Sunless Sea Wiki
Advertisement
Port Carnelian
Port Carnelian (Map)
SS Locations Port Carnelian Map
Port Carnelian (Gazetteer)
SS Locations Port Carnelian
Located in The Carnelian Coast
Ports Yes
Shops SS banknotessmall Dockside Market

SS sapphiresmall Sapphire Exchange
Shipyard No
Data ID 175505

Port Carnelian was added in the Carnelian release. The Diamond update began adding story content.

Port description[]

"Fallen London's sole Imperial possession. Treasure it."

Port interactions[]

SS Interactions Port Carnelian Port Carnelian[]

Port description[]

"London's first Unterzee colony sweats under a blanket of southern heat. To the right of the dock, the sapphire-mines yawn. To the left, the Governor's house stands, prim as an Elderwick mansion. Behind lies the fungal jungle, ghostly in white and violet."

Interactions[]

Actions Requirements Effects Notes
Visit Murgatroyd's Imperial Tea Shop

Behind the windows, spoons clink on china.

Home away from home

They import the doilies from London, but the tea is local: blue and smoky. The crumpets are warm; the tablecloths white. You could almost imagine you were back in Veilgarden, except for the tiger lounging on a divan. It laps tea from an azure bowl and complains about the recent nostalgic trend in poetry.

Pan for sapphires in the fungal jungle

Somewhere in its heart runs a river of shining stones.

Failed event
A native ambush!

Perhaps 'ambush' is a strong word. But there's a tiger sitting on a broad mushroom-cap, asking unflattering questions about your nutritional value. You retreat.

Successful event
A glimmer of truth

Braving the jungle's violet spore-drifts, you find a narrow stream. You kneel among the red-capped agarics that spot its banks. It doesn't heave with sapphires, as the stories promised, but an afternoon's panning yields a pocketful of glittering shards.

Rare successful event (15%)
The tales are true!

Hacking through a fence of looming, lurid toadstools, you find a river. You gather up a cupped handful of water, part your fingers, and watch it drain away.

Your palms sparkle with blue stones. Your crew leap, laughing, into the river, scooping up handfuls of jewels. Enough to fill all your pockets. Enough to fill a barrel!

Insinuate an agent into Port Carnelian

The place is thick with spies. Who would notice another? Once your agent is in place, you can tap your network for information, or use it to influence affairs here.

Failed event
A small fish in a big pond

Where are your reports? Where is your intelligence? Where, come to that, is your agent? Did they succumb to the intrigues of more callous, more experienced operatives?

Successful event Game note: On subsequent visits to Port Carnelian you'll be able to grow your network, or tap it for information. As it grows, you may be able to affect the balance of power in Port Carnelian.
Success!

Your agent vanishes into the Carnelian crowds. Within the week they will have found lodgings, friends, rivals and victims.

Find out what your spies need

To improve the quality of your network, you'll need... something. Find out what.

Game note: This will improve your Network here.
Fulfil your spies' needs

They wanted something...

Game note: This will improve your Network here.
Seek intelligence

If you have eyes and ears on the Carnelian Coast, you can use them to gain more than just a Port Report.

Failed event
A narrow escape

Your agent's warning reaches you just in time. You fold your newspaper and vacate the dock, moments before the two gentlemen with pearl cuff-links arrive. Their hands are scarred. Their smiles are false.

Rare failed event (50%) Game note: Your network has suffered.
Slim pickings

You comb your recent reports. A few morsels, but nothing to feast on. Port Carnelian is so crowded with spies that secrets are in short supply.

Successful event Game note: After a significant success, you'll often need to lie low or rebuild your network.
The dangers of success

Your late agent considered this information worth dying for. You blot her blood from the page and apply an old Assyrian cipher. She was not wrong.

Rare successful event (25%) Game note: Secrecy has been maintained! Your network has not suffered.
Silent as stone

The great zee-powers covet the Carnelian Coast for its sapphires, but the jewels your agents excavate are even more precious. Secrets: less gaudy than stones, and more portable.

Influence Affairs in Port Carnelian

Your network's influence over the colony is extensive. How will you use it?

Decide Port Carnelian's fate

Your network reaches into every office, every parlour.

Call at Heartscross House

Where the Governor administers this distant fleck of Her Majesty's empire.

A port report

The Governor is very, very busy. An attaché offers you a bowl of sugared puffballs, and explains the work the Governor does among the natives. "Got to keep them happy, what? After all, they are tigers."

Talk to a tiger in the Blue Bazaar

The Carnelian Coast's padding natives are eloquent, placid, and acerbic. Most of the time.

Trouble abroad

The Blue Bazaar is Port Carnelian's great indoor market: arched, lofty, plush with patterned carpets where the vendors display their wares. Most of all, awash with gossip.

The tiger is well-informed. A black-hulled Khanate trireme prowled the coast last night, a rifle-shot from shore. Shipments from the sapphire mines have slowed. The Governor's aide was left-handed on Tuesday, and right-handed on Wednesday.

Rare event (66%)
Trouble abroad

The Blue Bazaar is Port Carnelian's great indoor market: arched, lofty, plush with patterned carpets where the vendors display their wares. Most of all, awash with gossip.

The tiger chats about the Banded Prince, their supposed monarch, and his palace deep in the jungle. You lever the conversation onto the state of his people. He has no complaints, he says. Not even about the recent re-instatement of the travel restriction on natives? Nor the report of a tiger killed at the jungle's edge? His tail flicks.

Call at a room above a bookshop

The diplomats of the Khanate were expelled from Port Carnelian following the Galatea Incident. Only one remains behind. "Not in any official capacity, you understand."

Off the record

"No, I'm retired, now," he tells you, cheerfully. His crockery is white as the moon, and rimmed with gold. Over tea, he comments sympathetically on the Governor's difficulties ("I feel for the man, I really do"), and asks probing questions regarding your travels. You manage to squeeze in a few of your own. "Oh, the Khan is very fond of sapphires. Blue is his favourite colour."

Visit Heartscross House

The Governor is always pleased to see you, and his cook makes admirable scones.

A friend in a high place

Since the colony's change of fortunes, the Governor has swapped his unassuming bowler hat for a towering stove-pipe. He laughs often. His watch-chain is gold, not silver.

He gives a full account of recent events. A tap of his nose, or a wriggle of his eyebrows, alerts you to those matters he cannot discuss more explicitly.

Visit Heartscross House

The leaping-fish flag of the Taiman clan hangs over the door.

Professional respect

The Khan's representative greets you in the airy, mahogany-panelled office that once belonged to Her Majesty's Governor. "It's quite a change from my little room over the bookshop, but somehow I find it in me to manage."

You share recent news and old tradecraft over a cup of airag.

Visit Heartscross House

Tigers flank the door. Are they asleep? No. A glint of golden eyes.

Memories

The Banded Prince receives you in the airy, carpeted office that was once the Governor's. You recall the leaner, simpler days of the Restitution Committee. A footman fetches tea, his uniform splendidly striped.

The Prince is happy to share news of his realm. You ask about the rival Empires across the zee: the Queen's and the Khan's. Will they try to reconquer the Coast? "They can try," he rumbles. His teeth are still sharp.

Find the Avuncular Broker's Snuffer

He wants it captured alive.

Refer a patient to the Cladery Heir

There is a lady at Murgatroyd's who dresses in tiger pelts and shows her teeth to customers.

Unacceptable

The lady insists that she belongs in the jungle. The tigers disagree. There are questions about where her pelts came from, and how the former owners died.

The Cladery Heir offers her a consultation. Afterward, the patient has a curious crescent scar on her forehead, roughly the shape of a claw. But: "I can wear a hat. It's no matter." She buries the pelts with honours, and buys a ticket for the next ship back to London.

Help Maybe's Daughter search for her mother

"This one's a slender lead. She's been seen wearing sapphires." The Daughter shrugs. "This is where sapphires come from. Look, you were heading this way anyway, weren't you? (Weren't you?)"

Failed event
No luck.

"She hasn't been here in forever. I don't think she's coming back. So that's one port eliminated. And, ah, I did pick up some sapphires. Here and there."

Successful event
She was here last week, but -

You follow the Daughter's stunned gaze. A woman in a lilac gown strolls past a tea-shop. Her features bear an unmistakable resemblance to your officer's. "We should talk," she says to the Daughter, quite calmly.

The Daughter assembles the rags of her composure with remarkable speed. "Excuse us," she says...

Put a blemmigan ashore

The heat of the colony thrills the blemmigan. It sits quivering by the port rail.

Familiarity breeds confidence

It trips over its own tendrils in its eagerness to advance. It heads straight for the Governor's house. Or perhaps the jungle behind it. Not your problem, either way.

Assist a specialised collector

A dapper gentleman lounges by a shoot of flowers admiring butterflies with a predatory gleam in his eyes. Would you help him find the quarry of a lifetime?

A man of pins and the jar

With a satisfied nod towards your ship, the Incomparable Aurelian slips the butterfly into a killing jar. He explains as the vibrant orange wings beat against the glass.

"You've been beneath the waves, I see. And I trust you've seen the Tyrant Moths as well? Fine creates, but nothing compared to the regal kin, the Most-Moth. I know where to find it - and with your ship, we can see it hatch."

He gazes down at the butterfly, now still. "Take me down to the Undercrow, and I'll show you something worth preserving forever."

Warn the adventurers of Wrack

There is a hullabaloo in Murgatroyd's Imperial Tea Shop! Young adventurers celebrate an upcoming expedition. They're planning to zail over Wrack.

You buy them crumpets, and they happily let you join them. "You're a captain, aren't you?" asks a zailor, stealing his neighbour's crumpet. "Have you ever zailed out that way? Anything you can tell us?"

Yes, you know the place. The zee is calm there. It's dark, like all the Neath, but there are lights beneath the waves: red and white distractions, to keep you from noticing the explosive mines. Hulls break there. Zailors die.

The adventurers fall silent. Dispirited, they head home. The next day, you're delivered a heavy purse from 'Thankful Mothers.' Sometimes, justice has its rewards.

Recruit a new Healer to the Seven

The tigers of the Carnelian Coast were once one of the seventy-seven kingdoms of the Presbyterate. They know its paths, its perils, its promises.

Their titular leader is the Banded Prince, although tiger politics are complex.

Available events[]

SS claderyheirgaz Retrieve the Cladery Heart[]

This interaction becomes available after advancing enough in Cladery Heir's storyline, that is:

SS Cask of Mushroom Wine Zubmariner: The Fierce Philanthropist[]

This interaction becomes available if you have the Zubmariner expansion and the following:

SS portholegaz The Old Sapphire Processing Plant[]

This interaction becomes available if you have the Zubmariner expansion and the following:

SS Cask of Mushroom Wine Ambition: an Additional Sherry with the Fierce Philanthropist[]

This interaction becomes available if you have the Zubmariner expansion and the following:

Gallery[]

Port Carnelian story events
Carnelian ConspiraciesInfluence Affairs in Port CarnelianSnuffer Hunting
Shops
Arcade of SighsBultitude's House of VisionCaminus YardsCarrow's Naval SurplusDahut ExchangeDaily BreadDearly DepartedDockside MarketFire in the BellyFortune & FortuneHarbour ProvisionersHollow TempleHouse of HarmsHouse of HarvestsHouse of MilksHouse of PleasuresHull-harvestJonah's EndLicensed ExchangeLow ChurchMalebolge ExcavationsMrs Plenty's Shipside ProvisionersPeleghast's PostPortentumRed Stallion PublishingRequisitionsSapphire ExchangeStonemarketTemple of LaboursThe Arrant LimpetThe Charnel LoungeThe Fisher of DawnThe Hunter's CageThe Iron & Misery CompanyThresholdTraveller's FriendUncle Ankle's Lean PlaceWind-Come-CallingWolfstack Exchange
Locations
Ports Abbey RockAdam's WayAestivalAigulAntheAvid HorizonChapel of LightsChelonateCodexCumaean Canal Staging AreaDahutDemeaux IslandEmpire of HandsFallen LondonThe Fathomking's HoldFrostfoundGaider's MournGant PoleGodfallGrand GeodeHideawayHunter's KeepIremIron RepublicIsle of CatsKhan's GloryKhan's HeartKhan's ShadowKingeater's CastleLow BarnetMangrove CollegeMount PalmerstonMutton IslandNookNuncioPigmote IslePolythremePort CarnelianPort CecilRosegateSalt LionsScrimshanderShepherd IslesStation IIIThe UndercrowThe UttershroomVarchasVenderbightVisageWhitherWisdomWrack
Places of Interest An Abyss...The Admiralty Survey OfficeAvernusThe Brass EmbassyDawn MachineDrydockThe EyeThe Forgotten QuarterThe House of the QuestionLight-ShipNaplesQuaker's HavenRoser's WharfSurfaceThe UniversityViennaWolfstack DocksThe Wreck of the NocturneYour Lodgings
Characters Blind BruiserMerchant VenturerThe Dark-Spectacled AdmiralThe FathomkingThe First Curator
Advertisement