Your opportunity deck is not available here; however when you return to Zee any cards that were in your hand will still be there. The Bazaar is accessible on Grunting Fen. There is no penalty for having Suspicion or Nightmares at or above 8 here.
Orthos is Coming! 0-4
Grunting Fen
Grunting Fen shoulders uneasily out of the Sea of Voices. Beware. Prodigious strange things happen, this near to Polythreme. Get on with your research while you can - as Orthos gets nearer, things will change…
Listen to the island
Evidently, the Sea of Voices is named for its sounds. If you stand still and quiet, voices seem to surround you. The zailors, always superstitious, are chattering like geese.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Unknown tongues
Waves break on the shore, and pebbles rustle in the receding water as if whispering softly. The boulders on the beach creak and groan in the wind like giants in pain. If you were to give into fancy and imagine these were human voices, they'd be talking in languages you don't know. You make some initial observations, wondering what this flat little island can tell you.
Watchful increase
You've gained 12 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Orthos is Coming! has increased (2 change points)
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Do a survey
Don't waste time sitting around listening. Draw a map!
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Beautiful cartography
You pace out a section of the island and plot what landmarks you can find - they're few and far between on this flat chunk of land, but you do your best. In the process, you draw a few interesting conclusions. Does the symmetry of those hillocks suggest ritual burial? Or just uniformity of geological forces?
Watchful increase
You've gained 11 x Cryptic Clue
You've gained 10 x Map Scraps
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Orthos is Coming! 4-5
What is Grunting Fen Made of?
Do you dare to dig on an island that might be able to talk back?
What manner of things live here?
And what manner of things may once have lived here?
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Recalcitrant soil
The island teems with life and movement. Everywhere you look, something is scurrying or flitting or squirming. But it's not until you plant your spade in the earth - and the earth talks back - that you realise that not everything that moves here is alive in the strictly… traditional sense. The spadeful of earth, protesting grumpily with little moans, moves aside. The ground shifts like an old man trying to summon up a cough, and abruptly spits out something stick-shaped. It settles back, muttering. That wasn't a stick, in fact - it was a bone. You pick it up, but it twists in your hands and you drop it. It burrows back into the earth. Quick - at least you can sketch it.
Watchful increase
You've gained 12 x A Page of Cryptopaleontological Notes
Orthos is Coming! has increased (2 change points)
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Try some beach-combing instead
The sand humps and slouches unhappily, but seems to accept being walked on.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Little treasures
The zee sometimes carries flotsam and jetsam to shore. The sand grudgingly accepts the little offerings when they wash up. It lets them sit on its surface, but doesn't engulf them. It's almost too easy to find treasure.
Watchful increase
You've gained 100 x Glim
You've gained 1 x Phosphorescent Scarab
You've gained 3 x Relic of the Fourth City
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Orthos is Coming 6: He has Landed!!
The Skull of a Long-Dead God?
Some say the cavern of the Neath is the empty shell that once housed the mind of a god. Is Grunting Fen perhaps one of its teeth?
What can you learn of matters spiritual and supernatural?
The tooth notion is a little fanciful, but what you have seen here already more than suggests there is something unusual about the island.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
A place filled with spirits?
Why does everything move, here? Why do the very rocks and stones seem to be alive? Perhaps the simplest explanation is the correct one. Perhaps they are alive. You observe some rolling pebbles. You catch a clod of mossy earth that's bumbling along the shore, and try dissecting it. Both halves jump out of your hands and go their separate ways. Then your knife follows. You're writing some notes on the possibility that every thing here has a soul, or a spirit, when your quill twists in your hand and starts scrawling gibberish across the paper. The paper resists the ink, crumpling and creasing, but you salvage what you can.
Watchful increase
You've gained 13 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Orthos is Coming! has increased (2 change points)
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Follow the trail of history
See if there's any evidence to back up the old zailors' tales of mutiny and rebellion on Grunting Fen.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
A fascinating journey
You set off across the Fen with but a sketchy idea of the facts - a peasants' revolt, sparked by crippling taxation and doomed to failure, led by the enigmatic Straw Walter. There's scant evidence here, and searching is made harder by the constant shifting of the mosses and stones that cover the land. Still, there are traces of a path here, and you convince the zailors that it must be the route the rebels took across the fen, waving pitchforks and calling for blood. They look at you with renewed admiration.
Watchful increase
You've gained 2 x Memory of Distant Shores
You've gained 13 x Cryptic Clue
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Orthos is Coming! 7 - He has Landed!!
The Treasures of Grunting Fen
Even the mushrooms here move around, hopping on little stalks like children in a sack race, or rolling like cartwheels with gills for spokes.
Catch some
If you can trap some of these animate fungi and get them back to London, they might be worth a tidy sum.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Filthy but productive
Once you've developed the knack, the little mushrooms are easy to catch. They'll hop right into your hat. The larger toadstools are more elusive, but you rig up a couple of tripwires. If they fall on their backs, they're stuck, and you can scoop them up. You make sure to catalogue them scientifically, of course, as well.
Watchful increase
You've gained 13 x A Page of Cryptopaleontological Notes
Orthos is Coming! has increased (2 change points)
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
How about we make this more… interesting?
The zailors in your crew love a little flutter, and they're already setting up races. Can you pick a winner with your practised eye?
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
Requires 100 x Rostygold
Still looking up
Watchful increase
You've gained 228 x Rostygold
Orthos is Coming! has increased (2 change points)
Unknown
Watchful increase
Orthos is Coming! has increased
Orthos is Coming! 8
The Rarer Artifacts
Animate mushrooms and pebbles are all very well, but perhaps there are things here more valuable still?
Go searching
At the very least, you might find some glim in this remote spot.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at ??
The wonders of the Sea of Voices
You rig up a few nets and go trawling the water around the island. You dredge up a positive embarrassment of riches. Scuttling glim. Creeping jade. Crawling stone scarabs. Oysters that open their mouths as if to speak, and drop rolling pearls onto the ground.
Watchful increase
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 9
You've gained 200 x Moon-pearl
You've gained 100 x Jade Fragment
You've gained 200 x Glim
Unknown
Watchful increase
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 9
Nightmares is increasing…
Knowledge that Seeped into the Water
Relics of previous cities are scarce on Grunting Fen. But have you yet thought to ask your ship what it learned on its way here?
No more peculiar than anything else here
You've seen things you brought to the island become animate, and the way the water whispers suggests the effect spreads out into the zee.
Watchful challenge, straightforward at 132
Tales of another city?
After a long while, as if it was gathering its thoughts, or perhaps just bemused by the fact that it now has thoughts, your ship begins to speak. Its voice is a mixture of rusty shrieks, like unoiled hinges, and deep groans like shifting metal plates grinding on rocks. But at least you can understand its words - it must have learnt to speak from you and your crew. It tells you that a terrible bargain was made once in a far dry place, and that all water still remembers it because all water contains something that was once well-water. Your ship falls silent, unused to this kind of effort.
Watchful increase
You've gained 40 x A Page of Prelapsarian Archaeological Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 9
You've gained 2 x Memory of Distant Shores
Unknown
Watchful increase
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 9
Orthos is Coming! 9 - He is Here!!
Spiritual riches
There's no escaping the fact that the plants and rocks of Grunting Fen have some kind of sentience. But can you communicate with them? Learn from them?
Untapped wealth
The secrets of the ponds alone must be worth a fortune. Let alone the lichens. It is worth studying their languages.
Riches beyond dreams
Careful study and application of everything you ever learned while studying the Correspondence brings you a level of understanding. You hope. You've lived among the strange inhabitants of Grunting Fen for long enough now - the stones and the mosses are almost comfortable talking to you. Most of it is nonsense, of course - petty grumbles about the effects of the briny zee air or territorial bickering between rocks. But a deep pond comes up with something startling. It claims to remember when the Cantigaster was 'his real self, before the asp bit and the pact was sealed. That's why they won't abide talk of that place, you know. She's still there, though, isn't she? Sending him to Parabola when she wants, no doubt. Sometimes the Clay come back here and tell the rest of us these things. Don't you go thinking we live in the past all the time.'
An occurrence! Your 'Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery' Quality is now 4 - An Established Scholar! (Or: Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery hasn't changed, because it's higher than 3)
You've gained 6 x Extraordinary Implication
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 10- He is Here!!
Describe Grunting Fen in Theosophistical terms
What has your experience here really taught you about matters spiritual?
Rich insights
The sentience you have observed here alone is enough to overturn much current Theosophical thought.
Will they even believe it all?
You have sailed a way off from Grunting Fen by the time you've finished writing up everything you've seen. The place is the nearest thing to the mythical Parabola you've yet come across, and that in itself will startle London. But your specimens are looking sluggish and sleepy… Before you can worry about them too much, all hands are called on deck. You must make haste!
An occurrence! Your 'Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery' Quality is now 4 - An Established Scholar! (Or: Embarking on a Voyage of Scientific Discovery hasn't changed, because it's higher than 3)
You've gained 150 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality is now 10- He is Here!!
Orthos is Coming! 10- He is Here!!
Orthos Seeks To Take Your Work
Ominous shapes lurk on the water. The Fleet of Truth is looming.
Time to go
Dr Orthos' crew use whatever methods they deem necessary to get the job done. So you should probably leave now.
A carefully planned escape
That was close. You slip away across the deep waters of the Unterzee, as quietly as a mouse who knows the cat sleeps with one eye open.
You've moved to a new area: The Sea of Voices
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality has gone!
Tarry a little
Nobody builds a doctorate in a day. [There is some risk of losing some of your research notes.]
(A matter of luck: pretty good odds.)
Standing on the coast
You were fortunate!
You've moved to a new area: The Sea of Voices
20 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality has gone!
Unknown
You were unlucky. Better luck next time…
You've moved to a new area: The Sea of Voices
You've lost 5 x A Page of Cryptopaleontological Notes
You've lost 5 x A Page of Prelapsarian Archaeological Notes
You've lost 5 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality has gone!
Cut it fine
What's he going to do? Kill you in cold blood and steal your work?
(A matter of luck: the odds are against you here.)
Unknown
You were fortunate!
You've moved to a new area: The Sea of Voices
You've gained 40 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality has gone!
Shocking
Has it come to this? Being menaced by unbred ruffians for your work on rarefied matters of the spirit. O tempora! O mores!
You were unlucky. Better luck next time…
You've moved to a new area: The Sea of Voices
You've lost 5 x A Page of Cryptopaleontological Notes
You've lost 5 x A Page of Prelapsarian Archaeological Notes
You've lost 5 x A Page of Theosophistical Notes
Your 'Orthos is Coming!' Quality has gone!
