As an eager adopter of Fallen London pets and companions, I’ve been working toward gathering one of each of the various types of raven available from the Dazed Raven Advisor evolution. Has anyone else attempted this? Any ideas for raven names? My Mystic Raven Advisor is called Lenore (because, of course), but I’m not sure what I’ll name my Devious Raven Advisor when he returns from his final evolution.
More generally, what advice do my fellow Neath-dwellers have regarding collecting Companions?
[li]Heya, It’s as valid a form of collecting as anything else in the game. I have the two final evolutions and had toyed with the idea a month ago, but got distracted by a couple of other costly grinds. The two obvious names that come to mind are Hugin and Munin (or double 'n’s at the end depending on your choice of spelling)[/li]Edit - You appear to be a well developed character so this is all probably pointless.
Just collecting pets? You can’t just do that, if you are going to be a collector you must follow the true path of a collector, collect everything! Destroy yourself to collect things! Seek the Name for the items as a true collector would, destroy your wallet and make it cry!
Thanks very much to both of you!
Alfred_Bloodwine: Awesome! I hope you eventually join me on the raven-path. I think Hugin and Munin sound perfect for the two ravens on the second level (Unscrupulous and Philosophical) :0) Those are Odin’s ravens, right?
The Master: I’ve made some effort to gather other items, but the pets are at the center of my attention. Mainly because most other items don’t have adorable puppy-dog eyes. Most ;0)
I don’t know if anyone has attempted to get all the possible ravens at once, at least independently (as opposed to being part of a collect-'em-all companion plan). I think it’s an excellent endeavor, and I salute you. Just… make sure they’re all housebroken.
For names: I myself went th Huginn and Muninn route, though as it turns out, I got a mynah first and decided to name her Muninn, in the name of my own amusement. When I did eventually pick up a raven he got named Huginn, of course, and I decided I liked the pair better than the traditional salt-and-pepper pairing, so Huginn and Muninn they stay.
On companions: If you do decide to build a full Neathy menagerie, it is impossible to have all companions at once; there are several mutually-exclusive sets out there. The connected pets from Watchmaker’s Hill are obvious; less obvious are the Salt Weasel/Rubbery Euphonium/Haunted-Looking Dog triad. If you don’t have one of the latter group, do some research ahead and choose carefully; they can be sold, which will allow you to get a different one, but chasing the opportunity card twice is a particular pain. Rare companions are thick on the ground at certain seasons, so researching beforehand what you’re wanting and what you’ll probably need going in (barring changes from Failbetter, of course) will save you a mort of frustration.
Also, (unless you like surprises) it’s helpful to know which companions add opportunity cards in your deck, whether you want to seek these or avoid them. Some companions have conflict cards, too, either with each other or with other pieces of equipment. This too is something to keep in mind.
I have all the Ravens (excluding the bandaged raven connected pet), and they were fairly easy to get. Some of the items you need to evolve them are a little costly, but nothing that will break the bank.
I named my first Raven “Flagg” after the villain from “The Stand,” and decided to name all the others after characters from the book as well. The black ones are named after villains and the white ones after good guys :P
Anyway, glad to meet another companion collector! The advice you’ve gotten so far is good, and I don’t have much to add other than to point out a couple other sources of mutually exclusive companions. One is via your Profession. Some (but not all) professions give you a companion, however you can only have one job at a time and you lose your companion if you change jobs. So that’s something to take into consideration when choosing a profession and deciding how far you want to advance in it.
The other is via your Ambition. If you haven’t chosen an Ambition yet and want as many companions as possible, you’ll want to choose either Bag a Legend or Heart’s Desire, as they each give you a unique companion (Half-Wild Mandrake and Cardsharp Monkey). The other two Ambitions don’t give you companions (although they probably give you other unique items).
Like another person said, festivals are good places to get companions and another good place in when you start breeding monsters in the Labyrinth of Tigers, You’ll end up with nine pretty cool monsters to call your own (plus a horse in the transportation section) and five of them have opportunity cards which can be useful.
Best of luck and happy hunting!
Thanks very much, Siankan! I haven’t had too much trouble from my current raven with housebreaking, but it’s entirely possible one of my canine companions has been removing the evidence ;0)
Thanks also for the advice on companions. I lucked into obtaining the Haunted-Looking Dog a while back, who’d be my first choice anyway. I’ll definitely do some research for the upcoming Feast!
Thanks for your help, Kukapetal! I like the idea of naming the ravens after heros and villains.
I’ve been thinking about eventually advancing from Author to Correspondent, and I’d nearly forgotten that I’d lose my Appreciation Society, so thanks for reminding me. The Society for Purportedly Hopeless Cases isn’t the most interesting of Companions, though, so I wouldn’t be overly upset.
I’ll have to investigate the monster-breeding process more closely once the Feast of the Exceptional Rose winds down.
I too got lucky in this regard, acquiring a Rubbery Euphonium within my first week or two of playing. I am assembling a collection of Neathy instruments (and will pick up both the Amber Cello and the Consonant Violin as soon as the right cards show themselves), so it was the perfect one for me. I had no idea until much later that I could have been locked out from it.
Out of curiosity, which do you find more interesting: the animal companions, or the human ones? (Okay, human-ish.)
I also have the full complement. The Dreamy Ravens are Rustle, Perdita and Rowena, while the Waries are Caution, Rambeau and Daubeny. The naming of ravens, like the naming of cats, is a mystery, so names just come to mind and are not chosen deliberately or questioned. Which reminds me, my moth is still just "it"…
Siankan: I’m most interested in the animal companions, but the human(ish) ones can be quite fun as well. Particularly a couple (Well-Scrubbed Urchin, Esoteric Accomplice) I acquired this past Hallowmas! What about you?
Meradine Heidenreich: Thanks for the response! It’s great to meet a fellow raven-collector.
My name picking abilities are so horrible that I honestly think a dog given a keyboard could do a better job(I actually named my haunted dog Dug ages ago, that taught me a lesson to never try to make original names), I don’t even want to imagine the ways my ravens would commit suicide if they saw what names I would give them.
Haha, I’m sure your ravens wouldn’t mind being given ridiculous names, The Master :0)
I am somewhat interested in both; it’s been a joy to watch my unusual little household grow. Right now the chief members of the house are myself; Ondine, my accomplice and first companion; Brother Justus, my pious henchman; Orlando, a well-scrubbed urchin; Algernon, the L.B. bandit who tried to invade my place; a chatty rat named Polonius; and the aforementioned Huginn and Muninn. There’s also an Araby fighting-weasel named Saladin, Chryses the goldfish, Midnight the Parabolan panther kitten, and a stable of messenger-bats that are mostly called Here-Shut-Up-And-Take-This.
That reminds me: Since you’re interested in companions, be sure to pop over to the Panther Kitten Adoption Agency. Kade Carrion says she doesn’t have a queue right now, so you’d be well-positioned to get one as soon as she has some available. Or you could just put your name down on the Agency thread and you might get one from someone else first. A Parabolan kitten won’t help you stat-wise (+3 Persuasive, +1 Bizarre, so less than what you’ve already mentioned here), but for a true companion collector, they are a must.
[quote=The Master]I don’t even want to imagine the ways my ravens would commit suicide if they saw what names I would give them.[/quote] There’s always the tried-and-true method of grabbing a random book, flipping pages until you find a proper noun, and then applying that as your companion’s new name. It will, at the very least, prove interesting (unless you chose a math textbook, but that one’s on you).
You named your Talkative Rat “Polonius.” That’s brilliant XD
Siankan, I love your companions’ names! Especially Polonius for the talkative rat (I agree, Kukapetal, what a brilliant allusion!) and Algernon for the bandit :0)
My household is crammed with an entire Scuttering Squad (known as the Shamskies), Fitzhugh the working rat, Igor the devious henchman, Fitsroy the bandit chief, Windermere the lucky weasel (with some extras for the Urchins), Aristippus the reprehensible lizard, Vlad the sulky bat, Vincent the cheerful goldfish, Vespertilio the bat with attitude, Corleone the Araby fighting-weasel, Fitzwilliam the talkative rat, Elvira the albino rat (I guess the girls don’t use a fitz-), Leucon the haunted dog, Lenore the mystic raven, Yetl the devious raven, Oberon the tomb-lion, Ciaran the hungover terrier, Arabella the canny costermonger, a rampaging gang of my readers known as The Society for Purportedly Hopeless Cases, Pangur Ban the Parabolan kitten, Imogen the esoteric accomplice, Arthur Robin the well-scrubbed urchin, Anthony the haunted goldfish, and Ludovica the extravagantly-titled tigress.
Thank goodness I have plenty of properties! My suite at the Royal Bethlehem may be large, but it’s not THAT large! (Also, I’m not sure that I want the scuttering squad anywhere near my other companions - bad influence and all that.)
I’ve already got a Parabolan kitten. I only just found out about him a few days ago, though, so you were completely right to proffer the advice :0)
Pangur Ban! That one made me smile the most - though it’s pretty ironic for such a darkly-shaded cat.
I’m glad you guys like Polonius. This is what you get for letting an English professor play the game. O:) Although I certainly don’t want to lose him, if he does get it while investigating the Big Rat, at least I know what his last word will be.
I suppose I should’ve mentioned my own rampaging gang of readers. My stories tend to involve mystical voyages that would make Jules Verne happy (if Verne happened to be in the Unterzee), so said rampaging gang is known as the Hesperidean Biblophilic Society. Ondine is the president. (There’s already the euphonium, but unless it starts to show sentience all of a sudden, I’m not really counting it.) I am hoping a certain midnight matriarch will make her home her eventually; I’m not absolutely sure what her name will be, but I’m leaning toward the straightforward Bast.
So, confession time: I plan out the details of my Neathy existence in far too much detail. When I lived above a bookshop, only Orlando (they call him Landy, and it annoys him) lived with me. Ondine had a guest room, and Brother Justus a pallet in the garret, but their full-time abodes were elsewhere. (In Bro. Justus’s case, this was my old cottage on Watchmaker’s Hill.) When I bought the old S.S. Sirene I moved everyone there, and that is also where Algernon ended up coming to us. The old cottage got abandoned to a new tenant of the green variety. Now I’m in a townhouse with room for everyone (or at least when I’m not retired to a giant zhell), but Bro. Justus tends to prefer the seclusion of the Sirene most of the time. Algernon stays with him, in the name of irony, and both of them are in charge of giving the bats their sodding crickets. (There may also be a list somewhere of where I store all of my possessions, down to the last lump of beeswax.)
edited by Siankan on 1/31/2017
edited by Siankan on 1/31/2017
[quote=DonaghyLogan]As an eager adopter of Fallen London pets and companions, I’ve been working toward gathering one of each of the various types of raven available from the Dazed Raven Advisor evolution. Has anyone else attempted this? Any ideas for raven names? My Mystic Raven Advisor is called Lenore (because, of course), but I’m not sure what I’ll name my Devious Raven Advisor when he returns from his final evolution.
More generally, what advice do my fellow Neath-dwellers have regarding collecting Companions?[/quote]
I have a problem.
If you don’t have a panther kitten, I just had a litter, if you’d like one?
edited by MidnightVoyager on 1/31/2017
I wish I had your problem :P
sneaks into your house in the middle of the night and steals your falcon, panther, mole, gilded crustacean and Last Constable
There! Now I do! :P
Yes, I see the problem. Not enough bats.
