“The gas lamp could very well be the symbol of London — a light against the darkness. But it is malodorous, wasteful, and still barely keeps the gloom at bay. I see another London: one that no longer has to huddle in the dark.”
The Illuminating Futurist has a bright vision for London – a city of light and prosperity. But the future of the Fifth City is contested by fierce and mighty powers, and they are rarely kind to competition. Secure funding for the Futurist’s invention from the sometimes-great and almost-good, weigh the betterment of the people against the interests of capital, decide the future of this Miraculous Device, and – perhaps – blow something up.
In addition to a new, substantial, stand-alone story every month, Exceptional Friends enjoy:
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How dare you rest the conclusion of the story on a thrice damned chance based on some arbitrary stat that I hadn’t even known existed up until that very instant. Bloody hell, I thought you’d learned your lesson from the garbage that was Borrowed Glory, but apparently not. So now my superhuman skills of persuasion are completely meaningless because I don’t have enough of some random stat that I have no idea how I could have gotten any more of. Blow off, you taffers, This story is rubbish.
And even beyond that, this story had very little substance to it. Much like Borrowed Glory, without the crap it would have been merely forgettable. It had one or two amusing descriptions, and a couple fairly interesting concepts that it did very little with, and that’s about it. Bloody hell, this is what I get for the month of my birthday? I should have just stayed in Jericho and spent those actions salvaging crates, that would have been a more interesting and engaging use of them. What dreck.
I liked this story a lot, but unfortunately Stanley wasn’t skilled enough to achieve their goals in going through it :c I wonder what I could have done to Mr Fires had things gone my way! Is there any way to find out? I know we’re not supposed to share locked content but I am already a monthly subscriber.
I took a neutral path (ie not for revolutionaries or master), or at least the closest to it I had available.
At least I got a chance to insult Mr. Fires, who was fuming in rage after a successful monstrous anatomy skill check near the end, and destroy the machine personally after I failed to persuade the inventor to do it. Granted, I got overwhelmed by his little minions after I destroyed the machine, and that increased my wounds by a little. The inventor wasn’t even mad about it, and possibly because I encouraged his spirit, he moved on to other ideas as he considered this one flawed anyway, just with a more pragmatic approach to his invention in the future. Crackling device was my reward for it
This was a really good story (I almost assumed this was Nikola Tesla at first, rather than a neat inventor). I enjoyed another chance to flirtatiously bully Mr. Fires (this is for trying to take my child, a*****e). I did find it a little frightening to see the RNG aspects at the end, as that lack of control can really suck sometimes. I’m lucky to have fervently supported both the Futurist and the Revolutionaries at this point (yes, I know that’s you in the dark, August); every single check ended up swinging hard in my favor because of it. All-around a really good time and a very fun story about social change and the relation to technology, although the riskiness of needing to know exactly who you will support to manipulate the odds in your favor, while making sense from a story perspective, can be difficult to balance properly from a gameplay one. This was, unfortunately, rather obvious in this story. I bid the Failbetter team good fortune on their April story!
I enjoyed this one a lot! I liked the commentary on the interaction between people, progress and power, and I liked the moments of levity. I also liked recruiting the Futurist to the Revolution after blasting Fires halfway to Hell. Well, not actually halfway to Hell - that would be somewhere around Station VIII, and it won’t be going there anytime soon - not with its dirigible in the state it’s in.
Being a complete b*stard, I set out to sell the man out to Mr. Fires from the beginning and succeeded. I could practically hear the game screaming at me to please pick any choice, any other choice, but alas-my experiences on the Railway have cultivated a violent spite against the working-class man while my experiences hunting Mr. Veils (and the bitter lamentations of those disappointed in the monetary reward) have helped me embrace being a monster.
The only reason I even bothered to persuade him to work with Fires was because Fires himself didn’t seem to actually want the thing for anything other than basic principle and hey, even if I’m far from the idealist I feel a lot of ESes want you to be I can appreciate a good lightshow.
I liked this story. Very good point that technological changes without social changes could not bring bright future to as. This is correct both for the Fallen London and for real life.
Maybe my good experience is connected to the fact that I won RNG challenges. Merely week ago I promised to Mr. Fires (during the meeting in “Light Fingures” ambition) that I’ll murder him, and now… well, I did not managed with that, but attempt was glorious!
Much, much better than Stolen Stanzas, those story was quite poor, IMO (have not played Hollow Triptych yet).
I was so uninvested in this one that I think I must have missed the part where I could convince the Futurist to fight Fires; it was brought up as a possibility so I assumed it was possible but it never came up.
