A young woman's detective camera is revealed when her pocket watch shatters on the tiled floor.

A model omnibus clatters by, reflected in the polished glass of a mirror.

A man strides by, carrying a tune on a mechanical violin. The strings gleam blue in the electric lights.

A crowd of visitors hurry by. Someone has unleashed the Automated Blemmigan Typist.

The Khanate's flight cage has been sabotaged. Scarlet birds fly through the glassy heights of the Exhibition.

Electric lights spark violet overheard to the delight of the crowds.

A mechanical chorus of chorister puppets creaks to life. A crowd gathers to the strains of 'The Boy I Love is Away on the Galley'.

A child is crying. Progress is not for the faint-hearted.

A cable-car disappears into the fog of the marshes. A woman offers her sweetheart some of her spun-candy.

Smoke wreathes London's exhibits. Hell's are haloed in flame. Summerset's clouded with pipe smoke. The crowds pass in and out of the fog.

The Gate-Prophet's attendants have fallen to their knees, singing songs of praise. They pay no mind to how long their hair grows, nor how small their bodies.

The Devils keep in packs, and run with unnatural speed from the Wind. There is fear in their eyes.

The elderly hobble toward the Wind. They are disappointed they cannot catch it.

The Wind has made life awkward for a pair of lovers, now that one has a failing body and a lifetime of loving memories for another.

The Wind blows through a device dedicated to toasting bread, turning it to rust.

Children who know no better are playing in the Wind. Their parents shout for them to return, they sob; but they are too afraid to approach.

Young Stags dare each other to run into the Wind. For once, they seem hesitant. "If only Chuffy were here!" one cries.

Extra tidbit: I particularly enjoyed the jibes at Tennyson (I think he's pretty good sometimes but my god Maud is dull). If you picked certain options and would like to hear first-hand the soporific power of ol' Alfie T, there are miraculously a few wax-cylinder recordings extant from when he used to bore people in his parlour. They're awful quality, but that's only to be expected from an 1890 reading! Recording, complete with creepy moving edit of his face, here.
edited by Barselaar on 1/26/2017

[spoiler]The glass tablet reminds me of a Nokia phone.[/spoiler]

Insatiably Yours wrote:

While the linear model is a perfectly fine format, it strikes me as odd that the pitfall of this story for many people is that the open exhibition was not linear enough. I can see how the Type A personality or those seeking to most efficiently grind good items would be frustrated by this story (or rather, the first half of the story).

While I recognize that the exhibition convention can be slightly confusing, I was surprised by some of the comments in this thread.

Hello. For me it was not the desire to 'grind' that bothered me, but the worry that I was missing something that I needed to do. Without any kind of counter or progress indicator, all I could do was keep going to the same places and see the same text over and over. Maybe I had bad rolls for airs? But really, the mechanics of the game are where I feel the least confident - I want to concentrate on the story. I had trouble doing that. Not that I disliked the ES overall - just expressing my confusion at the start of it.

OMG I missed the one with the Young Stags! I wonder where that no-good Chuffy ran off to?

Anyway, they're lucky they didn't get turned into the Old Stags :P

Was disappointed in a Personal Recommendation as a reward.

From an EpA perspective, this day was the lowest in months for me - ES or otherwise. Usually ES day is the highest EpA day of the month for me. Hopefully the end of season payout will make up for it.

People seem to either love it, or hate it. Interesting.

I actually really like the way the Expo unfolded. The mechanics and story-telling very much matched the feeling I've had in person at such events: Wandering from place to place, encountering different things, wanting to partake, following one direction of interest and being pulled from another, having to double back and finding a place you've been and getting to see something you were forced to miss... It seemed like how you would go about trying to pursue an actual goal in such a situation. Wandering around, and seeing the sights, and being "led" in a fashion but not a linear fashion. Top-notch use of using game mechanics to establish setting and mood.

I liked this story, though I do admit the part Robin is talking about was confusing. I would also like to report a typo at the end "An acquaintance with burnt-away eyebrows gasp excitedly".

Squashed. Thanks

Or perhaps it shouldn't be so tricky to unlock them properly? I presume the reason we had the thread on exceptional stories and where to find them is precisely because people are losing access to stories they have paid for.
Not everyone wants to play them at once. Some people, including me, don't want to play a substantial chunk and then let it lie and fade in the memory. Some people want to play all the stories in a season together. People play this game in all kinds of ways.
And though House of Chimes is apparently off the table permanently, there was never a problem when all you had to do was swing through there.

• I agree completely the it should be less tricky to unlock, given that every month there are a few posts from people who are confused as to why they can't play the previous month's story which they apparently never actually unlocked.
• I don't see how the new "Exceptional Stories and where to find them" will change things. This is just describing how things have been since there were seasonal hubs (which means for the past 6 months), and obviously some are still confused by it.
• You don't need to play "a substantial chunk" of a story to unlock it. Just to start it. This is because being an Exceptional Friend is a monthly subscription and you can only get the new story in that same month. It's not a system in which anyone subscribed is eligible for this story whenever they choose (even a year later). I'm not arguing if this is best, just that that's what the subscription means.
• Having Seasons indeed confused some people, who believed that they can play all 3 stories whenever they want (or, at least, until the season ends). However, these are still 3 separate stories, just linked with a common theme. Each must be started in its own subscription month (though you really don't have to advance in it at all).
• The House of Chimes was really no different than the current system. There was still a promo universal storylet announcing the new story, and playing it the game told you to go to the House of Chimes to unlock the new story, exactly how the promo storylet of the new stories today tell you to go to your Breakwater-House/your Study/etc. to unlock it.

@dov
I see we disagree on what "a substantial chunk" is. For me, the palaver with the arm was too much; not in the sense of too many actions, but in the sense that it lays out the exposition and the problem, which really need to be fresh in the memory for the story as a whole to make sense and be coherent and enjoyable. (I've actually started saving exceptional stories off line because trawling the diary for the bits works so badly.)

And as far as I recall, House of Chimes was a couple of screens at most. Simply having access, of course, identified you as an EF. So a simple, elegant solution has been given up in place of something people find hard to navigate.

Plus, as I mentioned in my first post above, changes in the coding can result in properly triggered stories becoming unavailable. That's not satisfactory for the player, and it's unnecessary work for the support desk.

Odd, it was quite profiting for me. A bass skull (60 echoes), five Aeolian Screams (12.5 echoes), 10-15 incindiary gossip or equivalent (5-7.5 echoes). And that is not counting various other small things here and there. That is about 2 epa. Not too bad.