"The pneumonia has carried off a Widely-disliked Parliamentarian. Although he was unpopular, his funeral will be well attended"
What’s with this card? I thought people didn’t die in the neath?
It’s harder to die in the Neath, but not impossible. There’s a couple sidebars that reference permanent death, and you yourself get to witness/cause it.
do diseases typically cause a permanant end? it seems rather odd that people can survive beheadings, but die of pneumonia
I guess it makes sense since one can heal from wounds, whereas diseased tissue cannot ever be ‘cured’ since the pathogens will remain in one’s system? Just a hypothesis.
(Not sure about poisoning. One of my RPs involved a minor character being poisoned, which she recovered from shortly after, but don’t know if that’s really how it works in the Neath!)
Also, I was under the impression that beheading does cause permanent death in the Neath: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Marianne~Anders?fromEchoId=6698466
edited by Sestina Valdis on 1/4/2016
Most poisons only cause temporary death in London, but one is poison notorious for its permanent fatality.[li]
edited by Lady Sapho Byron on 1/4/2016
I thought beheadings were a consistent method of permanent death? In The Black Ribbon storylet that’s one way to permanently remove an opponent.
Death shuns the Neath, to be sure, but that’s not to say it’s impossible to die. It’s not even entirely uncommon, only far less frequent than on the surface. And there are more than a few ways for one to meet their permanent end in the Neath.
For instance, as Sestina above mentioned, decapitation will absolutely cause permanent death to the unfortunate recipient. Barring a few peculiar circumstances (such as when the subject happens to be immortal), this is without exception. In fact, any lethal wounds dealt beyond the means of recovery are liable to cause permanent death. Incineration, for instance, you will most certainly not survive. Furthermore, any terrible wounds you might be dealt will often remain. If you get your arm lopped off, it’s not going to grow back. Your wacky Neathly vitality does not make you a lizard, and those shipped off to the Tomb Colonies are typically those who have been dealt wounds too grossly for society to bear.
Disease can be your end, if it’s strong enough to kill you. One can also die of old age, but it tends to take a lot longer than it would on the surface.
(Minor spoilers)
You can even find some still-living Tomb Colonists back from the days of the Third City! Although to call them "living" in the current state they’re in could be a misnomer. Another reason you don’t tend to see the more ancient colonists around London is because every time a city falls, the current city’s residents are…errrm…evicted. In what might be one of the most horrible ways possible.
Now then, poisons. As Sapho mentioned, the vast majority of poisons are only able to cause a temporary death. However, there is at least one poison (in high demand) that offers a permanent solution to any problematic individual you might encounter; and that poison is Cantigaster’s Venom. I’ll spare the details of its origin, since that would involve spoilers, but you’ll understand why it’s so volatile once you come across that information.
Finally, even temporary death can become a permanent one if you happen to fall or be pushed off the Boatman’s boat. So, let’s hope you’re not sharing a voyage with anyone who means you ill, hm?
edited by Red Herring on 1/4/2016
I imagine it depends on how much of the person is left after the circumstance. I.E. some "deft needlework", antidote or other remedy might suffice, provided there is enough of the victim left to re-establish normality. In the case of the "Widely-disliked Parliamentarian" it could be assumed the lungs were no longer capable of maintaining the individual’s functionality.
My only question is: did this person go to the tomb-colonies afterwards? Or was this a "permanent" death, and tomb colonists never actually permanently "die"? There is some confusion on that account, at least for me.
[li]
edited by SouthSea Rutherby on 1/4/2016
I think Tomb-Colonists are the ones who haven’t permanently died yet. The bandages are an attempt to keep their bodies from deteriorating to the point where they die, and they get to live as long as they can keep their body relatively intact.
Now that you mention it, there’s room to wonder whether "funeral" in this case refers to consigning the body of one who has permanently died to the earth, or to wishing someone bound for the Tomb-Colonies safe travels. I’m guessing the former, though - disease can render a body unlivable just as much as violence.
We do know that Tomb-Colonists can die permanently just as much as anyone else. Some of them pursue combat sports in the half-hearted hope that it’ll polish them off properly. (For others, of course, the cause-and-effect is the other way around - they’re happy to keep on living, but their love of combat is the reason they’re now Tomb-Colonists.) And, of course, Tomb-Colonist status is really just a matter of looking alive - there are plenty of folks who have died and recovered with no wounds serious enough to keep them from appearing in polite society.
(I’m rather fond of one theory that I read somewhere - can’t remember where - that the air quality is so bad in the Neath, being a poorly-ventilated cave full of volcanoes, chemical factories and so forth, that a lot of us die and recover without even noticing, and that’s one reason why it’s hard to predict who will or won’t be struck dead by sunlight on returning to the surface.)
It’s another Society euphemism, like ‘hunting accident’. Pretty sure the real cause of death was stockings-related asphyxiation.
Perhaps The Pneumonia was the name of his ship?
[quote=the truthseeker]Are you saying we invented the likes of Mexico City, Los Angeles, and Beijing centuries in advance?!
[/quote]
London did not need the Neath to produce lethal fog - pea-soupers were a problem for centuries, and, if Wikipedia’s to be believed, the Great Smog of 1952 killed twelve thousand people in a matter of days. We might not have that level of population in the timeline of the Fall, but with the closed environment, the increase in municipal industrial production (Manchester et al. no longer being so accessible), and the proximity of Hell… well, I’ll reiterate what I said in a recent, much dung-ier thread - I’m guessing Fallen London smells foul.