October Exceptional Story: Our Lady of Pyres

Fallen London
141

[quote=Kourkoumpina]I always feel a bit sad doing these and not being able to play them through multiple times to see all text.

I am still doing it and I am playing both sides as both seem mad to me.

The issue is that as a new player of this wonderful game I have no clue on what either side represents and I cant say there is a lot of info in the story itself…

As such, I really have no reason to support either from an RP perspective. My character is self centered and wants to make the most out of this situation and gain the most… I hope I am not shafted for trying to play both of them.[/quote]

As a new player, I have the same issues, although knowing the Conflagranti is more established, yet still a cult in my eyes. As a character who tends to be rational, I would rather not support either of them, although I cannot stay neutral as I would like to be, because it would need a higher number in &quotConspiring on the Pyres&quot than I could acquire.

That is why I also regret that going through the story is a one-time chance, I understand it makes sense though. I would love to side with the Abiding Wife though, as she is far the most sane person in the whole story.

EDIT: I found the answer for my question in the previous comments of this thread, you have to observe the events before conspiring.
edited by BomiBoogie on 10/19/2016
edited by Sir Frederick Tanah-Chook on 10/19/2016

142

Soooooo…on a mostly unrelated note, can anyone tell me why worshiping the Dawn Machine turns your teeth red?

The multiple references in the text to the otherwise adorable Visionary’s red stained teeth weird me out :P

I’m assuming he’s not a vampire or a red wine addict, so it’s probably a side effect of being a Dawn Machine devotee, but why? Glowing eyes I can understand. Red teeth I can’t :P

Someone please enlighten me :P

143

Unlocked the lifeberg story, then this one, then completed that one. I no longer seem to have the option to sail out and find the Conflagrati ship. Sailing out normally doesn’t help, either, and there’s nothing at Apis’ Meet. Anyone know what happened?

144

[quote=Mr. Sails]This story unfortunately didn’t resonate too much with me. The main reason is perhaps mechanically related. I was quite confused as to what I was supposed to do once I reached the wreck, and what you did during the &quotday&quot didn’t seem to impact the rituals too much anyways. You were free to choose sides as you wished. I spent more time being confused about how to snap up as much information as possible than actually chewing the cud.

Secondly, the situation seemed somewhat forced to me. We’re on a wreck, there’s this nutty Narcissus who wants to burn up and be left alone, this other dude who thinks he’s a Dawn Machine prophet and a bunch of followers, with on information on how they’re sustaining their communities. The worldbuilding aspect was completely ignored in favour of character building, but somehow the characters didn’t strike me as particularly interesting anyways.

After last months powerstory that completely pivoted my character into an entirely different view of life and philosophy, this was a bit of a letdown. However, seems like there’s lots of other peeps on here who enjoyed it, so I might just have esoteric tastes.
edited by Cantankerous Captain on 10/1/2016
edited by Cantankerous Captain on 10/1/2016[/quote]

I agree with your first objection, Captain. I’ve just started the story, having my first chats with the Iconoclast, and the story interface gives you no hints as to why your attempts to offer the Bequeathment elicit no apparent reaction from the Iconoclast but only raise Sequencer Ascendancy.

Yes, she says, &quotI won’t accept my lover’s guilt&quot and complains that he didn’t come himself. He’s on his death bed, and she rattles on about swabbing the deck after a poisoning. Very strange, in my opinion, and to me it makes it harder to suspend disbelief.

145

[quote=phryne]Well, this one wasn’t for me. Which is fine, as I’ve loved 90% of Exceptional Stories so far, it was bound to happen sooner or later ;)

It was the third ES I played within a week, after Calendar Code and Where You & I Must Go, and after these two excellent ones, Our Lady of Pyres was a major disappointment. Sorry, but I just could not care for anyone in this silly story. All I wanted to do at any point of it was wring my hands in despair and shout at these madpeople to leave me the f___ alone! Religious wars, meh.

From my (purely personal) pov, I would’ve loved an option to just walk away from it all in the middle of the story. Or at least an option at the end to harangue the Bluejacket for wasting my time like that. Silly old bugger… ;)
edited by phryne on 10/3/2016[/quote]

I’m not even at the end of Wreck of Pyres and I can already see how much fun it would be to give the Bluejacket the rough side of [my character’s] tongue! I guess that’s the way some of us felt about the Revolutionary and the Secular Missionary squabbling outside the Cave of the Nadir. ;-)

146

Dirae Erinyes helped the aiding wife, less then satisfied with the results. The cults did appeal a bit to their heterodox religious side. Still, not a fan of the Dawn Machine, and that Iconoclast’s cult could be particularly deadly to their wife judging from their adventures in the East. Saved the iconoclast, gave the beathquement to the wife.

147

Still need help with this.

148

I just finished the Our Lady of Pyres.

There was some impressive descriptive writing in the middle of the story, but I agree now with the folk who complained that the mechanics made it difficult to meaningfully decide who to support.

I think this story had some of the same problems you see in live-action role playing games where the GM have set up the plot in a way that they believes encourages a particular result not realizing that the players, with their limited knowledge of the game secrets, have no particular motivation to act in ways that would advance the plot as the GMs hoped.

[spoiler] I chose to bring the Iconoclast back to London but to give the Bequeathment to the Abiding Wife. What a lose for me. Somehow, I think a bottle of airag was too poor a reward for spending that much time trying to thread a path between two rival sets of fanatics. On the other hand, I have reason to believe from the ending I saw that both the Iconoclast and the Sear-Eyed Visionary lived, and less damage that could be expected was done, which is what my character would have wanted.

I doubt I would have achieved that result, though, if I hadn’t read the comments on Our Lady of Pyres before I played it. [/spoiler]
edited by cathyr19355 on 10/22/2016

149

Still need help with this.[/quote]

Have you emailed support@failbettergames.com?

150

Still need help with this.[/quote]

I am at a similar point, though I haven’t tried to set sail yet (and am sadly at Corpsecage at the moment, so can’t check). However, when I went to Breakwater House, I had a screen split with two storylets for this story at the top and assumed acting on one of those would take me onwards. Does that appear for you? Or are you beyond that point?

151

There’s only one option dedicated to this story when I visit Breakwater, and it’s to talk to the Abiding Wife. That was where I got the idea that I might be supposed to go to Adam’s Way.

152

[quote=Gul al-Ahlaam]
[li]

I may have to play the story again just to hang out more with the Abiding Wife.

[li]Do you imply that there is a way to replay exceptional stories? If so: How could I do that?
[/li]
edited by Sir Polaroid on 10/22/2016

153

[quote=Sir Polaroid][quote=Gul al-Ahlaam]
[li]

I may have to play the story again just to hang out more with the Abiding Wife.

[li]Do you imply that there is a way to replay exceptional stories? If so: How could I do that?
[/li]
edited by Sir Polaroid on 10/22/2016[/quote]

When an exceptional story comes out on the fate page you can pay fate to replay it.

154

I am a new player, and this was my first Exceptional story. There was a danger I would never pay for another story again if I thought they were all like this. Luckily, since it was on offer, I have been persuaded to try Waltz, and the two could not be more different.

I hated Pyres, to the point that in the end I just took as few actions as I thought would end the story so I could get out of there. This was mostly due to the mechanics, but there were issues with the story too, whcih have already been mentioned by others.

It’s not obvious that you need to go through the evening rituals multiple times to progress. Once I found this out, it’s very boring to read the same options again, and then do the same action again as an artificial way to extend time away. I’m used to it in other aspects of FL, of course, but I don’t expect the same thing when I’m paying for it.

While I can see the potential advantage in being immersed in a storylet in another location, I found being forced out of London exacerbated the problem. So far I haven’t been stuck in a story for more than a couple of actions in a row if I wasn’t taken with it: here I had to grind through this painful mechanic just to be able to go and do something more interesting back in London.

Up until this point I hadn’t realised the benefit of referring to characters by their traits e.g ‘The Abiding Wife’. Here a couple of characters were referred to by real names, and I found I didn’t know who was being referred to, and there was no way to go back and find out, because those actions were past. This further distanced me from the story.

As a new player the lore elements were new to me, and the New Sequencers seemed to make a lot more sense than the Conflagrati, and it seems that wasn’t really intentional.

I agree with those who were upset that there was no ‘inaction’ option to resolve, for better or worse, but honestly by the time I got there I was so far from roleplaying this was a footnote.

By contrast in Waltz, it was almost all character all the time. I didn’t know the background to the people I interacted with, but each was interesting in their own right. I gladly expended actions I didn’t need to because I wanted to hear as much as possible from everyone I talked to. Though I didn’t have to, I focused on resolving the story and didn’t deviate for other actions because I was enthralled. I didn’t have to repeat anything (well, a little at the end, but only to work out what my options were, not because it was necessary to progress).

I’ve heard ‘story as reward’ as an intention in the creation of FL, and Waltz was the embodiment of that for me. Pyres was a painful action-sink for little in-game reward, and a very poor introduction to the benefits of paying for content.

155

I found this one pretty diappointing. It started off wonderfully, interesting new characters and factions were introduced, but once on the island I felt my decisions were a bit rushed 3 days of observing the nightly festivities just wasn’t enough time. I wanted to examine the sides in more depth, but I was quickly locked into siding with the wife and undermining both because I would have needed to choose a faction almost from the first night to do anything else. As a result I felt railroaded. The daytime events by themselves just weren’t enough, and there wasn’t any warning I’d only get the three evenings. (Or have to choose based on such limited infromation ahead of time.)

Overall, this is my least favorite since the Seven-Day Reign just because I didn’t feel like I could progress through it the way I wanted (in the case of the Reign, it was partly because of website bugs, which frustrated me to no end). It’s really sa shame, too, because I found the Conflagrati really interesting, and I’ve always been intrigued by the New Sequence.

156

I am replaying the Marsh-House and was surprised to realise that the Conflagrati were mentioned all the way then!

157

I was quite disappointed with this story, as I was forced to follow a given path because there was insufficient warning that certain actions would foreclose certain options. I would have chosen otherwise, had any alternatives been available.

– Mal

158

Very disappointed in the outcome.

I spent the first night aiding the wife, the second one listening to the new sequencers and the third one helping the conflagrati, thinking I would have had the 4th night to decide who to help and leaning towards the conflagrati; I didn’t expect at all I would be locked out of two options just because I wasn’t willing to choose a faction from the start.

I have half a mind of resetting the story when I can, but the other half thinks it wouldn’t be the best of idea to pay for something I didn’t appreciate.

The writing and the characters were interesting, though; what I didn’t appreciate was the pacing. Mechanically speaking, at least there wasn’t as much “filler” as in the previous story.

159

What rewards give Decide the fate of the Severe Bluejacket’s Bequeathment? And if you complete it can you return to Breakwater’s Parlour to grind those items like romantic notions,Intriguing Snippet?

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[color=#cc0099]Our Lady of Pyres is now available to purchase for Fate![/color]