After playing Sunless Sea and Fallen London (and still playing them) there are so many questions. First of all, this game reminds me on Lovecraft but not the Cthulhu Mythos. More of the dream quest of unknown kadath with all those talking cats and so on.
So i start with a simple questions: What are tomb colonists? It seems Fallen Londoners can’t die or they can i am not sure because as captain of the sunless sea i can die of mortal wounds but fallen londoners just seem to get older and older until they get tomb colonists or so i think.
so my theory is that people can die of wounds but not from getting older. But then there are tomb colonists with mortal wounds that are still some kind of alive i think, like zombies.
then there is that furious device at the southwestern part of of the zea. what is it good for. is it just like some kind of a sun which just sometimes pretends it would lighten the sunless caverns?
and the last one for now: what is it with the hell? there seems to be a directly conncection to the hell and people out of hell are also part of London but are they mortal? can they die? it seems so that they can be wounded, that they are all some kind of anarchists, but i am not sure and that they have the power to steal souls (which also apes have) so i don’t know if that is a big deal in London.
i ask because i think the world of fallen london is great to play in with the next Pen and Paper group and i want to know a few more details i couln’t figure out.
Tomb Colonists: Put it this way - there’s a lot of life energy floating around in the Neath. That means that, sometimes, a wound that would kill you instead leaves you very, very badly hurt - really almost close to dead - but not quite actually permanently dead. Mind you, that doesn’t mean you’ll be as healthy as you were before - you might still have a bunch of horrible ragged scars and dents and oozing bits, but there’s enough life going spare that you’ll still be upright and mobile. That means there’s a lot of unreasonably old and/or badly-injured people walking around, getting stains on the furniture and putting people off their dinner. Thus, the socially acceptable thing to do is wrap them up in bandages and ship them off to the Tomb-Colonies.
Oh, and the reason zee-captains still die when they’re badly wounded? Well, some wounds are naturally still going to be fatal - depends how badly you’re hurt. Also, the zee has its own weird energy, which cancels out some of the spare life energy - that’s its own mystery, which we don’t know an enormous amount about yet.
The Dawn Machine is a major player in recent lore - search for it and/or the New Sequence for discussion of it.
The Iron Republic isn’t Hell itself - Hell is further west, up the river, where our ships can’t go. The Iron Republic is a collaboration between Hell and some anarchists to create an experimental society without any consistent laws - even laws of physics. There are still laws, but they’re essentially satirical, and they change almost constantly. How do they do it? Who knows! The devils themselves are another deep mystery of the lore - suffice to say they’re not what they seem, and very, very hard to kill.
It takes a grievous wound or special skill to kill someone on land. Don’t worry. You are likely to survive for a long time, wrapped in bandages, losing your ability to move and speak. After enough strange aeons, a few find an alternative transformation — or sacrifice?
Londoners built the Dawn Machine. We regret reading Voltaire. It lives to order and enslave, just as the real sun does.
Hell is roses and origami and royalty. Hell is buzzing and horns and revolution. Slay a devil, and you’ll find something inside. We do not know how devils use souls, but then, how do we?
so i thought that people with the bright yellow eyes were devils, as the one which is sitting on this special volcanic isle in the zea and as she was afraid of some things and if someone is afraid he or she has something to lose.
And as i read out ouf your information people only sometimes end up being tomb colonists. I’ve read the neathbow so i know something about transformation.
And tomb colonists seem to die if they lose their heads if i got this right. I stumbled upon an event where this was happening.
and i still didn’t find any information about the dawn machine that are more than cryptic. Ok, faction of London build it but why?
there is this weird love story between the sun (the real one) and the bazaar but why then building a decoy sun? is it what london droves underground?
What i also don’t get is why if love storys are crucial to the bazar, why i can’t sell any in sunless sea to the bazaar.
im fairly sure it does say somewhere in fallen london that you can die from getting older, and that the only exception to this is to use hesperidian cider
It’s implied. Not outright stated, but it’s pretty clear being a colonist is a slow decline until you’re either dead, or the price of greek mythology immortality from nasty gods. (an insect)
yes i thought that. but it is slow. As far as i got into the streets of fallen london there is much murder around. It is said that many constables died in their duty and sometimes there are dark missions about assassination so i think that the streets of london are not as safe as it first seems to me.
I stumbled over another details which was not fully clear to me. The cats and other animals seem to be able to speak and exchange secrets. and i am so eager to hear more about the dawn machine. Also my Captain is eager to get a Khanate Ship (for some charity work, you know)
[quote=Spielesocke]yes i thought that. but it is slow. As far as i got into the streets of fallen london there is much murder around. It is said that many constables died in their duty and sometimes there are dark missions about assassination so i think that the streets of london are not as safe as it first seems to me.
I stumbled over another details which was not fully clear to me. The cats and other animals seem to be able to speak and exchange secrets. and i am so eager to hear more about the dawn machine. Also my Captain is eager to get a Khanate Ship (for some charity work, you know)[/quote]
Most murder is temporary in the neath. This includes as a zailor, but there the consequence is usually a fate worse than death, or at least enough to make you quit work as a zailor.
Unless it’s specified otherwise, mentally replace murder with maiming. death is an inconvenience, and many constables die- and die frequently.
Speaking of death… When I briefly died recently, I had a dream-like experience of playing chess with a boatman. Does that mean that some sort of an afterlife is confirmed to exist in this universe? Or was that just a delirium-induced dream? edited by Remedan on 2/10/2016
[quote=Remedan]Speaking of death… When I briefly died recently, I had a dream-like experience of playing chess with a boatman. Does that mean that some sort of an afterlife is confirmed to exist in this universe? Or was that just a delirium-induced dream? edited by Remedan on 2/10/2016[/quote]
That is a tricky question. Thanatos and Hypnos were supposedly twins, I guess it makes sense that sometimes it’s a little hard to tell them apart? :)
In many ways I think the Neath might be considered an afterlife of sorts (in so much as it is both literally and thematically an Underworld) - I mean Hell is only just up the river.
I think it’s left up to you really how you want to interpret the boat-man experience. Which (sort of) segues into what others have said above.
From what I can see: People die but then then get better. Death is no less real (or painful/debilitating), only less permanent. A general guideline in the Neath, not a law. Not staying dead appears to almost as much a matter of willpower and patience as the amount of damage that was done to your body. I imagine that getting eaten might well permanently kill you, but even that doesn’t always work out…
(Maybe getting set on fire might work?)
I think it’s reasonable to assume people die from old age quite frequently, it perhaps doesn’t always last that long. No wonder Tomb-Colonists can be a little crotchety.
thanks for all the links. So dying is not a permanent thing. If it says i shuld assassinate somebody i can be sure he will be around once again after some time? So that Jack O Smiles must be a very sad murderer :)
And yes, i want to know more about that speaking cats, too. At least i know that i have to be very careful if i talk to pets in fallen London.
And when Londoners don’t die, why do they even bother that they’ve lost troops in the fight against hell? shouldn’t they be like healthy back a few days later?
I was sure about that a beheaded tomb colonist stays dead…
And also it seems to be like DEAD in the neath gets more deadly if you die more often. As that chess player really wants to keep you there. (or me. I shouln’t look into mirrows so often)
So: how can you kill someone in fallen london so that he or she stays dead? I want to know if there is something i should fear (right now getting crazy seems to be more likely)
and btw: if i can’t die or it is nearly impossible to die if i am not cruising the zea i really bother with the thought what might happen if a sorrow spider steals my eye. Can i attach it to my body again? or is it gone, digested from a vile spider who lurks in my very house? Now i can feel the panic. so many question… so much horror
I think beheading is often (but not a guaranteed) way of killing someone permanently. Cutting them to pieces, digestion, and other deaths that make it hard to recover the body also work. But even then, people from the elder continent will be fine.
And Devils didn’t let the casualties stay dead. They took them all prisoner. edited by suinicide on 2/12/2016
I quite wonder about that.
Considering Neath’s generally lax rules for deathlike conditions, you could find a decent surgeon and go all Frankenstein, swapping the replacements for your missing body part till you find one that fits. You might need a lot of spares though…
I quite wonder about that.
Considering Neath’s generally lax rules for deathlike conditions, you could find a decent surgeon and go all Frankenstein, swapping the replacements for your missing body part till you find one that fits. You might need a lot of spares though…[/quote]
Now that’s a really good idea for a story. You lose an arm and go on a search for a replacement. It probably would have to be fresh for it to work. And maybe you’d need some really unique and experimental drug to suppress the immune response. That way you can explain why not everybody can do it.
Why are there still doctors, like surgeons and physicians in fallen london. As there is not much to worry about, there shouldn’t be any (or only a few) around…