The Unterzee and its islands are nothing like Surface things, of course, but I’ve seen a few sly little mirroring here and there. Raffles the criminal is always there to give British authorities headaches, and it’s fortunate that the pig in question isn’t visible at Savior’s Rocks, however radiant it might be. I know the Cumaean Canal is there for mythological/Waste Land connections, but I haven’t read any Kipling to know if Port Carnelian is a deliberate reference either.
I think that there’re probably gigantic jokes lying around that’ve whooshed high over my head on leathery wings. Are there other references/connections that people have noticed around the Neath? [li]
There is currently a Cthulu Reference which is unmarked on the map, but you’ll know it if you see it.
Your ship is passing over sunken ruins, the camera shakes, and a giant eye opens in the center of the ruins, sending your terror spiralling out of control. The diary says that something ancient dwells there. I think its a reference to Cthulu, sleeping in sunken R’lyeh at the bottom of the sea
One could also argue that the Republican and Aristocratic divisions between the Devils of Hell is a reference to modern British politics, they certainly dress well enough, are sly enough, and are inhuman enough to be politicians. Heh.
And the Fathomking could be a reference to Davy Jones, whom looks after all of those who drown at sea, though I’m a bit unsure about that one.
Actually, the Fathomking is a reference to King Alonso in Shakespeare’s The Temptest :
Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell
Alonso is the king of Naples, which helps to lend support for this.
Edit: then again, they could have taken the Drowned at sea thing from Davy Jones…
edited by Jules Asimov on 1/19/2015
I just logged on to post the Tempest reference myself! Notably, the “pearls that were his eyes” line shows up more than once in that perennial Neathy influence, Eliot’s The Waste Land - leading, I’d wager, to the trade in drowning-pearls.
I suspect there’s more than a little of the French Revolution in the ousting of Hell’s monarchy - hence the continuing popularity of “Citizen” as a term of revolutionary address, and how the grotesqueries of the Iron Republic mimic the arbitrary outrages of the Terror.
Leopold Raffles is a real-world historical figure, though in our timeline, he died in infancy, rather than vanishing in uncertain circumstances involving honey and cats.
facepalm I’ve only gone through father’s bones four times, how did I forget the best reference. Yeah, the beach combing option for pearls, right? (I nearly always get the egg instead so I don’t read that text often)
[li]
And Leopold always gets mentioned by name in the side-bar text in fallen london, but the Admiral calls him a ‘blackguard’ at your port report, a word which feels particularly period and that crops up in Hornung all the time. While we’re on isle of cats, do you think Zaira’s free floating temporality is anything to do with Calvino’s invisible city Zaira? (I know it also means rose, which is more likely, but "the city does not tell its past but holds it like the lines of a hand" seems rather like her ‘all times are one to me’ thing.)
(terror goes up by the eye? I didn’t notice that (in my wild attempts to provoke it to attack – the iris moves to follow you! where’s the teeth and tentacles, huh.) Just assumed it was a leviathan, but the ‘sleeping’ part is a stronger link. Guess they’re obligated to enshrine R’lyeh somewhere.)[/li][li]Oh, and Isle of Cats itself is the piratical Singapurr-a of the Neath, with the founding myth tiger-lions everywhere. (I guess we should be should be really happy that tile doesn’t spawn swimming tigers, or even tiger-fish hybrids, however cool they’d look) I was always sensitive to the leonine presence before I even opened the labyrinth route, but then I went to a school named for Leopold’s father. (whyyy are there tigers everywhere, ((borges)). why.)[/li][li]
edited by fortluna on 1/19/2015
Huh. I always assumed the eye was a stirring stone pig, awaking from his slumber breifly.
I thought stone pigs would burrow closer to the bazaar, though there is the sailing card. But [spoiler] there’s now a hilarious Murder in the Rue Morgue reference when you look at the image for the benthic invitation, and I can’t tell if the delightful adventuress was meant to be Jane from Tarzan. [li]