[spoiler]The Obstinate Adoratrice is the last Adoratrice of Amun in the Second City. The real-world ushabti leads to a statue of “the last priestess of Amun in the city of the faithless”. This is unambiguous confirmation that the Second City is/was Akhetaten, founded by Akenhaten as the seat of his monotheistic solar cult of Aten. Akenhaten prohibited anthropomorphic depictions of the Aten, commanding that the image of the sun disk be used instead. The Antiquarian’s manor contains no images of anthropomorphic deities, and many images of the sun.
“When still on the Surface, she quarreled with her father and was banished.” She insisted on continuing to revere Amun. Past pharaohs had claimed that they were descended from Amun; Akenhaten claimed to be not only the child of the Aten, but also a full incarnation of the Aten upon the earth.
“This Palace was to be a refuge, a place where the citizens of the Second City could walk beneath a new sun… She maintains this place even though she did not approve of its construction.” The Palace was designed for and by the cult of Aten to be a place of sunlight.
What if the Palace is a prototype of the Dawn Machine?
What if the Aten, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers, is also the Dawn Machine, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers?
The Fulgent Impeller is built around an Element of Dawn and awakened with the sacrifice of a sage into its burning heart. What if the Dawn Machine was born in the same way? What if the original architect of the Dawn Machine, and perhaps the sage burning at its heart, is none other than the Pharaoh Akenhaten, his claims of solar divinity finally realized?[/spoiler]
I thoroughly enjoyed this story. The writing was excellent and the mysteries great. I do love to get more knowledge about the previous cities. My favourite part was easily the search for clue during the hide-and-seek, it was very atmospheric and I loved how tens it felt even though it was merely a game.
I too was reminded of the Calendar Code by the set up of this and I really loved that one too. This easily makes my a spot amongst my favourite stories.
[quote=loredeluxe]My favorite part of the story was passing the six gates and finding out what happened to the six daughters of the Pharoah of the Second City. Some of what I say below will be theory, but most will be factually correct based on what we as veteran players know already.
[snip, theories, etc]
Discuss! edited by loredeluxe on 7/27/2017[/quote]
Why would you say that we meet the fifth daughter, when (according to the Antiquarian, at any rate) she is "the second of six daughters"? Are the gates, perhaps, in reverse order?
Yes, the gates are almost certainly in reverse order, since the first gate we go through is the one depicting the sun and we are explicitly told that the last daughter was the one who stayed to die in the sunlight. The rest also makes sense with who is who if the order is reversed.
I might have to go back and look but I thought of the gates as showing them from youngest to oldest and the daughter we meet is called the second daughter of the Pharoah because she is the second born, the fifth daughter as in the second oldest not youngest.
I seem to be at the final decision and am a little unclear about my options. I see one choice to leave immediately and two other choices that require a specific quality from all the characters, I assume relating to their choice to leave or stay. My only option of interaction with them is to convince them to leave (with a persuasive stat check), but I don’t want them to (I don’t really see how it’s really my business actually).
What I’m wondering is whether their decision to leave or stay is just a success or fail on the persuasive stat check, or if I actually get a choice to argue for them staying. The former would seem to suggest that one of the choices requires me to FAIL every single check and is impossible to get as I’m 100% chance all across the board.
Or am I missing why convincing everyone to leave would be a clearly superior option instead of just kind of a dick move? edited by Scienceandponies on 7/27/2017
I er… think I may have accidentally skipped a chunk of this story. Or just played it wrong (as much as you can play a story wrong)
When the choices came up to sabotage the project or talk the guests out of staying, I didn’t even understand why I would want to.
So apparently one of the daughters died in the House of the Feather, whatever that is. I found one reference to it though - in Sunless Skies, the House of the Feather will be one of the ports usable as a home base like London is in SSea.
Did anyone get echoes of the ending for convincing the friends to leave but not the Antiquarian?
[quote=a Nice Friend]I er… think I may have accidentally skipped a chunk of this story. Or just played it wrong (as much as you can play a story wrong)
When the choices came up to sabotage the project or talk the guests out of staying, I didn’t even understand why I would want to.
I messed up somewhere.[/quote]
There isn’t any real reason for sabotage that I can think of, unless your character was particularly angry at the trickery. You might want to talk the guests out of staying because the Antiquarian wanted them to only stay if they really wanted to, I guess? And you might want to convince the Antiquarian for the same reason. edited by Optimatum on 7/27/2017
All the new lore is delightful: The new rituals, the seance, the palace itself, the clues towards the fates of all the sisters. Seeing all the tricks the Assistant was able to pull was quite an education experience, as a fellow glassman.
The party at the start of the ES had a lot of good and funny writing - you can’t overstate the fact that you can go through the whole ES drunk to high heavens - and exploring the Manor/Palace was also intensely satisfying.
Also: Shout out to the Antiquarian for probably being the only other person who has so many Ushabtiu in his house.
I’m at the same place. I see no reason why my character should interfere with these people’s decision.
It would have been an interesting choice had there been more character development for them, through which we might have learned of things still important for them in London.
Gotta admit, I did not predict where this story was going.
With the dying Egyptologist apparently off being bandaged, the devoted friends being plied with food and wine, the talk of funerary rites, and the creepy servant trying to get everyone alone and off-guard, I figured I was in for a night of avoiding someone’s attempts to have me mummified alive and bind me forever in service in the afterlife. The mirrors and princesses gradually made clear that there was more to it than that, and it turned out to be an excursion into deep lore of suns and pacts and dreams rather than a pure exercise in trad horror, but there were still some creepy sarcophagus scenes.
I’m at the same place. I see no reason why my character should interfere with these people’s decision.
It would have been an interesting choice had there been more character development for them, through which we might have learned of things still important for them in London.[/quote]
That’s what led me to believe that I must have messed up or missed something.
These people are strangers to me and they seem extremely pleased with this place, so the option to sabotage the construction or talk them out of staying only makes sense to me if there was something especially sinister going on. And if there was, I couldn’t see it.
I did enjoy the survival horror puzzle mansion and the option to get completely sauced while the guests bicker. edited by a Nice Friend on 7/27/2017
Along with just being pissed at this motley crew tricking you, some people don’t like anything to do with Parabola due to how dangerous it’s been for many cities and groups. With that and the base fear of "new crazy magic shenanigans! scary!", talk of a new sun may frighten players wary of replacement suns (I mean, the Dawn Machine wasn’t exactly a good start for that concept). Other than those reasons that are stretching logic to rationalize it, yeah, it pretty much feels like a dick move for the sake of being a dick. Part of me wishes that they’d have given better reasoning for messing with the daughter’s plans, even if they weren’t great or concrete reasons, but I also like the idea of the options being "being evil for evil’s sake VS being a decent person with no self-sacrifice required" in a game where those kind of options aren’t always a constant.
You could make a better argument for convincing the members of the party to leave, but to me it just seemed like needlessly convincing people what they wanted wasn’t in their best interest when they were already happy with the outcome. I think it was partly a tie-in to the fictional king’s / the daughters’ willingness to give up their lives to follow their dreams and desires, though I don’t have much reason to think their aspirations are any less valuable as their usual lives. Still, though, it was a nice tie-in.
[spoiler]Personally, I thought it was silly for a group of capable scholars to give up their lives to build a dream of a reflection of a sun-temple to aid a three thousand-year-old priestess who doesn’t even believe in it, in memory of her sisters, at least one of whom is alive and active in the real world anyway.
Nice to have my suspicion that the Duchess is the Masters’ hostage confirmed, too.[/spoiler]
Along with just being pissed at this motley crew tricking you, some people don’t like anything to do with Parabola due to how dangerous it’s been for many cities and groups. With that and the base fear of "new crazy magic shenanigans! scary!", talk of a new sun may frighten players wary of replacement suns (I mean, the Dawn Machine wasn’t exactly a good start for that concept). Other than those reasons that are stretching logic to rationalize it, yeah, it pretty much feels like a dick move for the sake of being a dick. Part of me wishes that they’d have given better reasoning for messing with the daughter’s plans, even if they weren’t great or concrete reasons, but I also like the idea of the options being "being evil for evil’s sake VS being a decent person with no self-sacrifice required" in a game where those kind of options aren’t always a constant.
You could make a better argument for convincing the members of the party to leave, but to me it just seemed like needlessly convincing people what they wanted wasn’t in their best interest when they were already happy with the outcome. I think it was partly a tie-in to the fictional king’s / the daughters’ willingness to give up their lives to follow their dreams and desires, though I don’t have much reason to think their aspirations are any less valuable as their usual lives. Still, though, it was a nice tie-in.[/quote]
It certainly does seem a bit of stretch. Sure it takes place in Parabola, but it’s not like this involves anything from there trying to move London-side, and I don’t smell even a whiff of fingerking involvement. Replacement suns are no big deal if kept on that side of the glass (Parabola is usually described as a pretty sunny place anyway). There’s really no impression these characters are leaving anything terribly important behind, nor that their fates on this side will be particularly ominous.