Internal clock

A mechanic I’m curious about is the passage of time between when you leave a port and you’re able to play through its stories again. Is it based on distance sailed? Playing through storylets in other ports? It is unclear (perhaps intentionally) but has any one else gotten a sense of what has to happen before you can, for example, gather more scintilack?

Every few minutes, you’ll see a bit of atmospheric text posted to your journal: (paraphrasing) ‘A crewman raises her head and sniffs. There is blood on the wind’ or ‘Thoughts of home come at the strangest time’, etc.

This indicates time as passed and storylet access has been reset. Some branches - like hiring particular officers in Fallen London - require specific conditions, others are restored with every change in the winds.

It feels a little cheeky, but a captain could just sit, undocked, in the waters around Fallen London or Port Cecil - with engine at full stop, lights off, just burning through Supplies - and wait for time to pass, docking only to check if a new officer is available or to harvest scintillac.