How Many Masters Are There?

Fallen London
1

I’ve been really into the Masters as a set of characters lately, but since my account is early-game (I don’t remember what my middle school password was T_T) and the game is the way it is, the easiest way to learn about them is via the wikis. The official one doesn’t have many character pages, so I turned to The Fifth City wiki, which says that there are eleven Masters: Apples, Hearts, Iron, Cups, Mirrors, Spices, Wines, Veils, Fires, Pages, and Stones.

Cool and good. I know who the characters are, debate over who might be who in disguise notwithstanding. However, I just received some Proscribed Material as a reward from a bundle, and as part of the little blurb, it said “Perhaps there are more than 15 masters.” Fifteen? Even counting Mr. Chimes (whose existence isn’t very well documented) and Mr. Eaten (can of worms and/or powder keg), that’s only thirteen. Whose names don’t I know about? The official wiki, bereft of character pages, is… not very helpful.

2

Well, you could always count Mr Sacks, making 14 by your extended count, and from then there is some extremely late game content that causes there to be another master, one that turns the PC into Mr Cards for a Heart’s Desire player and another that involves the birth of a new master, Mr Transport but that was definitely not around when that blurb was written. It is probably just one of those things that was written before a lot of the setting and lore was solidified.

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3

Remember that “Master” is a role. How many roles there are to play says very little about the number of individuals playing these roles.

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I know that much, don’t worry. But the prospect of extra roles floating around to learn about was far too intriguing lol

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oooooh, tysm. I knew about that first one, but the second one is fascinating. Not yet in The Flit, and I’m already way too excited to get my teeth on endgame haha

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Once upon a time (i.e., back in 2010 or so), Fallen London featured the original “Mysteries” tab, which posed 16 lore-related enigmas for players to answer. Those Mysteries closed in early 2014; a week later Alexis Kennedy of Failbetter Games released the official answers. One of the questions was “How many Masters are there?”

Eleven, currently. The count is complicated by Mr Apples, who also trades as Mr Hearts; by Mr Cups, who also trades as Mr Mirrors; and by debate over whether Mr Chimes, Mr Sacks and Mr Eaten count as Masters. But there are eleven.

So there were never 15 Masters; the text in Something to burn? was always just as reliable as rumours ever are.

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