Fallen Cities (A Great Many Spoilers)

theodor_gylden · January 26, 2012, 8:40am

Incredible! I came to share and speculate upon the Capering Relicker’s words, and I see that Mr Burandt has already deduced the identity of the First City from them. The First City that has hitherto been the most difficult to pinpoint, but against the evidence, I am thoroughly convinced. And I am convinced anew that the Second City must be Amarna.

Akhenaten did indeed tear the old gods down in order to clear the way for Atenism, and he did indeed raise himself up. The name he gave himself means the ‘Living Spirit of Aten’ – the name he gave his city, Akhetaten, meant ‘the Horizon of Aten’ – 'and he said that he was 'the eternal son that came forth from the Sun-Disc.’

Given, however, that it is forbidden to speak the Traitor Empress’s name, that pre-lapsarian street signs are contraband in Fallen London, that everything has been renamed and reshaped … I wonder whether Akhetaten was permitted to remain Akhetaten, after the horizon sunk and the Sun-Disc disappeared. Or perhaps the Masters learned something about the power of the name, and that is why they detest Egypt so.

felicitychase · January 30, 2012, 3:49am

I was looking through my diary recently and I found the echo I made when I opened a package containing a Fragment of White Gold: “Sometime during the frenzy of unwrapping something chimes on the floor. It’s a piece of white gold, a fragment of a miniature wheel with a spoke attached. Pieces like this are from the Second City. Charming! You’ve heard that certain wealthy collectors desire these greatly.” (Emphasis mine)

Unfortunately, the internet is providing very little information about white gold in Egypt, never mind Amarna. Silver was called hedj, “white gold” in ancient Egypt; the modern definition of white gold is an alloy of gold and “at least one white metal” (Wikipedia). I don’t know if the ancient Egyptians made alloys of white gold.

Clicking on the Fragment in my inventory allows me to “Melt down a fragment of white gold and breathe deep of the smoke to be renewed in vigour and in clarity of mind”, increasing my Watchful and substantially decreasing my Wounds. But research sources on the alchemical properties of gold in ancient Egypt are scarce. One website says “The ancient Egyptians used a white powder from gold which was mixed with water and called “the teardrop of Horus.” It was used in a ritual by the Pharaoh and high priest to achieve immortality”, but the entire text sounds pretty bogus and it’s trying to sell me white powder gold anyway, so I’m skeptical. (http://www.freeworldnews.com/wgold.html)
Edit: Actually, the storylet option cites it as a Custom of the Neath, “from page 67 of Curious Customs from Under the Earth”. So it may not be relevant after all.

In conclusion, I don’t have any idea what this means. But I think it’s relevant…
edited by Felicity Chase on 2/5/2012

thedaveebz · January 30, 2012, 5:24pm

For some reason, I first thought the fragment was a coin. I found an interesting [color=00ffff]coin[/color] with a wheel on one side, and an Egyptian scepter on the other, and even biblical ties to a “gracious” widow! Unfortunately, it dates to about 1,000 years later than most people are guessing for the 2nd city. Ah well, it probably wasn’t a coin anyway.

There is also the [color=00ffff]Oxus Chariot Model[/color], which would have gold wheels and axles of the right size. Again, a few hundred years later than we’re looking, but I thought it might be a direction to head. Unfortunately, searching for gold chariots was a dead end - or rather, an explosion of directions. Every king, tribal leader, and deity between here and the discovery of the wheel seems to have ridden a golden chariot.

So… who else has done more studying of ancient history due to echo bazaar than they ever did in school?

ruphoschartenhauer · February 4, 2012, 10:41pm

These were the Shivering Relickers’ words when she (very reluctantly) handed me a Night-Whisper:

The Co…? The Correspondence, the language of Xanadu? Is this a false lead? Or is the Khan of Dreams deeply enmeshed in all this?

felicitychase · February 5, 2012, 1:20am

[quote=Wieland Burandt]These were the Shivering Relickers’ words when she (very reluctantly) handed me a Night-Whisper:

The Co…? The Correspondence, the language of Xanadu? Is this a false lead? Or is the Khan of Dreams deeply enmeshed in all this?[/quote]

The Correspondence is definitely referred to as the language of Xanadu. One of the Forgotten Quarter storylets, when you first get the Correspondence Stones:

“Your philologist asks you to watch over him as he sleeps. He sleeps for no more than a minute before he leaps up, his hair on fire, screaming ‘It’s the language of Xanadu!’ You throw the contents of the washing bowl over his head and he calms down enough to tell you that the language is known as the Correspondence, and has been seen written on some of the Bazaar spires.”
edited by Felicity Chase on 2/5/2012

ruphoschartenhauer · February 5, 2012, 9:14am

Thank you, Felicity. I played that storylet such a long time ago, I’d forgotten the philologist’s words… (I’d all but forgotten about the Correspondence Stones, too.)
But of course, “the language of Xanadu” might just translate as “the language of Dreams”…

Diptych · February 5, 2012, 10:17am

It seems my own theories have been quite exploded, but we’ve got some cracking stuff going on here.

twochandler · February 5, 2012, 1:02pm

[quote=Wieland Burandt]These were the Shivering Relickers’ words when she (very reluctantly) handed me a Night-Whisper:

The Co…? The Correspondence, the language of Xanadu? Is this a false lead? Or is the Khan of Dreams deeply enmeshed in all this?[/quote]

If you enter the House of Chimes using your Scholar of the Correspondence quality, Mr. Chimes will make a remark regarding the Khan of Dreams. So yes, there is a definite link there.

patrickreding · February 5, 2012, 3:52pm

[quote=Wieland Burandt]Thank you, Felicity. I played that storylet such a long time ago, I’d forgotten the philologist’s words… (I’d all but forgotten about the Correspondence Stones, too.)
But of course, “the language of Xanadu” might just translate as “the language of Dreams”…[/quote]
Except that Xanadu is not a dream or metaphor or anything like that. It was a real city, more accurately called Shangdu, as I pointed out earlier. The name translates from chinese as “upper capital”. It was only after Coleridge that it came to mean anything else.
edited by Patrick Reding on 2/5/2012

theodor_gylden · February 5, 2012, 5:38pm

We know, however, that the Correspondence predates the Fourth City, from research at the Brass Embassy –

[color=rgb(51, 51, 51)][/color]

That places the Third City in the 9th century, some centuries before the existence of Xanadu. That suggests to me that ‘the language of Xanadu’ must be a moniker adopted in later generations, perhaps well after Coleridge’s opium-dream … and is there not much significance to dreaming, in the Neath?

Kublai Khan was, however, responsible for the initial decline of Karakorum, when he made Xanadu his capital. Perhaps that was the Masters’ opportunity. Perhaps that part is not a metaphor.

I am certainly learning more of the Mongol Empire than school ever taught me!

patrickreding · February 5, 2012, 6:07pm

Oh, sorry. That was me. I got logged out while typing that. :p

felicitychase · February 5, 2012, 7:59pm

[quote=Wieland Burandt]Thank you, Felicity. I played that storylet such a long time ago, I’d forgotten the philologist’s words… (I’d all but forgotten about the Correspondence Stones, too.)
But of course, “the language of Xanadu” might just translate as “the language of Dreams”…[/quote]

This investigation is fascinating and I’d love to contribute more, but I’m not far enough in the game’s stories to even know of what most of you are taking as fact (Egypt confirmed for Second City, for example). So I’ll help any other way I can :)

That said, I do suspect that the Fourth City is Karakorum but the Correspondence (or at least a current name for it) comes from Xanadu, as Patrick said. I like the similarities of the silver fountains in the Forgotten Quarter and in Karakorum too much to give up on the Karakorum theory.

ruphoschartenhauer · February 5, 2012, 8:39pm

What I don’t understand is: Kublai Khan died in 1294 - 75 years before the fall of Xanadu, 94 years before the fall of Karakorum. So, what does he even have to do with it all? Have the Masters been courting the Mongols for 100 years or more?

Which brings me to something else: I’d like to know if some of you have a theory concerning how the succession of cities works… Do the Masters get rid of one city and immediately move on to the next? Or are there periods of respite, with the Bazaar &quotin limbo&quot patiently waiting for the next city?

This would be especially interesting in the case of the Second City. We know something went wrong there, but when? Immediately after it was acquired? Or was everything going well for hundreds of years until &quotwhatever-happened&quot happened?

And on a related note: what do you think will happen to the Prince Consort when the Bazaar acquires the Sixth City? Because every time at least one of the saved lovers who sold their cities apparently falls from the Master’s graces eventually: the Once-Dashing Smuggler, reduced to the life of a tomb-colonist; the Cantigaster - well, being from the Second City, it’s hardly a wonder he was extremely hard done by… the Capering Relicker, if he’s the one, hides behind a mask… and we still don’t know Feducci’s story.
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015

ruphoschartenhauer · February 6, 2012, 9:00am

It might be a false lead… the stuff from the correspondence-related sidebars cannot all be true:
They say it’s a series of confidential negotiations between the Masters and a devil of some note. [Unlikely, unless that devil never sent a copy of the negotiations to Hell.]
They say it comprises the billets-doux written by Jack-of-Smiles to the Traitor Empress. [VERY unlikely.]
They say it’s the letter the Pope wrote, the one without which Rome would have been the Fourth City.
They say if you read it your eyes boil and your hair turns the white of old ice. [Not true: your hair might catch fire, but it doesn’t turn white.]
They say it’s written on slate in the blood of poisoned bats.
They say it’s the language the bats speak. [Possible.]
They say the Snuffer wrote it on the outside walls of New Newgate. [Unlikely. I don’t recall any mention of sigils on New Newgate’s walls.]
They say the Topsy King learnt it, and that’s why you can never understand a bloody word he says. [True.]
They say it’s the mathematics of Hell. [Unlikely, unless they forgot their own mathematics.]
They say it’s the geography of Time. [Possible.]
They say it was invented wholesale by a honey-sipper sitting giggling in a cramped and filthy room on Hollow Street, and it’s been driving gullible scholars insane ever since.
They say it’s the key that opens Mr Stones’ vaults. [Possible.]
They say it’s concealed in Mr Pages’ library. [Possible.]
They say it’s the only way down here you can ever see starlight. [Possible.]
They say only the Brass Embassy knows. [No, they don’t.]
They say it’s the only map of all the Unterzee, scratched on the keystone of the Neath. [Possible.]
They say it predicts every price change in the Bazaar for the next hundred years. [Possible.]
They say it’s a script that you cannot write and live. [Unlikely, if it really was the language of Xanadu.]
They say every piece of deep amber has a fragment of the Correspondence at its heart. [Possible.]
They say it’s a gate that opens in the stalactites behind Wolfstack Docks.
They say you can see it in Mrs Plenty’s mirrors.
They say it’s the only sure way to tell the weight of your soul. [Possible.]
They say it’s the map that connects every glimmer of moonish light to a star. [Possible.]
They say it’s the key that unlocks the secrets of bat-flights. [Possible.]
They say it’s a trap that someone found inscribed on a wall in the First City, and if you decode its complicated patterns you inevitably decide you’re God, to the considerable detriment of your social life. [Possible.]
They say it’s the letters that Helen wrote to Menelaus in the years of her imprisonment. [Unlikely, though the Correspondence would be a tragical love story, then.]
They say it’s the last accounts of the last days of the Third City, strung in beads on cord in a code no-one living understands… [Unlikely, as the Third City was Mayan, not Inca. Only the Incas used Quipu. The Mayans had a hieroglyphic script.]

I don’t think the Masters would’ve seen Rome as a likely candidate for Fourth City, anyway. The Fourth City was acquired in the 14th century - Rome was not particularly powerful back then (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rome#Middle_Ages).
Also, not a single one of the sidebars hints to the Second City, which I think is where the Correspondence was invented/discovered. (Mr Eaten’s name is a Correspondence sigil, after all…)

There’s also this:
They say it’s the letters Raffles wrote about the Cat that never were published.
Unlikely, though very interesting in another matter:
A letter fragment, dated Singapore, 1821
&quotI have, I fear, at last determined the cause of our poor Leopold’s sad disappearance. You will recall that I sent by the Borneo a very considerable collection of [illegible] … identified one variety as the sinister exile’s rose of the Bosphorus. Sophia had long admired their colour [illegible] … gardens here about the Government-house [illegible] … although here they call it ‘lion’s rose’. Singapura is Lion City in the Sanskrit [illegible] … There are of course no lions here, though many tigers. I would not mention this except that when I dream of Leopold, as still I often do, it has always seemed to me that there is a great cat present, the colour of sunset, which is also the colour of the roses…&quot

Compare:

&quotPersonal tragedies started for Raffles. His eldest son, Leopold, died during an epidemic on 4 July 1821. The oldest daughter, Charlotte, was also sick with dysentery by the end of the year, but it would be his youngest son, Stamford Marsden, who would perish first with the disease, 3 January 1822, with Charlotte to follow ten days later. […] As Raffles grew restless and depressed, he decided to visit Singapore before heading home to England. Accompanying him would be his wife Sophia and their only surviving child, Ella. […] Raffles was a founder (in 1825) and first president (elected April 1826) of the Zoological Society of London and the London Zoo.&quot
[from wikipedia: Stamford Raffles - Wikipedia]

edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015

urthdigger · February 6, 2012, 3:32pm

They say the the Topsy King learnt it, and that’s why you can never understand a bloody word he says. [True.]

You find out the truth of the matter during the Hearts Desire ambition [color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]The play he wrote, the Bell and Candle, is stuffed full of correspondence glyphs, which leads to a rather amazing performance[/color]

katarinanavane · February 6, 2012, 3:40pm

"They say the the Topsy King learnt it, and that’s why you can never understand a bloody word he says. [Possible.] " I thought this one was pretty much confirmed, actually. It seemed pretty clear in what’s learned in the ‘Heart’s Desire’ ambition that the Topsy King’s madness is due to his involvement with the correspondence. edit: haha, Urthdigger, you beat me to it.

On Rome and the Fourth City–they could have been courting Rome for the fourth city centuries prior to their actually acquiring Xanadu for it. They don’t have to have been courting Rome at the time they acquired the fourth city, just any time after they acquired the third.
edited by KatarinaNavane on 2/6/2012

ruphoschartenhauer · February 6, 2012, 6:06pm

Yeah, but the Third City was acquired in the 9th century, and the next 500 years were hardly the pinnacle of Rome’s history…

felicitychase · February 6, 2012, 7:00pm

Hmm. “The symbol has been eluding you for weeks. But you think you have it… No, that cannot be right, can it? Does the Correspondence really have a symbol that indicates love?” Found in my journal again, so unfortunately I don’t remember what storylet this is from. There’s also a sidebar that says the Masters tax outgoing love stories, which may not be related, but I found the explicit mentions of love interesting.

twochandler · February 6, 2012, 9:50pm

How does the line go? “In the deepest matters of the Bazaar, always look to love”.

I suspect that the references to love are more to do with the Bazaar itself than the Correspondence.

ruphoschartenhauer · February 7, 2012, 4:44pm

Thank you, Dmitry!

In light of this evidence I concede that the Pope’s letter was not a false lead entirely. It is definitely not THE Correspondence we’re looking for, but it fits into the storyarc: If it was written in 1245, that was during Kublai Khan’s lifetime, so if the Masters immediately began courting the Mongols (though they were unsuccessful for more than 100 years), his role finally becomes clear.

Very good. This adds to the &quotpro-Karakorum-arguments&quot we already have. There are a few &quotpro-Xanadu-arguments&quot as well, though, so I’ll leave this debate open for now.
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015