For you, it was a dare. For me it was Tuesday (morning).

Although the stimulating effects of Darkdrop are instantly recognisable to any coffee-drinker, Anne's quote about the Scrimshander historians is the only reference I know off that hints at caffeine dependence, which every coffee-drinker knows only too well.

For whatever reason, Londoners don't seem to drink Darkdrop often enough to experience grouchiness in the morning before their first cup, or a headache after too much abstinence, or the soreness and heart paloitations after too many.

"You'll just have to pay more! You can compete perfectly well without price controls."

You spend days whittling away opposition in the Foreign Office, meeting with merchants, citizens, and foreign agents, and drafting stacks of legislation. But the final results of your labours are minimal. The Port isn't ready for a radical expansion of tiger rights. What ground you do gain is nevertheless precious to the tigers. Spices, silks, and certain enlivening beverages, which had been legally denied them before, are now freely available.

They take full advantage of their new-found economic freedoms, buying in such bulk that scarcities are created in the Port. This sparks outrage from the Khaganians, who protest your measures by rallying outside Heartscross House and waving empty mugs – but progress cannot be stopped.

One wonders though, what would happen if the city's Darkdrop Coffee supply were ever cut off?

Infinity Simulacrum wrote:

Overdosing on coffee is one of the very nicest ways to die.

As a person who drank four cups of very strong coffee in quick succession because of "it's Art, dude"***, I can assure you it would be terribly unpleasant. Much grinding of teeth and moaning on the floor followed from that particular experience...








***maybe it was a dare. Just maybe

Another interesting connection to blood: nidah is the Hebrew word for the ritual state of menstruation. I am aware that Nidah means something else in the game lore, though I haven't encountered it myself except for snippets like this one. But with the Mountain so closely linked to Judeo-Christian myth, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 11/27/2016

TheThirdPolice wrote:

Another interesting connection to blood: nidah is the Hebrew word for the ritual state of menstruation. I am aware that Nidah means something else in the game lore, though I haven't encountered it myself except for snippets like this one. But with the Mountain so closely linked to Judeo-Christian myth, it seems unlikely to be a coincidence.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 11/27/2016

Nidah, I believe, is the capital or central kingdom of the Presbyterate. Or it might be some holy site or citadel of Presbyter power. All I know is that some people wanted to conquer it and were apparently fighting the Presbyter to do so.

Anyway, a reference to menstruation is not very surprising. Stone has been repeatedly referred to as a woman after all, the Sun and Bazaar's daughter. Perhaps her wound isn't really a wound in a break the skin sense, but rather a curse of unending menstruation, with the Elder Continent serving as the sanitary pad absorbing her flow.

Continuing this thought, I think we've all made a mistake of conflating the Mountain's blood and light as equally &quotvital.&quot In Sunless Sea you can encounter a flower encased in glass, growing out of a solid rock. You ask how that can be and you're informed that the flower was planted close to the Mountain and basked a Summer in its light. Consequently, &quot[w]hat need has it for water, now? Or air?&quot Clearly the Mountain's light has stimulating yet preservative powers. Absorbing a considerable quantity of said light made that flower immortal and invulnerable.

Stone's blood appears to have very different properties from her light. When they plant a tree in the blood soaked soil of Adam's Way, the tree goes from sprouting seed to dead husk within the space of a single day. The tree's life is not enhanced in any way, it is merely sped up. Similarly, bathing in the Mountain's blood apparently causes undesirable growth and sailing a metal or wooden ship up the Red River will result in the hull corroding away. Stone's blood accelerates everything that absorbs or comes into contact with it, but it doesn't add any new life force and certainly does not preserve. The best it does is concentrate life, packing a lengthy period of life into a much shorter period of time.

Now, everything in the Elder Continent has absorbed a certain measure of light and blood. Clearly there's some very intricate interplay between these two conflicting emanations. Darkdrop Coffee would be no exception, but from its effects drunk pure - it really speeds you up, it really hurts you, drink too much and you will obviously die - I think it has more blood than light. Further supporting this is the Almost Dead Man, who calls the coffee you give him &quotblood of the Elder Continent.&quot So the boost you get from Darkdrop Coffee comes at the expense of your future life. You're essentially taking an hour or five hours or whatever from your future and giving it to yourself in the present. If you're a light infused immortal this simply wouldn't be a problem. In fact, given that everyone but the Presbyters family can only live one thousand years by holy edict, taking time from your limitless but unrealizable future and giving it to your finite present is incredibly smart, a good way of making those one thousand years really count. It's no different from running up a bill in the knowledge that you'll never, ever have to pay it, so you might as well get everything you can. But for ordinary mortals, well...the bill will eventually come due.
edited by Anne Auclair on 11/28/2016