Faith's Fall

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"Behold. The remains of a celestial behemoth, rotting gently. "A Messenger of the Heavens", breathes a member of your crew. There are tears in his eyes."[1]

Faith's Fall is the corpse of an unnamed Messenger, located in the Reach.[2] Its carapace is made of tough chitin[3] and covered in sigils, which are mostly broken at this point.[4] Enough of the Messenger has rotted away and desiccated that caverns have formed within its body.[5] It was wounded grievously,[6] but may have ultimately been killed by its own guilt, which accumulated around its heart.[7] It died loyal to the Judgement it served, the Garden-King.[8]

Within a chamber of its body are sigils of greeting and truce, which turned into scars since its message was a lie.[9] This Messenger had been sent as a "false messenger" by the Halved[10] to murder the Garden-King using a well-seed,[11][12] which bloomed in the star's heart, fed upon it,[13] and formed Old Tom's Well to bury its remains.[14] There are signs that agents of the Halved have been to Faith's Fall since the Messenger's death.[15]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Discoveries and Spectacles, Sunless Skies
  2. ↑ Discoveries and Spectacles, Sunless Skies "The remains of a celestial behemoth, rotting gently. "A Messenger of the Heavens [...]""
  3. ↑ Repair your locomotive, Sunless Skies "It is several hours' gruelling effort to remove a piece of chitin. Your crew destroy two saw blades and one friendship in the process. You are forced to organise them into shifts. It takes even longer, but at last you haul away a vast sheet of shell. Strong, broad and bereft of sigils."
  4. ↑ Faith's Fall, Sunless Skies "What remains of the behemoth's carapace is scarred with sigils. Most are marred and broken, some still holding a sullen, resentful power."
  5. ↑ Stinking, Rotten Caverns, Sunless Skies "Desiccation has created tunnels in the behemoth's corpse. The walls are wizened flesh – stone hard, striated with muscle."
  6. ↑ Delve deeper still, Sunless Skies "Jagged striations suggest this chasm is a wound, long-ago gouged into the behemoth."
  7. ↑ Search for its heart, Sunless Skies "You are in a ventricle of the heart. The heart is clogged with hard, black, cancerous polyps. Each is scored with a sigil of guilt. They have grown in such abundance that the heart is distorted; they have torn a hole in the muscle wall. Is this what killed the behemoth?"
  8. ↑ Delve deeper still, Sunless Skies "Beneath flaking scabs are dim sigils – desperate declarations of loyalty. This messenger was steadfast. It died in its king's service, fulfilling its will. The sigils blaze desperately when they feel they're being read."
  9. ↑ Break through the hardened membrane, Sunless Skies "Sigils are branded onto the walls. Many are charred and broken. [...] They are sigils of greeting, of truce. But they have become scarred and blackened as their lie was revealed."
  10. ↑ Strive to hear the death-cry of a fallen sun, Sunless Skies "You hear distant, thundering words, accompanied by blazing visions. They rage against the sun's death at the hands of a half-sun, a midnight murderer. The killer sent false messengers [...]"
  11. ↑ Investigate what killed the sun of the Reach, Sunless Skies "It was killed by a titanic, mangling force. Even the grain of its bone-fibres are distorted."
  12. ↑ Escort the Incautious Driver to the Well, Sunless Skies ""Can you see them? Glimmering in the dark? The bones of the sun!" The Driver looks back at you, their eyes suddenly as green as old emeralds. "A Messenger came, inscribed with signs of peace. But it bore a well-seed. Murder beneath the arches of heaven!""
  13. ↑ Strive to hear the death-cry of a fallen sun, Sunless Skies "The killer sent false messengers bearing a well-seed. They planted the seed in the sun's heart, and it bloomed! Bloomed and ravened. A lawless killing! A shameful death, enacted without due ceremony!"
  14. ↑ The Bones of the Sun, Sunless Skies "You stand amidst the gold bones of a sun. They vault and arch like a murdered cathedral [...] You scramble like ants beneath them, discovering that their lengths are twisted and splintered, mangled by some impossible force."
  15. ↑ Dig into the hoard, Sunless Skies "[...] grab at the resinous tools. Every golden piece she pulls free is scored with a knotted eye – the symbol of the Halved: the lightless sun that rules Eleutheria."
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