a spy. Bat always dies." |
Take time to properly read the in-game description if this is your first visit.
The Frog is for visitors, the Locust is for those who seek profit, the Bat is an ill-omened visitor. |
Choose the frog mask It looks curious. |
Brekkekkekek Moon-Moth lifts the mask and places it over your head. The eye holes are large and they are fitted with spectacles. These improve your view of the environment, though you must look bulb-eyed from the outside. There is also a mechanism attached to the mouth piece which magnifies any sounds you make, even your breathing. You start to thank the Moon-Moth and it comes out as a booming croak. "May you profit from your visit in knowledge," says Moon-Moth. Its wings fold neatly over its back.
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Choose the locust mask It looks voracious. |
Hunger for all things Moon-Moth settles the locust mask over your head. The eyeholes are covered with a thin gold film through which valuable objects gleam more brightly. "May you find a happy harvest," says Moon-Moth. Then, when you have partly turned away, it double-knots the ties on its purse, as though you're likely to pick its pockets. Doesn't it know you can see it?
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Choose the bat mask It looks threatening. |
Messenger with no message Moon-Moth spreads and folds its wings. (Are those part of the moth costume? It looks that way, but one cannot rule out the possibility that Moth has real wings.) "My condolences," it says, with polite formality, as it sets the bat mask on your face and ties the worn leather straps around the back of your head. The inside of the mask smells of musk.
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It's tricky to progress the story with the bat mask. |
Ashore in Visage[ | ]
On the lower slopes: stone buildings, flat roofs, archways. In the architecture there lingers a memory of lotus and palm frond. The hill above is a face, forever looking up at the ceiling of the Unterzee. No one inhabits its cheeks or the hollows of its eyes.
This is where you select which room you'd like to attend. Depending on your Visage: Expertise in Parts and choice of Visage: your Mask, different options will be available, and also, within each area, different options await. Some of the locations allow only a single interaction before returning you here, while actions which don't play the part of the mask you wear will have you ejected from the island.
Once your Visage: Expertise in Parts = 4, you can swap masks with the Moth, and explore further, eventually being able to enter the Festival of Flourishing, where this story will end.
Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
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Check in at the Customs House One may not wander Visage at will. |
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Choice of masks Masks in an assortment of shapes and colours await.
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This is actually the first interaction you'll see when you come Ashore in Visage, but it just forces you to the changing room |
Visit the Library of Parts So called because all the books are fragmentary, perhaps. |
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Stoop at the lintel, enter the dark A room of heavy stone, guarded by a golden statuette of a woman with outstretched arms. The scroll niches, sorted to correspond to a variety of masks: the jackal and the lioness, the crocodile and dung beetle. A woman in the mask of a lotus blossom is standing at a lectern, reading in silence.
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The Library of Parts is where you learn more about the "part" the masks represent. |
Visit the Flood Court The Moon-Moth speaks as though you should already know what that is. |
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High water The Flood Court is a long stone room with two ranks of columns on each side. Currently the court is ankle-deep in water, though water stains on the stone show that the flood has often reached higher, sometimes up to the height of your waist. In a raised niche at the far end of the room sits a statue of a man with the head of a ram. He holds a jar from which water flows out onto the floor.
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Trade masks with the Moon-Moth It has been making subtle overtures for some time. You only now understand them. |
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It is keen to go It draws you aside into a closet in the Customs House. "Had enough of Visage," it tells you frankly. "Here, you take my mask and pretend to be me, and I'll trade in the visitor mask and get on some departing ship. Get my life back." Its face - no, now you see, her face - is aging but unlined. A lifetime of never needing to use a facial expression.
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Once your Visage: Expertise in Parts is high enough, you can trade masks, and unlock new parts of the story. |
Visit the House of the Chief Geometer It is understood to be an honour. |
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Lines in wet ground Each morning the man in the cobra mask draws lines in the mud flat with a pointed steel rod. This apportions to each inhabitant a small trapezoidal area from which to harvest mushrooms and to scrape salt. No plot is ever preserved from one day to the next. This man is the Chief Geometer, the Keeper of Directions, Master of Land Measures and Sea Measures.
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Add in a little stuff here about what each place does |
Visit the Temple of Apis All the denizens of Visage go there sooner or later. |
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The wounded god In the center of the temple is a black bull with a white diamond on its face. It is tied in place with heavy ropes, and it is wounded in the thigh. From this wound it bleeds copiously without dying.
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Visit the Side of the Face The stone cheek of Flourishing-of-Years is visited as a pilgrimage by the inhabitants of Visage, and if you are in good favour, you too may go. |
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At the proper time You must, of course, wait until your work with this day's crop of frogs and locusts is complete. It would not be suitable to bring them along.
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Enter the Hollow of the Ear
It is a place of still greater pageantry. |
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A proud nose It is a festival day. The great stone face has been illuminated from forehead to chin with blazing torches, so that the profile is visible from the side more clearly than you have ever seen it. "Flourishing-of-Years is awake," says the genderless figure in the crocodile mask.
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Bring a Flare if you want to open up extra options. |
The Assigner of Corpses? One of these masked strangers is the Assigner of Corpses, if the Gracious Widow is to be believed. But which? |
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This is related to Your Father's Bones Ambition and accessible simply by selecting any mask from Choice of masks |
End your performance and leave the island You can't stay in character forever. |
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A shame about the Moth You say farewell to the Moon-Moth. It makes gestures you now recognise as agitation. Perhaps there was some other plan for you here, but no one consulted you about it. You have other things to attend to. Your last sight of Visage: the Moth smoothing the folds from your robe and hanging your mask on a peg for the next visitor.
Triggers Event: Visage |
Leave, and leave your mask too. |
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Calmer When the other citizens are distracted, you find your way to the familiar Customs House and rid yourself of mask and robe. There is satisfaction in laying aside a role well performed.
-10 Terror Triggers Event: Visage |
This is available if you didn't cause troube during the Festival of Flourishing.
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Your Father's Bones: the Assigner of Corpses[ | ]
One of these masked strangers is the Assigner of Corpses, if the Gracious Widow is to be believed. But which?
Your Father's Bones: the Assigner of Corpses | |
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Category | Story Event |
Linked to | Visage |
Data ID | 176399 |
This is accessed from Visage. You must go Ashore in Visage, pick a mask in the changing room and then speak to the Assigner of Corpses. It will only appear if Your Past is a Natural Philosopher, and your Ambition is to find Your Father's Bones.
Actions | Requirements | Effects | Notes |
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Interrogate the Visagers The Visagers seem reluctant to discuss the matter, even with Frog. It is distasteful, or forbidden, or inconvenient. But surely someone will let something slip. |
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The blankness of masks A man in a crocodile-mask trundles an ibis-masked corpse on a wheeled bier. Is this the Assigner of Corpses? He shakes his head. "This corpse was assigned to the Fathomking," he explains. "I go now to the Hold....The Fathomking knows why." Was that a meaningful pause? If no one here will speak to you of the Assigner and his Assignments, might the Fathomking know more? |
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Across the zee If no one here will speak to you of the Assigner and his Assignments, might the Fathomking know more? |
Game note: Find the Fathomking's Hold, somewhere in the south or central Unterzee, to continue.
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This will only trigger if you come back after speaking to the Fathomking, before completing his requests. | |
A Crimson Lion-Mask The Fathomking told you to look for the 'dawn-coloured cat'. Over there - that slope-shouldered fellow with the shovel, masked as a lion! It's him! |
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A Vital Secret The Assigner of Corpses is disinclined to speak with you, but you are similarly disinclined to let him go. You have gone too far and suffered too much to be put off. You insist. You place your hand on his arm. You invoke the importance of filial piety. The conversation becomes increasingly heated. At last, quite suddenly, the Assigner drags you behind a midden and tears off his mask. "All right!" he hisses. (His breath is heavy with rum.) "It's me! I'm not dead! And, er, hello. It's nice to meet you. Now please go away!" The face staring back at you - seamed by Time, bulbous with wine - is unmistakably like the one you see in the mirror. This is your father."
Trigger Event: Your Father: Bones? |
Game note: You have your father's bones. Bury them in London to win the game. |