By the way, for anyone feeling stressed about time, remember that the newspost at the top of the thread specifically said ‘Estival will start on Monday July 28th, and will end when you’re finished with it.’
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That phrasing was actually what made me nervous about falling behind and missing out! Haha, my brain.
I get it! But if it ends when you’re finished with it, it can’t end before you’re finished with it. Therefore, there’s no rush to finish it before it ends!
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It was actually @enail’s post that made me think about it again, I had dismissed it earlier.
And then I saw on the wiki that the Living Story was in fact locked by Seven 7, so that kind of proved the connection (some people check the source code of Fallen London to see hidden locks and unlocks that we can’t see). So it was other people’s work that put me on the trail. 
I also went to check “Contemplate the matter of confounded causality” under VERY, VERY WRONG and it told me clearly that “You must stop finding yourself back at the beginning, over and over.” That wording convinced me that I needed to do something, not just sit around and wait for the Living Story to activate again. Since I didn’t find an option to set Seven to 7 anywhere in London, in the end I came up with the two theories I posted above, one of which proved correct.
Trial and error and reading other people’s papers, that’s how science advances! 
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Important to note that the Living Story activates after you come back from your first successful hunt for a Causal Law. As long as you haven’t hunted down a Causal Law, you’re safe.
And no, it can’t be solved the first time round. You need to play through it once. The hidden options only become visible in your second stint.
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The wiki states the rewards for this branch, so someone must have figured this out. Anyone here got to it, yet? I’d rather not delve into the hectic of Discord.
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More than any other event, Estival is meant to be a community collaboration. I think having one player crack the puzzle by putting together clues that other players found is the coolest possible example of this.
The collaborative part is also why I’m much more willing compared to normal content to read wiki guides vs figure everything out myself.
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I haven’t fiddled around with that yet.
My guess is that ‘Marked by Kindness’ unlocks a hidden option somewhere that sets The Kings’ Song to 7.
Or it’s got something to do with the Elephants/Rats riddle. Maybe selling all your Rats on a String, setting Evidence of Elephants to zero, enables you to reach The Kings’ Song 7 somehow.
Maybe even the Severed Twelve come into it.
I’d definitely wager it’s a combination of several qualities set just right.
I copypaste the excerpt from the wiki:
Question #1: is law hunting available after the event closes? Doubtful I can hit 77 before it happens. I know new ‘content’ gets permanently unlocked after every Estival, not sure if this is that content.
Question #2: If I chat with Milton and progress with the event story, can I come back later to hunt more laws? I have already hunted one of each law type, total four hunts done.
That particular meeting with Milton doesn’t lock Law Hunting (nor does the subsequent meeting with the Implacable Detective to unlock Law Forging). Not sure which of those two carousels is likely to survive the end of the event but they’re both unlocked for me at present.
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We don’t know, ask Failbetter.
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No, thankfully not.
But if it ends when you’re finished with it, it can’t end before you’re finished with it. Therefore, there’s no rush to finish it before it ends!
I hear you, but I assume the “you’re” here is actually the general “you all” sense of the word. Meaning, the event is finished once the community is finished with it, not you as an individual. So, unless Failbetter clarifies this point, I would assume, to be safe, that you still need to push through this quickly if you don’t want to miss anything.
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Last year’s Estival went for more than 4 weeks. I expect this year’s Estival to be roughly the same. If you put your mind to it, hunting 77 laws should be possible.
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No, you understand incorrectly.
Sometimes, there are special vanity qualities or items available only for the first few or within a specific timeslot. But this is rare, and Failbetter makes very little use of it.
You can spend the rest of the week hunting Rogue Laws or doing whatever you like and continue with the next stage next week. You won’t be locked out of anything, you’ll get to play through the whole story, no matter how long it takes you. Everyone does. In fact, it’ll be the easier way since all the more difficult puzzles will have been solved for you by then.
There really is no reason to fear a door slamming in your face at some point.
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Just for my own, let’s call it sanity-- The furthest along we can be right now is
a) Messing around in the Book Of All Hours
b) Law-hunting
and/or c) fixing the Embassy’s law-furnace
right? There’s a lot going on…
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(Ack, sorry for three tries at this! - it looked like my reply didn’t embed below your comment correctly)
While not exactly a storyline, don’t forget doing the Add One action over and over again to build up 3 Storm-Threnodies every 7 turns. It’s a great return on investment for the rat market!
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What am I missing with the Kings’ Song? I cannot get it to seven, but clearly it’s something that should be possible.
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Years ago I was locked out of certain vanities during the Great Sinking event, but that was to be expected since I was not yet a POSI and many areas were not yet unlocked.
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There will be if we ever get a Polythremic Door as a Home Comfort.
That or it’ll be a Companion.
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I want to say it’s weird there’s not more “material” rewards from this Estival, but I’m reminded we’re still early in the event. Stuff dropped later the previous years, after all, and in fact mostly towards the end.
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