No, I think it’s more likely they didn’t know about that. There are eleven Masters if you exclude Sacks, Names, Chimes, and Eaten. That there are only 10 Masters to those 11 names wouldn’t be common knowledge. Maybe there are even fewer than that. But yeah, it’s just a funny little thing I thought I’d bring up. ^^
edited by Sara Hysaro on 6/23/2013
[quote=Flapdragon]…Hmm, does that mean that Eaten or who Eaten used to be is included in the eleven then?[/quote]No, it means that Mr Chimes or Mr Sacks is a real Master. I’m inclined to believe in the former.
Also, I think it would be good to collate the evidence for Sara’s assertion. To my knowledge, it rests on A slip of the tongue by the Curt Relicker when you trade in Scraps for a Rumourmaster’s Network, along with the numerical discrepancy under discussion.Am I missing anything?
edited by Flyte on 6/23/2013
Plus some talk about reflections on Twitter, but yeah, that’s pretty much it.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 6/23/2013
Why don’t you believe in Mr Chimes? His portfolio seems a bit… thin, but I haven’t come across a reason to doubt his independent existence, other than that.
Edit: this question was a bit less redundant before your edit. I wonder if we’ll ever uncover evidence that a building from the Fourth City was once a House of Chimes.
edited by Flyte on 6/23/2013
There is a sidebar about Mr Chimes:
Who is Mr Chimes?
Is it, in fact, one of the Masters of the Bazaar? Is it Mr Iron or Mr Pages trading under another name? Or is it a bold rascal pretending to be an unknown Master?
Edit: I’m always editing. XD But yeah, it’s possible he was around back then, even if he’s apparently unknown. It’d be nice to know for sure.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 6/23/2013
Here’s some stuff on those Masters mentioned above off the top of my head (note it’s 2am I might have muddled some things but i’m like… mostly certain)
[spoiler]Mr Cups/Mirrors. I don’t have a whole lot to say, really, except about the Christmas content. The Master asking for Dreams wishes to reflect dreams (sound like a mirror to you?). Giving him dreams of mirrors makes him accuse you of flirting with him (cause, y’know, mirrors). However, if you ask him /directly/ who he is, he says he’s… Mr Cups? Of course it could just be a lie or subterfuge of some form, but when you put it together with the Relicker’s slip of the tongue…
Mr Chimes! This one’s a lot less obvious if you were to just enter the House yourself once. However… a group effort collating the various entry options showed that Mr Chimes seemed to copy behaviours from various Masters, depending on the option. Either Mr Chimes is some hellish conglomerate of all the Masters together, or it’s just several Masters pretending to be one Master at different times. I dunno. [/spoiler]
I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. I would really like to believe that Mr Chimes is the Master who trades in Fate. But I’m not sure I can.
We could sort all this out if we could just get the Masters to line up in an orderly fashion. Preferably alphabetically. Can the Bazaar catch fire? Does the Correspondence have a sigil for ‘fire drill’?
More questions for my list of mysteries…
Edit: I think the thunder once attacked the Bazaar. On reflection, this leads me to believe that it is not, in fact, flammable.
edited by Flyte on 6/23/2013
The taglines used by Mr Mirrors and Mr Cups should also be noted, both of them being official accounts followed by Mr Names.
edited by Tesuji on 6/23/2013
[quote=Flyte]I don’t think I’ve ever seen that one. I would really like to believe that Mr Chimes is the Master who trades in Fate. But I’m not sure I can.
We could sort all this out if we could just get the Masters to line up in an orderly fashion. Preferably alphabetically. Can the Bazaar catch fire? Does the Correspondence have a sigil for ‘fire drill’?
More questions for my list of mysteries…[/quote]
Rare success from the second heist:
The Seal of Mr Fires
"…in the event that the Drowned stirs, we will apply the measures indicated in Annex Thirty-Three; Annex Thirty-Four; the Prelapsarian Conditionals; and the Spire-Sign. Through these measures…"
Emergency procedures for the Bazaar: somewhere between a fire drill, a secret treaty and a protective rite. Most of it makes very little sense, but some of it sticks, and burns.
Delicious scholars, I have absorbed your keen observations and keenly encouraged their fermentation. I present the resulting speculations on Mr Mirrors and Mr Chimes. I should like to believe they have a pleasing pungency not dissimilar to Broken Giant. But perhaps they merely smell of horse sick. I cannot say. I have not often smelled horse sick. Perhaps others shall bring their experience to bear upon this point. Anyway, here they are.
[spoiler]Having read the document to which Spacemarine alluded, I must now accept the fictitiousness of Mr Chimes. I conjecture that the House of Chimes is a place where the Masters keep humans they find remarkable, attractive or amusing. To be exhibited therein, it is sufficient to gain the interest of a single Master. This is why, for example, those admitted on account of dangerousness or death or sedition are received by a Chimes who communicates in the same manner as Mr Iron.
Now something more tenuous. I don’t think Mr Mirrors is Mr Cups; it is Mr Cups’ reflection. As such, it is similar or more-than-similar to a Fingerking – possessed of an autonomous will but no body, and able to influence the Neath through mirrors and dreams. For evidence, consider this exchange:
You and Mr Mirrors both claim to deal with the frangible and the fine. Do your interests overlap? Are you competitors?
Mr Cups: Consider a mirror. Do your interests overlap with those of your reflection?[/spoiler]
edited by Flyte on 6/27/2013
[quote=Flyte]Delicious scholars, I have absorbed your keen observations and keenly encouraged their fermentation. I present the resulting speculations on Mr Mirrors and Mr Chimes. I should like to believe they have a pleasing pungency not dissimilar to Broken Giant. But perhaps they merely smell of horse sick. I cannot say. I have not often smelled horse sick. Perhaps others shall bring their experience to bear upon this point. Anyway, here they are.
[spoiler]Having read the document to which Spacemarine alluded, I must now accept the fictitiousness of Mr Chimes. I conjecture that the House of Chimes is a place where the Masters keep humans they find remarkable, attractive or amusing. To be exhibited therein, it is sufficient to gain the interest of a single Master. This is why, for example, those admitted on account of dangerousness or death or sedition are received by a Chimes who communicates in the same manner as Mr Iron.
Now something more tenuous. I don’t think Mr Mirrors is Mr Cups; it is Mr Cups’ reflection. As such, it is similar or more-than-similar to a Fingerking – possessed of an autonomous will but no body, and able to influence the Neath through mirrors and dreams. For evidence, consider this exchange:
You and Mr Mirrors both claim to deal with the frangible and the fine. Do your interests overlap? Are you competitors?
Mr Cups: Consider a mirror. Do your interests overlap with those of your reflection?[/spoiler]
edited by Flyte on 6/27/2013[/quote]
[li]
The trouble I see with this is that it’s the exact same reaction you could expect it to give if your theory were false and the previous theory were true, as well.
My fellow scolars of prelapsarian history and of the mysteries of our benevolent overlords. After a delicious reading of your thoughts and a little research of my own I discovered a pattern in the tastes of our masters.
They hunger for love, but said love is never the same:
-In the first city it was the love between men. (The Manager aka the Priestking and the Explorer aka the King with a 100 hearts)
-In the second city it was a daughters love for her father. (The Dutchess aka the princess and the Cantigaster aka the Pharao)
-Now the third city troubled me for a long time but under the pretext that it is related to the myth of Xibalba we have a tale of brotherly love.
-The fourth city was fairly easy as it is a tale of motherly love. (The Gracious widow aka Empress Qi and her son whom she wanted to be king aka Yesterday’s King)
-For the fifth city, well we all know Londons story of love between Empress and Consort.
PS: A neat little detail I picked up during my readings on Xibalba, the fallen city of the mayan underworld. It was ruled by twelve deities, one of these falls from grace at the end of the story and ends up deep in the underworld which is at the bottom of a well. Sounds to me a lot like the whole Mr Eaten business.
I thought the whole mr eaten business happened in the second city. And are you sure yesterday’s king is the widow’s son?
No, I’m pretty sure that Mr Eaten was drowned in the Third City. Though maybe he did something in the Second City to result that business in the Third.
@Matt- Have you played the Silver Tree? Also, I don’t think orientation makes a big enough difference in itself to make the First and Fifth City’s love stories distinct from each other.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 7/11/2013
So the terrible bargain that all water remembers happened in a dry place but mr eaten met his fate in a city from the rain forest?
I’m pretty sure the terrible bargain happened in the Third City.
Edit: Revisited Grunting Fen, and it seems as though it did happen in the Second City. So the bargain is probably something other than what I was thinking, though I still believe Mr Eaten met his fate in the Third.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 7/23/2013
I didn’t know of the Xibalba myth you mention. It fits suspiciously well with the number of masters. I agree with Sara about orientation: much of Fallen London is written on the premise that gender doesn’t matter.
For the fourth city, my understanding was that the love in question was that between The Khan and his daughter, who is the Gracious Widow. Also, for your theory to be persuasive I think it would need to be capable of predicting the love stories of the Sixth and Seventh Cities.
Sara, why do you think the bargain happened in the time of the Third City?
Silver Tree Spoilers:
It was between the Princess and the Sculptor. Assuming, of course, that the story being sold to bring the city down to the Neath isn’t dependent on your choices. I’ve only played through it a couple times, so maybe it varies.
Well, what was the bargain? Do we know? I figured it was the arrangement that had Mr Eaten drowned into the well, making the Third City an appropriate place for it.
I thought that was a false and manufactured love?I only played it once, myself. Hmm…
The nature of the bargain remains obscure, to me at least. I think we can identify the parties to it with some confidence, and date to some point after the fall of the Second City and before the fall of the Fourth. We also know a little of the terms, but not enough, so far as I can tell, and the motives of the parties are even less clear.
I’ve read that, and its purpose was to trick the Masters. It did in my latest run, at least, though I forget if I ever learned for myself that it was false.
I’ll admit that I assume a lot regarding the bargain, and am attached my personal ideas on it. I’m looking forward to a little more clarity, even if my opinions prove to be incorrect. That might be a long way off, however.
edited by Sara Hysaro on 7/12/2013