Hi, I’m new here! Recently, my OC followed a path that turned out to be Mr. Candle’s “good” route; she played without Smen or The Hunger, and the path is called “Spending Time in the Southern Archipelago” (if anyone plans to take this route, please do so without Smen or The Hunger—at most, take “Freed of the Name” and nothing else). Because that name is so long and confusing, I want to suggest some ideas and talk a bit about the route. So, from this point on, there will be spoilers—including the reason why you can’t have Smen or The Hunger (consider yourselves warned): Well, since this route flirts with “Seeking,” I wondered if Mr. Eaten’s route can have the codename “Seeking,” why can’t this one? I thought of the name “Hunting,” since the route starts at Hunter’s Keep—it seems only fitting. By the way, it’s a route that really tricks you—starting with the name itself—and involves a lot of wells. I have a theory: what if “Seeking” is actually a fake-out route? After all, Mr. Candle is called the “Drowned Man” on this path, and there’s no mention (at least at the start) of Mr. Eaten. Plus, several parts of the route depict a being getting drowned rather than eaten—strange, right? Was anyone already familiar with this route, or just “Seeking”?
Hello! I’ve just amended the thread title slightly to hide a spoiler.
I haven’t Sought myself, but I’ve looked into it quite a bit and I’m familiar with the lore & routes.
What are you talking about? Everyone who’s in a position for serious Seeking knows of the “Time Passing in the Southern Archipelago” action loops found on Mutton Island and Hunter’s Keep - but beyond me being able to tell you’re referencing that, I genuinely cannot tell what you’re trying to say or suggest. Are you trying to ask them to add a new route centering on the Southern Archipelago? Are you suggesting that a Seeker should be satisfied with what they find there?
No, it’s just that at the time I thought the other route was a lie because of this sane route (and not safe, as I had written). Except Fallen London doesn’t have lies, it has half-truths, which is exactly what happened. And since this route doesn’t have a nickname like “Seeking”, I thought, why not “Hunting”? If you @Johnson_Rivers have a better name idea, just write it here!
Usually in Fallen London when someone is talking about a storyline, they mean some big narrative which spans multiple locations. Generally (most of) these locations are also normal places you can visit as part of the main game (though some of them are unlocked by these storylines, so you can only visit them once you’ve progressed so far). Usually there’s a handful of different qualities which track where you are in the storyline and thus what you need do next, which is necessary to make the whole “these are special actions related to a specific point in one story that should only be visible during that point in the story and not whenever you visit the veilgarden or wherever” thing work.
Your Ambition is usually the first one people are exposed to, but later in the game Evolution & Firmament probably count (I’d argue the railway isn’t narratively coherent enough to be a storyline—pretty much every station is its own distinct thing). SMEN is a bit of an unusual storyline of course, but it does broadly fit into this pattern.
I’m unsure if you’re referring here to the “Time Passing in the Southern Archipelago” quality (which is closer to what you called it?) or to “Time Passing at Hunters Keep”/“Hunter’s Insight” (since you proposed calling your route Hunter?) but either way, these are qualities which control your access to storylets at a single location, by looping through a single fairly short carousel of options. There are a LOT of minor qualities which track this kind of thing in the game. So, while I agree that both Mutton Island and Hunter’s keep are cool places with intriguing lore, I’m hesitant to call them by anything other than their names—there are just too many places in the game with cool lore and a few qualities attached to name them all!