"I met her while swimming," the Suffragist and octopus say in unison.
While the skies are vast and full ofterrors, they have their share of amusements as well.
- The matter-of-fact way the Kickstarter trailer gives "Murder A Sun" as one of the things in the game. Just... "Murder A Sun." And following the right ambition, you do. And while the manner is kind of horrifying, it's such a humongous asshole of a celestial body that no one can argue it didn't deserve death.
- Even the Devils can't stand the Useless Cat's presence in the Well of the Wolf and immediately emphatically insist that you take it for your travels the moment that you catch it.
- During a sidequest, the Useless Cat can finally become of use to you. A tooltip helpfully reminds you that doing this will not lose you the cat, however much you may want to.
- The Incognito Princess decides to reveal her true identity simply by taking off her tiara in favor of another, more expensive, tiara.
- In general, the Incognito Princess's entire quest line toes the line between this and Nightmare Fuel, as she's essentially a psychopathic Disney Princess.
- Upon discovering the truth of Worlebury-juxta-Mare, you may find the Uncanny Valley nature of the whole thing to suddenly become darkly hilarious; it seems at least one Lorn-Fluke has learned absolutely nothing from how badly they mangled creating humanoid go-betweens in the form of the Rubbery Men.
- Even before that, the stubborn insistence that the cloud of corrosive mist next to Worlebury-juxta-Mare is a "sea", that the winged things that live it in are "fish", and that the tumor-drooling creatures you can ride on are "donkeys", in spite of all evidence to the contrary, can be pretty funny.
- Just about anything involving the Inconvenient Aunt is bound to elicit a chuckle.
- Right from the start, your captain knows she's gonna be trouble.
Your Aunt is here. Dear God.- Oh, the horrors she inflicts upon your locomotive's cabins...
She has taken over one of your nicer cabins, which she has ruthlessly redecorated. There is a preponderance of ugly ornaments balanced precariously on tiny tables. Hideous antimacassars adorn every available surface.Your Aunt occupies a felt armchair in the centre of the horror, where she spends her time either knitting or solving truly mind-boggling cryptic crosswords. - This snippet when nearing the Royal Society:You steam before the grand glass eye of an observatory telescope. Presumably, behind it, an angry astronomer is gesturing at you to get out of the d_mn way.
- Among the many experimental devices you can acquire at the Royal Society is a Mechanical Turk, a "chess-playing automaton" that actually just has a hidden compartment to hide the player (or contraband). But it's not a hoax because they're unable to make such an automaton; it used to play by itself, but it was so "impossibly smug" the mechanic had enough and gutted it.
- At Magdalene's, you can seek treatment for your Terror and Nightmares in the form of attendants taking on the appearance, mannerisms, and personality of someone dear from your past, with enough skill to effectively fool you into believing it's the real deal. Most options are left vague enough (e.g. "someone from your past") to let you make up the details yourself and believe that your captain could be fooled by it...but then there's the second option for removing a Nightmare, which is to have your captain encounter Her Renewed Majesty.
- Pretty much anything involving the Inadvisably Big Dog. Your captain may make a log entry in the sky as you pass that you went off course due to "tail-wagging. Dog now barred from bridge."
- Another log entry mentions that the Dog somehow got into some paint pots you didn't even know you had on board and dotted the ship in paw-prints.
- If you have both the Inadvisably Big Dog and the Incautious Driver on board, the latter may decide to outfit the former with a pair of goggles.
- Your log entry describes a certain area of Albion as "an unloved stretch of sky, where London sends the things it wants to forget". One of the landmarks in this region is called Carrington Remedial School.
- Something not funny: the potential of the Martyr-King's Cup to send you into a permanent delusional Lotus-Eater Machine state. Something funny: going into it for the first time when your officers are prepping for mess and displaying the personality of a complete Large Ham king with every one of your Officers being given rather fitting epithets and wondering WTF. Ending with you somehow driving a butter knife four inches into the table in the absolutely sincere belief that it's a sword.
- In the epilogue of the ambition where you murder a sun your captain has to be sealed in a room for 300 years with a supply of hours to survive that long, some of the things they do to pass the time include "trying to learn to play the oboe, breaking an oboe in frustration, learning how to repair oboes and mastering playing the oboe".
- The July 2019 update added horns as its flagship feature. It's even called The Horn Update
, with a graphic noting that contrary to real life and train simulators, there have been zero horns in Sunless Skies prior to the update. According to the developers, this has been the second most requested thing since launch. According to their official Twitter account the devs received "a slide presentation, a chocolate train with TOOT TOOT written on the box, a wooden ornament which whistles when blown into, and approximately a billion tweets, posts and emails in favour of train whistles". - If you get lost in the Achlys marshlands, a Random Encounter can lead you to meet a seductive siren alone on a rock, beckoning you closer. Your options are "Approach", "Run away", and "Protest this tiresome cliché".The naked lady sits patiently as you complain about the gender politics of mythology, the unfortunate interplay of sexuality and vice, and the equal insult such things are to the males of the species treated as unthinking sexual omnivores and to the females reduced to mere passive decoration for the sake of such a tawdry social gaze. Why, for instance, is the succubus endlessly more represented than the incubus in all the literature? What does it say of the human condition that beauty has been linked to damnation by temptation from the moment of Eve's sin, and from where did the double-standards-
It is a fine speech, even if in retrospect you remember that its only audience was actually a small frog interested in the flies buzzing around your muddy clothes. "Ribbet", it agrees, hopping off into the marsh to carefully ponder things. - Getting rid of the Eccentric's cats, especially by making them leave you, is quite a riot. It essentially involves shaming them into leaving the locomotive by making them act like actual cats. The loss of face is too much and they abandon you in shame.Half an hour later, you burst into the room to discover Asmoday stretched on the attendant's lap, his paws treadling the air, her fingers running through the thick fur of his tummy. A thick bass purr of utter contentment emanates from his throat.
He springs to his feet, but it's too late. The Felined Eccentric fusses over him. What a good boy he is. How nice it is to see him happy. She knew he was a softy really. - Nearly everything involving Parliament is hilarious. Highlights include the fact that the Prime Minister has been down in the wine cellars for so long that the First Secretary is thinking of sending a search party after him, the Loquacious Civil Servant's incredibly verbose description of your job (with footnotes), cutting and pasting old photographs to create a fake celebrity endorsement for your bill, and the fact that when you do successfully pass a law and bring it to the Throne of Hours, the Empress's staff immediately tear it in half, burn the pieces, and stamp the remains into ash while you watch.
- The Blue Kingdom's Kafkaesque Celestial Bureaucracy would give Friend Computer pause. Even getting a rental agreement renegotiated requires you to visit at least four different courts and put your liver up for deposit. You're assured that you'll get it back later.
- The description of the Tobacco shop at London is peak Failbetter dark humor.The sign over the door once read 'Mac Quarry & Son Fine Tobacco' but since then someone has crossed out 'Fine' in a fit of honesty. Then, on a separate, more ominous occasion they have crossed out '& Son'
- Also, the fact that what it sells really barely qualifies as Tobacco (it doesn't grow well in the High Wilderness) and that otherwise dignified Londoners have been desperately lighting up and puffing every bit of High Wilderness flora they can get their hands on in a search for a replacement.
- Recruiting the Repentant Devil may lead one to wonder just what they're repentant for... made all the more bewildering by them murdering a stowaway less than five seconds after you leave Port Avon.
