sigh
Wish I wrote like that.
As an impoverished scholar of the invisible arts, you might of course benefit from the opportunity of commissioned work. We might recommend these individuals in particular:
Mme Olympe Bechet, editor of the “Kerisham Review”. The Review publishes material too ghastly, thrilling or perilous for other literary magazines. Kerisham has been located on the south coast of England, but is notoriously difficult to find.
Count Gottlob Jannings, a gentleman from the Continent who represents a certain confraternity of duellists and physicians. The Count has an interest in novel medical theories, and also in esoteric martial techniques.
Dr Ibn al-Adim, sometimes called the Aleppine. The good doctor has an interest in overlooked histories. He’s a newcomer to the city, but speaks fondly of his memories of previous visits, long ago.
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edited by Anne Auclair on 11/30/2017
[quote=Anne Auclair]
Dr Ibn al-Adim, sometimes called the Aleppine. The good doctor has an interest in overlooked histories. He’s a newcomer to the city, but speaks fondly of his memories of previous visits, long ago.[/quote]
Such wonderful ambiguity here. Is he claiming that he knows his alternative selves? Is he saying he’s a reincarnation of a past Ibn al-Adim? Or is he hinting that he’s an immortal?
Fun fact, an ecdysiast is literally a strip-tease artist . "What may be lost?"
The name Ibn al-Adim reminds me of Lovecraft, with Abdul Alhazred, the writer of the Necronomicon/Al-Azif. Perhaps there’s a connection or homage there.
shakes head Not with Alhazred. There was a 13th century historian and diplomat named Ibn al-Adim from Aleppo who wrote a history titled Everything desirable about the History of Aleppo. Doctor Ibn al-Adim is implicitly claiming to be that Ibn al-Adim in some form.
Why is this so clever? In Hermetic and Gnostic theology, the descent of the pure soul to Earth is marked by passage through various heavenly doors/spheres. As it descends through these gates the soul acquires various burdensome vices and material desires - much like putting on clothes. These vices and desires serve to bind the soul to Earth and the movement of the heavens (i.e. fate and the whim of its rulers). In order to reascend, the soul must cast off these extraneous burdens as it passes back through the heavenly gates.
What I think is going on: The Ecdysiast’s Riddle asks you what you can give up. The result is a succession of parables where you strip yourself down to your most fundamental elements. You’re casting away all that is unessential, all that covers up the soul. Casting it all away, piece by piece, until there’s no more that can be lost - the true you, free at last (the Moth is chaos). Characterizing it as an erotic dance makes it all sound kind of cute, until you realize that this stripping down won’t stop at metaphorical clothes, but go much, much deeper…
A response to Alice:
[spoiler][quote=Alice Lutwidge]
True, I maaay have gotten a lil excited and assumed that the Hour is called the White, when that could possibly just be a descriptor; the Sun-In-Rags does seem fitting, now that you mention it. But at the risk of sounding crazy, when I recently re-read Galmier’s letter describing Port Noon, I was sort of reminded of the "Who is Salt?" SMEN ending (…I hope that isn’t too telling, is it? I can explain further via PM if anyone wishes, but of course I don’t want to publicly say anymore than that). I know Alexis stated early on that Noon and Fallen London were separate universes, but… I just can’t help this niggling feeling that there may be a connection there, somehow. But I know that I may be reaching there :P[/quote]
I think the White might be a location? Like the Mansus, the Wood, and the Edge seem to be?
In A Journey in a Window, your character is shown their death "where the woods turn white." The Mansus also has a White Door, which is the door through which the dead and dreamers enter.
Connecting the White to the White Door is the fact that using the White Ceremony to create an occult society gives you the Children of Silence.
[/spoiler]
Thought a bit about the hours of The Moth and Sun-in-Rags. At first I thought it was a little weird that those two Hours received special attention, but the more I think about it the significance and placement of both makes the most sense.
Hour 0, The Moth, is the Fool. It is the moment where the previous day officially ends, and the new day officially begins. Midnight marks the start of the day, the beginning of the Sun’s journey across the sky. Before the Sun arrives, the day begins in total, blinding darkness, likely another allusion to the blind naivety of the Fool. Midnight might also signify the brief moment where yesterday and today briefly overlap -exist as one as it were- which might be why the Witch-and-Sister seems to also have some level of influence here outside of her/their own hour of Six o’clock, hence our need to use the Recitation of Amethyst to create the Society of Midnight.
Hour 12, The Sun-In-Rag’s hour is Noon. The Hour of cold and fading light holding dominion over the brightest and warmest point of the day might seem odd at first, but makes more sense after a moment of contemplation. Here the Sun is at its zenith, the highest point. Like Midnight, this is another important moment of transition in the order of the day. The day is no longer beginning, it’s officially starting to end. In that brief, fleeting instant between it’s rise and fall, the Sun could be said to be the most beautiful. But after reaching it’s zenith, the Sun can no longer rise, only fall. Slowly it grows distant, not as it was. It’s light and warmth begin to fade from a glorious gold to a baleful red, until eventually it disappears entirely over the horizon, ending the day in total darkness. In silence and stillness. Everything about this practically screams everything we know up until now about the SiN.
This also plays into the theme of the twelfth Arcana of Tarot: the Hanged Man. This Tarot can mean sacrifice, but it also represents surrender, letting go. Accept the end, acknowledge your mortality. All things must end. Just as the Sun rises it must at some point set. Even the Long are shown to die, eventually. We can no more avoid the end forever than we can stop the Sun from disappearing over the horizon.
The Moth journeys out of the dark of night into the warmth and light of day, and as it sets The Sun-In-Rags takes the world back from warm and bright to dark and cold… And then it all starts over again.
And that is very beautiful.
edited by Edward Warren on 12/3/2017
Oh, that’s clever! Well said ^_^
Maybe, but the Recitation of Amethyst is also a very unfinished card and the Society of Midnight could easily be a placeholder for a society card missing from the alpha.
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edited by Anne Auclair on 12/3/2017
I did some more research today on a hunch after thinking about a history course I’d taken once, and I think I I’ve found some more information about my favorite Hour, namely the Red Grail. If what I’ve found is correct, a lot of the Hour’s symbolism is rooted in Egyptian Mythology.
The most clear bit comes from the story of the goddess Nut. The goddess of the sky, she gives birth to the Sun every morning, and then eats him every night, which is why the morning and evening sun appears so red. This also explains why the Red Grail’s hour is 5 o’clock, sunset, where the sun appears to be devoured by the horizon and the sky turns bloody red. Nut was also viewed as a protector of tombs, and the worst punishment reserved for grave robbers in Egypt was drowning.
Drowning waters also feature heavily in Ancient Egyptian mythology. The clearest parallel is the story of Osiris’ murder. In most retellings, Set throws Osiris into the Nile river where he is drowned. This story spawned the Egyptian belief that those who were drowned in the Nile were sacred. Eventually Osiris is reborn as a god. We also have the book of Exodus, where Pharaoh and his men were swallowed up and drowned by the Red Sea.
I feel like I’ve had something of a world-shattering revelation of my own the last few days. Once I made the connection between an Hour’s placement in the day and their nature everything has just sort of started to click.
http://weatherfactory.biz/the-thing-on-the-doorstep/
Lottie Bevan (former producer at FBG, romantically involved with Alexis) has just joined Weather Factory as a co-founder alongside Alexis. She’ll mostly be working on the things that aren’t in Alexis’s main wheelhouse of writing/design.
Additionally, there is now a Weather Factory twitter: https://twitter.com/factoryweather
Finally, there are some new screenshots on the Cultist Simulator page, showing the updated interface (substantially similar to the existing alpha, but seems more spacious, and has a very nice infobar at the bottom).
http://weatherfactory.biz/cultist-simulator/
https://i1.wp.com/weatherfactory.biz/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/screenies-5-alpha.jpg
The stuff on the desktop is mostly stuff we’ve seen, at least in the trailers, although I don’t think we’d known that Ezeem the Second Thirsty has an expiration date - that could just be a dematerialization timer, if we’re lucky. (Which we probably are, there isn’t anything else that has a particular effect when it expires.)
edited by illuminati swag (Benthic) on 12/5/2017
There is now a fourth way of gaining funds. You can do a token amount of work while begging your parents for money.
It’s kind of funny imagining a family allowance funding a potentially world ending cult.
Some cryptic new additions:
- The Ecdysis Club
- Ghastly News for a Bright Young Thing
- the ominous Poppy Lascelles
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edited by Anne Auclair on 12/5/2017
There is now a Steam page, and a listed release date of May 8, 2018: Cultist Simulator on Steam
I was asking on discord. What the hell is Jesud Christ. What goes into the bigger question how do these occultist powers and actors affected the real world religions. The real world religions just another window dressing for the hours? Is Jesus Long that later became a Name? Are they one of the gods of the flesh or blood?
Wow seeing the Steam page for the game got me all hyped all over again. Also, I found this interesting video featuring The Colonel today that I thought you guys might want to see.
I’m sorry.
This joke could no longer be evaded.
[quote=Anne Auclair]
Maybe, but the Recitation of Amethyst is also a very unfinished card and the Society of Midnight could easily be a placeholder for a society card missing from the alpha.[/quote]
Based on some of the Steam page text, it looks like the Recitation of the Amethyst will allow for the creation of an eleventh occult society, this one dedicated to the Witch-and-Sister.
The Beta is currently scheduled for release at the end of next week.
Anyone else wondering what the SMEN quest line for this game will be? I know this game is all about capturing that general feel of sacrificing everything in the name of a yearning that can never truly be filled, but what would be the end-all quest? What unfathomable horror could be considered to be the most foolhardy endeavor in the world of the invisible arts?
Also, the Society of St. Hydra’s name has me thinking. From what we’ve learned, it seems that the different histories seem to share some constants, such as certain people and countries. The hydra is a creature who grows two heads from the stump of one. Does that imply that there wasn’t just a first history, but a certain date from which multiple alternate histories divereged? When did the Hours first start changing history? Why? What determines what’s shared between histories and what’s erased?
edited by Edward Warren on 12/12/2017
As I understand it, the entire game is the SMEN questline writ large. Or, more precisely, any ending other than giving up your dread curiosity and making a living as a clerk leads to madness in the Kennedy style.
I could be wrong, of course, but that’s the impression I get.