How Permanent Is Injury?

Fallen London
1

So I’ve been wondering this for a while now, how permanent is injury in the Neath?

I know that you can come back from the dead. I know that under the right circumstances you can eat things that should kill you. I know that you can even have your head lopped off and come back. But what stuff stays and what doesn’t and what determines that?

I know that after so much or so long some individuals stop coming back right or just give up the will to live. As far as I can tell that is why the tomb colonies exist. But there have to be steps before that, because the FL mentions people with missing eyes and horrible scars and other things.

So what heals and what doesn’t?

And as I’m guessing there isn’t an absolute answer to this, I’ll take people opinions.

2

[quote=Eichlos ]So I’ve been wondering this for a while now, how permanent is injury in the Neath?

I know that you can come back from the dead. I know that under the right circumstances you can eat things that should kill you. I know that you can even have your head lopped off and come back. But what stuff stays and what doesn’t and what determines that?

I know that after so much or so long some individuals stop coming back right or just give up the will to live. As far as I can tell that is why the tomb colonies exist. But there have to be steps before that, because the FL mentions people with missing eyes and horrible scars and other things.

So what heals and what doesn’t?

And as I’m guessing there isn’t an absolute answer to this, I’ll take people opinions.[/quote]
Generally, your ability to heal relies on the ability of the mender. Nevertheless, while death is easy to mend, other stuff isn’t. If someone drives a bullet through you, your body can heal with it pulled out and quality stitching, but if they sent it through an eyeball- they can’t get it functional again. You might survive, even brain injuries can be healed, but bit by bit there’s more damage than you can heal, or you’re a little dead.

I believe that having your head lopped off is actually pretty reliably lethal for non-seekers, and that’s ritual and dark magics. Generally speaking, unless you go to the really special parts, you can’t heal nearly as much as you’d think. if someone kills you and rips off your arm, then stitches it back on- you’ll get scars that won’t heal. if they rip said arm to shreds- there goes that arm. in other words, in london you can recover from wounds if you put all the parts back together, but you can’t gain new parts?

3

The tomb colonists did not gave up, just the opposite, they are those who never died or came back every time. The ones who die permanently in the Neath are apparently on the far shore.
As for injuries, I think it’s a simple matter of fixing them up, bones and skin can heal, an arm and even a head can be sewn back, I’d say it’s a matter of circumstance.

4

Many tomb colonists seem to be in the process of decomposing. I’m not sure how they fit into this whole picture.

5

Presumably, they died-or-aged enough that their fate is inevitable- though anyone sufficiently maimed probably also qualifies for a permanant trip to the tomb-colonies.

6

Well… The Contrarian is in a wheelchair. I am not sure if it was from an injury or pre-Neath event, but it shows that the Neath does not automatically mean that you will heal to perfect health.

7

I imagine it’s something like this: if I slit open your throat or your stomach, things will heal back together and you’ll be left with an impressive new scar.

But if I cut off your arm or head, or rip out one of your eyes, you won’t grow a new arm, head, or eye. ;)

I think it was said somewhere that illnesses/diseases are more dangerous than injuries. So, if the Contrarian’s state is due to spinal damage, I’d wager it was more likely caused by a disease of the nervous system than by someone throwing him under a carriage years before.

Though the healing of more serious injuries, like a broken spine, might well take long enough to actually necessitate some time spent in a wheelchair.

It is stated clearly that most Tomb-colonists ended up there because the other Londoners simply couldn’t stand their sight anymore. So, if Jack-of-Smiles cuts you to shreds real bad, you would be able to heal well enough to continue your life in London. But people won’t allow you to - for aesthetic reasons!

8

I wonder how that works with Cider people. That’s not an suggestion to hurt people, by the way.

9

Life in the Neath is just undeath, which makes us all varying states of zombies and the Tomb-Colonies particularly damaged zombies.

Hespiderean Cider grants you True Immortality. You don’t &quotcome back&quot from death, death is an impossibility for you. In the same way Feducci can come back from getting chopped into little tiny bits, you can just come back from anything. It’s Vitality, Life Everlasting, a taste of the Continent.

Neath’s particularly brand of death being funny comes because its out of the reach of Judgements. They would LOVE to see every Neather die (with minor implications that even the Far Country in the Neath isn’t exactly the afterlife, just another hold-over). That is, biology is screaming at you that you should die, but Human will predominates over death except for the light of the Judgements. The Boatman is trying to take you, therefore, but your will to live (and negotiations with the Boatman) are preventing it.

If I haven’t beaten this horse dead, I’ll recapitulate that on the Continent, you aren’t simply &quotnot dying&quot. A Hespiderean is filled Vitality, the life and energy of the sun and the Mountain. As a consequence, a Presbyterate can go to the surface if they cared to, so can a Hespiderean, because you are not dead, Biology does not demand your death, etc.

10

A food export from the Elder Continent would do wonders. But we have so little to trade for that.

11

[quote=Addis Rook][quote=ExcArc]
If I haven’t beaten this horse dead, I’ll recapitulate that on the Continent, you aren’t simply &quotnot dying&quot. A Hespiderean is filled Vitality, the life and energy of the sun and the Mountain. As a consequence, a Presbyterate can go to the surface if they cared to, so can a Hespiderean, because you are not dead, Biology does not demand your death, etc.[/quote]

So there would be no traces of the Mountain’s existence in them? I was wondering if that would nullify their immortality upon going back to the surface if that was the case…[/quote]
The Mountain’s vitality is the same as the sun’s, just more… overflowing. A result of packing that much vitality into a much smaller space. I don’t believe someone touched by Stone would be bothered by the sun. I’m not sure, however.