What Does Your Destiny Mean to You?

Fallen London
21

Backstage - ‘Your hands, secretly, on the lever that moves the world.’

Asclepius has always been about power and knowledge. More knowledge = more power. He’s experimented with the Correspondence, seeing it as the New Sorcery. He’s learned all he can about the Fingerkings and the Mirror-Marshes. He’s walked in dreams for so long his eyes roll with the storm. He’s becoming … something. Something or someone that can live in the liminal spaces between true and false, can make their will real with the words of the Correspondence, and whose power and knowledge will endure forever.

That’s what Backstage means to him.

22

Dearest Friends,

Upon my back lies a destiny of sorts. Backstage: hands on the lever that moves the world. The world opens up wider with each passing day. All that was once complex grows simple with understanding. A friend calls me a metamorphosing major-general, without the smatterings. What a mouthful. Perhaps history shall look upon our circle as polymaths, who can say. Our power grows.

It has been made known to me the exacting nature of Morpheus. Defining all creation. Master of dreams, illusion, immaterial and LORD OF NOT. Seers speak of a sublimation, a state of understanding by a man who walks the planes beyond our own materium. What he takes beneath his wings becomes his, never touching our world but through minds. He understands all that is by choosing what is NOT.

No man can grasp negation. We are limited by our imaginations in this way. I shall be the first to break this barrier.

~N

23

(spoilers—)

It’s Hester’s destiny to fly with the Masters. Her motives, however, are a bit bizarre. Ultimately, she aims to unmake the Great Chain, or at the very least make it possible to move along it—but for now, there is the matter of love. She is an appreciator of the Courier’s work, after a fashion (the idiot selfish thing). If it sways the heart of the Sun, then she’ll use their story as an argument for allowing cross-Chain love—if it does not, if the Sun succumbs to its sorrow, she’ll use their story as an argument that standing in the way of love leads only to pain. Somehow, some way, she’ll find a creature of the Judgements’ sphere that will listen.

But whichever way things pan out, there will still be something beautiful in the end—even if not all is as intended.
edited by scherzofrog on 11/27/2014

24

It may be for the best. It may not be. But at least those d–mnable bats and that leviathan won’t be in charge anymore. And there will be life in the darkness. Many will suffer, but with some humble work, we can reduce it somewhat.

25

The sky will open to Estelle. She will rise with the Lorn-Flukes and the Bazaar.

In any case, she will rise to the sky one day, because she slept in at her Spire-Emporium and forgot the Bazaar is departing in the afternoon. She is so prone to inattentiveness and learn so very little during her life in the Neath.

Just looked at the first post and found out my reply completely missed the point…
Yeah, the Road is pretty fitting. I have a long way to go before I learn to properly read and appreciate things.
edited by Byron Man on 1/15/2015

26

Passion: There will still be something beautiful

It brings hope that, someday, all manner of things may, in fact, truly be well. (Which I suppose is rather an optimistic viewpoint for someone who’s also a determined Seeker)

27

The Road. The sky will open to me.

I am destined for great adventure in the pursuit of knowledge. This thought fills me with excitement. I ask myself - will I have the courage to pass the challenge, and face the truth?

28

The Memory - You will change beyond all understanding, but something of you will remain.

This was the key to Eris’s backstory/character, obliquely - she is all about her memories. Her heart’s desire, as it were, is to escape them, but to do that, she has to change - or be changed - quite fundamentally.

29

[color=rgb(194, 194, 194)]The Memory - You will change beyond all understanding, but something of you will remain.[/color]

Den’s journey has been a fascinating one, at the very least. When he first ventured into the Neath, he usually surrounded himself with other fellow Bohemians to experience the height of hedonistic pleasures. However, as he became irrevocably drawn to the mysteries of the Neath and the vast conspiracies between factions, he has slowly drifted into becoming an insidious pawn of the Masters and the Great Game at the cost of his (metaphorical, not literal) soul. To be fair, it is far better to work for the stability of Fallen London than advancing the mutually-destructive Liberation of Night or trusting the criminals and devils that prowl the dark street allies, but Den has committed terrible acts of betrayal and brutality that shocked his core. It was by his hand that the dock workers will never gain the proper benefits that all physical laborers should be entitled to, it is by his testimony that an innocent woman is falsely convicted for a wrong he did not commit, and it is by his prattling that took away any chances for the Cheesemonger to enact the justice she so craves.

If this does not change, the future will be set in stone. He has the potential to be on that long road one day, walking along the Masters as he ponders about the future games he will participate in after he receives his payment. After all, rather than working to reach a higher existence, his main goal would be to play the Great Game for all time even if it expands into another dimension entirely. Nothing else would please him more than to exert his invisible, unescapable influence on a cosmic level, finding new opponents to engage with in a battle of wits while further adventures lie beyond him.

Will this be the future? The Judgements may have ordained it to be the case, but I believe that he will eventually pick a different path. He remains an Author (soon to be Correspondent) of epics and tragic romances rather than a formal agent of the Great Game, he has no regrets in regards to the mercy he’s shown to a few others, and he has made it clear he will never sell the location of the Nadir to any faction. In time, he may meet and fall in love with a brash Seeker of the Name, and it is through this eventual loss of his love that someday, he may awaken to Passion. In that moment, he can prove not only to all of existence, but to himself as well, that love is eternal, and that as long as one has love, there will always be hope.

Now for the ultimate question: is one constrained by, Fate or does one decide one’s destiny for himself.

30

The Memory.

Someday there will be a reckoning, for it cannot be postponed indefinitely. On that day se will become one of the hungry things that lurk in the water, one of the cold horrors up North, one of the terrible toothy servants that carry His train. Se does not Seek the Name, but puts down the red carpet for He that is Named. Such beings are anything but human, not that se ever truly was.

31

Gleam-Lost in Light

Seeing it always makes me feel like Fleshy’s attempts to be a better person may be beginning to pay off.

32

Hieronymus Drake is The Memory: You will change beyond all understanding, but something of you will remain. Acceptance heavily tinged with melancholy. Drake has already changed a great deal in the Neath. Storm changed his eyes. Drinking the blood of a Master infused him with something powerful but alien. The Bazaar did both. I think that he will live a very long time, perhaps outliving all the friends who warn him against the terrible risks that he takes. Yet something of him, something true, will remain. Something always does.

Tanith Wyrmwood is The Curator: You will preserve. Bittersweet. Tanith wants to save everyone, but she can’t. She still has some hard choices ahead of her. A lot of anguish, but a lot of joy as well.

33

Destiny? I have one (the Curator, if you must know), but what of it? All vouchsafed foretellings needn’t be true; I cleave my own path and thank whatever gods may be for my unconquerable soul.

34

Exaggerated sigh.

If you don’t mind turning down the sunshine? Some of us are trying to mope over here. And quite frankly, you’re making it difficult. ;)

35

If it helps, A. E., I’m sure that you are constrained by a pre-determined future. :-P

36

Uhhh… yeah! Good! That’s right! Frowns uneasily

37

Backstage - ‘Your hands, secretly, on the lever that moves the world.’

Lady Karnstein has long remained in the shadows, using her charm to get her way. Often by necessity. The spotlight is bad for her, and regrettable attention brought her below to begin with.

She has agendas, and many would have little issue with them, especially in the modern mind. But enough would see her as a threat purely for who and what she is, and who and what she represents. She wants to change that from the shadows, influencing those in the light. The Neath has many opportunities, and a few new obstacles to someone used to only really dealing with humans…

Still, her destiny is heartening to her. It suggests she might win after all.

38

Gleam - Lost in Light
Parvorus and his Revolutionary Allies will destroy the Bazaar and its tyranny in the Liberation of the Night, and from the ashes, he shall become a new light in the darkness, rebuilding a civilisation without oppressive space bats.

39

I have the Curator and Appetite for my two characters; the Curator, for me, radiates a certain, not entirely unkind, smugness. Just look at this big tiger in its little hat, looking ever so slightly down at the viewer. It speaks of maintaining a leisure peace.

A tiger is an ideal symbol for that- this lazy danger, the sense that if it ever gets over it’s laziness and wishes to get up and change things, then you’re in trouble…- but it won’t, because it’s a cat, and cats are lazy. But it potentially could. Like a more stagnant version of the &quotBackstage&quot destiny.

As for the Appetite; I adore both the name and the icon. It looks dangerously joyful. A smiling promise of a hunger fed, not necessarily satiated. And it’s a shadow puppy! Who doesn’t love a nice, smiling shadow puppy. And it tells me my two characters should swap their destinies, because as it is, they’re both quite unfitting.

40

Authority - Dominion will be given unto you


For Addis, I think it speaks of the new power that was forced on him, due to a mishap that happened during his visit to the Iron Republic, due to a devil getting the bright idea to use a vial of his red honey while he was there. They both greatly regret that decision.

Now, he exists as something similar to a hivemind, with his original, now comatose, body kept hidden, while he operates through his growing network of… &quotAgents&quot… recruited from the Chambers of the Heart.

He never wanted this, but now it’s the only way for him to interact with London, and continue his search for his love, and their memories.
edited by Addis Rook on 11/22/2017