[quote=a Nice Friend]Is there anything that could even hint at the noman mystery?
I’m not answering ‘Mr Sacks’ because he is clearly a nobat. (If Sacks is the answer I will call my lawyer)[/quote]
Well, nomen are made from lacre…these lacre constructs exist outside and independent of the original body…and a certain someone was drowned in pure lacre…and exists independent of their original body…
Of course, your original objection still somewhat applies there.
[quote=a Nice Friend]Is there anything that could even hint at the noman mystery?
I’m not answering ‘Mr Sacks’ because he is clearly a nobat. (If Sacks is the answer I will call my lawyer)[/quote]
I think the various Sacks have been referred to as nomans
My problem with Sacks, though, is that it is actually several different Nomans, meaning that we have to pick one out specifically. The best bet is, probably, “Mr. Eaten,” or “Mr. Eaten’s Noman.”
I suspect we’ll learn a but more about this particular subject with the coming Sacksmas.
[quote=Indigo Clardmond][quote=a Nice Friend]Is there anything that could even hint at the noman mystery?
I’m not answering ‘Mr Sacks’ because he is clearly a nobat. (If Sacks is the answer I will call my lawyer)[/quote]
Well, nomen are made from lacre…these lacre constructs exist outside and independent of the original body…and a certain someone was drowned in pure lacre…and exists independent of their original body…
Of course, your original objection still somewhat applies there.[/quote]
I have wondered about this just like everyone else, so here’s what I’ve built up for - and against - the idea so far.
Spoilers below for everything to do with Sacksmas, in case players who’ve not yet played it through are still looking up this thread in December 2017.
There is AFAIK no text to directly suggest the first noman (all right, nobat) could have been Mr. Eaten, but there is a chain of rather wild conjecture.
Reasons to believe:
Why is there any guest appearance as Mr. Sacks by the very last person the Masters would want to see? It suggests to me that at a certain time of year, Mr. Eaten’s lacre revenant can’t be prevented from rising up and offering Fallen Citizens its ‘gifts’, and the Masters are trying to hide a tree in a forest by creating similar nomen of their own.
For this to be near the mark, the genesis of this particular noman would have had to be grim serendipity for the Masters. They can’t have known it was a risk, implying that it had never happened until then – thus making Mr. Eaten’s noman the first of its kind. And now they can neither safely retrieve what’s left of their former crony, nor stop it from oozing into the lacre and raising a noman (but what causes it to happen at this particular time of year? Is a rather grim anniversary? I’ve no clue).
Reasons for scepticism:
The encounter with this particular noman is dreamlike and ambiguous - even the colours of Sacks’ robes are reversed - and the perpetrator has previous form when it comes to manipulating dreams. In some choices you rise from your bed to meet him, but you could easily be sleepwalking. And a pile of ‘snow’ on the windowsill next morning is not hard proof that anything was ever physically there.
Also, it seems unlikely that no-one tried mixing blood and lacre before this, and people/creatures who just drown in lacre seem to die without becoming nomen*. Perhaps a ritual element is necessary. Creating a noman means shedding one’s own blood with a Skyglass Knife, a black glass blade used in Seeking to such an extent that it seems likely that the priest-kings of the Third City used similar tools on Candles (there is a real-life Mesoamerican counterpart to Skyglass Knives, the Tecpatl). And ‘black glass’ in the Neath is likely to come from a powerful source.
Of course, the Skyglass Knife is also the only cheap-ish edged weapon that can be bought at any time at Carrow’s, and using one’s own blood to seal a magical rite is a very old idea, so all this may be an elaborately-sculpted pile of bat droppings. And not everything can or should be traced back to Mr. Eaten, surely. And although it was a question in the last Mysteries, we still don’t know where he is.
The first Noman almost certainly was not Eaten!Sacks for two reasons. First, the Day 9 encounter seems to be a dream. Second, the Twelve Days of Mr Sacks wasn’t the original Christmas content. At first there was only one visit from Mr Sacks each year without any obvious connection to a specific Master.
So Mr Sacks could well be the first Noman, but if so, we don’t know whose Noman.
The first noman might not necessarily even take after a Master (Fate-locked Sacksmas Urchin path spoilers).
Clearly the first noman was just a giant snow-Bazaar.
Oh, what the freaking heck.
[li]
But that’s Mr Veils’ day, since the non-Fate options all involve you trading fabric for Wild Words. Isn’t that just a node to the Vake?
It’s unlikely at best that Sunless Sea content would be key to any of the mysteries, but perhaps there’s something in the Snow Child branch of the Delivery for Mr Sacks questline which could lend further credence to an existing theory?
But that’s Mr Veils’ day, since the non-Fate options all involve you trading fabric for Wild Words. Isn’t that just a node to the Vake?[/quote]It definitely struck me as Veils-like, even without knowing about the rags-for-wild-words trades. The offer of "rags and riches" is one clue. The other clues tie into Hojotoho and the Mysteries of the Foreign Office.
Specifically, "I require the choir! I long for the song!" and "this one served a power that consumes. The worst that walks the roof-tops". On the rooftop of the Foreign Office, the Face sings to the Vake with their choir of urchins. Recruitment to the choir is conducted by the Songbird Initiative, whose agents are known to the Urchins as "Mister Songbird", a child-stealing boogeyman.
Tanget: how about some wild speculation about those twelve syllables?
But that’s Mr Veils’ day, since the non-Fate options all involve you trading fabric for Wild Words. Isn’t that just a node to the Vake?[/quote]
Yes, that’s exactly what the power there is. I linked it more for what the urchin says in general regarding nomen, not so much for the particular one here.
That’s the "Why are there no foxes in the city?" question. The linked page claims that the answer (that Mr Cups denied them dominion over scraps, giving it to the rats instead) was obscure but obliquely hinted at, but even knowing the answer I have no idea where these hints were. Does anyone know where the reason for the lack of foxes was mentioned in-game?
The first Noman was obviously the Noman themselves.
Why would we think otherwise…?
bolts upright
Does the Neathbow even exist? How can it appear without-
falls asleep again
Hyper-mega-ultra spoilers for this month’s Exceptional Story, “The Attendants”.
[spoiler]The Obstinate Adoratrice is the last Adoratrice of Amun in the Second City. The real-world ushabti leads to a statue of “the last priestess of Amun in the city of the faithless”. This is unambiguous confirmation that the Second City is/was Akhetaten, founded by Akenhaten as the seat of his monotheistic solar cult of Aten. Akenhaten prohibited anthropomorphic depictions of the Aten, commanding that the image of the sun disk be used instead. The Antiquarian’s manor contains no images of anthropomorphic deities, and many images of the sun.
“When still on the Surface, she quarreled with her father and was banished.” She insisted on continuing to revere Amun. Past pharaohs had claimed that they were descended from Amun; Akenhaten claimed to be not only the child of the Aten, but also a full incarnation of the Aten upon the earth.
“This Palace was to be a refuge, a place where the citizens of the Second City could walk beneath a new sun… She maintains this place even though she did not approve of its construction.” The Palace was designed for and by the cult of Aten to be a place of sunlight.
What if the Palace is a prototype of the Dawn Machine?
What if the Aten, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers, is also the Dawn Machine, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers?
The Fulgent Impeller is built around an Element of Dawn and awakened with the sacrifice of a sage into its burning heart. What if the Dawn Machine was born in the same way? What if the original architect of the Dawn Machine, and perhaps the sage burning at its heart, is none other than the Pharaoh Akenhaten, his claims of solar divinity finally realized?[/spoiler]
What is the Great Game played for?
Paris. It’s always Paris.
For all the people arguing that the Wings-of-Thunder Bat is Mr. Hearts: isn’t it better to say the former on the off-chance we’re wrong? When uncertain, it is best to be as broad as you can reasonably be. Even if Mr. Hearts uses that term as an alias, it would still be accurate. In fact, I’d argue that the correct answer is definitely "wings-of-thunder bat" purely because that is how everyone refers to it.
edited by Saklad5 on 7/27/2017
Where is the University’s library located in Fallen London? I’m nearly certain I saw some mention of it on multiple occasions, each involving theft.
The reason I ask: in the real world, that Library is located in Bloomsbury. If we could get confirmation that the University library is on Lusitania Road, that would be compelling proof for the answer.
I am all but certain that Lusitania Row is Picadilly. Lusitania is a Roman name for Portugal. A Row is a street (as opposed to a circus). Picadilly used to be called Portugal Street.
edited by genesis on 7/27/2017
[quote=Anchovies]Hyper-mega-ultra spoilers for this month’s Exceptional Story, "The Attendants".
[spoiler]The Obstinate Adoratrice is the last Adoratrice of Amun in the Second City. The real-world ushabti leads to a statue of "the last priestess of Amun in the city of the faithless". This is unambiguous confirmation that the Second City is/was Akhetaten, founded by Akenhaten as the seat of his monotheistic solar cult of Aten. Akenhaten prohibited anthropomorphic depictions of the Aten, commanding that the image of the sun disk be used instead. The Antiquarian’s manor contains no images of anthropomorphic deities, and many images of the sun.
"When still on the Surface, she quarreled with her father and was banished." She insisted on continuing to revere Amun. Past pharaohs had claimed that they were descended from Amun; Akenhaten claimed to be not only the child of the Aten, but also a full incarnation of the Aten upon the earth.
"This Palace was to be a refuge, a place where the citizens of the Second City could walk beneath a new sun… She maintains this place even though she did not approve of its construction." The Palace was designed for and by the cult of Aten to be a place of sunlight.
What if the Palace is a prototype of the Dawn Machine?
What if the Aten, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers, is also the Dawn Machine, a sun-god created whole-cloth by its worshippers?
The Fulgent Impeller is built around an Element of Dawn and awakened with the sacrifice of a sage into its burning heart. What if the Dawn Machine was born in the same way? What if the original architect of the Dawn Machine, and perhaps the sage burning at its heart, is none other than the Pharaoh Akenhaten, his claims of solar divinity finally realized?[/spoiler][/quote]
That sounds incredibly unlikely to me, but I don’t actually know enough for a solid counterargument. A great theory though!
One thing I noticed in the ES was a use of the phrase "open the mirrors" but the context seemed to be completely different. Also, you should check someone’s journal for the other translation - there’s a few differences that might be relevant.
There’s also a reference to the House of the Feather, which (as far as I can tell) has only been mentioned in a SSkies update as one of the ports you can use as a home base.