March's Exceptional Story: The Clay Man's Arm

I really loved this story! I kept it (the echo of the epilogue is journaled) and I must say, the dangerous increase was much less than expected.

It is always deeply disappointing when I fail to be able to echo part of a story (or in this case even READ part of the story) because my internet isn’t very solid and the page doesn’t load.

Haven’t played the story yet, but it seems the quality tracking the clay-ness of your arm after the ES ends is set to 2 if you keep the clay arm, and to 1 if you don’t.

You always end up with a spare clay arm, which I think is disappointing for those who wanna show off their partial non-human musculature according to canon.

I must say, I was a tad disappointed that getting the Fallen London equivalent of a bionic arm gave such a small boost. Still, a nice insight into a past quest, and I felt rather bad about being so Ruthless at the end. Looking forward to dramatically punching through a wall in a future ES.

This isn’t so much a comment about the ES as it is a comment about the season, but boy howdy am I looking forward to the remainder of this season. As one involved somewhat…intimately with the Revolutionary cause, I enjoyed the Season of Revolutions…but another Seasonal rotation dealing with injustice and the transgression/upholding of boundaries? And then the 1895 election soon to come after that? Hoo-boy, things are going to get interesting. Hotshot won’t be content with only the elites going to the Wilderness after all…

Now, with this particular story:

[spoiler]I thought it was decent and slightly informative if a little direct and with few options overall - a bit like the Clay Men themselves I suspect. As a whole though it’s not quite…uh, well, what I expected or really hoped for from an ES with this premise. Not enough interaction with the Theseusian Clay Man or going into the implications of his name/your situation for one: the Theseus Paradox and the question of whether your ‘self’ in Fallen London is determined by your body, your mind, your soul, or something…else is really fascinating but the in-story elements I felt were too subtle or nonpresent to register. Ditto with the whole ‘Clay Man beginning to self-liberate’ premise. The perception I got through it was a focus on mild body horror more than philosophical questions of the self and the body OR sociopolitical questions of challenging one’s position in the status quo and the nascent difficulties of organizing resistance.

The beginning situation with the room and your experiences with the clay arm were nicely done, and I wished more checks like those would have been done in the story. I have never experienced the replacement of a limb (or other part of my body), but from my limited position it seems like an honest attempt to portray the feeling of having a replacement body part: difficulty, awkwardness, thinking differently about formerly routine actions, even describing the act of covering up so that no one will know you are marked in such a way. Sharing more of that experience with your actions during the story and/or with the Theseusian Clay Man’s experience would have been interesting. Just two people, sharing each other’s limbs, making (very) small talk with each other.

We don’t need or should expect stories from every personality we meet, but certainly it would have been interesting to know more about the Clay Doctor (was that the title? IDK), especially in the context of the whole ‘ship of theseus’ thing: I have to admit I was waiting for him to be a a person that succeeded in full-clay transmutation. As is, we don’t know that much about him other than doctor doing some weird stuff with clay and flesh, to people unwilling to volunteer themselves. And either way, he ends up likely smashed to pieces. No saving him the same way we could save the Mechanic in December’s ES, huh?

The Clay Men uprising and organizing and figuring out how to resist under the constraints of their own ideological(-metaphysical?) belief sets would have been so cool to explore and I’m not knocking this story for not covering that but…I’m slightly knocking this story for not covering that. We got there a bit with the Earthy Proselytizing and a few snippets here and there but not enough. Will their rumbles of dissent only foment quietly in the background? Can we do nothing to show our support/opposition when the flashpoint eventually sparks and there’s blood in the streets and stories?[/spoiler]
edited by Hotshot Blackburn on 2/23/2017

Overall, I liked it. Thematically, it worked well with the implications of transgressing the Great Chain through a kind of piecemeal effort. I appreciated the reference to the Comtessa’s story as well.

I’m going to say this about ES’s in general though, their lack of mechanics is really getting a little old. I understand you’ve got to write for an audience with a variety of character stats, but if the solution to that is just another story of clicking through 5 dialog options to move to the next set of 5 dialog options, it’s kind of boring. I understand that these are stories, ultimately, but if I just wanted to click through and read, I’d buy a book. I play Fallen London because I like narrative games, and these premium stories are heavy on narrative, light on gameplay. It’s surprising because many Fate stories have a good blend of both. Is it the time crunch aspect in development? If the ES model necessitates gameplay light stories, it gets a little hard to justify the cost. I mean, I like them, they break up the end game grind, but they are pretty shallow.

To be more constructive, I feel like stories like 12:15 from Moloch St and the one about the play from last season handled this reasonably well, while the Gate Prophet and this current one were pretty weak in that regard.

So, as I expressed in the chat this story felt cool but unfinished. Much like the concerns of our poor clayman. I really wanted more stuff about how identity mirrors the form and vice versa.

Poor Dirae Wanted to help those clayman because now they are having terrible flashbacks to their childhood and all in all is not having a great time. And also to yell at the servants for not helping them before they smashed all the china.

For some reason I only seem to be able to echo the &quotFind out what’s happening in your city&quot results about the Urchins. The other results display just fine in the browser but trying to echo them just brings up the Urchins result.

Also, in the initial getting-ready event it’s possible to raise Morning Tasks to 4, locking the other options even if you still want to get failure results.

Unlike the other leads in the case, A Lead: Injured, or Broken doesn’t have a unique message when gained, and there’s a missing word in the message for investigating it. There’s also no message for losing A Lead: Unrest and Agitation.

It’s possible to ask the Theseusian who did the surgery multiple times.
edited by Optimatum on 2/23/2017

Not a fan of this story overall. It felt extremely lacking compared to the previous ones. The concept was interesting, but the execution was poor.

There was basically no way I’d have given the arm back. Sorry, Theseusian. The novelty of having a bionic arm in the 19th century was too great.

I am really bad at using this arm. I don’t know how many actions I’ve spent. 15 maybe? And all I’ve managed to achieve is lighting the fire. Really enjoying this opening sequence, but man my luck is bad.

Can someone PM me the mechanics of the choice about the arm?

Oh my stars, that was dark.

Yeah…keeping the arm actually made me feel bad. Wow

Like bad enough to consider resetting the story when available.

Also, I seem to have two clay arms. Am I just symmetrical? Did I steal one on my way out? Did I not need to steal one?

1- you swapped arms again
2- you kept the clay arm

It was probably suppose to be a quality.

I doubt I’m the first one to think this, but the start of this Exceptional Story was Kafkaesque as hell.[li]
edited by Saklad5 on 2/24/2017

It did take me a few actions to realise that the events described were actually happening.

Ive solved the case in LadyBones road and got this records : An Ossifying Clay Arm 5 - Your clay arm is numb and rigid and
Disapproving of a Surgery 20 - You have concluded the Case of the Clay Arm. That is it? You need to finish the case in Ladybones Road and you finish your exceptional story?

No arm, no rewards? Or Im not finished yet?

Sorry found the next part of the exceptional story.