Alrighty so this is a compilation of a bunch of niggling concerns I’ve been collecting while playing FL. No idea if there’s answers to all/any of them; most are pretty wild and probably up to the reader’s imagination. I shall be infamous for being That One Person who always posts huge lists of questions instead of actually doing the research!! Ah well, there are worse ways to be remembered.
Is there electricity in London? Like, household electricity?
For that matter, is there indoor plumbing?
I remember a certain bit of text referencing the fact that women’s suffrage was UNTHINKABLE. Do we have women’s suffrage in London? (pretty sure we do)
How the heck does one make a glimmering-lamp? Is it glim but set on fire?
WHAT IS GLIMMYCAKE? WOULDN’T THAT HURT? WOULDN’T THAT BE REALLY SHARP?
What do Londoners do to fix their (most likely) deplorable Vitamin D deficiency?
Where does all the moisture for the mushrooms come from? (isn’t the Zee salty?)
How do Londoners keep time?
What’s the population of London?
Is deep amber squishy?
Can weasels talk?
Does the Pirate-Poet is gay?(I’m so so sorry)
Why isn’t there more chocolate in the Neath? It takes a fairly long time to decompose, why couldn’t it be imported from the Surface more often?
Are there owls in the Neath?
Are there angry Rubbery Men?
Are there any devils with Actual Emotions?
How does laundry work? Are there poor laundry women who have to scrub clothing quickly in the Stolen River before running back into the city while screaming about Drownies?
How many times do you have to drown to become a Drownie? (so if you’re lost at sea, you pretty much drown again and again right? when do your lungs fill up so much that your body gives up on respiration entirely?)
Is paper in the Neath fungal-based?
Where does printing ink come from?
Are there house-mushrooms like there are house-plants on the surface?
She’ll sleep with your captain regardless of gender. The Pirate Poet does is bi.
The Cumean canal is long and twisting, requiring a large amount of Fuel to get through. The Surface is dangerous for Neathy folk and the Neath is scary. You’re not gonna get a lot of sailors willing to go down there unless they intend to migrate to the Neath.
Bifurcated Owl is a thing. Could have sworn there were actual owls but I can’t remember any specific instances. Probably on the Elder continent.
The Nacreous Outcast/Survivor seems frustrated, at least. I imagine a Rubbery Man can feel anger.
Yeah, but they are rarely willing to show them to humans.
Once, provided you recently ate Fluke meat (conveniently found in Rubbery Lumps).
Absolutely. There’s fungus for everything
Probably imported. A good share of the horses died in the invasion of hell, so it’s not like they have that many to feed and the rich can afford the prices.
We don’t know for sure, I believe, and it’s complicated by there being different rules for who can A: run and B: vote at the I: national and II: municipal level. Which is complicated again by Fallen London effectively being a city-state, but, nonetheless, there are parliamentary elections and mayoral elections and those are Entirely Different. (This is all entirely historically sound, by the way - woman were being elected to posts before they could vote for them, and becoming mayors before they could become MPs.)
I’ve heard that the Salty Fabulist uses glim for barbecuing.
If I look at the newspaper in Fallen London, it is 1896, and vitamin D is not discovered yet.
But fat fish species contain vitamin D, so Strange Catches may provide some.
And there are some fungus species with it (So yes, there is fungus for everything!)
Just before the Fall, London’s population was roughly 3 million. What happened after that is all speculation.
How much of London and its population would have been brought to the neath?
How much would have drowned since then?
How much have died in the Campaign of '68?
How much will have spread across the Unterzee?
And so forth…
I guess that even though it is hard to permanently die, London’s population has declined.
Here’s a question that may have been answered already, but I haven’t seen it. It’s about the snippets:
Who is the “I” in the “Snow in the Neath” snippet, and in Summer in the Neath? "There’s a zee-captain down at Wolfstack Docks who claims you can render Neath-snow into white glim on any kitchen stove. I have tried it. I have a pan of goo to show for it. Three of my cats tasted the goo when I left it unobserved a moment too long. The one that lives is locked in the cellar now. I do not expect I will ever dare to release it. I have developed a dislike of zee-captains.”
"Summer in the Neath
How to relieve the tedium of the warm season, when condensation drips from the roof of the cavern like a monsoon of stagnant sweat, and Fallen London smells as fresh as a week-old corpse? L.B.s can be paid to attach fans to bonnets. Pomander traders make their fortunes. But the best way of all to cool down is with a delicious fungal ice-cream. Urchin entrepreneurs with handcarts can supply everything from toadstool sorbet to frozen puffball creams. Where do they get the ice to keep their wares cold? Trust your correspondent when I assure you you do not wish to know.”
They’re two of the only first-person snippets I’ve noticed and they stands out.
The phrase “your correspondent” makes it sound like it was written for a newspaper. That would point to Mr Huffman, if anyone in particular. Someone more versed in literature than I can weight in on whether the snippets follow his writing style.
Isn’t the Tomb Colony menace area entirely in first person?[/quote]Typically. It’s written as an account of your experiences, relayed in letters as time passes and the memory of your scandal falls.
[quote=Greg M]Who is the “I” in the “Snow in the Neath” snippet, and in Summer in the Neath?[/quote]All of the sidebar snippets are written in the style of some "Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy" kind of semi-reliable, humorous tourist guide, with the writer sometimes massively derailing into gossip and whatnot. At least, that’s how I’ve always interpreted it.
There’s at minimum no discussion of the alternative.
There’s a temperance movement, which apparently in England focused much more on things like rights for women and children.
Weasels cannot talk, even the Celebrated ones.
Devils usually don’t express their true feelings where humans can see but there’s snippets around. The Nadir and some Renown related options come to mind.
[quote= Iona Dre’emt]7. Where does all the moisture for the mushrooms come from? (isn’t the Zee salty?)[/quote] Keep in mind that salt is not INHERENTLY dangerous to plant life (as anyone whose gotten seaweed wrapped around their leg can attest) and also, that fungi are not actually plants (They’re a separate kingdom entirely from both plants or animals and technically are closer to animals). There are any number of mechanisms that fungi could use to either draw moisture from salt water, expel excess saline, or just survive with incredibly high saline concentrations. I would not consider neath fungi’s survival in a salty area to be any more surprising that zee creatures survival in the same salt water.
[quote= Iona Dre’emt]12. Does the Pirate-Poet is gay?(I’m so so sorry)[/quote]While I get this is a joke and understand what you mean to be asking… this is actually a very interesting wording of the question given the time and place the game is set. The western notions of sexuality are actually far more fluid and recent than most think. And far less universal. I think that at the time London fell "sodomy" and "buggery" were crimes but the notion of homosexual as an identity marker the way we use it wasn’t (so someone might be exclusively attracted to their own sex, but there wasn’t really a notion of that as a specific category, the way we wouldn’t think of someone whose exclusively eats English food as having an identity marker for it) homosexuality was something you DID not something you WERE. You would be arrested for the act of having sex with a man but not for loving one (this switched around a LOT during this period as sexology and psychology started to get their footing so I might be wrong on the exact timelines and also there’s the divergence of the fall to consider) The point of this all being. Yes, the Pirate Poet DOES is gay.