“Oh, let me look at you, let me look, my poor darling. Yes, it’s just as I thought! You have the Lily-Tongue Sweats. Fascinating. Beautiful! Now, stick out your tongue.”
The Curious Socialite is hosting a salon, and only Londoners with ‘fashionable’ maladies are invited. Are you coming down with something? Do your symptoms inspire envy? Investigate a burgeoning aesthetic movement that treats illness as art, help catalogue Neathy Diseases, and learn just how far some people will go for the sake of a radiant complexion.
It is Animescence! To further the cause of supplanting the College of Mortality, my character would not hesitate to aid the Scarred Librarian, hoping to overcome their biological weapon.
Well… I guess my judgment has been inevitably influenced by what benefits my character, and as a result, I’ve stopped caring about the moral decision the narrative originally intended for me.
This Exceptional Story is quite unique. I recall that most of the Exceptional Stories I have played feature plenty of branching paths that let you switch allegiances, allowing players to act thoroughly duplicitous.
This one is different, though. After I sided with the Scarred Librarian, I never encountered a single branching path that offered me a chance to change sides.
Hmm… Perhaps that works for me, on occasion. I no longer have to agonise over picking the wrong turn at a branching path, since there is only one road forward. I am not actively choosing my character’s fate; I merely watch them act out their part in someone else’s script. At times, this lack of agency can feel strangely relaxing.
Still, I found myself lost amid the four final choices in Diagnosing Guilt.
My character aided the Scarred Librarian purely to win his favour, so that they might make good use of him later (unfortunately, I am certain he would detest the true nature hidden beneath my character’s mask; we could never be friends). I cannot summon a fierce righteous anger toward any one of the four options.
If anyone else has reached this point, could you share what you picked and your reasoning? Thank you very much.
The moment I realised this story was railroading me into going along with this deeply suspicious and unpleasant woman’s dithering, I vowed to bring ruin upon her and ultimately I did. Even if there was a frustrating amount of “but thou must!” moments to actually get there (how tragic I can’t simply brew my own cure in my own lab) instead of just holding someone down and forcefeeding them Cantigaster venom.
I blamed both the Curious Socialise and the Manservant because it’s the gosh-darned truth. She was practically brimming over with ulterior motives during the confrontation, too much so for someone who “merely got carried away”, and for all his whining about class privilege he certainly went above and beyond the call of duty to stalk and abduct someone. For heaven’s sake, this is LONDON. If you want someone murdered or abducted, there are plenty of professionals available with adding overtime to the hired help. He should have did what I do: Rob an old lady of a few horror stories to pay off the Gloomy Guttersnipe or whoever to have a go at a target while keeping his own hands clean. No bloody professionalism.
Anyway, I’d say New Newgate is too kind for people who belong in my Vake steed’s stomach, but on second thought I wouldn’t want my (literal) better half to catch something.
i absolutely loved this one!
i was 100% siding with the Socialite until towards the end. sure, go hog wild with your diseases and ailments, but spreading one that blows you up is a bit far, ain’t it? not to mention the whole ‘not asking permission’ part. even a plague-spreader needs manners! honestly!
anyway, what a wonderfully strange story it was! right up my alley
