What does it mean to be a Shaper? Complete guess, but I bet it’s the same concept as Notability and being a Person of Some Importance. It’s about having the narrative weight to shape stories.
Reasonable. A high level of social influence names you “A Shaper of Tastes”. The only other reference to Shaper I can find is probably unrelated — a maddened Snuffer’s battle cry “For the Shaper” presumably refers to its good old dad.
I have updated the doc’s references tab with in-game references to Boethius, Viriconium, Julian of Norwich, T. S. Eliot, and Gulbahar. I have no idea which Gulbahar the game refers to or why, however; any ideas?
I can’t help but suspect that the Gulbahar Redaction may be hinting at a connection to the Sultan’s Dream that has been teased for years now.
Having a flick through the spreadsheet and noticed one or two things that I know a little about!
Crushers I believe are the police, in reference to the big "beetle-crushers" or boots that policemen at the time wore. Push means the money or valuables. Not entirely sure about windering, but it seems likely to just be window/means of escape. I used a couple of sources, but this has the definitions of the first two.
Another proverb from the Red Book to go along with the other one quoted on the sheet. I’m also half-tempted to believe that the Order Vespertine inscriptions come from the Red Book or something associated. Maybe it’s just the contexts in which we encounter it, but the Red Book seems to have a preoccupation with light and dark, and the link between light and law.
edited by Barse on 8/7/2018
Thank you both! I’ve updated the doc. I’d never even heard of the Sultan’s Dream. :O
The Sultan’s Dream is the impossible-to-acquire tattoo, iirc.
Barse has sucked me into the Discord and now my neatly organized doc is expanding with more and more sloppy notes and weird connections.
And so far all I’ve asked them about is my current favourite lore string to tug: a proposal to ban black-painted ships on the river. It turns out black ships do appear in two other places, seemingly connected:
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In the Mind of a Long-Dead God, you see a fleet of ships (color unspecified) originally sailing East, but sacrificing to a contemptuous Storm in order to go North, Seeking-style.
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When discussing dreams of water, Seeking, and weather with Schlomo, he repeatedly makes references to Homer. Most relevantly, he mentions a fleet of black ships with wind "dearly bought from that angry god." The Iliad uses black ships as an epithet for the Greek armada several times, and that fleet infamously had to sacrifice Iphigenia to an angry god (Artemis) in order to get wind to sail to Troy.
But what could this voyage possibly be in-game? I’ve never heard of multiple ships sailing North to seek Eaten, or of Storm getting involved in their quest.
And secondly — if it’s connected at all — why would anyone want to ban black-painted ships on the Stolen River? I only have one very tenuous connection for who the author of that proposal might be: the Duchess. Schlomo speaks to her about wells and your dreams of water (the only time I know of that the Duchess is connected to Seeking, though it’s not surprising that she’s knowledgeable about it), and the scented letter paper fits the character. But a proposal to ban a color of ship seems too trivial for such an intelligent and serious character.
I’ve added to the doc. Thank you Barse and Voight on Discord for their contributions.
Specific Q’s tab:
- Several tenuous hypotheses about the nature of Hell’s Teeth.
Miscellany tab:
- Two hypotheses concerning the naming and origin of the crumbled Court of the Wakeful Eye.
- A hypothesis on the nature of "wave-smoothed fragments of dark glass" found in Flint ES.
References tab:
- A small reference to Lepanto, a naval battle.
Anyone have an opinion on whether I should merge the first two tabs or organize them differently? It’s not always obvious where to put something, which probably means the system is flawed.
edited by TheThirdPolice on 8/10/2018
A new thought on the blank spire of the Bazaar perhaps:
Could it have contained the letter of rejection to be delivered to the Sun? Surely on its way here the Bazaar had to pass by the Sun, and may have had to hide it. Not to mention the Bazaar would in all likelihood want it blanked anyway, if it really is that cruel in its rejection toward the sun, and I do not believe we ever hear any reference to anything but lovestories being written out in the sigils on the skin, marking that message as absent.
Maybe I’m missing something, but I really don’t see what’s so significant about the blank spire. The Bazaar is collecting love stories, and inscribing them on its skin using correspondence (this is known for a fact). It stands to reason that it would have blank spaces on its skin, otherwise it wouldn’t be able to collect any more stories (not without overwriting older ones, which seems to defeat the purpose). Unless it just throws any new stories at anywhere at random, it doesn’t seem surprising that it would simply not have gotten around to filling that particular spire yet.
Possibly, but if we assume the Bazaar can grow spires at will, the question is why is it standing empty for so long? Why grow it so far ahead of time? That it was grown long ago to already contain a message and has been blanked is a possibility.
And the second question is: Where, then, is the message of rejection to the Sun written on its skin? Since we never see anything but stories of love written in the sigils.
That it is a “blank page” waiting to be written on is a possibility, but so is that it is a “blanked page”, so the answer isn’t actually conclusive.