Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
5/22/2013
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Well, the time has come for me to pen my memoirs. I never thought that I would be able to do this now, when I’m still young, but the particular nature of the Neath makes it very important to get all the secrets I carry around in my head down on paper.
I wish to make it clear; I spare no one in this recitation of my life. If someone is mentioned by name, then they did it. It is not a euphemism; I have changed no names because no one is innocent. Besides, there may be a time in the future that others could use blackmail material.
First, I include a print of a watercolor that was recently made of me, so you have a context as to who is speaking.
I find this particular painting a work of art. It captures my essence so well. Many consider me to be a sinister lady, someone to be reckoned with, and I will admit that I am dangerous, but that is not all I am.
I suppose I should start this with what of my young age I can remember. I don’t recollect much before I was about 6 years old, and I am lucky to remember that much. Most of my memories are scattered as it is unimportant to me. But there are things I remember.
I do not remember parents, or any siblings, or any other relatives, and that is a good thing I suppose as there is no one to try to help themselves to my good fortune. What I have I earned through my efforts and my own actions, betrayals, and deals. I scrabbled with the worst scum, and rubbed elbows with devils and demons, as well as human saints to be where I am. Allowing someone to come into my life simply because they claim to share blood with me, is, in a word, presumptuous.
Instead I remember being cold and hungry, I remember the alleys and the gutters that I slept in. I remember the rooftops that I watched from, the way the sky looked at night, through the haze of ash from all the coal fires. I remember tasting blood from fights I had no choice but to participate in, and I remember some of the people I had to defeat in order to live.
I want you to understand, I had no noble birth, I had no kind of glorious ancestry, in fact, I was a street urchin, abandoned to a workhouse (or so I am told) as soon as I was born. I spent years working as one of those small children who tread on a wheel to move water from one location to another, or climbing under looms while they are working in order to clear a snagged thread. I was in terror of getting killed; I had seen many others of my acquaintance be mangled by these machines.
So I understand the plight of these children far better than they could possibly know, even though I’m a gr’up. I’ve been there and experienced it all, and I’ve worked now that I am prosperous in helping these children even though they don’t know I’m helping them.
TO BE CONTINUED...
edited by Joy Phillip on 5/22/2013
edited by Joy Phillip on 5/28/2013
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
5/28/2013
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But that would come later.
I was sold one day to someone who was cloaked all in a black cloak. We never saw beneath the cloak, and the person had a very high voice when they spoke. I don’t know who they were. I was one of about forty children that were sold at the same time. We were told that we were going to a better place and that we would be taken care of. Most of us were excited to be leaving the workhouse. I figured that I could work in the workhouse or work wherever we were going. It was all the same to me.
We embarked on a boat, and I thought that was it. Leaving England and going to wind up in another country. But apparently something was going to intervene in my favor.
We had boarded the boat to leave. The Thames stunk as usual, and it was night time again. This would be the last time I would see the stars.
Bats came out of nowhere, a LOT of them. The person in the cloak stood up in the boat and raised its arms and yelled at the sky. The next thing I knew, the entire world was turning and spinning, and I was falling. I screamed and I wasn’t the only one.
Next time I woke, it was on a bank of the river near Ladybones road. At least that is what it was renamed to.
Over the next week, there was a huge amount of work. Thousands of people were suddenly underground somewhere, with all of London as well. Everything was literally turned upside down. The toffs were now as homeless as I was, and all the constables and more were also out of a job. It took years to recover from that sinking of the city. But the Neath was where we were at, and it was something that we all had to adjust to.
For a person who was raised on the streets, it was a land of opportunity. I did odd jobs, ran errands, held boards while people nailed them in place and more. Anything I could do I did, sometimes for pence, sometimes for glim and sometimes just for a meal. As many know, a whole new economy started in the Neath. Things that were worthless were suddenly worth a lot of money.
TO BE CONTINUED....
edited by Joy Phillip on 5/28/2013
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
5/30/2013
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I got together with other kids and we started one of the first urchin gangs. We stayed together and helped each other, and didn’t care if they were worth it or not, they were people and we were people and we stood by each other.
The Rooftop Gang, what we wound up calling ourselves, was a family. We didn’t let many in the group, but those we did we took care of. We shared what we had, we thought about each other. Yes, it is hard when your stomach is growling to think of another, but after we would nic enough for ourselves, we took some more for those of us who didn’t have the ability to take, like the babbies.
Yes, there were true toddlers among us. It happened because there were many who died in the fall of London. Some of them who died left children behind. We took them in. It’s not fair that those who can’t care for themselves are the ones who suffer the most.
But this is my story.
I learned. Jumping from roof to roof, always very carefully since it was possible to fall through the roof due to damage from the Fall. I learned how to move from one home to another, in and out of those houses in my quest for scrap to sell or to make into things like knives and so on. I didn’t care what I wore, pants, tunic, skirt, scarf, it was all the same to me. Sex only mattered to those who were making child whores out of us.
It’s really odd, but people don’t learn to look up. They never think about those who are above them. It was easy to get secrets by listening to those who were gossiping over the fence with their neighbor, or when they were washing clothing. Twisting up paper to a cone to hear better made it very easy to hear those kinds of things, and there were many who would pay a lot of glim for some of them.
I never really understood why the fact that a footman was seen tupping one of the undermaids was something worth paying money for, but who knows what might be of use. If they want to give me glim for that, I’ll take it.
Don’t think I was totally altruistic either. I wasn’t. I took advantage of people when I could, and I held back some of my largesse at times to get myself extra treats, it made no nevermind. All I wanted at that point was a full belly. I didn’t care about shelter from the rain, since we were underground and it only rained occasionally, and that gave me a chance to lift certain items. Didn’t need shelter from the sun, either, since there wasn’t any. But I do miss the moonlight. Bat guano, glim from the beetles, water from being underground were all things that it was easy to put up with.
I lost track of the days. It didn’t matter when you went to sleep and when you woke since the city was awake all the time. With nothing to measure the time with other than a watch or a couple clocks, the days of the week and ever the month didn’t matter. Time became relative and a thing of guess and opinion, and not absolute.
There was a code of honor of sorts. “When a body’s sleepin, you don’t take from them. When they are wake, they can fight you off.” That was the unbreakable rule. If someone was caught liftin from one of the others while they were sleepin, they were hit with lots of bricks and tossed off the clocktower. If they lived, they didn’t come back and all their stuff was thrown down after them. Mostly they died.
TO BE CONTINUED
edited by Joy Phillip on 5/30/2013
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
6/7/2013
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It became a faux-pas to talk about the surface at all. It wasn’t a horrible mistake, but invariably someone would mention something from the surface and another person would punch them. It was one of those things you didn’t do.
Sometimes one of us would disappear. Just up and go. Sometimes people would adopt us (it didn’t matter about having babbies anymore, and family was who you surrounded yourself with and said was your kin) and sometimes we would get et by others. Yeah, I didn’t like the thought of being digested either, but who knows what those rubbery men do, or what is hiding under those bandages.
Which brings me to the next thing, all the new groups. Rubbery, the Devils, the Mummies, the Spies. People who hadn’t ever seen before suddenly hobnobbing with the society people and the Church people. I couldn’t ken it, but if that’s what they wanted to do, well, more people to grab things from.
It was really hard the first time I died. I had just nicked some amber from one of those guys with the face things, and I was running along a gutter to get away. I only had to jump to a ledge on another building, shimmy up the drain to the roof, go down through a chimbley I knew about to an empty room and I was safe. What I didn’t know was that there was someone squattin in that room and they had started a fire.
Halfway down, the smoke is too much and I choke. And I found myself on a boat and this guy offering to play some games. I do cuz there’s nothing else to do, and I win. He points back to where the boat is commin from, snaps his fingers and I wake up in the street, still in my same clothes and all my stuff that I had on me still. No one had stripped me or my stuff. Which was weird.
I dragged myself off to a tavern I knew of, came in through the window and cleaned up in their pump sink. The lady of the house caught me, and once I looked right, she put me to work servin drinks and food. Which was okay since it also included one meal on them for nothing, and it was a good one too, a bit o’ tha char, but that was all.
I stayed there for a while. Sometimes they had me mudlark to find some of the staples like wine and scrap. I gived them my best since they was takin care of me and feedin me. Didn’t nic a thing from them but I would lift stuff occasionally from the custom. ‘Specially when they would feel my bum or whatever was handy. I guess the skirt made everyone think I was a girl. Whatever.
It was really creepy, rats somehow learned to talk, and I started making friends with some of them, as well as with the bats, and the cats, both of whom were also talkin. I couldn’t understand what was goin on till this one lady with the most beautiful orange eyes told me that it was just a side effect of the same thing keeping everyone from dyin and keepin them walkin round when their souls got took. So every now and again, I had one of the rats or bats take a note to me mates on the rooftops, just to let them know I was still around.
It wasn’t like I was a leader of the Rooftop Gang or anything, but I was one of the oldest there. I had 10 years when the city wound up in the ground, and best as I could reckon I had been down here another couple years. Livin in the tavern helped me get growed and I got bigger in lots of ways. Some of the perverts were also trying to get in my pants or up my skirt (depending on what I was wearin that day) and I kneed them in the balls every time. I knew who would hurt and who would be kind. But I wanted my friend the beautiful Deviless back.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Joy Phillip
Posts: 177
6/10/2013
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He is still my greatest friend to today. No matter that I have an exotic menagerie today, with a Salt Weasel, an Obsidian Horse, a Hound of Heaven and more, Riki will still be with me no matter what.
I did get some notoriety in that time period. I got a reputation for doing anything I needed to do. If I took money for something, by the Masters it got done. Fire, flood, messages, poison and more, nothing was too amoral for me. I think that’s probably why I got approached to be a spriffer.
I had never thought about pulling out people’s souls, but I understood that most of them were very loosely tethered in the body, as shown by the fact that the Theosophicals would talk about “out of body” experiences. To them, the soul would get up and walk around without a body regularly, so by that reason, the soul must not be tied into the body very tight.
When I was first offered the fork, I turned it down. I thought that there was no way that it could bring any good to anyone. But like all things, it was only a matter of time before I succumbed to the temptation of using it.
However, until then I worked for anyone. I’d take information for Criminals down to the Docks and then tell tales to the Constables about what I just did. I made life for me harder, but the one group I never betrayed were the Devils. I always came back to them and they understood betraying them to the Church when necessary, and mostly they passed the problems over. There were a few instances where I had a penalty to pay, and that’s how I lost my soul the first time.
I had been buying and selling souls all over London. There wasn’t anything wrong with trading souls, it was the taking them that made me feel as though it was wrong. But because I was buying and selling so much, I attracted the attention of other devils. My Quiet Deviless was one of those who were now attracted to me because of all this dealing. She and I became more intimate. I shared secrets with her, I was invited into her boudoir on a regular basis. She and I shared clothing, and we would do each other’s cosmetics as well. I helped her with her beloved bat and she made sure that my green plant had plenty of rats to eat. She even good naturedly accepted a smiting when I was working on some expensive and rare animals to curry favor with the Bishop.
Unfortunately, I turned her down when she offered me an Abstraction. To be honest I am upset that I did now. I think my soul could have been content to reside on her dresser.
But when I turned her down, she was very upset with me. She slapped me and I can still feel the burn of her fingers. Two days later a devil came by my house and I listened to him as to what he had to say. The next thing I knew there was a contract on my dresser with my name on it, and since then I have not seen my bosom friend since.
TO BE CONTINUED
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Lieutenant Astros
Posts: 12
7/19/2016
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While it may come at the disapproval of some, to comment here, and break this chain of narrative. I feel I must remark on it and subsequently impart a ray of acknowledgment, on an otherwise wholly shrouded piece of fan based literature.The nature of its obscurity bemuses me and almost prevents me from commenting out of caution. But, whether it be intentional or accidental, respect or selectivity. The reasoning for it is not pertinent, only that you have my regards in knowing that your tale thus far is skillfully written and interesting to peruse.
While it does not align with my personal interest in the Fallen realm, it does an exceptional job at highlighting the possible psyche of London's many citizens. To give example, your casual manner of describing one's death, I would imagine, is a not so uncommon occurrence outside of the Tomb-Colonies. My! How unfortunate. That reminds me. An acquaintance died here recently, and their tale was ab-solutely atrocious! I can picture, is one of many possible dialogues between madams on life and liberty over warm tea. As well as the status of one's soul, an ethereal and heavily coveted object to mere mortals as ourselves, but a thing of circumstance to the liberty of Fallen London's residents.
Another example to speak of is the lead madam, or sir, and their sustained character. While one may think that due to the amount of eccentric personalities roaming the streets that it's a wonder not everyone is considered mad or flip flops weekly. Yet, despite leaving the urchin gang and making a name for his or herself, the lead expresses their content with merely surviving among the chaos. Keeping relations sound or otherwise neutral, aside from the Devils, who appeal to his or her desire for affection and overall painless interaction.
I fear at this point I may be in danger of convoluting my original intention in all of this so I will end in saying that the two examples above I feel are the highlights of this work, and the rest is adequate in conveying the setting and occurrences of Fallen London. The fashioned hollowness of the Neath's denizens you displayed here is something I will remember and use as fodder with my own writings in the future to come. Well done.
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