Fallen London Memories Competition

Fallen London
21

For Co-Operative Play of the Decade, it’s not much, and it’s much more recent. But, it still mean a lot to me.

I introduced my boyfriend to Fallen London. I’d been playing it for ~4 years, but never had anyone else to play it with. I talked it up to everyone of my friends. He was the first one to start playing it and he’s become obsessed. But, I’m nominating it because we use it to have virtual dates with each other. We use as many of the social actions we can to message each other and help each other. We have busy lives and don’t live together, so we don’t see each other too often. We’ve incorporated the Fallen London social aspect into our relationship so we can remind message each other and show that we love each other in every aspect of our lives. As is often said in Fallen London,”in all things look to love.”

22

I have OCD, and it can be hard for me to leave my home and interact with people. Fallen London gives me an opportunity to interact with other people, both on the forums and in game. I like to perform Social Actions and play a role, and the game lets me do both of these things with a generally positive group of people. There are plenty of things I like about the game, but I can never forget about the social aspect and the lifeline it gives me to the outside world.

23

The tenth anniversary not only brought me back to FL (after I recently opened up Sunless Sea for the first time in several years), but it set me to wondering when exactly I first started in this game. The first date in my character’s journal is the 30th of July 1890, back when this was still called Echo Bazaar, and I can thank the Non-Combat Gaming episode of the Youtube channel Extra Credits for pointing me in this direction. They won’t qualify for the contest as they aren’t foolhardy things my character did, but my worst ideas of the decade (well, the ones connected to Fallen London/Echo Bazaar anyway): letting my character sit idle for years at a time not once but twice and never making much use of the social aspects of the game.
edited by Kaunisenkeli on 1/12/2020

24

Ah, most foolhardy thing…Nikki is made of foolhardy. She makes brassiere and bloomer buntings during election season. She tried (unsuccessfully) to jump a velocipede onto the roof of St. Fiacre’s from the nearest roof, instead crashing through the rose window. She uses creative tactics when playing chess with the Boatman. But by far the most foolhardy thing she’s done is steal the hat off the head of the Tiger Keeper. I mean sure he was sleeping, and probably high, but still.

This was before the animal stampede, or perhaps during, something she also had a hand in, and you can thank In Red, Underlined and Lady Jen Black for giving her the opportunity.

25

[color=#0000ff]The Best He[/color][color=#0000ff]adcanon:[/color]
&quotFallen London(…) internet’s finest text-based(…) alternate history(…)!&quot
Bear with me, but as the ‘finest alternate history game’, I wondered if it was also finer than our current history. What I mean is that I’m wondering whether Fallen London is better than our London.

As of currently writing this, I’m pretty sure it is 1898 in FL. London had about a population of 5 million. For FL, I’ll use the forums. There’s people who don’t play anymore, so it probably balances the people who don’t make forum accounts. Anyway, there’s 138 pages of 100 people, the last page having 35. So, we got 13,735 people. However, FL has a secret weapon. NPC’s.

First, an explanation. Every player has the same opportunities, except for yearly events, which would be fine, but there are a few problems. So, naturally, I suspect every player’s in a parallel universe. After all, NPC’s would’ve had to revive themselves, and such, if they were universal. There IS a flaw, but word count. Back to the theory, each player’s universe has the same characters, thus more population. One could make infinite universes, but we’re trying to be practical. So, you’d need 364 people a universe to reach London’s population, which there is. All in all, population-wise, FL is better than London. Population, though, is just a number, so everything goes out the window. Keep in mind this was just a theory. I don’t claim to know anything about Fallen London. Anyway, I’ve never been to London, but I’d probably still prefer FL. I’ll wrap this up now, but according to me, Fallen London is better than London. The art, plotlines, and the general atmosphere is great. Well, You can say you’ve reached the end, now. Shortening to 300 words… it was better with 674.

26

My character has a Most Characterful Affectation. And by “affectation”, I mean that the Six-Handed Merchant is a Spider Council masquerading as a human detective.

Yes, Six is an amorous pile of sorrow-spiders who fight crime!

Six was born in Saviour’s Rocks and smuggled into London as hatchlings via a shipping crate of trinkets. (“Just Trinkets.”) Unfortunately, their crate was stolen by thieves and carted off to Spite. The cutpurses were horrified by the contents, but the spiders’ encounter with their boots was even more horrific. The remaining sorrow-spiders survived by fleeing up a drainpipe and through the open window of the Soft-Hearted Widow, who adopted them (because of course she did). She watched the spiders grow up, form their first humanoid-shaped council (like the spiders in HOJOHOTO), and say their first words. Those early years in a loving home had a literal humanizing effect on the council.

When they became too large for the widow to hide, two bohemians (Paisley and Alder Bourgeois, ancestors of Louise Bourgeois) wrapped the council like a tomb-colonist, taught them how to mimic people, and raised them in their basement. Later, Six acquired a skin-suit from the Face Tailor made from expired infernal contracts with a very convincing and androgynously glamorous face. But even after breaking into London society, Six remembered those criminals who nearly killed them. Under tutelage of the Implacable Detective, Six has learned to fight crime while hiding their true nature under a vortex of garish bohemian scandal. Today, Six is an accomplished and scandalous detective, solving crimes with various degrees of both help and hindrance from the criminal mastermind and their frequent lover, Bishop Valentine Fogsreach (another PC). (I love playing Six and wrote many stories for them, linked in my profile below.)

27

My headcanon: the Great Game doesn’t exist.

I don’t mean the spies are illusions. I know there are clearly spies; they spy on each other, infiltrate places, expose and assassinate rival spies. But the whole thing is headless - the spymasters have long since moved on. Now it’s a huge multinational multidimensional apparatus just running with no purpose and no goal. And because the goals were shrouded in mystery to begin with, nobody realizes!

The Game goes endless layers deep. Spies pass messages, but to pass on messages they have to set up dead drops and secret codes, and they have to pass messages to do those things. Spies want influence and want to infiltrate positions of power, but to do that they have to eliminate rival spies, and deny their rivals influence and power. To do that they pass messages, and packages.

And the brilliant part is - it’s all self-sustaining. Even if a spymaster realizes he has no important mission, they naturally assume OTHER spymasters DO have important missions, so they set out spies to infiltrate their network and figure that mission out, intercept their messages and dead drops. And to do that, they have to protect their own spies, from rivals doing the same thing.

Go to Wilmots End and play. You’ll see.

28

I’ve been asked about my handle a few times during my stay in London. Rather than delve too deep into the non-diagetic origins, I have a few thoughts about Mr. Cowboys and their in-character affectations.

The DNA Cowboys have been slinking London’s streets for the past ten years. In this wild-eyed decade they have been loved, hated, forgotten, and feared. Ask any urchin or society matron how one individual could accomplish such a range of deeds, and they would inevitably reply, “Who are you, and how did you get in here?”

The reason Mr. Cowboys—as they are known from Far Arbor to the very biggest of Bens—is beloved by Hell and the Church, Calendar Council and Masters alike is because they are legion. The American cousin and esoteric poet who arrived in New Newgate is no more. Repeated trips to the imaginary prisons of Parabola in search of the Manifesto of Flame have fractured him into a chorus of forms. The Correspondence wasn’t meant for poetry? Poppycock! Sing louder, fight harder, write prouder. Only then will the sky open to them and they will receive their hearts’ desire, engraved upon the stars.

They say he fielded his own cricket team on a lark, requiring each emanation to purchase its own lead-lined flannels.

They are living Dadd exhibition, celebrants of the greatest tragedies and highest peaks of neathy delight. As one would expect of a many-bodied bohemian, their pursuits of hedonism are of special note. If one could quantify a lifestyle of excess (say, on a scale of 1-15), Mr. Cowboys would require an additional nine full categories.

As the patron saint of flanuers taught Mr. Cowboys in his youth:

Ask all that sings or speaks; ask what time it is, and the wind, the waves, the stars, the birds, the clocks will answer you: “It is time to get drunk! So as not to be Time’s martyred slaves, get drunk, get drunk, and never rest! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue; whatever.”


edited by DNA Cowboys on 1/13/2020

29

Favourite headcanon: Mr. Eaten’s revenge isn’t over. It’ll use its ability to stain souls to corrupt those who feed on them, in the end bringing down reality itself.

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&quotTrue love is blind.&quot

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edited by Passionario on 1/13/2020

31

My Entry for Real Life Memory of the Decade

When I started playing Fallen London (probably at the end of 2009 if phyrne’s information is correct), I had a good job as an attorney with a medium-sized law firm.

In 2012, I was laid off, because the firm’s client base had diminished to the point where the firm did not have sufficient work for me to do. That loss affected me very hard, particularly because I’m in late middle age, and it’s difficult in America to get accepted into another law firm at that age if you don’t have clients of your own (which I did not).

Over the past seven years, I have been practicing on my own, attempting to build a client base, or at least a steady flow of law work, with spotty success at best. The process has taken a toll on both my morale and my health. Fallen London was one of the few bright spots remaining in my daily routine. I visited as much to interact with people in game and on the forums as to actually play. For me, it was (and is) a place where &quoteverybody knows my name,&quot and that has been very important to me. Players have come and gone, but I’ve made new friends over the years too. Thank you, Failbetter, for the community you support; it has made my life less gray than it otherwise would have been.

32

Congratulations to Fallen London! I’ve been playing for a little over 8 years and I still eagerly await the stories from my Exceptional Friendship. The lore hooked me and the captivating writing kept me.

How has the Neath had an effect on your Surface life?

It’s not a long story. Put simply, FL helped me come out as gay.

I spent a lot of time playing and participating on the forums in the early days. The FL game makers and community were, and continue to be, one of the most supportive, nurturing, and accepting groups I’ve ever encountered on the internet. When the option to marry became available in the game, it presented me with a dilemma and brought to a head lots of things I had been grappling with internally. I vividly recall deciding to marry a male character. It sounds stupid now, but I remember sweating and shaking when I clicked my mouse and then getting a rush of terror, then satisfaction. It was a test-run, a tiny revelation, but a public one nevertheless. Needless to say. I soon wanted that honesty in my own life and came out shortly after. Fast forward six years and I’m now married in real life. I even got my husband to play for a while so I could marry him there too.

Naturally all things in FL have an ironic twist – imagine my surprise when he created a female persona, Arabella Crane!

This is my way of saying thank you to the makers of FL and to the community they have engendered. I’ll be a fan as long as you keep writing stories.
edited by Wren on 1/13/2020
edited by Wren on 1/14/2020

33

When Mr. Zone first came to the neath seeking revenge six years ago, he knew nothing.
Now he knows too much.

His ultimate goal is to bring true death to the neath and dealing in knowledge brought him great power and wealth.
Once he achieved residence in a Spire of the Bazaar and looked down upon everyone else, the truth was revealed.

The Masters of the Bazaar are the true power in the neath and in order to have control over life and death he must become a Master.
Using Vials of the Masters Blood he completed a blood transfusion. His veins flow with the essence of a Master.

He now knows himself as Mr. Death.

Though a murderer and licentiate, he is compassionate. He renounces love for himself and encourages love for others.
They must know the embrace of life before the embrace of death.

This is my story. This is my memory.

34

[quote=Catherine Raymond]My Entry for Real Life Memory of the Decade

When I started playing Fallen London (probably at the end of 2009 if phyrne’s information is correct), I had a good job as an attorney with a medium-sized law firm.

In 2012, I was laid off, because the firm’s client base had diminished to the point where the firm did not have sufficient work for me to do. That loss affected me very hard, particularly because I’m in late middle age, and it’s difficult in America to get accepted into another law firm at that age if you don’t have clients of your own (which I did not).

Over the past seven years, I have been practicing on my own, attempting to build a client base, or at least a steady flow of law work, with spotty success at best. The process has taken a toll on both my morale and my health. Fallen London was one of the few bright spots remaining in my daily routine. I visited as much to interact with people in game and on the forums as to actually play. For me, it was (and is) a place where &quoteverybody knows my name,&quot and that has been very important to me. Players have come and gone, but I’ve made new friends over the years too. Thank you, Failbetter, for the community you support; it has made my life less gray than it otherwise would have been.[/quote]

And a warm thank you to those of my fellow players who +1’d this entry!

35

For Cooperative Play of the Decade, I think it’s hard to top the time that I’m pretty sure I crashed the game.

Unfortunately I wish I could recall the name of my partner in crime, aside from it beginning with a K, and I know they drifted away from the game eventually (I wanna say it was Kaesa Aurelia? Or maybe Kareir? Or possibly no longer on my friends list after all this time).

Anyway, back in the day there were social actions you could send to people &quoton the surface&quot, basically that whole recruit a player thing that was all the rage in social media games of the time. They gave a small payout when sent, and another to both parties when your invitee finally joined. We were researching these actions for the wiki when we uncovered something: You could send multiple invites to the same person, and when they finally joined they would all take effect.

We initially decided to just send one of each to an alt of mine and see what the results were. Along the way things got a little out of hand. We wound up just sending invites left and right to this alt, filling up the queue, just to see how much of a payout we could stockpile for later. It wasn’t greed, it still didn’t seem like the most lucrative option in the world, but there was that appeal of just having a giant loot pinata waiting to pop. So, we kept at it.

Between the two of us, I want to say we assembled over 200 actions sent to this alt at once by the time we decided enough was enough. I logged in on that other account… and promptly encountered a bug. The page wouldn’t load! Tried a few times, still nothing. Then I decided to check on my alt. It was down there too. Oops.

Turned out the game was down for everyone, not just us involved. I never had it officially confirmed whether we were indeed the cause of the crash or if one of the usual random crashes of that era just coincided… but social actions to invite players were removed soon after.

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[color=#0000cc]Headcanon of the Decade[/color]
So we all know that the Masters don’t go by their real names. My headcanon is that I believe we’ve learned the Correspondence sigils for two of them (one semi-deceased), which describe their true names and why they have their particular portfolios.
These are:
Mr. Candles (revealed in its Sacksmas visit card) – A light at the edge of sleep (that’s why he had both candles and dreams in his portfolio)
Mr. Cups/Mirrors (from Ambition: Nemesis) – That which is empty, whose purpose is to be filled.

I’ve also conjectured that the names of the others may be something like the following:
Mr. Apples/Hearts – The gnawing hunger for life
Mr. Irons – A thing whose purpose is violence
Mr. Fires – The spark which consumes
Mr. Stones – The hard captivation of greed
Mr. Wines – That which inebriates and brings forgetfulness
Mr. Spices – A small and transitory pleasure
Mr. Pages – A carefully preserved secret.
Mr. Veils – The universe’s biggest jerk.
edited by Toran on 1/15/2020
edited by Toran on 1/15/2020
edited by Toran on 1/15/2020

37

Headcanon: The Brass Ambassador would really prefer if people stopped calling her the Ambrassador.

38

I knew that I had a headcanon, but I couldn’t remember it… thank you Amalgamate for jogging my memory! Ironically, it deeply involves Irrigo.

For many players (especially pawns), the only thing driving them is the game itself. They clean their sins away with Irrigo, and they clean to deep, their motivations, their affiliations, and eventually their self. Individuals devote themselves to the Great Game with religious fervor, where absolution is not discovering a secret but becoming one.

A Surface-Nation like France don’t send dozens of spies to the Neath. There are dozens of spies in the Neath who believe they are agents of France. For the moment.

A spy finishes their devotions to the Shrine of St Joshua, absolved of burdens, and sees a discarded receipt for a croissant on the ground. It has coded message from their surface contact (can’t quite remember the face) with the next step of their mission (can’t quite remember the goal). Some of the details are hazy, but they know their role in the game–to act, not to question. They find the coordinates, cut holes in their copy of the Gazette, and wait patiently for their signal. At the appointed time, nothing happens. Sabotage! They retire to the Shrine of St Joshua, to atone for their failure, dropping a receipt for coffee along the way. An hour later, an agent of Vienna darts out of the shrine, burning with purpose.

There is a real Game, of course, and there are Players. But they put their pieces down between rounds, and different players set up the board anew with the same pieces the next time. The missions of these spies are occasionally for the highest of stakes. But an outside observer would be hard-pressed to tell which ones. There is a reason we only see the old man in Vienna in dreams.

39

Worst Idea of the Decade: Thurlow’s biggest claim to fame out-of-universe is dying from drinking too much Darkdrop Coffee while at Wounds 7. I even illustrated it for their Tumblr RP blog.

Most Characterful Affectation: Thurlow has shark teeth and can bite through basically anything. I’ve never come up with a very good explanation for it, and it’s not a Peculiar Personal Enhancement; they just… have sharp teeth that grow back if they get broken. They grew in when Thurlow was about 15.

Best(?) Headcanon of the Decade: I firmly believe that some of the Neathbow colours are the same thing as the impossible colours that you see, in real life, by exploiting the quirks of your visual system. Gant is a brown-tinged eigengrau, the greyish colour you see in a completely lightless room; peligin is stygian blue; cosmogone might be hyperbolic orange, viric could be a self-luminous green produced with the opposite version of the process for self-luminous red. They’re much stronger and more abundant in the Neath, of course.

Co-Operative Play of the Decade: Well, there was that one time I ate a pencil-and-paper drawing on camera in exchange for 100 Fate, but I no longer talk to either of the two people who sponsored that. For completely unrelated reasons. I also inundated my friend’s alt account with every Boxed Cat I could get ahold of for months.

Real Life Memory of the Decade: Playing Fallen London and talking about it on Tumblr is how I made at least half of my current friends, and it did a lot of the legwork to get me comfortable with being nonbinary and using they/them pronouns. I was even a model for the Individual of Mysterious and Indistinct Gender shirt!

40

Most Characterful Affectation: I have four accounts in Fallen London, one for each Ambition. Three of them are normal, defined as, &quotlike me but taller&quot. My fourth is Whimsicality P. Delphinium, a fey creature with a heart like face, dimpled smile and a bell-like laugh. She is also a Fae creature and for many in Fallen London that bell like laugh is the last thing they hear. Every choice made is based on what would amuse her the most. She is a Crooked Cross and London’s third Bishop. She was ready to gleefully lead the Bishop of Southwark to damnation in front of an infernal court but took greater satisfaction in tweaking Virginia’s nose by helping him. Whimsy’s never sold her soul because the Fae don’t have one, but she loves to lead them on anyhow. And despite what she might say in her cups, she doesn’t miss the sky or the flowers or the sun at all.