As far as I can tell, it’s not so much that light enforces law, as that it is law. This is just one of the basic defining facts about reality in the universe, and is why the Liberation of Night requires the destruction of all light.
Which is true of all light, but sunlight more than most because it’s straight from a Judgement.
My working theory for the Neathbow is that things are the colour that they are, but something about the Neath allows humans to see further into the radio spectrum than ought to otherwise be possible. Has anyone ever successfully brought a Neathbow-coloured item to the Surface, I wonder?
The single-lens reflex (SLR) camera, invented in 1861 and put into commercial production in 1884, uses a mirror. NO PHOTOGRAPHY. VIOLATORS WILL BE DEVOURED.
But how might Fingerkings react to being photographed? I think I have an idea.
Fingerkings are from Parabola, the place where "is-not" is.
Fingerkings can reach the Neath through mirrors.
A person possessed (or otherwise body-snatched) by Fingerkings has reptilian eyes.
The Gallery of Serpents is a prison for "Many-Fingered Kings", filled with wooden sculptures of unnatural creatures.
What if Fingerkings travel through the Neath by means of depiction? Mirrors present an image of the world; Fingerkings enter the world through mirrors. Eyes present an image to the mind; if someone has lost their mind to Fingerkings, the serpentine influence can be seen in their eyes. A wooden sculpture presents a frozen, immobile image of a thing; Fingerkings can be imprisoned in a place of wooden sculptures. A dream can be made real in an image. Might the same be true of the Many-Fingered Kings?
A photograph is a static image, and may thus be able to imprison Fingerkings in the same manner as a wooden sculpture. An SLR camera would transport the Fingerking to a mirror, from which it could escape back to Parabola before its image was projected onto the film.
So the best way to shoot a Fingerking might involve no bullets at all.[/quote]
I have to compliment this idea, though. It noticed a connection between a lot of content I haven’t seen brought up elsewhere.
It’s worth bringing up:
The statuettes used to trap Fingerkings by the Genial Magician are specifically referred to as Serpent-Images, which is definitely a point for the images-carry-power-over-Is-Not idea.
The Genial Magician also mentions that the statuette he finds has ‘different geometries’, which indicates an involvement of some further baroque variable needed to trap Fingerkings.
Several other results indicate that the statuette, even when empty, influences your dreams unless you remove every single mirrors on the ship.
Spiritual photography doesn’t mention any sort of haunting dreams in the results, even when failing the challenge, which seems to go against the idea that photographs carry the same amount of fingerking-trapping potential as Serpent-Images and the Gallery of Serpents. Is it due to a lack of resemblance and/or the appropriate ‘geometries’? Snakes are fairly well-known for disguising as reflections of fairly commonplace objects, such as the Nephrite Lens.
Obviously not, but there is a difference between a random drawing or picture of a snake, which doesn’t affect your dreams and isn’t able to capture serpents; an empty Serpent-Image, which does both of the above; and a Serpent-Image filled with the Fingerking it depicts, which means it contains the Fingerking (I know, shocking) and makes engines it’s attached to go reallyfastsometimes.
It’s a three-stage process. edited by Vavakx Nonexus on 8/3/2017
Another issue with the first plan is that reasonable places to strike are few an far between: They do not fully exist in the Neath, and sunlight both cannot be transported and would lose its power in Parabola. This leaves you with Hell (and possibly Irem) as your main option for firing location, which isn’t exactly great.
Hell is currently untouched by the dream-snakes, and will only be visited in large numbers during the Bishop of Southwark’s destiny.
Irem, while unhinged from time, still only connects to the fully-Is-Not Mirror-Marches, a transition that I doubt your sunlight will be able to pass potently. Another problem is that the transition requires help from the local Riddle-Fishers, who I doubt would be keen on letting you attempt it.[/quote]
There are various ways of getting into Parabola. The Carnival has a way in, through a mirror, and the cats would share with me a way in, if I informed them of my plans to fight alongside them. Less smart, but more awesome ways involve charging through a Wandering Mirage, or purchasing the designs for an armoured car from Hell, building it, reinforcing its armour with normal law, and driving straight through the Writhing River.
Parabola is all well and good, but I take issue with the issue of fighting the Liberation. If Bag a Legend, the Liberation Destiny, and what we know of the Device from Luminosity conversions is any indicator, the bo…the Device is as in the OP analog to an antimatter device. Even if you could get the munitions manufactured in sufficient quantity, and even if you could find wherever it is the Liberationists are building the thing, it wouldn’t destroy the Device so much as set the thing off prematurely. Which…wouldn’t do much to Parabola, although it would set back efforts and require rebuilding. And trying to stop the people working to fight the greatest evil in the setting is just plain silly. :V
Also, with regard to firing locations - don’t forget the Nadir! It’s close by metageographically, and it’s the place all the cool cats with Big Plans for Parabola want to get their hands on.
Greatest evil… the stars are not evil. Not good, either. Lawful Chaotic, yes, but Fingerkings are straight-up Chaotic, along with the Liberation and Anarchists.
Another issue with the first plan is that reasonable places to strike are few an far between: They do not fully exist in the Neath, and sunlight both cannot be transported and would lose its power in Parabola. This leaves you with Hell (and possibly Irem) as your main option for firing location, which isn’t exactly great.
Hell is currently untouched by the dream-snakes, and will only be visited in large numbers during the Bishop of Southwark’s destiny.
Irem, while unhinged from time, still only connects to the fully-Is-Not Mirror-Marches, a transition that I doubt your sunlight will be able to pass potently. Another problem is that the transition requires help from the local Riddle-Fishers, who I doubt would be keen on letting you attempt it.[/quote]
There are various ways of getting into Parabola. The Carnival has a way in, through a mirror, and the cats would share with me a way in, if I informed them of my plans to fight alongside them. Less smart, but more awesome ways involve charging through a Wandering Mirage, or purchasing the designs for an armoured car from Hell, building it, reinforcing its armour with normal law, and driving straight through the Writhing River.[/quote]
I can’t comment on mirages one way or the other, due to how little we know about them, but entering the Writhing River in Hunter’s Keep should definitely work. It has snakes for days, isn’t protected beyond the three sisters (who aren’t affiliated with snakes, and will let you in for some stories), and is a liminal location - ‘sharing a border with Parabola’ - like Hell does.
It almost sounds like it’d be better to try and come up with a poison of some sort for them. Is it known what castigator venom does to creatures of parabola?
I would also like to mention that the mechanic from sunless sea has a repeatable way to set up a trap for fingerkings, involving a mirror-catch box, a clay man, and several crew members. Doing so contaminates that item with viric. I wonder what would happen if they were exposed to say Violant or Peligan colors.
…What if we carved the bullets from Mountain shards? It seems like an ideal candidate for carving correspondence into, and could hold many more sigils than normal materials. It is part-judgement, after all. What better material than a piece of a quasi-judgement? It seems like it’s just the right amount of illegal to possibly even pass through mirrors effectively with.
We could also try setting up a sunlight collection system on Aestival, concentrate it into a laser, and formulate a network of mirrors to London for a source of fresh and potent sunlight ready for decompressing and utilization… A bit of a project, but it’s still an idea. It could even stabilize the positions of the islands of the Neath, and give us a weapon against Hell as well.
One question I have though, is could you even pass sunlight/correspondence through a mirror? Sunlight and Parabola are anathema to each other, after all. edited by Addis Rook on 8/10/2017
All this talk about Correspondence bullets makes me wonder if a Neathy adaptation of DerFreischütz would be successful. The first six bullets strike true, the seventh melts the cast, the audience, and the theatre.
[quote=Addis Rook]…What if we carved the bullets from Mountain shards? It seems like an ideal candidate for carving correspondence into, and could hold many more sigils than normal materials. It is part-judgement, after all. What better material than a piece of a quasi-judgement? It seems like it’s just the right amount of illegal to possibly even pass through mirrors effectively with.
We could also try setting up a sunlight collection system on Aestival, concentrate it into a laser, and formulate a network of mirrors to London for a source of fresh and potent sunlight ready for decompressing and utilization… A bit of a project, but it’s still an idea. It could even stabilize the positions of the islands of the Neath, and give us a weapon against Hell as well.
One question I have though, is could you even pass sunlight/correspondence through a mirror? Sunlight and Parabola are anathema to each other, after all. edited by Addis Rook on 8/10/2017[/quote]
Running with that so to speak, the center of the post office island in sunless sea might be usable as well.