Names of the fallen cities

Sunless Sea
21

I’ve just had a moment of smacking my head at having missed a vital clue. I popped by Visage to do the usual run, and found the text describing the great face, Flourishing-of-Years, as having been built by a noble in tribute to a lady who, in an ambiguous translation, ascended, bloomed or flew away. My significant-name sense twitched and I ran a search for Flourishing-of-Years - at least according to some sources, it’s one of the names of the Pharaoh Hatshepsut.

As it happens, I was listening to a podcast about Hatshepsut a couple of days ago - we don’t know as much as we might about her, but she’s certainly a fascinating figure. If Visage is her Neathy city, well, it’s entirely possible that this monument-minded noble who was fond of his pharaoh was Senenmut, her steward and chief architect. Among other things, they’re known for having built the twin obelisks of Karnak - I was wondering not too long ago why there were twin obelisks in one piece of SS story art. Senenmut’s been theorised to have been Hatshepsut’s lover - there’s not much evidence for this (more power to 'em if they were, of course - no skin off my nose), but as a loyal minister who rose considerably in status during her reign, he’d have every reason to be dedicated to her either way.

Story-wise, there’s two major issues that stand out here. One: if we’re assuming that the Second City was Akhetaten/Armana, as seems thoroughly probable, well… Hatshepsut preceded Akhenaten by a good hundred years. That means that, if she was in the Neath, she didn’t come there through the deal that led to the Second City’s Fall. So, how? No idea. Oh, but she did claim to be the worldly incarnation of the god Amun, whose various divine portfolios included the sun… though possibly not until later; this is thoroughly not my area of expertise. In any case, there’s parallels with both Akhenaten and with Varchas. The second issue is that ascending/blooming/flying away sounds awfully like the &quotemergence&quot that Tomb-Colonists experience. If present-day Tomb-Colonist practices date back to the pharaohs… well, it gives the bandages an amusing aptness.

Currently, assuming that Thebes is still where it’s supposed to be and not in fact in the Neath, I’m looking into whether Hatshepsut was responsible for any sites that included a temple, a nilometer, and perhaps even a library. Medinet Habu fits the bill, but, barring the temple, I’ve no idea how many of those features were from her lifetime and how many were added later. Could be Elephantine - island site, sacred to Khnum, known for its cache of papyri. Or, it could be entirely fictitious. I must go back to Visage on a fresh character, and look at all the content one gets locked out of once one’s played it through.

22

Well, lets look at the descriptions of city relics that Fallen London references.

First city is a coin with a cedar tree on one side and unknown script on the other. Others have suggested Tell Brak, Nagar, or the Phoenicians. If the first city is tied to Polythreme as Bardigan said, that island certainly has a Mediterranean/Near East feel to it. Personally I suspect a Sumerian city, possible Uruk. The cedar tree features prominently in Mesopotamian mythology and the Epic of Gilgamesh references and an underworld that is a &quothouse of dust&quot and darkness whose inhabitants eat clay, and are clothed in bird feathers, supervised by terrifying beings. Enkidu, one of the main characters in that epic was made of clay in the story and ventures into the underworld. In the Epic clay appears again and again as a symbol for life and death and as the substance from which all living things are made.

Second city is gypsum heads and indecipherable clay tablets. Amarna/Akhetaten seems pretty definitive since one city was certainly Egyptian. Also since the Egyptians didn’t favor cedar trees as a symbol on coinage the first city seems unlikely to be theirs.

Third city is cinnabar beads and little square granite gods. If you investigate the relic further in Fallen London you awaken remembering something about &quotblack mirrors&quot which while very vague, could be Varchas’ mirrors. Cinnabar as jewelry has been unfortunately common throughout history and doesn’t really narrow it down. The square granite gods doesn’t really match descriptions of southern Asian art styles and as other have pointed out is much more likely to be Mesoamerican.

Fourth city is horsehead amulets carved from bone and blue-glazed postsherds. Since the Fourth city and Forgotten Quarter are definitely Karakorum, that makes sense. The Fallen Quarter and the silver tree fountain match the description of the Khan’s palace.

To agree with what others have said, I think that Varchas is definitely a fallen city but its fall does not appear to be related to the business of the Bazaar.
edited by EscapeZeppelin on 1/14/2015

23

Just to give a little add-on to EZ’s post, the aforementioned &quotblack mirrors&quot of the Third City probably relate to the obsidian mirrors of the Aztecs, like the one allegedly owned by English occultist John Dee, claimed to have originated from the Mexica when the Spaniards conquered and pilfered Mesoamerica. Another clue that supports the Mesoamerican-Third City claim.
On the subject of the First City, a certain love affair in FL does seem to be oddly reminiscent of the Gilgamesh-Enkidu relationship…
edited by Bardigan on 1/14/2015

24

Is there a thread somewhere theorizing about the drowned buildings without a port? I’m thinking about that collection of square temples (same as the ones on Venderbight) in the middle of the map, the mushroom domed building above the coral clustered Eye that’s identical to Lower Barnet, plus the Labyrinth of Eels, the other set of temples in the SE quadrant with the glowy lava cracks, and those open pits near Whither (I have screencaps comparing the first two).
Those could be generic art for buildings/temples, of course, but I had thought Barnet was somewhere in London Above, so how that architectural style would be present somewhere near that eye is perplexing. I’m not even sure of what that round thing is; I feel that domes don’t look like that around London - there’s no steeple and only a bunch of bumps (which may be encrustations from the water). I remember the image for flute street/the Leshp amber source event at Port Cecil as being a dome as well. Maybe the shapelings established themselves in the neath at several spots around the unterzee?
With the temples, I assume they’re probably Mesoamerican (going off a cursory search and comparing the length of the flights of stairs to mesopotamian ziggurats). I know that there were cards in FL about a Third City tomb colony that you have to be drunk to find, but I think it was said to be separate from London’s Tomb Colony. Maybe they were combined at some point?

[li]
Going back to Varchas, I played through all of it today. It only become ‘fallen’ in the game narration at the last stp, when all lights were extinguished, and I don’t know if that was something required of other cities’s fall. (also without screencaps I was spelling agnihotri three different ways :| )

25

My guesses as to the “Third” City is maybe Chicen Itza or maybe Cuzco, meaning it was either the Mayan or Incan Empires. My guesses for these are that most of the evidence for the Third City seems to indicate a tie to the Correspondence (The reason I guess Cuzco is that their information on it was put into long threads of beads and such, which is a very Incan style of writing, they recorded timelines on long threads and interweaved cords IRL), indicating interest in stars and heavens, and maize-wine being a product of the third city means that the city must have been from the Americas.

Second city seems to be Egyptian, would make sense for it to be the heretical city abandoned after a single Pharaoh’s reign.

First City, my best guess is that its an ancient Lebanese City, though don’t ask me which one. The Lebanese have used the cedar as an emblem on their coins for thousands of years.

The whole numbering of cities could simply be a Londoner concept, Londoners haven’t seen everything in the Unterzee and could very well be off on the numbering due to their limits of knowledge, explaining why Varchas wouldn’t be numbered, if it is a Fallen City. Another answer could be that the Elder Continent leads up to India or Southern Asia (Implying the Unterzee spans across all of Eurasia at least), thereby explaining the South Asian and Hindu influences seen in much of the Elder Continent Ports.

Heck, maybe the entire continent of India sunk into the Unterzee to form the Elder Continent? It is its own landmass separated from the Asian tectonic plates…

26

[quote=Gideon Xanthous]
The whole numbering of cities could simply be a Londoner concept, Londoners haven’t seen everything in the Unterzee and could very well be off on the numbering due to their limits of knowledge,[/quote]

Don’t the masters themselves refer to the city numbers, at least sometimes?

27

Yeah, Fires-Sacks mentions cities 6 and 7 (specifically that it’s okay if we never get there because not all messages arrive)

28

[quote=xKiv][quote=Gideon Xanthous]
The whole numbering of cities could simply be a Londoner concept, Londoners haven’t seen everything in the Unterzee and could very well be off on the numbering due to their limits of knowledge,[/quote]

Don’t the masters themselves refer to the city numbers, at least sometimes?[/quote]

Who says the Masters aren’t telling the whole truth? Their positions rely on keeping everyone else in the dark on knowledge only they are privy to, so as to make a better deal. Who knows? Maybe they manufactured the numbering scheme just to put a higher value on relics from certain cities, or to refer to the major centres of power which The Echo Bazaar has resided in over the centuries? IDK.

[li]

29

[quote=Gideon Xanthous]My guesses as to the &quotThird&quot City is maybe Chicen Itza or maybe Cuzco, meaning it was either the Mayan or Incan Empires. My guesses for these are that most of the evidence for the Third City seems to indicate a tie to the Correspondence (The reason I guess Cuzco is that their information on it was put into long threads of beads and such, which is a very Incan style of writing, they recorded timelines on long threads and interweaved coral IRL), indicating interest in stars and heavens, and maize-wine being a product of the third city means that the city must have been from the Americas.

Second city seems to be Egyptian, would make sense for it to be the heretical city abandoned after a single Pharaoh’s reign.

First City, my best guess is that its an ancient Lebanese City, though don’t ask me which one. The Lebanese have used the cedar as an emblem on their coins for thousands of years.

The whole numbering of cities could simply be a Londoner concept, Londoners haven’t seen everything in the Unterzee and could very well be off on the numbering due to their limits of knowledge, explaining why Varchas wouldn’t be numbered, if it is a Fallen City. Another answer could be that the Elder Continent leads up to India or Southern Asia (Implying the Unterzee spans across all of Eurasia at least), thereby explaining the South Asian and Hindu influences seen in much of the Elder Continent Ports.

Heck, maybe the entire continent of India sunk into the Unterzee to form the Elder Continent? It is its own landmass separated from the Asian tectonic plates…[/quote]
being part Quechua (the real name for the Inca) I can say that the third city sounds more Mayan than Inca. There is no mention in fallen london of potatoes, alpaca, llama, guinea pig (cuy), or several other critical parts of inca culture. It does mention they counted using beads on strings, but the Inca used knotted cords without beads for both counting and writing. Also, since Inti the sun god was the main deity of the Inca, I find it incredibly doubtful that any priests powerful enough to sell Cusco would want to go live eternally in the depths of the earth considering that was where liars, thieves, and lazy people went when they died.
[li]

30

[quote=MartzelDePamplona][quote=Gideon Xanthous]My guesses as to the &quotThird&quot City is maybe Chicen Itza or maybe Cuzco, meaning it was either the Mayan or Incan Empires. My guesses for these are that most of the evidence for the Third City seems to indicate a tie to the Correspondence (The reason I guess Cuzco is that their information on it was put into long threads of beads and such, which is a very Incan style of writing, they recorded timelines on long threads and interweaved coral IRL), indicating interest in stars and heavens, and maize-wine being a product of the third city means that the city must have been from the Americas.

Second city seems to be Egyptian, would make sense for it to be the heretical city abandoned after a single Pharaoh’s reign.

First City, my best guess is that its an ancient Lebanese City, though don’t ask me which one. The Lebanese have used the cedar as an emblem on their coins for thousands of years.

The whole numbering of cities could simply be a Londoner concept, Londoners haven’t seen everything in the Unterzee and could very well be off on the numbering due to their limits of knowledge, explaining why Varchas wouldn’t be numbered, if it is a Fallen City. Another answer could be that the Elder Continent leads up to India or Southern Asia (Implying the Unterzee spans across all of Eurasia at least), thereby explaining the South Asian and Hindu influences seen in much of the Elder Continent Ports.

Heck, maybe the entire continent of India sunk into the Unterzee to form the Elder Continent? It is its own landmass separated from the Asian tectonic plates…[/quote]
being part Quechua (the real name for the Inca) I can say that the third city sounds more Mayan than Inca. There is no mention in fallen london of potatoes, alpaca, llama, guinea pig (cuy), or several other critical parts of inca culture. It does mention they counted using beads on strings, but the Inca used knotted cords without beads for both counting and writing. Also, since Inti the sun god was the main deity of the Inca, I find it incredibly doubtful that any priests powerful enough to sell Cusco would want to go live eternally in the depths of the earth considering that was where liars, thieves, and lazy people went when they died.
[li][/quote]
[li]Put that way, perhaps Mayan is the more likely one then for the Third City. Though as to how a city ends up in the Unterzee, it could very well be that the Masters trick the leaders of the civilization to &quotsell&quot the city to them. Victoria I think gave up London in order to bring Albert back to life? Or maybe that was a deal with Hell, not the Masters, I cannot recall. Either way, I don’t think any one who ran a capital of a major civilization would WANT to have their city sunk into a dark ocean beneath the world.
[/li][li]

31

Also keep in mind the dates. Angkor Wat was built (and first sacked) in the 1100s CE - definitely AFTER the third city fell (There are lots of theories, but iirc all agree the third city fell sometime in the 800s or 900s CE, and from a different continent entirely)

Varchas also obviously isn’t the Fourth City - again, all theories agree this was a Mongolian city that fell in the mid 1300s (by which point Angkor Wat was predominantly Buddhist rather than Hindu).

Sure, many parts of the lore are unclear, come from unreliable narrators, etc, but “London is the fifth of seven cities (stolen by the Masters for the Bazaar)” is so firmly entrenched in so much of the lore from so many sources that it’s not really one of them.

Even if Varchas really is supposed to BE an Angkor Wat fallen to the Neath rather than a Neathy city from the same culture, it absolutely isn’t one of the cities taken by the Masters and dropped on the Bazaar, and fell to the Neath some other way.

32

Thoughts:

[ul][li]The Fourth City is pretty explicitly Karakorum, since its fall is what The Silver Tree is all about.

[/li][li]I strongly suspect that Kingeater’s Castle is a remnant of the Third City. Why? That’s a good question.*

[/li][li]It seems entirely plausible that bits of Fallen Cities could be spread around the Neath, rather than all in one place! Fallen London gives the definite sense that all the Fallen Cities were sort of plopped directly on top of each other, but given how much the Neath rearranges itself I could totally see bits drifting all over if they’ve been down there long enough.

I’d posit this as the source of our &quottoo many cities&quot problem! We’re seeing bits of stuff in multiple places.

[/li][li]There’s definitely a lot of room for new cultures to grow up in the Neath! We can already see the profound effect on London after only thirty years, so it makes perfect sense to me that places like Varchas developed a lot of their culture and mythology once they were already down here, rather than bringing most of it with them from above.

Especially since they’re clearly reacting very strongly to particularly Neathy phenomena. [/li][/ul]
* Not a wise one.

33

out of all the cities, the third one is the one with the fewest remnants in the Neath. Whatever happened to reduce it to unusability by the Bazaar happened much faster and with greater thoroughness than the cities before it - so much so that the old immortal rulers of the third city aren’t even in London. So it’s not surprising that there would be few, if any, cultural remains of it, save for a few ruins no one knows the true purpose of.

34

It seems to me like Varchas fell/came to the neath but was not brought there by the Masters or the Bazaar. Possibly likewise Irem. Could it be that other entities of Power in the neath have been claiming places for their own in the same or similar manner as the Bazaar? Perhaps Varchas was taken not by the bazaar but by the mountain, and Irem by dream or by Salt.
It seems like there may be a few other inhabited places that came to the 'neath through other means as well. I wonder what we will learn when we can explore the ruins on aestival?

35

There’s some artwork in Varchas that implies they were cast down to the Neath in a moment of anger by Mihir (~the Sun?), rather than being brought there by something already below. Whether this is actually true or just the Myth they adhere to I’m not certain.

36

Come to think of it, this DOES sound a lot like (in Bazaarine terms) their ancestors did something to become Is-Not, and fled to the Neath because they could no longer survive in the light of the Judgements…

37

Okay! Going to throw a few things out here:

  1. Irem is mentioned in the Quran as a lost city of Arabia. If one city can find its way below without the Bazaar stealing it, I see no reason why Varchas can’t as well.

  2. The Second City CANNOT POSSIBLY be Amarna. We had a discussion on this several years ago—Amarna was abandoned around 1300 BCE, 700 years before the invention of silver coins, and thus it would have to predate the First City, which makes no sense. However, Hatshepsut did build a few statues of herself and it’s quite likely that one of those statues was brought below with whatever the Second City was.

  3. First City Coins are traditionally traded in stacks of 30. This is a tradition very strongly tied to Judeo-Christian imagery (both old and new testaments), usually related to a betrayal or sale into slavery, both themes that may relate to whatever the first city’s price was. The First City “was young when Babylon fell,” placing it likely outside of Mesopotamia, but it may be somewhere in Judea/Galilee.

38

The pre/post-coinage clue is a red herring, sadly - the Numismatrix makes it clear that the so-called “First City Coins” are actually more modern artifacts that somehow symbolically/metaphysically represent the First City and/or some ancient form of trading or bargaining.

39

I suspect the line about Babylon falling is also a red herring. A lot of those sidebar snippets are (see eg the one about the Stolen River flowing through hell being the reason people don’t die)

40

An observation: I was playing earlier and mucking about with Port Carnelian’s option to create an intelligence network. One of the options to improve your network is to spend a Searing Engima on the Prince. This storylet allows your captain to spew veiled truths at the Prince, some of which are immensely interesting. The most interesting is that &quotsatraps&quot are mentioned repeatedly. For those that don’t know, satraps refer to ancient Persia. To my understanding, satraps were basically local governors or councils or whatever, which would act as agents or rulers as an extension to the Persian main government (please correct me if I’m wrong).

That said, it would seem that there’s some sort of connection between Persia and the tigers of the Carnelian Coast. I skimmed the thread and did a few searches and couldn’t find any mention of satraps or Persia, so apologizes if this was already mentioned, but I thought it interesting. Likewise, I’m not heavily read up on Fallen London lore, and don’t know if this has already been discounted.

Regardless, this is a really fun thread. Thanks for the interesting read.