Assuming Mr. Eaten was connected to the second city, the third city cannot be the origin of the correspondence. [color=rgb(255, 255, 255)]According to a storylet in the forgotten quarter, Mr. Eaten’s name is a symbol of the correspondence.[/color]
Hm. I believe someone mentioned earlier that they thought the “Even the First City was young when Babylon fell” to be a corruption of the original phrase? I think that would make a great deal of sense. Why would it be important that something was young when Babylon fell? Babylon fell quite a while ago, many places were still young then. I agree that the original phrase was almost certainly “Even Babylon was young when the First City fell.” In which case, Jerusalem suddenly becomes a tantalizing possibility…
Edit: Hold on a minute. On the topic of places across the Unterzee being remnants of the previous cities, what’s up with the Iron Republic? If Polythreme is the First City, NORTH the Second, the Carnelian Coast the Third, and the East the Fourth, where does the Iron Republic come from?
edited by Little The on 2/17/2012
That’s not entirely true. Of course, I don’t actually believe that the Correspondence is anywhere near that recent - I think that it predates the First City by eons - but reason compels me to note that other symbols have included:
breath
death by water
an exchange
love
and many others. All of these concepts would, by necessity, predate even the First City. As such, it’s possible that Mr. Eaten’s name is in fact something like Endless Hunger, or Forever Lost (depending on interpretations) and that concept was included when the Correspondence was compiled.
[quote=Little The]
Edit: Hold on a minute. On the topic of places across the Unterzee being remnants of the previous cities, what’s up with the Iron Republic? If Polythreme is the First City, NORTH the Second, the Carnelian Coast the Third, and the East the Fourth, where does the Iron Republic come from?
edited by Little The on 2/17/2012[/quote]
It’s an outpost of Hell, so perhaps it’s not linked to human cities?
Though the fact that it’s described (in the Iron Republic dream as part of the Nemesis ambition) as thick with a choking fog makes me think of the famous smog of Victorian London…
EDIT: Just checked the list of locked places across the Unterzee, and the other one that hasn’t been mentioned here is “the Pillars”. I can only find one other reference to this place, on the ‘Gather Round Me Bully Boys’ zailor card - "The evening finishes with a fist-fight over the nature of ‘the Pillars’: a formation in a desert, an abandoned city of glass or a village of savage women." . More mysteries…
edited by Quil on 2/17/2012
[quote=Quil]
Just checked the list of locked places across the Unterzee, and the other one that hasn’t been mentioned here is “the Pillars”. I can only find one other reference to this place, on the ‘Gather Round Me Bully Boys’ zailor card - "The evening finishes with a fist-fight over the nature of ‘the Pillars’: a formation in a desert, an abandoned city of glass or a village of savage women." . More mysteries…[/quote]
Iram of the Pillars, lost city of the Empty Quarter?
Eh, it’s a strech. At this point, we don’t even know if they’re actual pillars.
[font=‘Lucida Grande’, ‘Lucida Sans Unicode’, Arial, Verdana, sans-serif]
Something I discovered upon inviting a friend from the surface to discuss proscribed literature:
This explains the curious gap between the Second City and the Third, if our dates are correct.
VERY interesting! One hardly dares to think it, but were they held… captive?
And maybe the Second City is still in the North – I feel that the Duchess would’ve done anything to preserve her father’s city for eternity… maybe she finally went with the Masters as a kind of hostage… maybe that’s why she’s never seen outside the palace…
[quote=Wieland Burandt][quote=theodor_gylden]
Something I discovered upon inviting a friend from the surface to discuss proscribed literature:
This explains the curious gap between the Second City and the Third, if our dates are correct.
[/quote]
VERY interesting! One hardly dares to think it, but were they held… captive?
And maybe the Second City is still in the North – I feel that the Duchess would’ve done anything to preserve her father’s city for eternity… maybe she finally went with the Masters as a kind of hostage… maybe that’s why she’s never seen outside the palace…[/quote]
Then perhaps Mr. Eaten was banished to the well because it betrayed its bretheren to the Duchess! Fascinating!
Going back to the various associations with the number seven… [SPOILERS!] [color=#ffffff]The number of candles that lead towards Mr. Eaten’s true name seems to be seven, at least as far as the storyline goes…
[/color]
Also, one thing that’s very strange, and in seeming relation to the stone pigs, and the number of current and possibly future cities is an opportunity card found while journying towards Flute Street… perhaps someone can connect it somehow? [MORE SPOILERS] [color=#ffffff]A Stone Pig?[/color]
[color=#ffffff]The hairy stone wall goes for a hundred yards in each direction. The edges are fast against the stone, but there’s something here, fifty yards on.[/color]
[color=#ffffff]It’s an altar. No, it’s a sideboard. The sort that graces half the parlours in London. Next to the sideboard, the hairy stone is pierced and crumbling. Is this a Stone Pig? If it is, what happens here?[/color]
[color=#ffffff]You spot something else fifty yards away. High up on the hairy flank are seven marks. The symbols are too far up to see with a candle, but you can tell that five of them have been defaced. Struck through by what could be great claw marks.[/color]
edited by Allanon Kisigar on 2/23/2012
[quote=Patrick Reding][quote=Rupho Schartenhauer][quote=theodor_gylden]
Something I discovered upon inviting a friend from the surface to discuss proscribed literature:
This explains the curious gap between the Second City and the Third, if our dates are correct.
[/quote]
VERY interesting! One hardly dares to think it, but were they held… captive?
And maybe the Second City is still in the North – I feel that the Duchess would’ve done anything to preserve her father’s city for eternity… maybe she finally went with the Masters as a kind of hostage… maybe that’s why she’s never seen outside the palace…[/quote]
Then perhaps Mr. Eaten was banished to the well because it betrayed its bretheren to the Duchess! Fascinating![/quote]
… and Mr Wines created the Vake in order to take revenge on the Duchess. It killed all her sisters (and the Pharao too, probably, though not "completely"), but for some reason couldn’t kill her!
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015
I would be very surprised indeed if the Correspondence came from an earthly city - it seems to be from the same place as the Bazaar is. I suspect that the ‘between stars’ reference refers to gravity, which is, after all, a kind of attraction.
Moreover, if the cities people have posted are accurate we should be able to find a historical figure who would have made the same compact as the Traitor Empress did, and for the same reasons. The Bazaar buys stories of love, such as the love between the Empress and her Consort, which suggests that the other four cities also have a love story at their heart.
I naturally jump to Antony and Cleopatra for the Second City, which would suggest the Masters’ annoyance has to do with Rome declaring war on them, although the hints we’ve gotten regarding the Duchess suggest that instead we’re looking for a mother and her child.
[quote=Wieland Burandt]Time for an update of my little list, then…
First City (Nagar, fell ca. 2200 BC):
Survivor: the Manager of the Royal Bethlehem Hotel
saved Lover: the Capering Relicker?
Last Remains: some bricks with eyes on them; possibly Polythreme?
Connected Mysteries: who makes the Clay Men?; Hesperidean Cider
Second City (Amarna, fell ca. 1335 BC):
Survivor: the Duchess
saved Lover: the Cantigaster
Last Remains: a sandalwood tree in the far east of London; some Egyptian columns in Spite and other unexpected places; NORTH?
Connected Mysteries: Mr Eaten; Dreams of Death by Water; the Vake
Third City (Hopelchén, fell in the 9th century AD):
Survivor: the Presbyter?
saved Lover: Feducci?
Last Remains: the Elder Country?
Connected Mysteries: Snuffers and Face-Tailors; the Correspondence was probably discovered and/or compiled here for the first time (by humans, at least)
Fourth City (Karakorum [fell 1388] or Xanadu [fell 1369]):
Survivor: the Gracious Widow
saved Lover: the Once-Dashing Smuggler
Last Remains: the Forgotten Quarter; the “Orient”?
Connected Mysteries: Dreams of A Game of Chess; the Correspondence (again); the Year of the Tortoise; the battle that never happened; blood on the troubled garments…
edited by Wieland Burandt on 2/26/2012[/quote]
This has probably been addressed already, but surely the first two cities can’t be that old? I think I’m right in saying that the game specifically mentions First City coins - but coins weren’t invented until around 700BC at the earliest. This would, of course, reconcile the “The First City was young when Babylon fell” clue, since Babylon was razed by the Assyrians in 689 BC.
I actually did address this earlier in this thread, but thanks for pointing it out again. It certainly gives me a headache, especially when everything else seems to fit in so nicely… there’s really no other mention of an "eye temple" anywhere but the one at ancient Nagar, and Amarna fits best of all Egyptian cities. Also, the Vake is mentioned to be more or less exactly 3,000 years old, so if the theory that it comes from the Second City is right then the First City has to be even older…
But the coinage matter is certainly a problem. Maybe it will be addressed in the game itself at some point?
EDIT: Thinking about this, I guess the Bazaar would’ve simply introduced money to the First and Second City… waiting for mankind to discover it for themselves doesn’t strike me as the Masters’ style. After all, we don’t even know if the First City had had coins before its fall.
SECOND EDIT: Maybe this means that money is no earthly invention at all? Money from outer space? Talk about "root of all evil" and all that…
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015
Well, the first form of currency was introduced in 2000BC (receipts for grain)
See, the issue I have with the Masters introducing the First City Coins themselves is that their prefered medium of exchange appears to be echoes. Therefore, surely any First City coins would have to predate the falling of the city itself, otherwise they’d simply be echoes?
Then again, since the Masters swapped pounds for echoes in the case of London (with the currency bearing a fair resemblance to 19th cenury currency in general) they have form for introducing new currencies, so they could just be archaic echoes. So you’re probably correct.
Yup:
"Stone and clay seals with pictorial designs predated coins."
"Many cultures around the world eventually developed the use of commodity money. The shekel was originally a unit of weight, and referred to a specific weight of barley, which was used as currency. The first usage of the term came from Mesopotamia circa 3000 BC."
"The Mesopotamian civilization developed a large scale economy based on commodity money. The Babylonians and their neighboring city states later developed the earliest system of economics as we think of it today, in terms of rules on debt, legal contracts and law codes relating to business practices and private property. Money was not only an emergence, it was a necessity."
"The Code of Hammurabi, the best preserved ancient law code, was created ca. 1760 BC in ancient Babylon. It was enacted by the sixth Babylonian king, Hammurabi. Earlier collections of laws include the code of Ur-Nammu, king of Ur (ca. 2050 BC), the Code of Eshnunna (ca. 1930 BC) and the code of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1870 BC). These law codes formalized the role of money in civil society. They set amounts of interest on debt… fines for ‘wrong doing’… and compensation in money for various infractions of formalized law."
"The city-states of Sumer developed a trade and market economy based originally on the commodity money of the Shekel which was a certain weight measure of barley, while the Babylonians and their city state neighbors later developed the earliest system of economics using a metric of various commodities, that was fixed in a legal code."
"Several centuries after the invention of cuneiform, the use of writing expanded beyond debt/payment certificates and inventory lists to codified amounts of commodity money being used in contract law, such as buying property and paying legal fines."
Aren’t First City coins mentioned to be made of clay, somewhere? Even if not, I’d think they are. Which would be another hint in the direction of Polythreme…
(Sources: World's Oldest Coin - First Coins, History of money - Wikipedia, Commodity money - Wikipedia)
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015
No, they’re specifically said to be made of silver.
The best source of information on them is as part of the Heart’s Desire Ambition, since you need to collect 77 of the coins from your choice of various sources. As such, they’re described several times as being silver coins, just as they are in your inventory.
[quote=travellersside][quote=Rupho Schartenhauer]
Aren’t First City coins mentioned to be made of clay, somewhere? Even if not, I’d think they are. Which would be another hint in the direction of Polythreme…
[/quote]
No, they’re specifically said to be made of silver.
The best source of information on them is as part of the Heart’s Desire Ambition, since you need to collect 77 of the coins from your choice of various sources. As such, they’re described several times as being silver coins, just as they are in your inventory.[/quote]
Ah, thank you. Well, silver coins really weren’t around in 2000 BC. So, if the dates are correct, then the Masters must’ve introduced them.
edited by Rupho Schartenhauer on 3/24/2015
Perhaps. But one shouldn’t cling too much to a favourite idea and discard all contrary data. You do put forward some very good arguments for the cities, but there are still some details that contradict them. As such, it’s possible that your hypothesised cities are incorrect. (It’s also possible that FBG made mistakes, and that causes a lot of other problems for us.)
I never argued that! Sorry if I don’t use enough “ifs” sometimes but I hope it’s clear to everyone that I’m only hypothesizing, and that this is a discussion where everyone can put forward their ideas.
About the other thing you mentioned: I’ve often thought about how much historical research the FBG writers actually did, and if they’ve possibly made a few errors along the way… or simply aren’t bothering about always being 100% correct. I guess time will tell…