I can’t even remember how many times I’ve died, to be honest. Not worth the bother to remember, since death is far less punishing than, say, losing one’s mind.
I’ve yet to die. I wish to attain immortality. Without having needed it. But I feel like I’m missing out on some things having not died. Ah to be left out.
My character has only died once. He’s usually good about looking after his wounds, but after having his soul stolen, he fell into a deep depression and stopped taking care of himself. As a result, attempting to protect an urchin from a deviless who was interested in doing the same thing resulted in a surprise trip to the river. He hadn’t even noticed how injured he’d gotten up to that point.
He never wants to go back there either. It was terribly boring and the boatman is awful at chess. My character was able to beat him every time even though his chess strategy involves sticking the pieces up his nose.
[quote=Kukapetal]My character has only died once. He’s usually good about looking after his wounds, but after having his soul stolen, he fell into a deep depression and stopped taking care of himself. As a result, attempting to protect an urchin from a deviless who was interested in doing the same thing resulted in a surprise trip to the river. He hadn’t even noticed how injured he’d gotten up to that point.
He never wants to go back there either. It was terribly boring and the boatman is awful at chess. My character was able to beat him every time even though his chess strategy involves sticking the pieces up his nose.[/quote]
The thing is, the boatman isn’t taking you seriously, it sounds like. He gets better the more you beat him. Quite frankly, he doesn’t really care about those of us in the neath at first- we always escape regardless, unless it’s so horribly lethal that you aren’t even extant enough for the tomb-colonies. So we have to make him care, if we want good chess. I could see someone trying to grind boatman’s opponent, actually.
Don’t mourn the loss too much. souls serve no purpose save what myths you ascribe to them. They’re nothing more than a journal tucked in some coat-pocket of your memory, if i understand this essay correctly, and i certainly haven’t noticed reduced empathy amoung the soulless. quite the oppisite, often. Those with souls can be so cruel to those without.
[quote=Grenem]
The thing is, the boatman isn’t taking you seriously, it sounds like. He gets better the more you beat him. Quite frankly, he doesn’t really care about those of us in the neath at first- we always escape regardless, unless it’s so horribly lethal that you aren’t even extant enough for the tomb-colonies. So we have to make him care, if we want good chess. I could see someone trying to grind boatman’s opponent, actually.[/quote]
Correct, but my character is too much of an idiot to realize this. He tends to take stuff at face-value and really thinks the boatman is that bad.
[quote=Grenem]
Don’t mourn the loss too much. souls serve no purpose save what myths you ascribe to them. They’re nothing more than a journal tucked in some coat-pocket of your memory, if i understand this essay correctly, and i certainly haven’t noticed reduced empathy amoung the soulless. quite the oppisite, often. Those with souls can be so cruel to those without.[/quote]
I think it affects different personalities differently, as my character suffered greatly without his. He’s very passionate, and without his soul, everything he felt was…muffled. He couldn’t laugh, couldn’t cry, couldn’t get angry, etc. All the zest was just drained out of life. He never wants to live like that again, and is now a dedicated Shepherd, doing his best to help those looking for their souls find them again.
[quote=Kukapetal]
Don’t mourn the loss too much. souls serve no purpose save what myths you ascribe to them. They’re nothing more than a journal tucked in some coat-pocket of your memory, if i understand this essay correctly, and i certainly haven’t noticed reduced empathy amoung the soulless. quite the oppisite, often. Those with souls can be so cruel to those without.[/quote]
I think it affects different personalities differently, as my character suffered greatly without his. He’s very passionate, and without his soul, everything he felt was…muffled. He couldn’t laugh, couldn’t cry, couldn’t get angry, etc. All the zest was just drained out of life. He never wants to live like that again, and is now a dedicated Shepherd, doing his best to help those looking for their souls find them again.[/quote]
Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it’s an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren’t some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.
But it is noticed some people feel less without them, or so other revolutionary pamphlets claim. Whether this is a mere placebo effect from centuries of conditioning, though, is unknown.
Keep in mind, mine place very little value on the soul. They take it’s physical presence as evidence of an absence of spiritual presence, and therefore isn’t the same sort as proposed by surface theologians.
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015
[quote=Grenem]
Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it’s an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren’t some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.[/quote]
Wait, says who? Is this actual Fallen London lore or just your own speculation?
Also, what happened to the part where you talked about your characters? It sounded fascinating, even if it probably would make my own character’s head explode :P
edited by Kukapetal on 12/5/2015
[quote=Kukapetal][quote=Grenem]
Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it’s an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren’t some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.[/quote]
Wait, says who? Is this actual Fallen London lore or just your own speculation?
Also, what happened to the part where you talked about your characters? It sounded fascinating, even if it probably would make my own character’s head explode :P
edited by Kukapetal on 12/5/2015[/quote]
Well, in canon- souls are star spores, and are eaten by judgements, so if they are your afterlife-self, then there’s no afterlife to be had. meanwhile, in whatever metaphysical realm the boatman appears in, you still arive there from a lethal wound, even when soulless. presumably, souls are eaten after death, so that’d imply their existence isn’t tied to yours, either. There are lines about consuming them for experiences, which implies… souls do gather experiences. the fact that they can tell tales increases this.
But you don’t stop being you, when you lose a soul, and I’ve never met a soulless who was as bad as a jack, save jacks. So, souls aren’t the core you, or if they are, they still leave large quantities of remnants of the orignal behind. they don’t contail all morality, or anything similar. The devils mention a very short list of side effects, if a soul were key to yourself, and the game they play with souls seems to be based on improving them all, like a deity’s purification done the hard way. And yes, it is a game, unless you really think it’s that easy to rob devils.
There’s some degree of paranoia/extrapolation, but i’ve never seen evidence that souls are like the church would claim they are, but i’ve seen a lot that implies they aren’t.
A soul might be you, but in the same way a noman is you. lesser, inferior reflection stored in aether and fear.
of course, i’m very paranoid about the stars. it’s no coincidence that the neath is the best place to live on earth that we know of.
the role-playing was dropped because it made it feel a lot more like raw fanon. specifically, what happened, though, was one of them- grenem or takuza- decided on a whim to drink a soul that wasn’t theirs. canonically, this is probably completely pointless, and nearly always done by accident- devils playing shuffle the souls seems plausible, given text from oct.'s exptional story.
however it works, in this case something else happened. specfically, the "recording" began loading on the one with a body. or maybe they’re just mad, it’s always hard to tell with them. either way, they are convinced they have the memories and personality of someone else, and swap at the drop of a knife.
takuza is cold but polite and pleasant, while grenem is much rarer. either he doesn’t speak at all, or he speaks in RANDOM capitalizations for emphasis. either way, he blathers about other sealed realms, that parabola touches, though it’s far more likely he’s just being messed with by something in the mirror.
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015
Dying I don’t do much of, I don’t tend to gather a lot of wounds with my play style and there’s a storylet to get rid of them right at your lodgings. I went the once when I was fairly low level, without the new action cap a four action storylet hit a lot harder and I was more likely to fail storylets back then but that’s it. I do agree with everyone who agrees there should be some sort of quality for people who’ve died, seems rather weird that going to jails the only one with penalties on repeat offenses
Re: souls I still have mine. Wrecked my hedonist trying to get rid of the devils once they started asking for it and then they put on a cap before I could build it back up :(
After sacrificing that much I really couldn’t justify selling it for anything even if it’s something I could imagine my character doing otherwise at this stage in the game (not when they were younger, though hence the original refusal)
[quote=Grenem][quote=Kukapetal][quote=Grenem]
Fair enough. I would claim it is a mere placebo effect, but perhaps it’s an emotional reverberation that he since lost. Souls aren’t some metaphysical essence, merely something that duplicates your expereinces with small smigeons of personality mixed in. Like i said, a journal of your life, tucked in some coat pocket of your body. or so the revolutionary pamphlets claim.[/quote]
Wait, says who? Is this actual Fallen London lore or just your own speculation?
Also, what happened to the part where you talked about your characters? It sounded fascinating, even if it probably would make my own character’s head explode :P
edited by Kukapetal on 12/5/2015[/quote]
Well, in canon- souls are star spores, and are eaten by judgements, so if they are your afterlife-self, then there’s no afterlife to be had. meanwhile, in whatever metaphysical realm the boatman appears in, you still arive there from a lethal wound, even when soulless. presumably, souls are eaten after death, so that’d imply their existence isn’t tied to yours, either. There are lines about consuming them for experiences, which implies… souls do gather experiences. the fact that they can tell tales increases this.
But you don’t stop being you, when you lose a soul, and I’ve never met a soulless who was as bad as a jack, save jacks. So, souls aren’t the core you, or if they are, they still leave large quantities of remnants of the orignal behind. they don’t contail all morality, or anything similar. The devils mention a very short list of side effects, if a soul were key to yourself, and the game they play with souls seems to be based on improving them all, like a deity’s purification done the hard way. And yes, it is a game, unless you really think it’s that easy to rob devils.
There’s some degree of paranoia/extrapolation, but i’ve never seen evidence that souls are like the church would claim they are, but i’ve seen a lot that implies they aren’t.
A soul might be you, but in the same way a noman is you. lesser, inferior reflection stored in aether and fear.
of course, i’m very paranoid about the stars. it’s no coincidence that the neath is the best place to live on earth that we know of.
the role-playing was dropped because it made it feel a lot more like raw fanon. specifically, what happened, though, was one of them- grenem or takuza- decided on a whim to drink a soul that wasn’t theirs. canonically, this is probably completely pointless, and nearly always done by accident- devils playing shuffle the souls seems plausible, given text from oct.'s exptional story.
however it works, in this case something else happened. specfically, the "recording" began loading on the one with a body. or maybe they’re just mad, it’s always hard to tell with them. either way, they are convinced they have the memories and personality of someone else, and swap at the drop of a knife.
takuza is cold but polite and pleasant, while grenem is much rarer. either he doesn’t speak at all, or he speaks in RANDOM capitalizations for emphasis. either way, he blathers about other sealed realms, that parabola touches, though it’s far more likely he’s just being messed with by something in the mirror.
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015[/quote]
Oh wow, I had no idea about all that. You definitely know your stuff. I thought the nature of souls was just one of those things that was left ambiguous. I had no idea there was a definitive answer out there. Thanks for the info.
Your two characters sound like they must be a lot of fun to RP
Well, in canon- souls are star spores, and are eaten by judgements…
edited by Grenem on 12/5/2015[/quote]
So the spirifer who hid her cache of souls in the Forgotten quarter wasn’t quite so mad as I thought! This is an interesting bit of lore. Do you mind if I ask where you found it?
I died at least three times trying to make an Impossible Theorem.
I forget how I died the first time in Fallen London, but it didn’t happen until I had been playing for a while, since, like some of the other posters, I was trying to avoid meeting the Boatman. Since my Impossible Theorem deaths, I engaged in a fair number of Sanguine Ribbon duels, and lost enough of them to have had the opportunity to grind “Boatman’s Opponent.”
Maybe this is because I have a high-level character, but I still don’t find him that difficult to beat.
I did not die until I had Cider. Coincidentally, The Shallows was released immediately after.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and death shall have no dominion.
[quote=Anneliese Lemieux][quote=Estelle Knoht]Just checking to see how many delicious friends has never died once so far - I mean death by Wounds only.
I am beginning to worry that avoiding the boatman entirely might not be of any consequence in the long run, but I think I am going to stick to it no matter what. Even if you offer me an Overgoat just to meet the Boatman for small talk. Or the Cider.[/quote]
I didn’t die. :D I’m gonna try a no death run in FL.[/quote]
Hear, hear! I’ve been in Fallen London for ~4,5 years and am proud to say I still haven’t died (and don’t ever plan to), despite making more than a few risky choices hehehe
edited by Matthew Enigma on 2/28/2020
When your dude/dudette/dude-something goes onto the boat, he/she/they is going away from London. Gameplay-wise, this causes the stack of opportunity cards to double in number. Going back to London doubles it again.
I had my characters kill each other to get Sanguine Ribbons and to restock opportunity cards. They meet the boatman, but it’s a hi-bye thing since all of them have the golden cider.
I wanted not to die too for RP reasons - Jolanda loves the surface. When she did die though, she had an RP reason to go for the Cider. Now I lament not dying more often so I can experience the location.
I died a lot, especially at the beginning because Dirae Erinyes didn’t have a reason to go back. Now they do, but needs cider for all parties involved.
the old man did when feduccie killed him, he longed for the surface, for him it had long passed to a mythical place that he would one day return to, when the lance pirced his bandage wrapped body he knew it was over, he’s died many times now, no point in avoiding the boatman anymore, he only has a few objectives now, one to gain a cider, two to make feduccie pay for forcing him to spend the last years of his life in this underground hell, the old man knows he will meet his final death soon, maybe not today but some day, and he wants to be sitting in a rocking chair in the sun smiling as all sins are forgiven and he fades into that good night. (sorry about the length of that the surface is quite important to the old mans character)
Neel tried to avoid dying…and then she, too, ran into Feducci. Or rather, he ran into her. With a lance.
Then she jumped off a Bazaar spire for the purposes of The Shallows.
Now she just needs to get herself some cider. An obliging fellow denizen has already given her a sip, but it can’t hurt to have her own supply!
None of my other fine ladies have died yet. But it’s only a matter of time for two of them.
I’ve died too many times to remember. I’ve gotten good at chess though.