Starved Men, to forgive or not to forgive, that is the question. Which flower to pick?
I see them as a potentially powerful faction rivaling the Devils, the Masters. Adding more flesh to a rich lore.
Well, you don’t have to do either! Just go home and think on it. But if it helps, I chose to forgive. If they want to try and make peace, we should let them. And if they try to undo that, then we will crush them again!
And thus the Neath moves a little closer to what Irem will give as the description of a Neon Future
So this means we have 10 more days of playing with ships? 
Now this is great and more than enough to catch up with the content! I was too busy getting all the 20 clues, but the trip was worth it.
That sounds pretty neat (The Starved Embassy) and I can’t help by wonder what the token of esteem will be.
The whole story seems to be a try to intentionally insult the victims of a real war that’s now raging not so far from all of us. “Two sides of a conflict”, “misunderstanding” - such a horrible nonsense. Too many attempts to justify the aggression and the aggressor. Feels like FB were using a weird mixture of Russian propaganda and “My Little Pony” as their source of inspiration.
Besides, the inner logic of the event is more than weird. First things first, why did the Starved Men decide to “change” London? Are there any mentions of their links to the Fallen Cities’ existence? Then, it seems a complete idiotism from Jenny’s and Commodore’s side to believe the Starved “defectors” without any tries to check their whereabouts - saying “hi” to “friendship is magic”, I presume. After all, the failure to act from the Queen’s side seems to be left forgotten. Too many missing links.
As for the good - brilliant! - moments - for me there were two: the “Hell is empty” line and the scene of the Masters’ attack, really impressive and very in character, showing us the real Curators hunting. They don’t outweigh the failures, but still they exist.
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I did my best to view the story on its own terms, as a reflection of the writers’ hopes and ideals, rather than any sort of commentary on current events, but… yeah, things being what they are it’s hard to avoid considering certain parallels, and one might ask whether the choices made here were the smartest ones available.
Naturally the reality right now is a very straightforward, heart-rendingly disastrous and miserably drawn out battle between right and wrong, with very little shades of grey worth considering.
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This story is not about any real-world war, nor any real-world ponies. Please remain on-topic, per the forum rules - real-world political events are not the topic.
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I didn’t really see any parallel between the Starved Men invasion of London and the Russian invasion of Ukraine. I’m not sure there were any, besides “it was an invasion”? Not every story about war is a story about THAT war.
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Personally? I made an offering of my own.
I say this as someone who went balls to the wall massacring Starved buggers at every opportunity. As someone for whom the highlight of this event was being able to take out the Vake-steed and join the Masters in GLORIOUS aerial slaughter, and who rammed the bloody eye rather than accept my guns’ failure.
It’s just that after that, after the death toll and vengeful havoc I’ve wrecked…sabotaging a flower or storming off in a huff just feels petty you know? All those assembled for this event have had cause to come to blows with London for one reason or another over the years, and most of them weren’t even doing it because of anything as idealistic as geographical acupuncture reasons. They tried to incinerate my house, I flew up and smashed theirs, I’m happy to call it even.
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I must say, this event was the greatest disappointment of all my London days. We’ve unleashed a major military campaign engaging tons of our own efforts and all our international connections based on an unverified, highly unclear, and hardly believable information from people who attacked us. I just can’t believe it did not lead to a painful and humiliating end.
Both the narrative and the mechanic felt largely pre-cooked almost everywhere along the way, as if the team didn’t care enough to make it at least internally consistent – and that’s the attitude I don’t like to assume.
I’m not even sure what made me follow the event through to the end. Probably, I’ve hoped that we’ll finally get a decent explanation as to why the things are what they are. But it looks like I will just have to accept it. I really wish I’ve never attended the Opening ceremony and just went on planting flowers and fungi. That was fun!
I’m pretty much on the peaceful side, I prefer to avoid fighting when possible, and to consider perspectives, and to search for the least harmful ways to satisfy everyone, and all. But the sudden alliance with the Starved Men doesn’t feel appropriate because I can’t believe it, even if I try hard. Trusting without doubt someone who was crashing your hometown just a few days ago? It doesn’t work this way! Even if their motives were benign, and it happened only over a difference in perspectives… are we sure there are no more critical differences left that might get us hurt? Not to even mention they could have lied about their intentions. People do sometimes lie, after all, especially when it comes to escaping captivity, for example.
Finally, I can’t settle with the fact that the royal family’s distancing from London’s trouble was left without a comment. Even from the Revolutionaries. I’m really looking forward to a monarchy overthrow now.
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Well, if we look at the structure of the story…
Some people came to help a city to their best understanding without ever asking consent, permission or even a perspective.
I’ll just ask – how is that remotely their problem? Why do these Starved consider themselves in charge over London so much as to affect such significant modifications? Why are they sure it is their responsibility to decide for the city?
Their representative claim the intentions to help the city. Why would they care? It’s not revealed. They admit to have seen the falling of cities before, and there is no evidence they ever tried to intervene. What’s different this time? That’s kind of important, but no answer still.
They claim to not have perceived humanoid citizens as individual counterparts for communication. It was the city. What is “the city” exactly? Did they regard it as a living being, a person? Did they try to communicate with “the city”, to understand its perspective? Or was it more like an object of possession to them? Why then there were no previous signs of them laying claims? No answers.
Moreover, everything that we know about the Starved Men from the previous encounters – like in Light Fingers, Upwards, Written in the Glim, Stretch in the Sky… – doesn’t suggest they are prone to granting bliss all around. They were either committed to their own goals without any regard to what fate it brings upon others or barely possessing self-consciousness, more like wild animals. Suddenly they want to help, and we don’t even ask why? Just immediately believe them without a single critical thought? I mean, really?
It’s like the story is trying to persuade me that having good intentions – in fact, just claiming them – is enough to justify any action, disregard any harm done, and enable friendship between the aggressors and the victims. I really choose to believe that this was not an attempt to put an ethical or political point about the Surface. Even in the Neath, saying “we didn’t mean to” doesn’t cancel what is done, even if one manages to say this in Correspondence
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Tryna get one of the Neon Destinies because I saw a post on reddit about how that Future connects to this event…and my god is getting 3 Sinewy Warp Cards before you reach the Chilly Future difficult.
Irem needs a bigger hand size than 3
Oh, cherry on top…
In the course of the “cultural exchange” material gifts are considered more valuable than conversation. Are we trying to establish understanding or just to bribe each other into forgetting past ills?
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…I’ll get back to you on that in three weeks.
Not necessarily. The Starved Men aren’t the people caring about what you give, it’s other Londoners who are judging you for appearing cheap compared to the gifts of other Londoners and the gifts of the Starved Men in return. You are probably one of the richest people in London, so just giving a nice conversation when other people are giving Puzzle-Damask and fine wines looks bad in the eyes of Society.
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Was there any point, besides deciding to participate or not, and closing some rewards, where our choices made any differences to any outcomes other than small bits of flavor text? (Or maybe having our ship crash and reset.) It seems to me that we’re increasingly confronted with essentially simple and linear stories where every path leads to the same outcome. Simplifies the coding, but at a serious cost in quality.
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Then probably I’m one of the most intelligent people in London as well 
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Wow, that ending! The desperate and scary flight into darkness, the Masters showing up (which I found surprisingly touching; they’re assholes, but they’re our assholes, and they came through for us, damnit), the last-ditch ramming into the sun, shout-singing “Row, row, row your boat” at the Boatman till he shoves you back at life, seeing the wreckage of my dear Lamplighter… . It really hit the excitement and the emotions, and gave me that welling up of fondness for our beleaguered, messy Neath-London and everyone in it pulling together that I’ve come to expect from the summer event, but managed to do it in a new enough way to not feel like a repetition.
It’s true that what happened felt a little set in stone, but I think that’s been true for all the events, hasn’t it; it was enough within my expectations that that didn’t bother me, at any rate. And the whole ‘one by one all your allies show up to pull you out of trouble’ is a pretty well-used trope, but I’m a sucker for it when done well. There was enough already happening to suggest the Starved Men weren’t trying to harm us that I didn’t feel it was too unreasonable for us to accept their claims, so that didn’t bother me, and I definitely didn’t read any intent to parallel current events. An invasion is a common enough staple in fantasy and sci-fi that I’d feel it’d need a lot more similarities to current events to give that sense to me.
As far as the rest of the event, there were some points I found a bit dull - the early on round of endlessly petitioning people to help and being refused or put off and then doing it again and again was rather tiresome and didn’t feel like the best use of characters’ energy within the story - surely if Sinning Jenny could do something meaningful, we could too instead of just keeping begging her to do it? Late-game players, at least, are certainly presented on at least equal footing to her.
Beyond the early round of petitioning and other than the ending, which really upped my excitement, I found last year’s Estival a little more exciting on the whole, though I couldn’t say exactly why beyond that first issue. But this year they’ve really gotten their balance right between enough sense of time-pressure for excitement, room for the whole playerbase has to pull together to achieve things, and enough resting points and freedom advancement to avoid too many people missing out on things because they had a busy day or are awake in the wrong hours. This was the first year I managed to contribute to a clue or two before their progress bars were full, and that does add a little oomph of satisfaction, but I didn’t feel at any point too stressed that I wouldn’t be able to get or experience all of the things I wanted to, which seems just right imo. Feels like Failbetter has reached a new mastery that we hadn’t seen in the prior Estivals, as much as I loved them, it felt so much more smooth and professional.
And I love the bit of movement into a pre-Neon future; feels like time is passing a little! Really hoping we’ll see more of our new could-be-a-faction, we’re so used to Devils and Rubbery and Clay Men that it’s nice to have someone who still feels quite alien in the city. And also hoping for the horticulture to return - since they’ve already done the work of creating it, seems a waste not to get to grow some alarming new plants. Would be nice to get even some limited chances to fly again, too!
Well done, Failbetter, and thank you! This was great fun, it’s amazing that we get so much new, intensive content every year like this!
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Totally with you there. Please finally let us guillotine the bloody Empress next Summer!
I’m… somewhat unclear about my reaction to this event. And the Summer events in total.
I have no idea whether FB have some kind of secret masterplan and these Estivals are all actually leading up to something in particular. But if not, then I’m really NOT looking forward to have London confront an Extremely Serious Crisis threatening its very existence every single Summer now. It gets old rather quickly.
I mean, we had an earthquake (ok, Neathquake) two years ago, some sort of Parabolan Time-Warp 2nd City invasion last year (I can’t remember much of the details) and now another invasion this year. And every time this crisis happened during some kind of Special Public Event (a Masters’ auction, a Science Fair, a Botanical Show). The next logical step would be for Londoners to ban any kind of new public events during summertime due to bad karma.
What this mostly reminds me of is the time when I read DC/Marvel superhero comics and every year there would be one major supercrisis threatening the very existence of the multiverse as we know it. I tired of that pretty quickly.
Mechanically, the events are not bad. There’s a lot about them that’s fun. And in order not to spoil the fun parts, I’m trying not to overthink the whole story behind them because I’m all too aware that it’s usually rather ludicrous and VERY flimsy. Which, unfortunately, is what a lot of recent Fallen London content seemed like to me. I wasn’t too impressed with Evolution as a whole, though parts of it were quite good. But maybe it’s just me and I’ve been here too long and after finishing all the Ambitions and the Railway, feeling the intensity drop off a bit is only to be expected.
But yes, as some here have already voiced, I feel like a lot of recent content (Exceptional Stories, Evolution, Festivals) doesn’t offer us any really meaningful choices leading to really different outcomes. Your flavour text gets adjusted a bit and that’s it usually. Otherwise just click through, please.
To end on a positive note: after an earthquake and two invasions in three years, I find it totally believable that everyone now just wants to spend some quality time planting flowers/mushrooms/weird shapeling things. I mean, the whole population must have pretty serious PTSD by now, so let’s just do some collective gardening therapy. That’s actually quite realistic. “Let’s not talk about it anymore. Let’s just believe all shall be well at some point.”
I do like this idea of the Peace Garden that just came about without any incentive from above. It’s rare in this game to see Londoners show any sort of independent community incentive.
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Well, I’d be very glad if next year (or some other time in future) we suddenly find London almost devoid of people right before the Estival, because it’s too dangerous to remain in the city in summer. It reminds me of something, you know, whovian, only with summer instead of Christmas.
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