When You reach 8 on your Wounds Quality , You find yourself on a boat with a ferryman…Which I’m sure many of you have come across.
I’ve always considered this area not "True Death" but merely on the verge of it. As the area as a whole seems to imply a Journey towards it rather than a destination…unlike most other Menace Locations.
In fact one of the opportunity cards assured me of this stating:
How much can you see of the far bank?So that’s the far country. What does death look like?
Implying that your Character has yet to reach "Death"
I was surprised when checking through other sources on the web…That many seem to regard this location as Death…implying that upon meeting the Ferryman…one can never return to the surface (unless you happen to have a swig of Cider).
I can’t seem to find any in-game sources confirming this outside of Community written wikis and walkthroughs and I’d like to request your opinions on which is true…
You’re dead. But you’re only London-dead. (It’s where you go between meeting Jack and meeting the surgeon.) And yes, the London-dead cannot return to the Surface, unless they’d like to meet true Death in a warm and spectacular fashion.
Interestingly, is there any quality that traces it? I would love to travel to surface at some point (maybe some exceptional story?), and my character never meet ferryman, nor plan to (unless, of course, things happen without planning ;) )
I think of it as death, because in ancient Greek myth Charon the ferryman transported those who had died to the Underworld. Even though the boat itself wasn’t the final destination, you had to die to end up on his boat, he didn’t kill you when you got there. There were exceptions, of course - a seemingly never-ending stream of heroes managed to procure day-return tickets because their quests took them to Hades.
I’ve been right up to the shore of the Far Country. It isn’t pleasant. You con him out of taking you all the way with chess games and such, and due to the particular qualities of the Neath it is possible to go back to the realms of the living, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t die. Getting on the boat is simply the first step of the journey after death. You died, the thing is that death isn’t necessarily permanent down here.
The game does say you are dead, too. The description for the Wounds quality when it is eight or above is "The spirit has departed" if I remember right. And there are other things, such as when you defeat another player in the Scarlet Ribbon the game says you have killed them. That’s my take on it, anyway.
It does make one wonder when it is so easy to dodge the trip and come back why so many people don’t do that (that shore is pretty bloody crowded). Maybe those are all people who never learned the rules of chess. edited by Plynkes on 1/28/2018
Think that only during SMEN, but that option costs 50 Fate.[/quote]
Oh wow, I didn’t know they still kept this. I though they retired it once they found / it was discovered that it didn’t actually permanently deactivate the character like it said it would.
Incidentally, if you wish to research the Boatman, there is a season conclusion you may find interesting wherein you go for a ride with him. Literally, this time. I do not know which season conclusion that is, though, and it would be rather expensive for a scrap of lore. Perhaps someone has journal entries.?
[quote=Reused NPC]Incidentally, if you wish to research the Boatman, there is a season conclusion you may find interesting wherein you go for a ride with him. Literally, this time. I do not know which season conclusion that is, though, and it would be rather expensive for a scrap of lore. Perhaps someone has journal entries.?[/quote]That’s the Family Ties season, which comprises The Frequently Deceased, The Seven-Day Reign and The Pentecost Predicament.
You can find many delicious journal snippets of the season conclusion by looking through this thread.
Death is…strange in Fallen London. Most death in the Neath (save for things like illness, specific poisonings, beheading, total destruction of the body, and so on) is only temporary for Londoners. While most would take a permanent ride on the Boatman’s journey, the lawlessness of the Neath plus the close proximity to the Mountain of Light allows Londoners and some others in the Neath to manage to return once they’ve recovered. If the far country is the land of the dead, then you can think of the boat as the inbetween where life has left the person’s body but the person themselves has not fully passed. There’s also the complication that not all death is traditional "death" as one might think it. Some instances of gaining wounds or a character getting severely injured involve death overtaking you, while not fully "dying", if that makes sense. It’s said during Light Fingers that the Fading Music-Hall singer "didn’t quite die", and failing a duel to the death with Chi Lan involves "a fusillade of rifle fire and all goes dark." It seems that one can touch upon the border of death in London from an injury that would kill someone in an ordinary situation. It’s only when the body finally succumbs to its massing injuries or achieves such a harsh injury that fully passing into the realm of death occurs, even if you don’t full "pass" and complete the journey, instead returning to the world of the living.
There’s also a bit of a misunderstanding with the Surface and its connection with death. Yes, dying in the Neath (whether it be a complete death or not fully dying) does make it slightly harder to return to the Surface, but spending any amount of time in the Neath means you’re up for risk of insta-death from sunlight. In Sunless Sea, journeying to the Surface leads to your crew and potentially yourself dying from sunlight the longer you stay there, regardless if you’ve died or not before. I wouldn’t sweat trying to keep from death in-game, since there aren’t qualities that track your first death, and you’re already doomed from the start if you’re down here to begin with. It’s not an exact science, but being in the Neath basically means that you will very likely eventually succumb to sunlight death on the Surface at some random point in your life, so the longer you stay up means the longer you’re at risk. That is, unless you have a bit of cider…To clarify, the Neath is a place that shouldn’t exist because it’s hidden from the law of the Judgements (the stars and gods of the FL universe) and breaks their laws. Many things originating from the Neath like glim and mushroom wine either lose their quality or are absolutely destroyed by sunlight, which is the very essence of the Judgements’ law in the universe. By just being in the Neath, you’re touching that lawlessness and becoming a part of it, soaking into it like a sponge. Not dying may make you slightly less likely to die so soon on the Surface, but entering the Neath is enough to put you at risk, and staying longer just worsens your chances. The only reason cider lets you defy death is because you’re basically drinking the powerful life essence of the Mountain, a literal demigoddess.
Keep in mind that only Neathers presumably get to play around with cheating death, and the far country has everyone who’s ever died. Compared to the entire population of people who have ever lived, counting the people currently alive in the Neath is merely a drop in the ocean. edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 1/28/2018
Yes and no. There are plenty of examples of people who successfully traverse between the Surface and the Neath, from royalty to everyone’s favorite aunt. Thus, it is not merely being down here that is dangerous. Moreover, a certain Hallowmas confession of years gone by directly links over-consumption of Neathy pleasures with a short and unfruitful life on the Surface. My reading of the evidence is that your post-surfacing fate is related, not to the amount of time you’ve spent down here, but to the number of Laws you’ve broken while you’re at it. If your entire life here is a cycle of doing things that don’t work on the Surface, then you’re probably in significant danger of judgment when you emerge. This coheres with the observation that returning from Death is the event most solidly linked to becoming Surfacer en flambe; not even traipsing about the Republic breaks the Law more flagrantly and fundamentally than refusing to properly die.
Think that only during SMEN, but that option costs 50 Fate.[/quote]
Oh wow, I didn’t know they still kept this. I though they retired it once they found / it was discovered that it didn’t actually permanently deactivate the character like it said it would.[/quote]
It was retired along with the rest of Old SMEN and returned when it was finished. No promises of permadeath now though, just regular Slow Boat death.
Also, important note: Cider apparently doesn’t give true immortality itself, just significant healing. According to a success when upconverting Broken Giant, and some snippets elsewhere, it gives dreams of the Garden and following those dreams to the source is necessary to be truly immortal.