“The Linguist turns the plaque toward the audience; its lines glisten red. Has the room grown darker? You feel the terrifying thrill of plunging into one of London’s darkest alleys alone. Someone screams.”
The Impetuous Linguist’s research into the poetics of the Correspondence is turning heads: the wrong kind of heads. When the Linguist goes missing, the Prudent Professor beseeches you to search for her. Wrestle with her research; disturb those who would disturb her. Any good translator knows that translation is an art unto itself.
As a longtime scholar of the Correspondence resigned to Watchful’s supremacy in a lot of content, it is very refreshing so far to be able to solve various problems with brute force.
I’m somewhat disheartened that I cannot claim the paper entirely for myself. To make matters worse, I resist the visions of all three individuals, and as a result, I’ve hit a wall. I think I will need some time to weigh my options before I can come up with the choice I dislike the least.
If anyone is hesitant over the final choice, I have a small piece of advice: selecting “Publish the paper” will yield echoes tinged with revolutionary, rebellious, and anarchist undertones.
I already seen to have taken two branches that can’t be undone, without realizing it. I know this is part of the charm of FL for many, but less so for me, especially when it costs so much to reset a story and none of the newer ones are available to replay as part of the EF perk.
For what it’s worth, “Publish the paper” was my least disliked choice as well. I mistrust the Liberation of Night (more specifically, it’s backers in the High Wilderness), and will always be more intrinsically British than any mere paper-pushing careerist because I saved London multiple times and he didn’t.
But I hate the Judgements most of all for imposing the absolutely unacceptable conditions of death on the entire cosmos, so I’m all for sharing the paper with everyone rather than one specific faction.
That lack of an option, as Sekai-Spring mentioned earlier, really does stand out because I vaguely remember many other ESes in the past letting you just keep stuff for yourself. Definitely wish that option was there, and that the whole Revolutionaries vs The Law vs An Eccentric Woman was a bit hamfisted compared to how FL has handled such conflicts in the past
Not much use for it on its own, unless one wanted to just shove it in a drawer (which has, I admit, been a possible option in the past). You can’t publish it as your own, 'cause then the Linguist could call out your plagiarism. If you want to pass it on to interested parties,well, there’s two of them in the story - the Professor and the Censor.
My reason for wanting exclusive ownership of the paper is that my character is an ambitious figure actively seizing dominion. At present, I subscribe to the maxim that “an ignorant populace is easier to govern”, and for this reason, I refuse to disseminate knowledge to the public.
Handing the paper over to the censor might seem a viable option, yet I have no interest in furthering his ambitions, nor do I wish to back him, as I mistrust the Department entirely.
Indeed, exactly as you said. It reminds me of stories like Adornment or The Haunting at the Marsh‑House, where players may freely indulge their greed and other such impulses
I was thinking more like the cave of nadir option not to sell where you just keep it a secret, not publishing oneself yeah. I don’t think theres any reason that “I don’t think this info should be out there” (because say its too dangerous) has to be correlated with wanting the author of said info to be arrested and her career totally ruined which seemed to be the censors goal
I enjoyed this one a lot. The bits with the strange machine were wonderfully spooky, especially when they started to mess with your character’s memory and sense of reality through the power of books! I also liked learning more about the Professor and the Linguist and their relationship to each other.
This was another delicious story from Anna Anthropy (who also wrote The Stolen Soiree). I’ll be looking forward to more from this author in the future!
I liked this one a lot: deep, dark and marvellous, a true Fallen London story. The only thing I missed was an option to feed the Censor to a tiger or a zee-creature or something like that.
As an aside, I love that the Fall of London in 1862 did not stop Lewis Carroll from publishing Alice in Wonderland in 1865, even though in this universe the title is different (and maybe some of the story as well).
