Ok so I’ve been madly researching the Merciless Modiste and the Pirate-Poet for a while now because of my irrational and completely obsessive love for the Poet. One intriguing snippet I’ve come across is the Set, supposedly a group of radical artists who do weird stuff like make people into pianola sheets. But who are they? Is there literally any way to get the content faster besides playing obsessively until I unlock it? And are the rumors that the Modiste resculpted the Poet true? How much Prisoner’s Honey am I on to be still so hyperfocused about this?
Anyways, just looking for some insight or tips. I’m honestly consumed by the Poet’s storyline and I want moooore!
Like a lot of Sunless Sea stuff, the lore is scattered around a bit, some of it in combat encounters. Here’s what I can remember!
The Set are super hardcore murderous pirate-artists. The Merciless Modiste and the Pirate Poet are former members, but you probably knew that. It seems the Modiste did sculpt the Pirate Poet when they were in the Set together.
The Set commands a submarine called The Irrepressible, sometimes referred to as the zee’s most feared vessel. It’s not particularly scary in-game, though it is mounted with a fancy cannon that sprays irrigo ink, and equipped with machinery that can process human (and clay man) bodies into music… or something. It’s full of thought-provoking (terrifying) art and fancy clothing though, so zailors who successfully raid the Irrepressible will return better-dressed and mildly traumatized.
It even makes a tuneful sound when it breaks apart!
[quote=A long-ago Sunless Sea Kickstarter update]The Set! Merciless, mercurial, blood-soaked artistic talents of incandescent magnitude. They’re something like an unholy nautical marriage of the Hole-in-the-Wall Gang and the Bloomsbury Group. The Perfidious Composer, the Pirate-Poet, the Ender of Critics, the Silent Sculptress with her knives and her tea, and the enigmatic Pianolist! Rumour has it they convene every year at an uncharted isle to co-ordinate raids, intrigues and operas.
The designs below - if our agent is to be believed - were drafted by the Pianolist to commission his underwater vessel, the ‘Irrepressible’…[/quote]
The Set appears to have dissolved by the time of Sunless Sea proper. We meet the Pirate Poet and the Pianolist; the rest remain at large. And you are most certainly not alone in adoring the Poet, of course.
I have not yet encountered any deeper depths of lore (FL-universe is wonderful and annoying that way—the REAL interesting stories are buried so deep it takes forever to unearth them!)
I maaaaaaay have gone along with the Merciless Modiste’s plot for ultimate fashion (or whatever the heck it was) until the moment I handed over the Pirate Poet, realized I had almost certainly gotten the Poet killed, and, ah, murdered the Modiste in a fit of guilty fury.
I believe the Set, or at least its zub, surfaced at one point and asked me to hand one or both of them over (while they were still alive, that is). I refused, but I might do it on a future go-round and see what happens. Or at least hand over the Modiste. I expect she’s earned a reckoning from SOMEONE, not necessarily me.