[color=#9900cc]Irem![/color]
That most mysterious of islands, an island of ice and inexplicably-blooming roses, populated by coffee-addicted, riddle-obsessed dreamers. A land with one foot in Parabola, balancing as if on the fingernail of a god. A place where past, present, and future are as mutable as clay and as fragile as ice. A land of wonders…and disappointments.
In Sunless Sea, the shops of Irem have an impressive selection of merchandise, and the island is an important location for advancing several missions, but other than that, there’s really not much to do there except pop into Parabola with the help of some coffee. There’s no way to explore the city the way you can at Khan’s Heart, Varchas, Visage, etc. So my question is, if there was an option to ‘Wander the streets of Irem’ (or something similar), with random results, what might be some things that a zee-captain and his fearless crew might discover? I’ll start:
The Library of Dreams: A steady stream of Iremi enter and depart from a huge building carved into the ice of a cliffside. Entering, you find yourself in a cavernous chamber cut from solid, unmelting ice in myriad colours, like a cathedral constructed entirely from stained glass. Over a hundred men and women are sitting at large tables in the center of the room, writing, drawing, and painting. Have you wandered into some sort of art collective? No; a Lackadaisical Librarian languidly informs you that this is the Library of Dreams, where all Iremi citizens visit to record their nocturnal visions, that past and future generations might benefit (and perhaps survive) from their insight. "Look around, if you like," he says, "but don’t get lost." (A Matter of Luck: it could go either way)
- Success: You wander through endless towering chambers of ice, each filled with tall shelves packed with tomes of all shapes, colours, and sizes. There must be millions of books in here, and if there’s a filing system, it’s beyond your understanding. Every so often, you select a random book, turn to a random page, and read. Strange secrets of both the sleeping and waking worlds are revealed to you… [Random snippet of dream-text and random reward, such as Fragments or a Memory of Distant Shores.][/li][/ul][ul][li]Failure: You spend a few hours, or possibly days, wandering through endless towering chambers of ice, each filled with tall shelves packed with tomes of all shapes, colours, and sizes. Every so often, you select a random book, turn to a random page, and read. Every passage seems to be more nightmarish and horrifying than the last, and eventually you stop reading, and simply try to leave. But the library is a maze of shelves, and it’s by sheer luck that you stumble back to the entrance, with terrible visions rolling around in your head… [Nightmare’s Strength is increasing, gain 1 Tale of Terror!!]