…
It’s actually possible to understand words at that speed???
(often, an entire sentence slips through in the space my brain allots for a single wordalike)
(Look, it’s an Alot of words!)
Does anyone understand the new stretch goals on the Kickstarter page? I get the part where he makes a cup of tea for his gf and cake for hos daughter (which are adorable btw). But the text snippets on the others have me scratching my head.
We’ve got book excerpts referencing a new Hour called “The Crowned Growth” and the “port of Noon”. Are these gonna be new books, or characters and locations we can find in the game?
No idea. The one about the Crowned Growth just got met though, so I suppose we’ll find out. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s some sort of blog post :P
Personally, I think the game is ambitious enough and it doesn’t need real stretch goals. The ambition isn’t in the games size, but rather its "narrative crafting" combined with "quick FTL style gameplay." I don’t think anything quite like this has been done before?
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edited by Anne Auclair on 9/4/2017
Here’s a comment Alexis made on the kickstarter that adds emphasis to the above passage:
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If FTL is the model, then the game is probably going to be really challenging, and that long list of (mostly unpleasant) things that can happen to you…
…is not a case of comical exaggeration.
But, like in FTL, it will be easy to pick yourself back up when one of your less fortunate cultists gets eaten by a demon they so foolishly summoned without the proper preparations. But whereas FTL has ship types, the number and variety of which can be increased over successive (even ultimately unsuccessful) play-throughs, CS will have legacies that you will win or stumble onto over the course of your successive failures, Pyrrhic victories, "happy endings," and occasional (extremely satisfying) triumphs.
The legacy system is also a nice simulation of how you and your characters will gradually come to learn more about the Mansus and its inhabitants. No occultist can hope to learn all the secrets of the Invisible World by themselves - fortunately they have a journal, fortuitously attained, which tells them many things that they wouldn’t have been able to learn otherwise. They will in turn leave their own journal, containing the sum total of their knowledge, to enlighten a third (un)fortunate, and so on. So what in another game would be the simple accumulation of out-of-character knowledge, instead becomes a progressively increasing inheritance of arcana.
Anyway, I should probably mention that as of today, five days after going live, Cultist Simulator is more than 200% funded. Alexis has promised that should one hundred pounds be donated, he will create a tarot deck of Hours and…six other assorted entities for those who like cards.
edited by Anne Auclair on 9/6/2017
I gotta say I’m really liking these letters we’re getting as stretch goals. They’re tasty little bits of lore and keep me pumped for the full release. I like how this one really gave us some good lore and clarified a few questions about the Hidden World:
- The Hours aren’t a unified front. Some Hours are in opposition to each other, and without them keeping others in check some of them could end up overtaking the world.[/li][li]The Crowned Growth is presumably a god of disease that wants to spread. It can actually take over the bodies of others and use them as puppets to further its will. Whether this is an ability unique to this Hour or something they can do in general is unknown. [/li][li]The afterlife is a terrible place in the CS universe. Depending on whatever door you’re unlucky enough to enter the House of the Sun through, you could end up suffering the loss of some of your faculties, such as your voice in the case of the White Door. Not to mention you’re at the mercy of the Hours, who can torment and/or possess you at their leisure. No wonder why some cultists want to find a way to enter the Mansus on their own terms.
A few new questions have been raised as well:
- Will divine possession be a hazard in the game?[/li][li]Will our goal influence our standing among some Hours? Now that we know some Hours oppose each other, it makes sense that depending on our goals for each play through some would be more inclined to help up us while others would hinder us. Example: from what we know a cultist that wanted to end the world would do well to seek the blessings of the Sun-in-Rags, and would likely become an enemy of the Thunderskin, who demands the dance continues. But in another play through the Thunderskin might prove to be an ally in the quest for enduring life and immortality.[/li][li]Is the Gelatinous Worm God a hidden Hour or one of the other six supernatural entities hinted by the Tarot cards?[/li][li]Why is there more than one History?
edited by Edward Warren on 9/7/2017
edited by Edward Warren on 9/7/2017
I know the map of the Mansus has been mentioned, but I haven’t really seen it analyzed. Here’s a version with Alexis’s handwriting deciphered by the members of the Delicious Server and put together by Evoro:
Note the Woods at the bottom and the Glory at the top - this answers the question in the quote for the Locksmith’s Dream ("All trees reach for light. What does the Wood reach for?"). Also the "Front Door" - the Mansus is the House of the Sun, we’re coming in the back door without the permission of the owner. The Second Worm War is interesting, as it’s not labeling an arrow but, apparently, a curve. Battle lines, perhaps?
The most notable thing that isn’t immediately visible, I think, is that everything explicitly connected to reality is on the right. The Sun, the White Door through which dreamers and the dead enter, and Galmier’s Lodge are all on the right. Also the Spider Door, through which Galmier went in 1923, and the "Front Door" through which the Sun presumably enters, though those are not explicitly connected to reality yet. The Mansus is "behind" reality, which is not a literal direction but rather some relation which is somehow analogous to direction - it seems likely that this relation is represented in the map by the Mansus being to the left of reality. And looking to the left of the Mansus, which presumably continues that relation, we see the arrival of the Gods-From-Nowhere. If you go "behind" reality, you end up at the Mansus. If you go "behind" the Mansus, where do you end up? Nowhere, apparently.
This also gives some interesting context to the Second Worm War - it’s to the left of the Mansus, which is odd. "We lost the Second Worm War. By then, the worms had learned to work people from the inside." If the worms are working people from the inside, how did the people get there? Or is that the wrong question? Lost as in the ordinary way for a war, or lost as in missing? Did we lose to our opponents (who may or may not have been the worms)? Or did the Second Worm War go missing from history because it went behind reality?
Also, a couple other snippets from the livestream:
There are 30 Hours total, but 6 are missing, which is why we know of 24 hours.
"There are five levels in the grand taxonomy. There’s us, at the bottom, then the Know, who have passed through the second door, the Long, who do not end, the Names, who are sometimes the emanations of the hours, and finally the Hours." This is especially interesting given that there are 5 doors to the Mansus, not counting the Front Door.
Edit: It is apparently "reasonable to suspect" that Gods-Who-Were-Flesh come from our reality, possibly originating as human occultists; since each of the other three directions in this theory have a type of God coming from them (Gods-From-Light from "up", Gods-Who-Were-Blood from "down", Gods-From-Nowhere from "behind"), this has some strong implications in favor of this theory. I’m not sure about Gods-From-Stone, though; maybe they come from the Mansus itself?
edited by illuminati swag (Benthic) on 9/29/2017
No, it doesn’t seem like it. Underneath the stretch goals section on the kickstarter’s main page it says it’s a giant gummy worm.
There’s an image in the latest project update (#7). It’s maybe 60-80 cm long, a couple inches in diameter, two colours (red merging into black at the half way mark). Smooth on the bottom and a series of round bulges along the top. Red end has eyes, can’t be sure with the black end, but maybe it’s double-headed.
edited by Ragnar Degenhand on 9/7/2017
Just starting to built my understanding of this… so I’m a bit slow here. The gods (Light, Nowhere, Blood, etc) became/are the Hours? What is the relationship of gods and hours?
"The Hours are the secret gods of the Cultist Simulator setting." We know very little about the beings below the Hours, but several of the Hours are confirmed to be Gods-From-Light, Nowhere, etc. and as far as I know nothing that isn’t an Hour has been said to be a god.
Thank you!
Noticed we were only one minimum pledge away from the Fucine stretch goal, and decided to back. ^_~[li]Very excited to see what wonders he can work![/li][li]
edited by Gul al-Ahlaam on 9/7/2017
No, it doesn’t seem like it. Underneath the stretch goals section on the kickstarter’s main page it says it’s a giant gummy worm.[/quote]
I’m betting on a Worm God as one of the six ("We lost the second Worm War." and so forth). It may or may not be gelatinous.
[quote=Gul al-Ahlaam]Noticed we were only one minimum pledge away from the Fucine stretch goal, and decided to back. ^_~
Very excited to see what wonders he can work![/quote]
Oh, that’s the one I was most looking forward to! Thank you!
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edited by Anne Auclair on 9/7/2017
No, it doesn’t seem like it. Underneath the stretch goals section on the kickstarter’s main page it says it’s a giant gummy worm.[/quote]
I’m betting on a Worm God as one of the six ("We lost the second Worm War." and so forth). It may or may not be gelatinous.[/quote]
Likely related to the jam lords…
No, it doesn’t seem like it. Underneath the stretch goals section on the kickstarter’s main page it says it’s a giant gummy worm.[/quote]
I’m betting on a Worm God as one of the six ("We lost the second Worm War." and so forth). It may or may not be gelatinous.[/quote]
Likely related to the jam lords…[/quote]
To be gelatinous: "having the nature of or resembling jelly, especially in consistency; jellylike." It does’t mean something is actually jelly (or gummy, as the case may be). So the god might literally be gelatinous in some respect ^_^
btw, I hope she eats that giant worm straight away. When I was little, this boy I liked got me a giant peppermint candy cane for Christmas and I wanted to save it for a special occasion and so I put it under my bed and it went rotten.
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edited by Anne Auclair on 9/7/2017
[quote=Anne Auclair]
btw, I hope she eats that giant worm straight away. When I was little, this boy I liked got me a giant peppermint candy cane for Christmas and I wanted to save it for a special occasion and so I put it under my bed and it went rotten.[/quote]
Oh, that’s sad. The question in this case, though, is: how dangerous is the Gelatinous Worm-God? The worms, it is said, have learned to work people from the inside. To eat something is to put it inside oneself. How bad is it to have a worm working one from the inside? Maybe that’s not how it works specifically, but I wouldn’t want anything bad to happen to her, and it’s better to be safe than sorry (though maybe it’s better to be eating a Gelatinous Worm-God than safe, honestly).
edited by Benthic on 9/8/2017
Anne,
I don’t know if this clicked for you previously, but the ‘Port Noon’ update indirectly answered a question you raised from earlier in this thread. You had commented, as Alexis quoted on the blog, “This makes me wonder about Illopoly and Galmier’s relationship. They appear to be contemporaries (their books are all recently published). Were they colleagues? Rivals?”
Now consider the inscription of Galmier’s letter, which begins “Christopher, darling” and concludes with “kisses”. This can’t be coincidental. Theresa Galmier and Christopher Illopoly were clearly intimates - either lovers, or very close friends.
This past night, I spent some time earlier in the night around Port Noon, collecting some short words which I believed would help gain me entry. While I lost most of them, I do recall “garv” and “kibe” as having some significance.
They must have worked. Later in the night, I found myself at the very outskirts of the Wood. The trees were short there, but it was very dark in the path under their boughs. I removed my sunglasses, but it did not get any clearer. Someone passed me and made light conversation - I’m not sure he was human - and I pretended I was just waiting for my eyes to adjust. The truth is, I couldn’t enter; I simply couldn’t make my arms or legs move to enter the path into that shade.
[quote=Clifton Royston]Anne,
I don’t know if this clicked for you previously, but the ‘Port Noon’ update indirectly answered a question you raised from earlier in this thread. You had commented, as Alexis quoted on the blog, "This makes me wonder about Illopoly and Galmier’s relationship. They appear to be contemporaries (their books are all recently published). Were they colleagues? Rivals?"
Now consider the inscription of Galmier’s letter, which begins "Christopher, darling" and concludes with "kisses". This can’t be coincidental. Theresa Galmier and Christopher Illopoly were clearly intimates - either lovers, or very close friends.[/quote]
Oh, I saw! And I’m enjoying them ^_^ I’ve just been a little busy and decided to wait for all three stretch goal lore posts, just in case the third had a telling detail that illuminated something in the first or second.
Given they were contemporaries, it would have been incredibly strange for them not to have known each other! Well, they were definitely colleagues, even confidants, and appear to have been working together (at least at this point). They could have been devoted pen-pals (remember the alpha begins with a note informing you of the death of "your corespondent," who you apparently never met in the flesh - later you inherit something from him) or actual lovers. They might have been a part of the same occult society or lodge, or they might have only met each other in dreams.
This section here made me laugh:
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‘I have enough funds to wait for a couple of weeks’ - that’s the Time Passing mechanic in operation. Galmier is also playing Cultist Simulator. If she waits too long she’ll have to start dealing with starvation!
btw, this makes me wonder if the player character will be able to publish occult books themselves, for money or renown or just to spread word of their ideas/experiences, like Galmier and Illopoly did.
edited by Anne Auclair on 9/8/2017
[quote=Edward Warren]I gotta say I’m really liking these letters we’re getting as stretch goals. They’re tasty little bits of lore and keep me pumped for the full release. I like how this one really gave us some good lore and clarified a few questions about the Hidden World:
…
A few new questions have been raised as well:
…
- Why is there more than one History?
We got some hints about this in the first gray-box prototype which didn’t carry over into the second. In short, it appears that the Long may have the collective power to change and rewrite the past - not just change what’s in print about it, but change the actual history.
Occult Scraps in that game have the text "There is only one future. There is not only one history." In addition, one of the books you can find in that game is a ‘History of the War of the Roads’ with the text "In the pasts of certain Longs, these are the events that began England’s Age of Steel." There’s some other text I didn’t copy and save suggesting this was a history in which the English Industrial Revolution began much earlier, possibly in combination with the use of magic, leading to a world war of conquest by England and ultimately to widespread disaster. The implication is that some of the Longs got together and changed that past as necessary to prevent that chain of events.
Edit: This is surely a factor in Alexis suggesting that it would be a bad idea to draw too much attention from the Long. Rather than do something minor like kill you, they might decide it’s safer to prevent you from ever having existed.
edited by cliftonr on 9/9/2017