Many Fallen Londoners have been putting their best foot forward, so to speak (if feet were extraordinarily imaginative and well-spoken), but the postal service sees fit to devour those messages upon receipt.
It would be a shame to lose them all, and I’m sure quite a few people saved the favorites they sent or received, or would like the opprtunity to peak into other people’s mail - so here’s the place to record them for posterity.
Our most esteemed Sebastian Flyte, for example, seems to seems to be an endless fount of lovely handcrafted and personalized calling cards:
To Spacemarine9, Official Rat Consultant:
To me:
"This is a calling card. It is crafted of enamel. It menaces with spikes of amber. It menaces with spikes of wax. It depicts an image of a candle. It depicts an image of a snuffer. The candle is on fire. The snuffer is on fire. The snuffer is eating the candle. The candle is laughing."
To bjorntfh, Founder of the Seeker-Council (please remember the hyphen):
"This is a calling card. It is crafted of cartilage. It menaces with spikes of tallow. It depicts an image of a Seeker-Council. It depicts an image of a tiger. It depicts an image of a goldfish. The tiger is menacing the Seeker-Council with the goldfish. The goldfish is cheerful. The tiger is cheerful. The Seeker-Council is screaming. It does not have enough Proscribed Material."
"This is a calling card. It is crafted of jade. It beguiles with knobs of brass. It menaces with bands of coral. It depicts an image of a Spire. It depicts an image of a dragon. Oh my! The dragon is-- 'GREETINGS, SOUL OF MY SOUL. SEBASTIAN FLYTE DESIRES THE PRIVILEGE OF YOUR COMPANY. ‘YOU HAVE NOTHING TO LOSE BUT YOUR CHAINS.’"
~
There is a hurried knock at your door, followed by a short grunt and a wet thud. As you open the door you find a body lying there in a spreading pool of blood. A figure is rapidly reeled up to one of the nearby roofs by a noose, only to scuttle off out of view, waving a white blade. Looking back to the corpse you realize it is apparently truly dead. How unnerving. Upon closer examination you realize that the streams of blood appear to be forming Correspondence Sigils. In the corpse’s hand is a small pale card. Picking up the pale white square you marvel at how soft and pliable it feels, the surface neatly marked in tiny blue script, the edges embroidered with black silk. It reads: "Your manners do you a service. May you find welcome and warmth at the feast; may the Garden open before you and may you consume until the Lorn-Flukes rise. Than we shall feast upon the fatted calves. Signatory to the Seeker-Council, Bjorntfh." On the lower left corner of the card you notice a tiny C marked into the material.
~
I stole/was inspired by his notion of (un?)naturally forming Correspondence sigils for my own, even. . . .
I got this great one from Alonois, too:
~
One day, whilst traveling through the crowded and dirty streets of Spite, you happen across a discarded box on a suspiciously vacant bench. Thinking nothing of it, you walk further on down the street only to see another vacant bench and another unattended box. Strange. You walk down the street only to encounter a third such arrangement of bench and box. Over taken by curiosity you stop at the bench, sit down, and pull the box into your lap. It’s not very heavy and can’t contain much. You fling open the top and there, at the bottom of the box, is a sorrow-spider sitting on top of a card. Did the other two boxes have spiders as well, or has some one been moving this box ahead of you? Or was the spider doing it? It seems tired - if a spider can seem such a way. It meets your curious gaze with a disdainful one. You start to move to reach inside the box and it jumps onto its backmost legs, looking ready to pounce. "Shouldn’t agitate a sorrow-spider, you know. They eat eyes." A man says, now sitting beside you. When did he get there? You turn to look, but he is already gone. Or behind you, hitting the back of your skull with a truncheon. Stars cloud your vision. You regain your senses minutes later, the spider and box and man gone, and only a card that reads "Dork" to remember the occasion by.
~ edited by Otaara on 12/3/2013
I hope mr Dawson saved the one he sent me, it was quite amusing. Sadly I failed to c/p before accepting, but the highlight was a correspondence similar meaning either “the delicate balancing act of feeding small zee-creatures to slightly larger zee-creatures” or “a Yuletide greeting to a dear acquaintance”
I received a lot of interesting messages, and I saved a couple of the longest and more articulate before accepting them. Mine, alas, tend to verge on the side of brevity :(
For you: Alonois has invited you to accept their Calling Card. Do so, and they’ll become an Acquaintance.
"You are on a stroll through the Tyrant’s gardens when, with shocking suddenness, you feel chitinous limbs rubbing along your scalp. A sorrow-spider! You loose an ignoble shout and fumble with your locks, shaking your head violently to discourage the disgusting beast. It hangs on tightly for a few seconds before relenting, allowing itself - and the card it has brought - be flung from your head. It rides the card gently to the ground, landing a few feet ahead, and rotates around in that curious way spiders do. It looks up from the stones at you wit hits unnerving and disdainful little red eyes. It is judging you. How rude, to judge you when it is such a scandalous beast! You try to stomp the dreadful creature, but it hops onto your foot. Another shaking fit later, it has jump into the rose bushes and escaped your wrath. You peel the card from your boot and read it. "Roses are red, violets are blue, get wrecked girl." Did one of your rivals arrange this?"
For you: nedemmons has invited you to accept their Calling Card. Do so, and they’ll become an Acquaintance.
"Why does cats of neath knows so much and says so much? I remember one cat who gorged on so much secrets and knowledge until it began to walk and work. no, I don’t think it’s you. But I want to see capacity of two gentlefolk of neath - one who dedicated hirself on knowing , and one who dedicated himself from hiding. We might do great job. We might end up shattering both because of our difference. But i assure that this will be interesting. How do you think?"
Everyone’s calling cards tasted most scrumptious. Some flavorful examples:
Alice Darkmoor
"Greetings. Salutations. Blood in the water, and beneath it as well. I extend my unarmed hand in your direction. My harpoon has not named you."
Ashdenej
"An enamel card! It feels oddly rigid. It appears to be made from the tooth of some hopefully long-dead creature. The corners are wrong. The edges are wrong."
Gloria Marie Valdez
"In your hands is a serious looking calling card. Or rather it would be if it weren’t for the (poorly proportioned) kitten smiling up at you in the corner. A small dot lurks to the side of it, as if Gloria was tempted to scratch it out. "
Gloria Marie Valdez (to another character)
"Curiously, the marked envelope containing the card had a small sequence of numbers on it. Can you crack the code? Seems simple enough. 433432154423243322 4415424224123115 2443 2234243322 44234234452223 442315 35344344 342121241315 3334 333444 113131 442315 43352414154243 5215 113131 25333452 1112344544 4423344315 3254 43344542131543 23115115 2433213442321514 3215 44231144 4423154215 2443 11 13114214 3111131514 2433 21114411313154 243343113315 141513152444 121552114215 442315 35344344 342121241315 1215 52114254 3421 54344542 3215434311221543 43441154 43112115"
The interpretation courtesy of Leraika -
[spoiler]Use a Polybius square to solve it.
"Something terrible is going through the post office - no, not the spiders, we all know about those - my sources have informed me that there is a card laced in fatally insane deceit. Beware the post office. Be wary of your messages. Stay safe."[/spoiler]
NiteBrite
"meow meow, me me me, meow meow, me me me, meow meow, me me me, ow, me, ow, meow"
The interpretation -
…None. That’s just how NiteBrite rolls.
I have just received what I must say is quite a large calling card from Edlaine Saphburgh:[color=#251f16]
[/color]
"The card is etched in a flowery shapes, which perturbingly appear to be fused with ancient, tentacular beings. The bouquet is vaguely fungal, with a hinge of benzoin and warm amber dissolved in alcohol. The graphy is excessively ornate Delicious Friend, Your unfame as a Seeker of who-shall-be-not named spreads in the City as a cancerous Ubergrowt, a splendorous tale of voluntary ruin. Such unpriced abomination, scandalous acquaintance you would be! Let me have a couple of words about my garrulous, grandiloquent person who i am - maybe my nomination of Edlaine Saphburgh is not unheard to you. In the present moment a Writer (the Empress herself had my very first poem - Ode to Mycelia, the sweet sound of Her Majestic Ifae."), i am an avid seeker (minuscule casing) of the Language of the Spheres. It may be not unheard to you the name of the Howling Nest, the Salon actually held by my - a coven of bohemians, abominable creatures, souls dipped in frivolous darkness. Don’t you imagine how delightful, how bizarre would be to articulate, there, the cachophonic sounds about your execrable acumen, the loss of consciousness, the emptiness of the animus, the titillating detriment, the fickleness and the betrayal of the other Seekers, and - lastly - the inevitable demise? Ebulliently waiting for Your answer, Mizr Edlaine Saphburgh. P.S. i would humbly suggest a First sporing in case your appetites will bring you to the ingurgitation of the object on hand. "
I have also gotten what I can only describe as a deluge of cards from various people eager to partake in my new-found fame, several of which have had some very sweet and encouraging notes attached. I intend to accept as many as I can as soon as I am no longer stranded on this island.
[color=#251f16]
Edit: Oh, for goodness sake! Can I copy a simple letter without it going all invisible on me?
[/color] edited by Alexander Feld on 12/3/2013
I’ve received a number of excellent calling cards: an elegant and understated haiku, complete with seasonal reference; Oblivion-addled meowlings; a strangely cordial invitation from the Seeker-Council; and three or four others which were, if more conventional, no less charming. Their regrettable evanescence moved me to take steps to preserve future messages. Of those preserved, I found this one the most excellent – despite a staggeringly dreadful pun, which I’ve redacted in festive red.
Since MayExist has done me the honour of quoting them, a word about my own cards, which I commissioned from an Ale-Soaked Artisan whose workshop did, as I supposed at the time, inexplicably little business. It was with some difficulty that I accommodated her ever more eccentric material requirements, until this morning a fey mood took her. ‘I must have boxed moonlight and a wreath of blazing roses,’ she snarled. 'A ≡sword of fire≡ and a ≡sword of ice≡! A cedar panel from the First Temple and a star-seedling soul. Boatman’s Honey in a softly shining silvered bowl.
‘Six +dead thunder jokes+. The animate skeleton of a cod. An unlaid egg, an undone prince and a brindled fox. A pastoral love poem expressed in the language of topology and tensor algebra. Boiled Vake leather and a kiss from the Cantigaster. Bring them!’
When I protested, she hit me with her menacingly spiked hammer. There is scant hope of further commerce between us. All that remains for me is to dispatch her final card.
My pun was not only excellent but entirely organic. I wrote the line, thought, oh, that’s a bit much, I should reword – wait, no, I so shouldn’t, it’s great. And you didn’t even give it so much mercy as a more delicate strikethrough! I suppose I’ll have to make more friends, once a few more seedlings get to blooming size, so more people can appreciate my, really, unimpeachably well crafted humor. It would ruin the rhythm if I just posted the line here, and no one would laugh. Or wince or groan.
I liked all of my calling cards, but I just received a message thanking Gloria for the diversion.
"Dear Madame Valdez: Allow me to present you with a note of thanks for an evening’s pleasant diversion. Rrha ki ra wearequewie yorr trina tes infel yanje ess loss dor. -Leraika Harphe Vinea"
Now to puzzle this one out…this’ll be tricky (but fun, I’m sure). edited by Sara Hysaro on 12/4/2013
[quote=Sara Hysaro]I liked all of my calling cards, but I just received a message thanking Gloria for the diversion.
"Dear Madame Valdez: Allow me to present you with a note of thanks for an evening’s pleasant diversion. Rrha ki ra wearequewie yorr trina tes infel yanje en loss dor. -Leraika Harphe Vinea"
Now to puzzle this one out…this’ll be tricky (but fun, I’m sure).[/quote]
Sorry to interject, but now I’m curious… Did you get the little code in my invite too?
Maybe I should have listened more to that little voice saying, “There is something in here.”
A white envelope, containing some neatly folded typescripted sheets of paper, documenting ninety little secrets from across all Fallen London. The missive is anonymous, but it is accompanied by a telegram, reading: “Thanking your rapid advice, no terrible suffering gleaned after reading dispatches! Enjoy ninety secrets, fondly offered, unduly raised, flaunting our respects to you. - WM”
[quote=Sara Hysaro]Maybe I should have listened more to that little voice saying, "There is something in here."
A white envelope, containing some neatly folded typescripted sheets of paper, documenting ninety little secrets from across all Fallen London. The missive is anonymous, but it is accompanied by a telegram, reading: "Thanking your rapid advice, no terrible suffering gleaned after reading dispatches! Enjoy ninety secrets, fondly offered, unduly raised, flaunting our respects to you. - WM"[/quote]
Well, it flatters me a lot that you kept a copy of it :)
(on the other hand, Leraika’s message was driving me crazy)