[color=#0066ff]Edit: Thank you all for your entries! Judging is underway, and we will update this thread as soon as we have the outcome. [/color]
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[color=#0066ff]The end of the century approaches and, absent any conspicuous planning from Mr Wines, His Amused Lordship has taken it upon himself to plan a New Year’s soirée of truly catastrophic proportions.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]In Fallen London, the year is 1899. The turn of the century approaches. What does the city have in mind for this unmissable occasion?[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We could scarce have thought, back when Fallen London was a few thousand words for a few hundred players, that we would one day be approaching this milestone with millions of words under our belt and a thriving, charming, delightfully creative community.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We’d like to commemorate this event with a competition. The winners will receive a rare, coveted companion, The Rubbery Plongeur![/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We are asking for your creative responses to the following prompt:[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]How does your character usually celebrate New Year’s Eve?[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]These could be in any format you like: drawn, written, video, craft, and so on. Written pieces must be no more than 500 words, video no longer than a minute. Any other format needs to be supplied with sufficient detail that we can fully grasp what it is, so for example a craft piece could be photographed and sent with a few words of description. Please limit your descriptions to 50 words or fewer.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]You may enter as many times as you like. We ask that entries are provided either here in this thread, in the dedicated Discord channel, or via email to replies@failbettergames.com, with your character name and username. Note: we’d like to share some of the entries on social media, so please mention if you’d prefer that we didn’t.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]We will be accepting entries until 11th January 2022 at noon GMT, with judging to follow. We expect there will be at least five winners, but there may be more depending on the volume of entries! See the full terms and conditions.[/color]
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[color=#0066ff]Meanwhile, London’s thoughts turn to the upcoming celebration. Look for A Revel to End All Revels, an opportunity card available throughout London, to follow a timely story.[/color]
edited by h4nchan on 1/14/2022
This is of course just a personal quirk of mine, but as a player, I always hate it in any game when content or unique rewards are gated behind not only participating in, but actually winning some sort of community competition, particularly when the winner is selected by jury or fiat, so I won’t be entering. Hopefully the card will bring something fun.
The Revel to End All Revels seems to involve a GCO-style cooperative World Quality. I wonder if this one will have a final boss, or a traumatized horse.
I wonder. My acquaintances and I seem to have different levels of this quality. But I’m holding out for traumatized final horse boss.
My main is going to grumble ferociously about how it’s NOT the turn of the century, that will be 1901. My alt will tell her she’s a silly grump, and just enjoy all the parties, who even care?
edited by Bluestocking on 12/1/2021
Interesting. All options cost.
Unless you have 40 Connected: Bohemians, which is straight profit. And I do have that.
[quote=Toran]Interesting. All options cost.
Unless you have 40 Connected: Bohemians, which is straight profit. And I do have that.[/quote]
But the gain from that one seems smaller than the others.
[quote=Snort][quote=Toran]Interesting. All options cost.
Unless you have 40 Connected: Bohemians, which is straight profit. And I do have that.[/quote]
But the gain from that one seems smaller than the others.[/quote]
Perhaps, but it doesn’t require you to get access to relatively scarce resources and the resulting Bohemian favors can be exchanged 5 at a time for Court of the Wakeful Eye Tribute.
In short, you gain value while also increasing the event, instead of losing value for marginally faster event increase speed.
Arguably supplying wine is the best choice. You exchange it for an item of equal value, and you get a someone is coming boost plus a favor on top. This essentially brings it in line with the bohemian option. However, you get twice the increase to the revel quality.
Mind you, when I last did the card, the quality didn’t change, so it seems we’ve hit some kind of soft cap.
Did you guys encounter the A Revel to End All Revels card often? I just got it once a short while ago. I used the Docks favour.
I’ve seen it a few times
I’m getting it about once every 6 or so draws.
Turns out you can’t discard it. Never noticed on my main, but one of my alts can’t do any of the options and can’t get rid of it. She doesn’t want to lose the other cards she’s holding at the minute, but she’s going to have to if she wants to free up her deck.
So thanks for that Christmas present, Failbetter. :)
The roar of the crowd was deafening, especially to that of Mr. Cards. Her bones and organs may have been moved and transformed, but her habits had barely shifted an inch.
Wine. Women. Men. Things with unmentionable genders. Song. The life of a hedonist was an expensive one, but worth every penny.
Her eyes gleaned a slight gant underneath her cowl as she surveyed her surroundings. Which party was this? Mx… E_____? Madame V____? In truth, they had begun to blend together. Only the occasional artist or assassin to act as a landmark in the plains of endless abundance.
When she was younger, she remembered sneaking into any get-together she could manage. Guzzling wine and charming guests before the guards were called to escort her from the premises.
And now?
She could use invitations as an alternative fuel for her train. She could drink an ocean of wine and consume entire banquets and still guests would trip over themselves to fill her glass.
An unlit Belvedere cigar sat contemplatively between her fangs.
Was she happy?
Yes. Hells yes. To Marigold Station and beyond.
To even imagine the power, the lovers, the experiences she had experienced in London would be fantastical in a dream.
Was she content?
…
Somewhere across the Zee sat a mountain. And in the mountain, sat a treasure. So well guarded, so priceless that it could pay for every city the Bazaar had ever bought, and will buy, from now until the end of time.
Eleven years. Nine months. Twenty-one days. That’s how long she had to accrue enough power, enough influence, enough wealth, enough respect. She couldn’t call upon the Marvelous again. No. This wasn’t her heart’s desire. This was something greater. This was her fate, her birth-right, her destiny.
But that was tomorrow’s worry. Tonight?
Tonight she sat in a large red loveseat, wine glass in hand. Companions, lovers, suitors, and paramours scattered about.
In one arm lay a slumbering Wilhelm and in the other a dozing Katlynn, both exhausted from the stories the three of them had been crafting throughout the evening. Upstairs, Mr. Cards could hear Stephanie, trying her best to avoid any socialization. She could hear Gaston gloat in the other room. She could hear Marsh and Jimmy and Dorothy all drunkenly singing about, all convinced the other was off key.
And Deieress?
Dearest Deiress? Master of Bazaar. Master of the Marvelous. Master of life itself!
She sat and listened. Smiling a sharp smile, her eyes glinting gant.
IGN: Dearest Deiress / Username: Jacob Elliott
[color=#0066ff]There’s another thread for discussing the Christmas and New Year content folks, please use this one for entering the New Year’s Eve competition. Ta![/color]
A neathy New Year’s Eve, to my heart it is a memorial to all my past travails, to many others it is a reminder that under all the aesthetic beauty of it hides their misery. Under these conditions it is difficult to only think of how I spend my time, when for every step I take in Veilgarden or Spite, seven injustices will greet me. As the clock strikes and signals this year’s last morning, I can only think of the urchin I once reunited with their parents, are they happier now? Will I ever encounter them again to greet them, to help them? Thinking of the fellow I visit my orphanage so I may see those little rascals before the year’s end, with gifts in hand I enter only for the voices of the playful children to grow even louder, for every one of them a marvel of technology is prepared to carry them into the new century (thank the devils for these!), I must admit however, that in my bias a large amount of these are bird themed, but who can resist a mechanical bird or a dozen? For one child I even prepared an inkling of the correspondence, they’re a curious one, and though it will be chaotic I do believe they will appreciate it. In the end all children will eventually calm down so that they may appreciate the serene beauty of the neath underneath all its terrors, though our sky may lack the Sun, we still have our own stars, and the people of the city are as beautiful as those of all the others, but with hearts filled with all these unique wonders. We will preserve this moment in our memories, and as the children inevitably go to sleep eventually, I will return to my home for my well deserved rest, in my bed I will think of the glories and the horrors of the neath, it is depressing to think about how many can’t experience those glories, but at least I can be happy knowing that a few have gained so much from all this work, and perhaps one day, a New Year’s Eve will be for everyone to appreciate.
IGN: Emma DeLeskie / Username: Emma DeLeskie
Every year’s end I like to do a tarot reading to contemplate on the year that’s past, and meditate on what is to come in the following year.
All shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of thing shall be well.
On New Years Eve, Professor Gangavann usually enjoys the private fireworks that certain symbols of the correspondence effect in the anterior section of their eyeballs … but this year is not usual, is it?
At long last, after many years of preparations, this was the year when a Nemesis was finally thwarted.
And in the aftermath, perhaps to burn certain sections of their mind clean, this was also the year when the professor had finally taken their long-running studies of the Correspondence as far as anyone could, into the Courier’s Footprint. A memorable year, although in parts perhaps too memorable.
So this year called for a less private celebration.
The assistants and students at the laboratory would all be called upon to lend a hand, and occasionally an entire arm, in order to set up preparations.
Fireworks that spell out sigils. Surely it must be possible to achieve, just a matter of research.
Nothing obscene, of course, and nothing that might amount to a confession, either. A private salute to ends, and to new beginnings, although also quite public.
Nonetheless, certain friends in circles best not mentioned in polite society would be called upon to help distribute the launching apparatuses.
And urchins would be charged with setting them off at the appointed time.
Actually, better have various inconspicuous gentlepersons relay the locations of said apparatuses to the urchins only when the appointed time is at hand - no need to put the little dears in too much temptation.
Yes. All manner of things would be well-prepared.
Well, for many years now, His Excellency, the Professor, Bishop Cosmos has spent New Years in the way so many great minds do. Which is to say that he forgets about it entirely while preoccupied with some distressingly enticing bit of research or some silly dalliance with interstellar intrigues. Or at least this is what he’d like to say, or have me say, without also having lied.
This, sadly, cannot be. For too often the research is actually a bit dull, or the intrigues far more local in their scope. Sometimes, as he is a diplomat of some standing, he is simply still hungover from the Christmas celebrations. Or, being a clergyman, still drunk from the Christmas celebrations. Once, even a bit dead.
Not that it matters. Whatever it is he’s doing, it always ends the same way. His wife storms in and demands to know why he hasn’t started getting ready for the party yet. It’s only two hours left to get ready, and there are still bits of exploded something in his hair; which is exactly the sort of thing she doesn’t need at that hour! The party is all the way out by Ealing this year and she, no, he, will be d_____d if he makes them miss the train - and he had better not open his mouth to say the trains run when he says or she will insert her new Italian boot into it first. So no more nonsense! He had best get his gear going sharpish, and if he even thinks of trying to use the discordance to go without going then by god she will find something sharp with which to remove his gear AND STORE IT IN A JAR!
my character name is Anagram, with my account name being Anagram Coldhearth. here goes nothing:
Anagram sat at the hurlers. He felt the frigid chill changing, becoming even colder. It was the season again. He packed his biscuits and tin of Zzoup, still warm thanks to the correspondence sigil he had etched unto its bottom. The last time he tried that he has lost half his mustache, he thought to himself and walked across the harrowing, icy plains to his encampment and from there to the train station. he nodded to the Calculating Lapidary as looked upon the station, adorned by his statue, awaiting the train to take him back to his home in London.
The ride was uneventful, but the city was changed. It was the 7th time Anagram has seen the city buried beneath this so-called snow, but he could never get used to it. He knew the way to his home in the spires of the Bazaar is probably buried beneath the sticky, odd substance.
Surprisingly, he met a caped volunteer as soon as he started shoveling it away. One of the many Masters of the bazaar was there, shovel in hand. How strange, he thought, the plucking’s of the strings of fate.
Once the shoveling was done, he entered his lodgings, sat upon his sofa, and looked at his many trophies and wanders. From that very special deck of cards to the masks of Hallowmas adorning the walls, to a portrait of a tabby, distinguished on the wall, and of course, to that ever-flowing firkin of cider, which had helped him immensely, more so lately than ever before.
He had decided he wants to share his wealth and hearth with all his companions and sent letters to friends and rivals alike. The Pirate Poet, the Woman in Yellow, the Cat’s chiefest claw, the Dashing Debunker, the Intrepid Deacon, Dr. Schlomo, and so many others.
He has made this place his home, his connections vast. He sent letters to constables and criminals, hell and church, rubberies, revolutionaries and masters, spies and academics. All are welcome to this end of a century party. He asked his apes and goat demons to help decorate. He sent letters to the Apicius Club for help with the refreshments.
This will be a commemoration of everything Neathy. He will celebrate his not-so-new home.
edited by Anagram on 12/11/2021