Station III

"There are some things we were not meant to know, they say. But you wouldn't be down here if you took that seriously." Beyond this point lie spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include midgame or minor Fate-locked content. Proceed with caution. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"Machinery hums behind high steel walls. Up the hill, there are visible outlines of warehouses and a building with a spire. But the lamps are low where they burn at all, and your ship the only one in harbour."

Station III is a top-secret facility owned by a company called Soothe and Cooper.

Clearance

"Heavy cannon. Harpoons of a metal wicked enough to pierce the most rubbery hide. Sheets of flat heartmetal suitable for hammering onto the hull of a vessel. Grapeshot of heartmetal fragments. Some of the inventory is already packed for export."

The Station accepts a steady supply of corpses stuffed inside of Soothe & Cooper Long-Boxes - brought mainly from the Surface, though they can also be found in other surprising places like The Shepherd Isles. All of the deceased brought here habitually took Soothe and Cooper's Heartsease Tonic, a medicine advertised as a cure for sadness and keeping secrets. When imbibed, the tonic produces a chemical reaction with a person's soul. It covers the source of a person's woes and slowly hardens and accumulates over time, creating layers of an extremely durable and cold metal called heartmetal, which can be useful in creating a variety of things, from weaponry to diving suits.

Valuable Secrets

"The woman's metal ball is not round or oval. It has grown to fit exactly in the spaces between her organs, and from the outside of the corpse you would not guess it was there at all. It takes a long time to carve it out."

Within these metallic shells lies a person's deepest secret, crystallized in the form of a black stone. Touching said stone can make someone relive the memories and feelings associated with that secret. The Masters of the Bazaar seem to be very interested in secrets related to love and romance, resulting in promotion of the tonic's usage among the general public.

The way heartmetal develops within the body is greatly affected by the type and intensity of a person's secret. The formation's location can range from the person's brain down to the palms of their hands, although the most common place of the metal's accumulation is right over the heart, resulting in the substance's name.

Rubbery Men can also fall under the effects of the tonic, although their own secrets manifest in the form of amber instead of black stones.

Dealing with Grief

"There was another apprentice who worked with me," she says. "He had a steady hand with the scalpel, but he thought the singing was foolish. Only lasted a few days before we had to pack him off to the Royal Bethlehem."

The Austere Acolyte is one of the Station's most accomplished workers, with a wealth of experience when it comes to extracting the secrets out of corpses. She can almost always be found singing or whistling a nonsensical tune; this is not just a way to pass the time, but a measure of protection from being overwhelmed by the secrets stored within the heartmetal.

The Acolyte herself doesn't remember how she came to work at the Station. She does remember her life as a doctor in London, along with her Bohemian twin sister, who she believes to have unintentionally killed in a failed resuscitation attempt. That, however, is not actually the truth. The Acolyte has never had a sister, and the entity living with her was a mysterious creature drawn to her potential, that wore a mirror reflection of her own face.

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The Austere Acolyte in her protective equipment.