One streetlamp is more conspicuous than the rest: few cast such squidly shadows. The Tentacled Entrepreneur pretends not to notice you until you’re right next to him, then gurgles a quiet greeting. You imagine he believes he was successfully skulking.
The Tentacled Entrepreneur – the Fifth City’s foremost business-Rubbery – occasionally requires a capable contractor to keep an eye on his competitors. Today, that partner is you. Investigate the lamp factory threatening his business interests. Interview the Impatient Supervisor and her workers. What secrets lie on the factory floor? What do these lamps use as fuel? And, most importantly, can it be leveraged for profit?
I don’t know what you did, tamaxlia, but I chose, finally, to tell Fires about the situation of the workers. The result was that Fires took away the Supervisor’s share of the factory and gave it to the Tentacled Entrepreneur and the secret about the bugs and the danger they present became known to everyone in the factory including the workers. Was this wrong? Maybe, but what it wasn’t was a solution that gave even lip service to human interests of rights to property, and right-and-wrong. Fires and the TE were both interested in supporting the Factory as a productive entity and the result was something that gave at least some benefits to all–except the ousted Supervisor.
Short, fun, didn’t overstay it’s welcome. Unsurprised that going along with the Supervisor leads to the best outcome for the workers. Nothing good ever comes of bringing Fires’ attention to anything
Have to wonder what options and dialogues Light Fingers players who abandoned their offspring got from this one, considering Fires taking you at your word is a major plot point.
This one was sweet and tender, at least with the choices I made. It really gave the levity of there being good in the world if you know how to make it yourself. I thoroughly enjoyed this one. Great work, definitely my favorite so far this year!
Shorter than I expected-- I thought there’d be another stage after the inspection– but enjoyable nonetheless.
It struck me partway through that the beetles were essentially equivalent to radium (or uranium, or both I suppose), after it (they) were first discovered and used for all sorts of things, before the radioactive effects were known, or at least publicized-- and that therefore the Junebugs were the Neath equivalent of the Radium Girls.
I felt the exact same way about the inspection actually, it did seem like it was going somewhere further after Fires showed up. And then it just ends abruptly with the Tentacled Entrepreneur’s business deal (or possibly lack of one I guess, in the endings I didn’t get)
Wow, that is not what I expected to happen from that choice! Wines is the only master I have known to be reasonable, Fires has always been absolutely brutal and merciless! I would have expected death and exploitation! I chose to be far, far more humanitarian than you were and there were no positive results for anyone in the story.
[spoiler] I convinced the entrepreneur to take over the factory as a charitable project. I convinced fires that the factory was worthless and that the woman managing it was corrupt(which she was, betraying her partner), I also honoured my promise to the Matron and kept her condition secret from the masters. The infected orphans were allowed upstairs which caused a lot of the upstairs staff to quit, the entrepeneur bribed the rest. There was nothing about any money being diverted to seek a cure or make the factory safer so at the end of the story. Everyone was still sick and there was no hope for a cure. The danger was less contained to sthe sickness would now spread outside the factory. There was no mention of making the lamps safe so they will make people in london sick as well. I think the reward was the rubbery favour dump and a 6 echo or 12 echo item, so about 65-70 echos for the story, which I think was at least 40 actions.
That’s why I was looking around if there had been a permanent unlock for the factory, I was hoping there would be a carousel that suggested progress toward finding a cure, also the ending reward was about normal for ES but there is normally also some rewards during the progression of the story to make up for it, or some sort of unique item, carousel, options on existing stories. ( although, the ES seem to have been far less mechanically rewarding for a while now).
[/spoiler]
Anyway it left a bit of a bad taste but that is a sign of what I was anticipating, so I won’t complain. I started the game in December and started my Enhanced Exceptional Friendship in January and every story has been better than the last up until now. Last month’s even had a nice item reward.
I still have my fingers crossed for a Dream of a thousand Tails or Diogenese type one to come up, both a great story and some cool mechanical/item unlock.
Calling a paylocked story Diogenes is hilarious, I loved it. :)
I really liked this one as well, and I have to say I adore the Tentacled Entrepreneur as a character pretty much anywhere he appears (despite not supporting him in elections and perpetually juggling him on the Railway Board - perhaps I feel guilty for the poor hapless fellow).
I think the characters were all very nicely written and I’d have loved to have an ending where you can do something for the Junebugs, help the two main ladies reconcile and get charitable and profitable business advice from the Entrepreneur. With all the advanced skills and scientific aptitude of a reasonably endgame character, this should be a piece of cake. Nevertheless, this is commonly the case and it doesn’t detract from the story quality, just promotes creation of head-canon, I suppose.
Regarding the monthly Exceptional Stories, however, there is quite rarely any unique Item reward or a new carousel added. These things are usually added as part of separately bought Festive Stories (we’ve not gotten one for some time, though). Just so you’re not disappointed by this trend in the future.
Personally, I consider the writing the real reward I pay and play for, and any rewards/items other than the main end reward/Memory of a Tale as a bonus. The ES model is crucial for long-term players, providing a monthly short story/novelette’s worth of beautiful words and worldbuilding, and it works very well in this regard - heck, it’s kept me Exceptional for ten years now! The material rewards are secondary, and while they are more of a point for earlier-stage player, there’s generally no need to rush anyway, with the exception of Festivals, and those are generally very permissive for the early-stage and casual players nowadays, which is a good thing as well.
While this is true and in my opinion fair, older exceptional stories sometimes had lingering tie ins into the game world which gave them a more firm footing in the narrative. Hohojoto, Cricket Anyone or Cut with Moonlight come to mind. I wish those were more prevalent. Some tie ins exist with the purchases from Chimes Lost and Found, but that is even more alienating to me. I experienced a ludicrous adventure with the Precocious Tosher, I should not have to purchase him to be able to experience the in world tie in. But considering some newer exceptional stories have no tie ins of other ingame qualities, leaving them hanging as appendixes to the game world with the lingering feeling whether they even belong in Fallen London altogether, the recent batch of stories that manage to reference other qualities and stories are a delight nonetheless.
This turned out to be much more ranty than I intended, so I want to add: no hard feelings.
Exceptional Stories with lasting rewards were never very common, but they’ve become even more rare as time goes on. I think these days you’ll occasionally see a permanent companion, or new game stories will have a tie-in with an old ES, but permanent game content almost never happens anymore.
Probably a big reason for that was the player backlash against the card added to the London deck by Cricket, Anyone? Some folks take deck-thinning really seriously. Addressing this issue is one of the explicit goals of The Great Opportunity Deck Ongoing Rework of 1899. Adding options to existing cards avoids that problem but it’s much more limited design space and honestly I’m glad they stopped before the Faction cards got too crowded.
I totally agree with your point that sometimes Exceptional stories sometimes feel extraneous, or that they’re missing something for not being more deeply integrated with London. But they have to be optional content. And that really limits the lasting impact it can be allowed to have.
Honestly the more I think about ESs the more I think they just have an overbearing amount of design contraints that other stories don’t have, and I’m amazed how many good stories still get told through those constraints. And it seems like Candlefinder is basically a venue to relax a tiny portion of those.
