On the other hand, some of us scoffed when told that London had been 'stolen by bats’, only to later be forced to admit that it’d literally been stolen by bats. I’m going to remain agnostic on Stone Pigs.
Actual swine or not, my hunch is that someone on the writing team is a fan of William Hope Hodgson’s ‘Carnacki’ tales. Specifically, The Hog, where ‘pig’ could indeed be the way the human mind interprets something it can only sense as an insatiable appetite – or perhaps it’s a genuine nebula-sized pig, which somehow manages to be far more ludicrous, but also unreasonably worse.
A favourite story of China Miéville’s, I believe. Proof that no concept is too weird if you sell it with utter conviction.
[quote=Vexpont]
Actual swine or not, my hunch is that someone on the writing team is a fan of William Hope Hodgson’s ‘Carnacki’ tales. Specifically, The Hog, where ‘pig’ could indeed be the way the human mind interprets something it can only sense as an insatiable appetite – or perhaps it’s a genuine nebula-sized pig, which somehow manages to be far more ludicrous, but also unreasonably worse.
A favourite story of China Miéville’s, I believe. Proof that no concept is too weird if you sell it with utter conviction.[/quote]
Well wasn’t THAT just the cutest thing I’ve ever read! Thank you for making me aware of its existence :D edited by Kukapetal on 7/24/2017
[quote=Teaspoon]I wonder what happens if someone wakes up the Stone Pigs on purpose.
I mean, I’m mostly wondering if any Revolutionaries have thought of this as a way to destroy London. Or save it.[/quote]
Sunless Sea offers the suggestion that the Masters utilized the Stone Pigs in some fashion to melt out the tunnels connecting the locks that make up the Cumaean Canal. Then again, what do random superstitious zailors know about it?
During Christmas you can feed lacre to actual pigs, and rather than killing them or mutating them or causing them to explode, it just puts them to sleep.
Lacre is also what keeps the stone pigs asleep.