Quoted By:
<span class="mu-i">“Even though the Lifting Oil that is Refined out of Sea-Shade Ichor is of a middling grade, and laborious rendering at sea is needed to strip the Ichor from the gelatinous mass of their corpses, Sea-Shades yield more Ichor than comparably sized beasts, and pose magnitudes less risk to Oilers and their crews than comparably-sized prey, such as a juvenile Serpent, or a Lurking Loomer.
That is not to say that Sea-Shades do not pose any risk. While they typically do not survive the raising process, there have been many reputable accounts where specimens made it to the surface alive, and in a fearful rage have set upon Oilers with a veritable forest of grasping and pummeling pseudopodia, killing crew, and damaging or even sundering ships. In the particularly grisly case of the Stiff Breeze, as accounted for by the captain of her surviving tender, the Periwinkle, the entire vessel was swallowed up, only a matter of seconds after the Shade breached the surface alongside of her. Once fully subsumed inside of the Sea-Shade, the ship and her crew were dragged down, into the blackest depths, all the while being digested – though had they been lucky, they may have been fatally masticated or otherwise crushed before they were suffocated or killed by the acid. That self-same acid can make Sea-Shades dangerous even after they have died. There have been several accounts of dead Shades being accidentally raised directly underneath the Oiler, where that acid ended up eating through the hull.”
<span class="mu-s">- Leonid’s The Oiler’s Abyssal Bestiary</span></span>
Your name is Chlotsuintha, and you are in the process of steeling yourself – for at this very moment, you are slowly but inexorably following two sets of Strange footprints which lead straight through the front door of the public house you right outside of. On its own, there is an inherent danger to doing something like that, but here, there are two compounding factors. The first is that while two people with Strangeness on their boots have entered the public house, no one with Strangeness on their boots has left the public house – at least, not through this door. Now, it could be that the men who made these prints have left the place already. These prints could be days only by now – in fact, for all you know, these prints could have been made at different times. Maker’s Mercy, for all you know, they might have been made by the same man. On the other hand, it is just as likely that these prints belong to two different men, that these prints are fresh … and that they are still in there.
As alarming as all of that is, it is the second compounding factor that is fraying your nerves. The footprint, visible through your Strange-Scarification Glyph, is only partial – and there are only three possible ways that you would get a partial print. If the sole of the boot was shielded, if the sole of the boot was made from an inert material, and … if the sole had been incompletely Mitigated or Remediated.
