Exceptional Story for April: The Luminous Factory
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?
EXCEPTIONAL FRIENDSHIP
All Exceptional Friends receive:
- A new Exceptional Story every month
- Memories of a Tale from each story to spend on exclusive companions and items
- A second candle (up to 40 actions at once)
- An expanded opportunity deck: ten cards instead of six
- Three additional outfit slots
- Access to the House of Chimes, including monthly gameplay perks
Enhanced Exceptional Friends receive all of the above, plus:
- A past story, or two resets of stories you’ve played from a monthly menu
- Memories of a Tale from every past story or reset
- Extra monthly perks in the House of Chimes
- Three seven-action refreshes per month
4 Likes
Ooh, this looks fun! I can’t wait to nose around and do some corporate espionage.
I loved it, right up until the end. The story ending and reward both made me think I had done something horribly wrong. 
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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.
2 Likes
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.
Honestly I do adore that there’s Junebugs given recent firmament events. Seems fitting.
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!
2 Likes
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.
2 Likes
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. :)
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