by HL TRUSLOVE
Items
Items work similarly to encounters, in that you get them at the end of a section to let the book know that you’ve gone down a particular path. Later on, these may be needed to choose a particular option. To add an item, when instructed, take the matching sticker and add it to your ‘inventory’ section of your character sheet. The instruction will look like this:
Add Ladder to your inventory.
* * *
You may be instructed to remove an item from your inventory. If this happens, cross out that item in your inventory to mark it as used and no longer available. You may not choose options that need a removed item unless you get a new one.
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Requiring an item to do an action will not always result in the item being removed.
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Just like before, items may be a requirement for a particular branch:
* * *
Go left – Turn to 5.
Go right – Turn to 6.
Climb wall – Turn to 7, Needs Ladder.
* * *
If you’re ever instructed to add an item to your inventory that you already have gained previously, and there isn’t an additional sticker available to use, simply ignore that instruction (i.e. there may be multiple opportunities to gain a specific item, but there’s only one of them in the game world and just a few ways of getting it). The stickers represent the actual number of each of these items available to you during the course of the story.
Perks
Perks are unusual, abstract items that allow you to do certain things relating to your traits. For example, if you went through a branch of the story where you got a hot meal, you could be able to avoid adding an instance of instability later on.
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Each perk is unique, and will have a description of exactly how it functions.
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When instructed to add a perk to your character sheet, take the matching sticker and add it to the ‘Perks’ section of your character sheet.
Field Notes
In addition to all of the above types of stickers and marks, which have a substantive effect on your path through the story, you may also be instructed to add something to your ‘notebook’. These are stickers that represent memories of your adventure; they do not have an effect on the narrative choices.
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To add one of these, take the matching sticker from the sticker sheet and add it to the ‘Notebook’ section of your character sheet.
ALBA
Chapter 1
The Voyage
1.0
Don’t be afraid of the Old World, Vola had told you back in the vault, it’s where we’re all from, after all.
The boat gives a subtle groan as you furl the mainsail and finally ease up the pace you’ve been putting her through. The boards creak beneath your feet – a speeding bullet, the hull cuts through the waves on momentum alone. The motion reminds you of skinning a beast, a knife neatly parting flesh and bone.
You take a moment to look to the horizon and smile as you bask in the reassuring sight of land. A long, grey strip sitting on the top of dark water. The wind picks up a little and whips your coat at your back. With it behind you, it feels like nature herself is encouraging you onwards safely to your destination.
You crouch beneath the boom as it swings loose from the mast and signal to Viktor at the tiller. He nods silently and turns the boat in toward the coast.
Twenty-four days.
For twenty-four days the three of you have scanned the horizon, read sea charts, and done little else save for a fleeting game of cards by lamplight, squashed in between the narrow bunks of the crew cabin. The work of sailing the ship itself has been steady and kept you on your toes, though the journey has been reasonably quiet. While you knew you should be glad of it, you somehow couldn’t help but have wished for a little more excitement, rather than just days upon days of endless chopping waters. With all things considered you’re happy to finally see land again.
Your mind meanders back to some time after the first week, when Gaia, your other companion, suggested naming the boat. With little else to do the pair of you had discussed the idea for almost the entire day, batting suggestions back and forth, happy to distract from the monotony that had thus far defined the mission. Viktor had endured the squabbling in contemplative silence, spending his time on the deck and staring out to the horizon for hours. It was only as the night settled across your little vessel that he spoke a single word, his voice sending out a tiny puff of frost that was soon eaten by the darkness.
“Marlin.” Turn to 1.1.
* * *
“Ark.” Turn to 1.2.
* * *
“Speedwell.” Turn to 1.3.
1.1
The sound of his voice had made Gaia jump a bit, and she’d furrowed her heavy brow.
“Merlin?” she asked. “Like the wizard in the stories?”
“Marlin,” Viktor replied, not looking at either of you, “like the fish.”
“Marlin it is,” Gaia said, perhaps swayed by Viktor bothering to join in the conversation. “Marlin like the fish.”
Viktor never mentioned the name again, but judging by how little the roughly bearded man spoke, you could only imagine that it had some significance for him. You’d made a mental note at the time to find out more about this creature.
Your curiosity was satisfied a couple of days after when, on a particularly quiet day on the open ocean, you had some free time to yourself. You found yourself thumbing through the handful of old books stored in the cabin, an eclectic collection brought by the three of you to try and provide some entertainment. Between an instruction manual for basic sailing and a never-used recipe book you came across a weighty tome bound in blue canvas. Along the spine faded gold lettering read: Beasts of the Sea.
The book was old, the pages were cracked and stiff with age. As you gingerly turned them they resisted your touch, splintering at the brittle edges where they had lost the flexibility they’d had when they were first pressed. You couldn’t help but think it was probably falling apart before it was on board – and being exposed to the salty ocean can’t have helped.
Muttering the chapter headings under your breath as you went, you delicately scanned the book, until you discovered the page labelled Marlin. Beneath two paragraphs of text, an illustration showed a long fish flying from the water in a mighty splash. Like a dart, the fish’s body was long and pointed, its head coming to a sharp end a few feet beyond its glassy black eyes. The body was a dark blue and decorated along the spine with a tall fin, much like the sails of your ship, carving its journey through the sky.
You turned to continue reading the entry when something fell out and landed on your lap. For a moment you were terrified that your clumsy touch had broken something, until you saw the paper was far fresher than that of the book itself. You unfolded it to see someone’s handwriting scribbled in black ink. It was a letter written to Viktor. You read a couple of sentences before realising this must be from his father, a goodbye note with the gift of the book to help him along his way, wishing him luck and expressing his pride.
Faltering for a moment, you fold it back to its original shape and returned it to where it was nestled between the pages. It felt too invasive to keep reading, and given Viktor’s solemn demeanour you couldn’t imagine he’d appreciate your continued snooping. You placed the book back on the shelf, hesitating only to take a quick look at the first page. Published 2019. It seemed the book was brought out nearly a hundred years ago, before the war. You wondered just how long it had been in Viktor’s family.
The old book said that the marlin lives in warm waters around the belt of the Earth, far from where your boat is heading and further still from where your journey began. You wondered if Viktor had ever seen one of these fish for himself, but you never found yourself asking him, just as you never found yourself asking about the letter folded away in his book.
Add Marlin (N.1) to your char
acter sheet.
* * *
Turn to 1.4.
1.2
‘Ark’.The word hung in the air for a moment; your eyes involuntarily flicking to Gaia and then back to Viktor. Viktor was – is – a private man, saying little and sharing even less, but you never thought him religious. Perhaps this is why he signed up for the mission, you thought.
Perhaps he truly believed.
Growing up in the vault you were surrounded with tales of rebirth. Stories of a chosen people that would rise from the dust of the world to rebuild anew. A hundred years had passed since the War, a hundred years you and your people had lived below the earth. Waiting. Biding your time. Weathering the storm. In the great metal walls of your home which sealed you off from the wasteland outside, it was these stories that nourished hope.
Your vault sent out its first expedition when you were just a child, but you knew they held far more significance for the older generations. The ones who had grown up when everything first turned to rubble and death. The ones who had seen the world before it consumed itself.
When you signed up to leave your home, the idea of rebirth wasn’t on your mind. All you had wanted was an excuse to leave the place that had kept you confined for the first twenty-five years of your life. Perhaps you were alone in that...
As the days rolled on there was a tension in the air that grew with each moment of silence. When it seemed like the pressure was too much, you would try and cautiously raise it with Gaia.
“I went for the same reason everyone does,” was the only answer she ever gave, her face always turned pointedly away from you. “I couldn’t spend the rest of my life in that place.”
You mulled over those words for a while. On the sixteenth day you found yourself with Gaia once again, securing cargo that had come loose in a night of heavy winds. As you packed the crates and barrels back in with tight ropes and examined them for damage, you saw the crew in a new light. Perhaps this mission was more than a simple supply run. Perhaps to the old world it spelled hope. A chance to start again.
You mustered the courage one time to turn to her and ask,
“Do you believe in the Ark?”
For the first time in your conversations, she turned and looked at you directly, the cold blueness of her eyes coinciding with a wind that made you shiver.
“I don’t know. Do you?” she responded. You paused for a moment, taken aback by the sudden reversal. You weren’t sure how to reply, but by then she had turned back to her work.
The subject wasn’t brought up again.
Add Ark (N.2) to your character sheet.
* * *
Turn to 1.4.
1.3
Not wanting to offend Viktor, you attempted to hide your amusement by covering your mouth with a fist, trying to stifle a laugh with a cough.
“Speed… well…?” replied Gaia, more confused than entertained.
A wide grin split your face as you were no longer able to cover it up. You suddenly noticed Viktor looking incredibly stone-faced, and you felt a bit guilty at your reaction.
“I like it!” you announced. By this time Gaia was smiling too, and she clapped Viktor heavily on the shoulder with one of her calloused hands.
“The good ship Speedwell it is!” she said, perhaps a little too patronisingly.
“The faster we get there the faster we return,” Viktor replied, his gruff tone setting an icy edge to the conversation. The laughter came to an abrupt end and he shook off Gaia’s hand, going to continue with his work.
In the awkward silence, you’d shared a look of concern with Gaia. Although Viktor had never expressed any enthusiasm for the mission, he’d never spoken of it begrudgingly in front of you.
You had assumed, perhaps foolishly, that your view of the mission was shared by your crewmates. It was an opportunity, a chance to escape the suffocating metal walls of the home you had never left and see the world beyond. Of course, as a child you lived in a world filled with stories of the war. A world plagued with terrible destruction. Entire civilisations wiped out if not by the damage the bombs caused when they fell, then by the ravaging fires they left behind. Wild beasts stalked the wasteland now, preying on the helpless, while the cannibals who were left on the surface after the fighting destroyed themselves in drug-fuelled orgies of violence and horror.
But as you grew older, you began to take these tales less seriously. And as you reached your teenage years you realised what they were: fear-mongering ghost stories meant to keep you inside. The walls that had once felt like protection were really a prison. Every safe and sanitised thing your home gave you left behind a bitter taste. Like ash in your mouth, it left you devoid of joy, taste, and feeling. There was nothing but a numb, bland shell to keep you going, and it never made you feel alive.
When you encountered Viktor’s cynicism for the first time, it left you with a strange feeling you were unable to shift. You had, admittedly, no real knowledge of the old world. Nothing beyond the books and lectures you’d endured in your youth. You were left with the horrifying possibility that perhaps, just perhaps, the stories you were told as a child weren’t quite as exaggerated as you were led to believe.
Add Speedwell (N.3) to your character sheet.
* * *
Turn to 1.4.
1.4
You feel that you should be doing more to help your crewmates, but you find it incredibly difficult to tear your gaze from the approaching land. You’re almost worried, foolish as it is, that if you turn away, you’d look round again to find it gone and replaced by yet more stretches of dark, dull ocean. But it does not disappear, not even when your eyes are ripped away as Gaia yells some… choice words at you to stop being so lazy and help the two of them out.
Your little ship stays her course and guides the three of you into the makeshift harbour, which is really no more than a few recycled crates bound together. You jolt to a sudden stop for the first time in weeks as the keel drives into the soft silt of the beach. You jump from the bow, barely able to contain your enthusiasm, into the icy waters. From the deck, Viktor throws a bundle of rope and you begin securing the boat.
The coldness of the sea shocks you for a moment, but it isn’t enough to make you regret throwing yourself in. The land beneath your feet is firm and reassuring and it helps you hone into the moment. You notice the softness of the wind, the sound of the waves lapping against the shore, the gentle warmth of the sun on your face. A barrage of sensations which all seem to have been absent in the last twenty-four days overwhelm you. It feels as though you are experiencing all of this for the first time.
Your daze breaks with a splash as Gaia lands in the water beside you, spraying you with even more chilly water. You can’t bring yourself to mind, though, as she slaps you on the shoulder and wades past you to the land. Following her, you tread over the greying sand to the dunes, where patches of dry grass begin to sprout. Gaia nimbly ascends the bank, offering a hand to help haul you up next to her, and for the first time you look and see the old world.
Ground stretches out as far as your eye can see, every inch of it covered with grass. It isn’t as bleached as your home country. In fact, it’s even beginning to ripen into greenness. Tiny purple wildflowers are forcing their way out of the tough dirt, specks of brightness in the open land. Wispy white clouds hang in the sky overhead but are clearing to let pale sunlight brighten the scene around you. A breath catches in your throat.
About a kilometre away you catch a glimpse of a base. It sits oddly against the rest of the old world, almost intruding on all of this nature. There is no more than a handful of tents centred round a gently smouldering fire, and between them you can see figures flitting around, busily engaging themselves with running their little camp.
“Look, there they are!” Gaia exclaims, elbowing you in her excitement with such force that you almost lose your footing and end up arse first back on the beach. Not seeming to notice she sticks her fingers in her mouth, ripping her gloves off and letting
them fall to the floor, and lets out a sharp, shrill whistle.
The group in the camp all pause and look towards you, cueing Gaia to start waving wildly. A couple of them appear to point and wave back, and begin to cross the vast space to come and greet you. The two of you carefully make your way down the bank trying to be sure the dirt will take your weight successfully. You meet the two of them about halfway – both men in green overalls, one small and smiling broadly, the other taller and solemn.
“We expected you tomorrow!” says the shorter man, reaching out and enthusiastically pumping your arm in a handshake. His tall accomplice follows his suit and you can’t help but notice he has the tip of a finger missing. Did that happen before or after the old world, you wonder?
“We made good time past Faroe,” Gaia explains. “Strong headwind most of the way.”
“Just as well,” the taller man mutters, “expeditions past the camp have been delayed until we can start on permanent construction. We’ve been waiting on the tools since we arrived.”
