That phrase keeps coming up. They say they are elder monsters beneath the Neath…but…somehow, I feel we’ll see them more often. My personal theory is that theyr’e somehow tied to the pillars, and the Mottled Man.
I think they’re the EB version of Lovecraft’s “Great Old Ones”…
The things we call Devils, and the Masters too, they cannot be the worst that Hell has to offer. I imagine they are merely… halfbloods and thinbloods, lower orders of the infernal races. The elder monsters are perhaps greater demons (not Great Demons, merely greater by comparison with the residents of the Brass Embassy). I dare not speculate as to their intelligence or motives but I am confident that, should they ever wake, the Neath shall know destruction such as we have never seen. Perhaps that is in fact their purpose - to wipe the slate clean before a new city arrives.
Just to bring this topic up again as it has been bothering me as to what the stone pigs actually are. Is there some connection to flute street? maybe the gods of sunless sea?
Sunless Sea has pretty much explained that the Stone Pigs are the Bazaar’s engines.
Bit of a spoiler there, O Wiry Wolf - maybe chuck that in some spoiler tags! (And, that said, even if we know what they are, we don’t know -what- they are.)
We only vaguely know what they are even with sunless sea.
Like obviously they’re how the bazaar travels between stars, and they dug the cumaean canal, but. And they’re… pigs made of stone. Maybe. But like does that mean they’re rocket engines or some kind of bazaar anomaly that warps the laws of physics or is the bazaar dragged through the high wilderness like Thor’s chariot?
Ah okay i hadn’t gotten that far in sunless sea yet but no worries. Still interesting, i like the whole chariots of the gods thing going on though. I only got the whole alien space bats thing the other day
edited by ReidlosToof on 8/2/2015
Do you suppose they’re literally porcine, or are they called pigs because they devour things greedily?
I wouldn’t have a clue, but going by the text beneath Arcturus Paleheart / ReidlosToof’s spoiler tag, I’d imagine perhaps it began as the latter but has since additionally become the former.
I could be entirely off the mark, but it seems plausible enough (considering the subject matter.)
edited by ReidlosToof on 8/2/2015[/quote]
Given that…well, the lacre takes on a whole new shine, doesn’t it?
One of the sidebar hints (which are not guaranteed to be reliable) suggest that the name is a mistranslation. I figure this was Porcus, pig, confused for Orcus, god of the underworld.
mistranslated from what though?
I would assume that it would be translated from the Correspondence, seeing as it is the language of the stars, and the bazaar.
edited by Hypersomnus on 8/3/2015
At the time I thought it was a mistranslation from an earlier city’s language (Latin), but that was some years ago. Now that we mostly know the earlier city’s identities, I suppose a Latin mistranslation doesn’t make much sense. Oh well, it was a neat idea.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 8/3/2015
Not really certain if this is overspoilery, but better safe than sorry?
[spoiler]Perhaps it’s several mistranslations at this point, if it an attempt at voicing Correspondence? The in-game effect of that language seem to be faltering, confusing translations at best and a complete lack of words for it at worst. I’d wager each city that’s fallen has had someone figure out what they are, but lacking words in their own language for what they saw or felt, they’re left groping for a proper phrase and we’re left with this?
Maybe this is just the more recent one, from London’s Fall, and there’s other weird mistranslations from prior cities as well. I’d be keen to see what other cities wrote on the subject; maybe we’re not all thinking pigs?[/spoiler]
I know that in sunless sea, the Tireless Mechanic steals information on an engine from one of the stone pigs through dreams. He mentions that the stone pigs had to do with the masters traveling between stars. This prompts me to suspect that the stone pigs are sort of like space-ships for the masters. (or Mr.'s, as I like to call them.) Of course, the game describes what the mechanic did as stealing from the dreams of the stone pigs, which suggests that they are alive, (as one must be, in order to dream of anything.) The really exciting part is knowing that with the coming of sunless skies, we are liable to find out more about stars in the Failbetter universe, and maybe learn more about the interactions between them and the masters. Fun!
Picture the Enterprise from Star Trek. The Bazaar is the saucer section. The stone pigs are the drive nacelles. The Masters are the officers. The Rubbery Forehead Men are like random Vulcan civilians already on board before the show started.
London is like Season Five of Star Trek Earth.
Note: don’t ask the crew about Season Two or about Mr Chekov.
edited by Masterpiece on 3/31/2017
There’s a bit of text on the way to Flute Street that[li]
at least suggests the Pigs are physical entities of some sort that are sleeping. Very LARGE entities.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/nedemmons?fromEchoId=2175225
Sadly, there’s no option on that card like "bring back your Revolutionary friends and all the dynamite you can get your hands on to see what happens". Nothing good, I suspect. :)
I’m firmly of the position that their name is not because they oink or have curly tales. The Stone Pigs are part of the Bazaar, and like many things about the Bazaar, the way we know of it is some distance apart from its true nature due to an inability of the human mind and senses to fully perceive and comprehend it.
Specifically, the Pigs are the Bazaar’s engines, which through mechanisms unknown carried the Bazaar across the High Wilderness before it went into hiding in the Neath. Engines need fuel. Interstellar engines need lots of fuel. The Stone Pigs are pigs not in shape or temperament, but in appetite. Where in Fallen London might we find mineral resources to sate the Pigs’ hunger? Look no further than the Bazaar’s personal attendants.
"Mine."
Mr. Stones is tired of Fallen London. Presumably, that means a desire to return to the High Wilderness, which in turn requires the Bazaar to be prepared for its eventual departure from the Neath. A departure which will require not only the seven cities’ worth of love stories the Bazaar came to the Neath for, but also enough fuel to get the Pigs up and running again. Mr. Stones is stingy with his supplies because every diamond, every crystal, every block of marble traded away is one less morsel to feed the Bazaar’s engines.
edited by Anchovies on 4/1/2017
edited by Anchovies on 4/1/2017