A brief speculation on Ambitions (Spoilers Abound)

Fallen London
1

Warning: Bad Theory Ahead

So… does anyone else think all the Ambitions might be leading to the same place(or very similar places)?

I recently played through The Waltz that Moved the World, and now I’m thinking, a little bit. So, from what I’ve picked up about the various ambitions, it seems that they could all lead to similar endings, or even slightly different variations of the same ending.

I’ll start with Heart’s Desire since it’s mine. What, exactly, is my heart’s desire? It’d be a little against role-play if the reward for winning the game was just always, one, specific, fixed item, 'cause what if that’s not what I keep deep down in my heart-of-hearts? Unless… you didn’t know what your heart’s Desire was. What if you were sent to find a secret, like the Duke, and you just forgot? Like, irrigo-forgot, not like you can’t remember what you had for breakfast. What if someone pumped you full of irrigo and got you thrown in prison to get you into the Neath, so you could go win this card game, and win a secret from the Bazaar?

Oooor how about Nemesis? I don’t know a lot about this one, but from what I’ve picked up from various mentions on the forums and such, a Master of the Bazaar(I think) had your Loved One killed as part of some ritual, right? So, maybe after exacting your revenge upon the Cloaked Menace, you steal a secret from the Bazaar, or maybe you accept it as a bribe, or something.

Alright, Bag-A-Legend. Kill cloth-bat, take a secret. I guess.

I don’t know anything about Light Fingers. You’re out to steal &quotA Diamond the Size of a Cow,&quot and things get messed up and creepy. I remember hearing about a creepy orphanage, and a rival thief, and somesuch nonsense. But hey. Back to my garbage theory. This one’s easy. You want to steal something, and things get weird? I think it becomes somewhat clear that the Diamond doesn’t exist early on, right? The &quotHeifer Star&quot(which I guess is a good name for a cow-sized diamond) ends up being a woman named Hephaesta within the first few beats, so maybe the real treasure is a secret from the big crab’s vaults?

TL;DR maybe all the ambitions end with you in the bazaar, I guess?

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Light fingers: the diamond turned out to be a creature from the roof, and Hephaesta’s sister ends up impregnated by one of them, due to one of the masters’ plans. You need to gather something from the roof to save her, while one of the masters’ assassins is chasing you.

But that aside, if each ambition doesn’t tie into the bazaar at the end, I’ll eat my hat.

3

from what I remember (which is theoretically nothing, because I took a sip of that Tea, and switched to Heart’s Desire), Light Fingers goes 0 to 100 real fast. How often it is that one sees the Boatman and, with tears of gratitude in their eyes, says &quotoh thank God.&quot?

I do think all four plotlines of ambitions will get tangled with each other in the end. Notably, at least three out of four ambitions heavily involve one of the master- pages in HD, cups/mirrors in Nemesis, you-know-who in BAL. Not sure about the LF.

The real question is- after the ambitions are resolved, what’s left, in terms of some big goal to strive towards? Personally, I’m hoping for some sort of… ambition: the sequel. Ambitions are back and this time, it’s personal!

4

Has Light Fingers received its update yet? Maybe I’ll finally find out how the Starved Men got there.

5

I believe it’s Fires in LF, what with all the dirigibles. It does indeed appear that all of the ambitions are building up to some form of grudge match with a Master…

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[quote=Von Darken]
It does indeed appear that all of the ambitions are building up to some form of grudge match with a Master…[/quote]

Oooh, maybe they could lead to you replacing one? Like, you dispose of the Master and take their place? It might be neat to check the Road destinies and see if any of the Masters playing a bad role in Ambitions are notably absent from them… If Veils, Pages, Cups/Mirrors, and whoever the Master in LF is are all not on the long space-road back home, maybe that’s why You’re there.
edited by hellaGumshoe on 8/19/2017

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Pages, Mirrors/Cups are there, as is Veils, salty like only Veils can be. The notably unmentioned Master is Fires. Now, I’m not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying that it’s a funny coincidence that you, an ex-Londoner, are there, while it, the bat who so loved London, is not.

Personally I think the masters would try to pass the player off as mr. Candles. Like &quotsee, judgements? eleven bats went underground, eleven emerged, nothing untoward happened, certainly no Illegal Chain-Climbing or unannounced Feasts, we would Never.&quot

Still, it would be unfair if the ambitions led all players to replacing a master; some Destinies are much more fun, and such resolution to ambition would render them meaningless.

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lol, brilliant ^_^

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Pages, Mirrors/Cups are there, as is Veils, salty like only Veils can be. The notably unmentioned Master is Fires. Now, I’m not saying it’s not there, I’m just saying that it’s a funny coincidence that you, an ex-Londoner, are there, while it, the bat who so loved London, is not.

Personally I think the masters would try to pass the player off as mr. Candles. Like &quotsee, judgements? eleven bats went underground, eleven emerged, nothing untoward happened, certainly no Illegal Chain-Climbing or unannounced Feasts, we would Never.&quot

Still, it would be unfair if the ambitions led all players to replacing a master; some Destinies are much more fun, and such resolution to ambition would render them meaningless.[/quote]I may be a bit iffy on my math, but wouldn’t it be either 10 or 12 (depending on how we count double-titled masters like Mirrors/Cups) with Candles? He’s even referred to as King Twelve in SMEN on some select occasions.

I do think all 4 ambitions will end specifically as a destiny, though, new items for the slot & all. This’d allow FBG to avoid a lot of problems: Characters built around revenge and the Nemesis ambition can still stay in London after they complete the ambition itself,
Heart’s Desire doesn’t have to give you your unclear reward or even state who wins Marvellous and whether it’s you,
Bag A Legend doesn’t require all content involving the Vake to be amended for it’s completion.

Just declare the final parts of your ambition as a destiny, a vision of the future, and you can avoid dealing with all sorts of frustrating conundrums about existing content.
edited by Vavakx Nonexus on 8/21/2017

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[quote=Vavakx Nonexus]
Just declare the final parts of your ambition as a destiny, a vision of the future, and you can avoid dealing with all sorts of frustrating conundrums about existing content.[/quote]
Actually, such turn of events will be even more frustrating.
Ambitions are quite long and expensive quests. And to find out that after all your efforts you are still unable to finish it properly will be quite disappointing to say the least. Basically your desicion cements ambitions in their current state of absent ending with only one difference - right now ambitions endings are absent, but one day they (maybe ;) )will be in the game, but &quotvision of the future&quot declares that they never will be in the game.
Personally, I don’t think players will like such open ending like &quotit is unknown who won Marvellous/if Vake is killed/what happened with your revenge/if you got your &quotcow-size diamond&quot&quot.
edited by Riful on 8/21/2017
edited by Riful on 8/21/2017

11

This was a source of some debate when the new spacebat lore came out. Excluding Sacks, Names or Chimes, we know of 11 Masters, two &quotcounted double&quot, plus Eaten. This would go with the Mysteries answer that &quotthere are 11 Masters&quot and that Eaten/Candles is, indeed, number twelve (King Twelve.) The fact that the ones with an identity disorder or something seem to be consistently counted as two separate bats is… Weird, but who knows how Judgemental employment contracts work. So probably there would be 10 Masters, counted as 12, you replacing Eaten as the safest bet in my opinion for why they bothered uplifting you in the first place. After all, employment and a happy ending was promised for 12 bats, it seems.

A destiny sounds like a likely end for the ambitions, although I won’t pretend that wouldn’t leave me somewhat disappointed… But at this point I’ve just hyped myself up for Ambitions Ending that anything I’d be happy with would be gamebreaking and/or demanding back-breaking labor from the FBG team. I suppose there’ll be a hefty material reward to distract our inner magpies.

I recall a bounty of 1 000 000 echoes mentioned. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

12

According to the SSkies social goal lore we got, exactly eleven spacebats came to the Neath, which includes Mr Candles. So the King Twelve bit is a bit strange.
edited by Optimatum on 8/21/2017

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Perhaps mr eaten is not counted as &quotsomething that once was, and replaced, mr candles&quot, but more like a weird spawn of mr candles and the priests. Assume mr candles is the eleventh bat, and it’s dead, but it’s still counting as the eleventh bat.

That would make mr eaten something like a plant cutting; not the same plant as its parent, but not an entirely new one either. A twelvth.
edited by gronostaj on 8/21/2017