Weekly Fallen London Questions, 20/08/2018

Mutton Island heaves with visitors, the zee heaves with fish, and bosoms heave with mirth - and this thread heaves with questions!

Aside from flight, what can the Masters’ kind actually do?

Also, how likely is it that Eaten could still fly on tattered, mummified wings? Because it’s such a great image :D

Speak Correspondence, fly in space, kill a lot of people as a certain legend you attempt to bag, “continuity through conjoining disparate flesh”…

Quite a lot.

But when does Mr. Eaten fly?
edited by Ixc on 8/20/2018

[quote=GuesssWho]Aside from flight, what can the Masters’ kind actually do?

Also, how likely is it that Eaten could still fly on tattered, mummified wings? Because it’s such a great image :D[/quote]

The Master’s abilities, off the top of my head:

[spoiler]
From Bag a Legend:

  • Getting bigger, or, perhaps, shape-shifting to a degree; echolocation; super tough skin
  • Their pulled teeth still move on their own and can chew through iron or marble
    From Seeking:
  • Crazy resilience (at the very least, can survive a stab in the heart and being eaten alive for the entire day) even on the Surface, without the Neath’s vitality
  • Some (probably, most) of them have &quotdual nature&quot, whatever it means
    Misc:
  • Speaking the Correspondence
  • Being able to spawn animals (and humans, sometimes) after a lunch
  • Getting tipsy or, perhaps, hypnotized by music
  • Flying on the unmoving wings, so probably it’s more magic than aerodynamics

To your second question, the wings probably aren’t the main concern. If those guys don’t really need aerodynamics, and even a pulled tooth still moves, a skeleton of a wing might suffice.

The main problem is, well, being dead.
[/spoiler]

edited by incerteza on 8/21/2018

On top of your head? Are you wearing the list as a hat then? :p

Being dead doesn’t seem to have stopped him, though, has it? If anything it gave him more powers, namely dreamweaving and being able to eat concepts and speaking out of wells. It also trapped him in the Neath and drove him fucking insane and Judgements know what else, of course.
edited by GuesssWho on 8/20/2018

Oops. Not a native speaker, sorry.
(Also, not the weirdest thing I wore as a hat :D)

Oops. Not a native speaker, sorry.
(Also, not the weirdest thing I wore as a hat :D)[/quote]
It’s usually ‘off the top of my head.’ Slight difference, but important ;)

They are higher on the Chain. Whatever relation humans have to animals, the Masters probably have to humans. They seem on average larger, stronger, faster, tougher, smarter. There is some variation among them, though.

Let’s not forget, they don’t age (or at least not on the scale of human civilizations). And their affinity for markets and capitalism seems to be something common to their kind, not just to this particular group of them.

It’s a little hard to tease apart what is a property of their kind versus what is a result of age and experience and knowledge. There are many secrets in the Neath that have power, which the Masters are privy too. But then again, humans aren’t born with language or swords or dirigibles either.

Oh, and…

Drinking their blood creates a dream link between them and being a lesser on the Chain.

Speaking of… this might be how they learn the languages of the Fallen Cities

That makes a lot of sense, actually.

When I play Empress’s Shadow, what would I give up/miss out on if I choose the path to get a Judgment’s Egg?

Asking because I want it for collection purposes, but I also want to hoard as many Fragments of Tragedy Procedures as possible, so I’m weighing my options as to the Egg sources to avoid spending Regnant Coins on it.

Is there like a list of collected lore pages? It seems hard to keep up with the exceptional stories when there is a lot of lore I don’t know. I am confronted by things that more seasoned players have more insight on, and it’s kind of stressful. For example, '\the sorrow spiders? Do they control or influence their hosts? What’s their deal?

It’s a well-known failing of Fallen London. Journals are an imperfect solution, since they don’t record the action taken that led to a given result, but some people put the title of the action into the editable title of the echo which can help piece together the narrative. Your best bet would be finding someone like that, I think, since I don’t think there are any comprehensive collections of text anywhere (certainly not easily findable on e.g. the wiki and such, as FBG requests that a) Fate-locked content doesn’t get recorded on the wiki and b) text from the game doesn’t get recorded verbatim above a certain length). There might be some things like this: Fallen London Lore & References Miscellany - Google Sheets, and various forum threads over the years. But I have never found any real comprehensive, compiled and well-organised stores of lore.

Well, the I 'a a candle tumblr blog is by far the most comprehensive lore source.

Helped me A LOT to understand what was going on in London and make sense of several ES.
edited by Jolanda Swan on 8/22/2018

Oooh thank you. Maybe we should start like…lore understanding threads? Like everyone can give their spoiler free or non-spoiler free summaries of what they understand in threads about certain topics? And someone can maintain them. Would give me a way to practice my summarizing and data smooshing.
edited by maylee henst on 8/22/2018

I think a lot of the more obscure issues are discussed here and there in the forums! They are the ones that make you wonder if you have been playing a different game, before you realize they are pulling from 5 different games, the candle tumblr, three obscure tweets by Alexis Kennedy, a note Italo Calvino made in the back of his laundry list and a real life goat invocation.

It’d probably be pretty hard to get a nicely-organized summaries here on the forum, mostly because the site search only returns top-5 results. Even if you somehow organize a new sub-forum with structured and well maintained lore-understanding threads, it still would be easier to ask than to find this info with a site search.
I’m not sure which format would suit it better. The Fifth City wiki sounds similar to what you describe, but it’s often outdated.

[quote=incerteza]
It’d probably be pretty hard to get a nicely-organized summaries here on the forum, mostly because the site search only returns top-5 results. Even if you somehow organize a new sub-forum with structured and well maintained lore-understanding threads, it still would be easier to ask than to find this info with a site search.
I’m not sure which format would suit it better. The Fifth City wiki sounds similar to what you describe, but it’s often outdated.[/quote]

Isn’t that site riddled with lore spoilers?

Yes. That’s the point of it, putting all the lore in one place!

[quote=Dudebro Pyro]When I play Empress’s Shadow, what would I give up/miss out on if I choose the path to get a Judgment’s Egg?

Asking because I want it for collection purposes, but I also want to hoard as many Fragments of Tragedy Procedures as possible, so I’m weighing my options as to the Egg sources to avoid spending Regnant Coins on it.[/quote]

There’s a bunch of different endings, one of which gives the Egg. The other endings give various other 62.5 echo items, but nothing unique. So you’d mostly be missing out on the story for a different ending.

As I understand it, the sorrow spiders don’t have any supernatural powers of persuasion; the Spider-Councils are just really good at running cults.