manic, feverish fan-article

Indigo Clardmond wrote:

My theory on the identity of May in particular, I'm quite proud of, and will love Failbetter forever if I end up being right because of it.

I wonder if it's the same as mine... hmm. Probably not. I went with something of an obvious guess.

[spoiler]The Jovial Contrarian[/spoiler]

As opposed to ripping the face off an innocent Snuffer? Seriously, what was his crime? :P

I don't think June can be anyone working for Dawn Machine right now. Dawn Machine is in direct ideological opposition to the Council, anyone under its influence will definitely be banished and maybe also killed to preserve secrecy.

The Aten connection is definitely interesting and probably meaningful - there aren't that many man-made sun gods aimed at centralizing power under one source. It's just that Akhenaten's Aten failed and Dawn Machine … was too big of a success.

I agree with Aro Saren, this doesn't seem like Duchess. However, Dawn Machine was an Admiralty-led project, so whoever designed it had to have strong Palace connections to persuade them, which Duchess posesses.

And we don't really know anything of Akhenaten's fate, so he is even more of a wild guess.

James Sinclair wrote:

This is an interesting find, but I don't think the contents of the Bazaar's vaults are the ultimate objective of the Great Game. Rather, they're just one of the many, many things that the spymasters of various nations in, on, and above the Earth are after. Given the parallel of Fallen London's Great Game to the historical Great Game, I'd guess that the Game is ultimately played for control of the Neath.

Recall one of the sidebar texts (don't have the exact quote at the moment) that says something like, "The Great Game was once played on the Surface. Now, the Neath is its battleground."

I would say that, depending on how you define the Great Game, it's bigger than just Surface and Neath. Chess is a strong motif of the Great Game, A Game of Chess dreams are about intrigues and spies in the dreams/ Parabola, and you play Chess with the Boatman, who is somehow connected to the Judgements. Finally, there might be some parallel to the Great Game in the Salt story. Spacemarine9 thinks/thought so, but I don't really have enough information to have an opinion one way or another. http://saint-arthur.tumblr.com/post/138481529729/whats-the-deal-with-frostfound-and-why-is-some . So maybe the answer is: the Great Game is played for everything? Which is, admittedly, a bit unsatisfying of an answer.

I think that with all the different factions entwined in the Great Game, the only applicable answer is the one from Wilmot's End:

"Money. Power. The Game itself. One does not play for a cause, one just plays."

As for for what the Great Game is played for: keeps.

And have you considered: you have the Iron, and the Stones, but let us not be caught up in the Fires of fury or the Veils of violence, for we would otherwise engage in Pages of posts trying to capture the Hearts of all around us, Mirrors to each other's antics. Instead, let us drink deep of the Wines and Spices of the various theories around us, filling our intellectual Cups to the brim.

...How do you like them Apples?

"I've got a wings-of-thunder bat from the Elder Continent. Something from near the Mountain, if you know what I mean. Magnificent brute."

"We have seen your very fine work with the sturdy and admirable Bishop. Such creatures! So salty and moist!"

"We commend your work. My brethren and I have enjoyed your creatures greatly. Juicy and well-spiced and delicious. We smack our lips and lick our fangs at the thought of the next creation. We grow a little weary of hyaenas, though."

Ok.
So WHY Baker and none other?

The room of Spring is decorated in a palette of greens, from the olive upholstery to the pine and mossy shades of the carpet and ceiling. The scheme may not please a Veilgarden decorator, but it vividly evokes Surface days.

These are powerful tales: of hands touching for the first time on carnival rides; of intimacies stolen by doors which listen. The ecstasies captured in the middle section give way to a sombre conclusion: stories of old lovers separated by dark waters, and of hearts turned to stone.

The room of Summer is bathed in golden light. An intricate array of prisms and lenses refracts and diffuses the light of concealed flames. The books are bound in warm vermilion and crimson shades.

To the casual eye, this is a straightforward collection of ideas for frivolous amusements to fill idle afternoons. Yet you can detect an undercurrent of desperation in its party plans; a sense that without an itinerary for every occasion, the author could descend into dangerous introspection.
The descriptions are strange, too; and the activities are indexed by season. Is there some connection between the book and this library?

The gears whirr and the blind closes, shutting you in to the room of Summer. Was it so stifling before? Not like an oven. Not like that at all.

The room of Summer swelters in darkness. It is alive with the memory of a faraway sun.

The work is exquisite: precise diagrams of clockwork, exploded and separated to illustrate its functioning. Beyond the main wheels, the cogs are so delicate, and the lines so thin, that it is difficult to even perceive its full extent without climbing on the shelves to see more closely.
Whatever this device may be, its workings are incredibly complex. And if that scale marker is correct, it is also immense.

March needs assistance containing an escape of secrets (it is perhaps not entirely his fault; he inherited a compromised network). June cannot be trusted. (After what she made? It's all the more difficult to make the lights go out, now.) August is being recalcitrant. Again. April's latest business ventures need burying, before it's discovered she still lives. There's no time for play, when your work is deadly serious.

A man has come to sit with you. He's drinking tea from an ancient cup. His face is as cracked as the clay. His eyes look tired – they have seen enough. But his brass buttons twinkle like stars. "Conserve your energies. You must last until the Liberation." He sniffs. "I am weary. I suspect that, even after the Liberation, I still will be. It may free everything, but not everyone." He plucks two brass buttons from his coat and lays them over your eyes. "I suppose we'll see. Remember the _______."

Doubt it. He could fit for August, given the debate-focused book in the Agendums of Ascent. May's book is love stories though so doesn't seem like there's a connection there.

(may is the bazaar confirmed)

I don't know if this is a stupid question because I'm a newer player, but do we have an idea as to what the great game is played for? I've been under the impression that there isn't necessarily a point, it's played because it's fun/it's a good way to not be bored as heck when you're a giant floating ball of reality wandering around eating things.

Also:
Indigo Clardmond wrote:

As for my answer for who May is, I'll spell it out, since there seems to be a few good referential or punny ones besides mine, and I feel like I'll be proved wrong over the course of the year:

The Curt Relicker. He loved December.

Therefore if he was May, it would be a May-December Romance. 8D

But have you considered: come here and fight me for making that awful, awful pun.

Given that it's most definitely a Judgement of some sort (heck, that might even BE the White) that is instigating and supporting the Liberation of the Night [see Sunless Sea, giant eye, began long before the humans ever got involved, etc.] it's clear they don't all agree with one another, have their own agendas and desires, and seek to influence things for their own celestial purposes.

Because they don't know how to stop.

The Game is played to advance. Advance far enough, and even a pawn may be a queen.

Sara Hysaro wrote:

The first noman might not necessarily even take after a Master (Fate-locked Sacksmas Urchin path spoilers).

But that's Mr Veils' day, since the non-Fate options all involve you trading fabric for Wild Words. Isn't that just a node to the Vake?

genesis wrote:

Accepting that there is no single wholly convincing explanation for who hid the key in the well, what are the arguments against the sisters themselves? It's on their property, they know about it, they encourage you to retrieve it and it's very much *placed* in the well rather than just chucked it.

And then there's this sidebar snippet:
[spoiler]No one in London knows where this key is. Or at least, no one who knows is telling. And anyway, this doesn't stop them talking. They say that the one man who knew where it was just vanished one night, along with his boat. They say he was probably eaten by a zee-monster. They say that pirates might have scuppered him out of spite. Some of them say he had already hidden the key before he died. One or two of them say that he sold it to a mad king in Polythreme who gave it to his youngest daughter for safekeeping before being eaten by a Stone Pig. It's probably safe to discount those ones.[/spoiler]

At first, I thought it might've referred to the time when London was still on the surface, in which case the answer'd be "London Fell", though I can't remember exactly if London actually fell on a February.

If we assume the answer may not be entirely in FL, follow my 2 cents about the Dawn Machine architect using some Sunless content.
[spoiler]
We know that:

• The Dawn Machine was created by (a faction of) the London Admiralty.
• Things went awry and the Dawn Machine apparently started to bend the will of the ones nearby.
• The ones who get close to the Dawn Machine are marked by Bright/Amber Eyes.

In Sunless Sea, we have the Dark-Spectacled Admiral.
Reason why he can be the architect: what led someone to use dark spectacles in a sunless place like the Neath? My guess is his eyes are touched by the Dawn Machine. If that is true, he got near enough to be marked but the machine wasn’t yet strong enough to mind-control him, what indicates an early stage of the project. Also (but a weaker point), if you rise the Dawn Machine Supremacy to 7 (TRIUMPHANT) in Sunless Sea, the Admiral is gone.


Also in Sunless Sea, we have the Carnelian Exile as one of the First Officers, whose eyes are marvelously bright with amber irises and white flecked with gold. When asked, she says that “I was too close to the New Sequence, and the Machine. I have repented of that now, but I'll never go home”. Since she isn’t mind-controlled as well, it indicates an early stage of the machine.


If neither of them are the architect, the only other person I recall that has marked eyes is the Bright-Eyed Sequencer (also from Sunless Sea). But seems a too generic character.


Anyone recalls someone else that has amber/bright eyes (preferably from FL)? I know that the original architect may not be marked, but would be an interesting detail (at very least we can possibly find someone related to the Dawn Machine that we didn’t know).



I don’t have a good memory for this kind of detail, but, for non-marked characters, the only one I recall that has showed knowledge about the Machine was the Wry Functionary (Fate-locked conversation), but it seems unlikely to be him. L
[/spoiler]

June cannot be trusted. (After what she made? It's all the more difficult to make the lights go out, now.)

http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Andre%20Alexin?fromEchoId=13165518
All 4 tidbits, down from this one.

On an unrelated note, I'm loving/hating how this one question has become the equivalent of last mystery set's "Why are there no foxes in the city?" question.

Gonen wrote:

And how can we connect him to the said newspaper?

From what I gather
[spoiler]We know that the old March's Christian name is John, traded in tea, friends with the DTC (hinting his support for Temperance movement, perhaps? Goes with "self-proclaimed adversary of Mr Wines" too), and had strong religious views. All of that adds up to John Cassell and his paper, the Working Man's Friend.[/spoiler]
edited by Sinnouk on 8/24/2017

Now, in regards to her current involvement with the dawn machine or not, it's worth mentioning how little sway the Liberation crowd actually holds in the Council.

A good chunk of suspected members aren't interested in the mass-scale changes the Liberation proposes:
July is off doing her own thing, making deals with the Orts and stopping Paris. She was also a big addict for sunlight, which I suspect wouldn't be supported by those who want to put the sun out.

March/John Cussel was giving out coffee to the masses as a protest against Mr Wines' practices and was a proponent of Temperance, which directly clashes with June's shown hedonism as another member of the Council.
August/Jovial Contrarian and May?/Manager of the Royal Beth are both refusing to support the Liberation, and both have seemingly been doing so for quite a while (August is mentioned as being recalcitrant, again; Manager is all the way from the First City).

Now, only March was dealt with and replaced by the Liberation Crowd (July can also be given over to February, but I attribute that to the PC, rather than February herself), which shows us how little actual power other members of the Council can muster to dethrone one of their own.

There are schematics for something quite similar to the Dawn Machine located in one of the seasonal room displays of the Calendar Code, so presumably all three months were involved. (July's approval of the project as a sunlight addict should be obvious, and June is the architect. August might've seen it as a safer way to achieve the Liberation's goals?) You'd need a lot of power to put somebody who has the partial support of 2 other months, alongside London's Navy and the Admiralty, out of commission.

I see the temp programmer has added disappearing text to the tricks in Failbetter's toolkit.

That was pretty cool to watch.

You know, living on a different continent than actual london means I don't have the foggiest idea for any of the geography questions. For me, Blythenhale is no more imaginary than, say, Islington. In fact I probably know marginally more about Blythenhale than I do Islington.

-snip-

How do we know the manager is may?
How do we know the architect of the dawn machine is June?
and how do we know the thief of faces is the first noman?

Jaina wrote:

What did the Fingerkings do to the fourth city?

They basically corrupted the Fourth City's government, which is what split the city in two. Those that didn't agree with practices with the dream snakes sailed off to form Khan's Heart and Khan's Glory on the zee, which would also spit into the smaller group of Khan's Shadow. Everyone who was fine with the Finger-Kings stayed while the city degraded from their influence until their destruction when the Fifth City (London) fell. Some citizens of the Khan still practice connections with the Kings, though they are overall reviled by the Khan for what they did to them.

[spoiler]Lazaroth wrote:

Regarding the identities of different parts of Our Fair City, I have:

• Moloch Street was Baker Street
• Elderwick was Aldwych
• Lusitania Row was Picadilly Arcade
• Blythenhale was Bethnal Green

Yes to the first and last, no the the other two. Aldwych was made in the 20th century, destroying Wych Street, which was made long before the Fall of London and was demolished in 1901. As for Piccadilly Arcade, that was made in 1909, while Piccadilly Circus was opened in after construction in 1819. So, a more accurate statement would be that Elderwick was Wych Street and Lusitania Row was Piccadilly Circus. You're technically correct, and I know the corrections are nitpicky as hell, but I think small details like that may potentially have an influence on whether or not Failbetter deems the answer right or wrong.[/spoiler]
With regard to Sir Joseph's comments under the spoiler tag, it is best to be as precise as possible, though in the past Failbetter has been fairly liberal in giving credit for responses to Mysteries that are mostly correct.
edited by Sir Joseph Marlen on 6/2/2018

Sara Hysaro wrote:

The first noman might not necessarily even take after a Master (Fate-locked Sacksmas Urchin path spoilers).

But that's Mr Veils' day, since the non-Fate options all involve you trading fabric for Wild Words. Isn't that just [spoiler]a node to the Vake[/spoiler]?

Dubitable, it's implied that the clockwork sun is either not sapient or in some way subservient to Victoria.

Where does this knowledge come from? I have never encountered anything saying that in either Fallen London or Sunless Sea, and I have been searching as well as I could for any content with the Dawn Machine and the New Sequence. I know it is served by a breakaway faction of the Admiralty but where does it say that they made it?

I don't have links to echos of the relevant text at the moment, but the information about the Admiralty constructing the Dawn Machine comes from two sources, both Fate-locked: a conversation with the Wry Functionary, and The Last Dog Society ES.

It's hinted at in multiple places in the "Functionary's Confidant" storyline such as here or here.

Indigo Clardmond wrote:

Given that it's most definitely a Judgement of some sort (heck, that might even BE the White) that is instigating and supporting the Liberation of the Night [see Sunless Sea, giant eye, began long before the humans ever got involved, etc.] it's clear they don't all agree with one another, have their own agendas and desires, and seek to influence things for their own celestial purposes.

Wait, what? Well, that's a pretty solid fact that proves me wrong. Does the White think it's going to be immune to the consequences of that, or that it can truly control the Liberation? I feel like that's a genie that the other Judgements should be very afraid of letting out of the bottle... But I suppose in some ways, they're just as much of fallible jerks as humans are.

Indigo Clardmond wrote:

Because they don't know how to stop.

I like that as an answer. It's there, they picked it up, now everyone's stuck. Fun times for all!

Optimatum wrote:

The Game is played to advance. Advance far enough, and even a pawn may be a queen.

I feel like the Judgements would start flipping the board if a rubbery man got close to becoming one of them. That would be hilarious, though. I support you, Rubbery Judgement!

Worth mentioning that the port at Grand Geode is called Zelo's Town, and the passage behind the Dawn Machine is called the Barnsmore Gap.

Are these names based on kickstarter Backers or do they appear anywhere in the lore?

But if we have to go only based on available clues, we basically only know that May's book is about Love Stories.
Who is associated with Love Stories? Well, taking the Bazaar itself out of the equation, then who was the one who *told* us that "in the matters of the Bazaar, always look to love"?

<snip>

As for my answer for who May is, I'll spell it out, since there seems to be a few good referential or punny ones besides mine, and I feel like I'll be proved wrong over the course of the year:

The Curt Relicker. He loved December.

Therefore if he was May, it would be a May-December Romance. 8D

In regards to the Mystery: "What do the Fingerkings want?"

[spoiler]

I followed a Implacable Detective quest line and found this:

Green light flares in the mirror propped against the boathouse wall: a light you've seen before, perhaps? The Medium is singing, a breathy refrain that switches between English and Loamsprach, the language of the Clay Men. You can only catch phrases: 'We will exist! ' 'Clothed in jade and clothed in mud!' 'The king with a hundred hearts!' 'No flying thing, no thing that flies!' 'The garden gates, with faces locked...'

Curious as to what exactly this might mean. Very curious that they know loamsprach and mention the King with a Hundred Hearts.

Is this implying that they want to basically be able to make themselves bodies like the claymen do?

Does it mean they want to steal the King with a Hundred Hearts specifically? Perhaps possess him and thus all of his children?

Or, since we know he is basically just a small chunk of the mountain of light, does it mean they want Stone so they can create themselves bodies?

Or is all of this too complex and the answer is simply "We will exist"? [/spoiler]

Now, I can definitely see Dawn Machine having revolutionary support when it was first build. It could weaken the Bazaar and allow to modify the Chain without tearing everything apart. The brainwashing, after all, wasn't part of the Admiralty's plan, so it stands to reason that it wasn't part of June's either.

It might be able to help the Revolutionaries, but I haven't seen anything in the Sunless Sea pointing to it doing anything of the sort. Its Supremacy is separate from the Revolutionaries.

I wonder what would happen to them if they ate some of the weirder candles you can find in London, like Mourning Candles, Chrysalis Candles, the SMEN candles, or the old Second Chance candles.

illuminati swag (Benthic) wrote:

I doubt that it's Salt - Stone is actually in the Presbyterate, and is the reason they live such long lives. If there's any power they've allied with, it's Stone.

They've certainly allied with Stone in some fashion, but she's not the power under discussion. A quote from Sunless Sea refers to the Presbyterate making a treaty with another power long before the Bazaar ever came to the Neath. We don't know why the White would have sent Salt there before the Bazaar arrived, and we don't know if Stone could have arrived in the Neath before the Bazaar ever entered, but without better evidence it still probably refers to Salt.

I'd say this is quite a stretch, but that would be rude to innocent stretches. At best I'm highly skeptical of your points, and more often completely bewildered.

[snip, various rebuttals]
"This is where we go into extreme tinfoil territory." I think this is the most accurate statement in your entire post, though it would be more so if at the beginning.

I don't recall the thing in the well ever being clearly identified, whether as a Moon-Miser or something else. Where's this from?

Additional tidbits about the mysterious tentacle key: it shares its icon with the key to a suite at the Royal Beth and there's a rare sidebar snippet that seems to only show up at Wolfstack Docks

It is possible that our sleuthing is being thrown off by one of these, and that none of us (including the FBG staff) is aware of it.

It's not out of the realms of possibility that it would have taken 1.5 months to evacuate whoever they care about in the fourth city, activate Lacre murder of the rest and set up the magical machinery to trigger the fall itself.

Oh. I probably missed that - does the detective live at Moloch street?
edited by Gonen on 6/7/2018

Another note to make about Moloch Street's identity:
[spoiler]The Honey-Sipping Detective has an unavailable case called "The Case of the Other Waxwork", though who knows when/if it will ever become available. The first of Madame Tussauds' wax museums, meanwhile, was started in Baker Street in 1835. Now it did move to Marlebone Street about fifty years later in 1884, but that's still very close nearby.[/spoiler]

If we're being technical, though, which Failbetter might, Aldwych is the name of the modern street (which has historical roots). In Victorian times, there was Wych Street, which was demolished and the modern Aldwych established.

• The Manager is May, which means that he can't be October. This leaves Dr. Schlomo as the leading candidate for October?
• Mr. Wines is (all but) confirmed to be the Master who suffered from "failure and defeat; a fall from king to beggar". This, by process of elimination, all but confirms Spices as "idleness, and the dwelling-on of dreams". It also makes you wonder if Wines is being somewhat spiteful when it negotiates the fall of the Fourth and possibly Sixth Cities: it's forcing the Surface rulers to undergo the same kind of fall that it had.
• Because cats are the guardians of what Is, this connects London's cats to the Elder Continent tigers, as the Minister of War states that they are made for the destruction of the enemy, implied to be the Fingerkings. This resembles the way that sunlight (what Is) corrodes Parabola (what Is Not).

Otherwise I ask that the ladies, gentlemen and other gentlepersons of the forum stay open to playful brainstorming done by a fan of the game. I'm not here to attack anyone and feel a bit flustered by the fact that I may have caused offence. My only wish is to try to exhaust as many avenues of viable interpretation as one can feasibly exhaust. I understand that this might be tiresome at length, but I feel that if anywhere, it should be appropriate when we discuss the most shadowy mysteries of the vaguest literature one can get ones hands on.

The Maid is only a Parabolean Panther while in the Well. While she’s out and about she still shows a host of feline characteristics, but is able to unconvincingly disguise as a maid. And while regular cats generally take the form of big cats in Parabola, the opposite is not necessarily true. We have both Panthers (kickstarter reward) and tigers outside of Parabola for example.

This is possible because Wells indeed are portals to Parabola, operated by Correspondence. See the following echoes, from the Mirror Marches:

[snip]

What are we seeing here? We follow the trunk of a tree as it rises, and at some point we notice old scars, scars that are correspondence. The correspondence speaks of a process that turns tree into stone (petrification) and stone into tree (lignefaction). Not to mention that the stone reminds you of Fallen London. Reread it, and keep in mind this duality between stone bricks and trees as they grow into each other. Now let’s look at the well at Hunter’s Keep. You lower the crook into the well and start to feel around its oily black sides. Its tip scrapes on the mossy brick, then hooks onto something.’ Now combined with the fact that it’s mentioned that cats can cross to Parabola through not only mirrors but reflective puddles and more, it should be quite apparent that one of the significances of wells is that they link the Neath and Parabola.

There are a numerous examples littered around the text describing the Maid with Feline Qualities at Hunter's Keep both in Sunless Sea and Fallen London (although she becomes somewhat serpentine after the house goes boom, perhaps influenced by the Fingerkings from the Writhing river beneath the house, who knows).

I will, however, immediately concede that the Duchess is not feline royalty, as you correctly point out. In the court of Cats the Duchess tells you that she’s the God-mother of the Viscountess of the Hanging Mountains, which I always just assumed meant that she was a cat herself, but a God-Mother must not necessarily be of the same species of course.

I doubt that it's Salt - Stone is actually in the Presbyterate, and is the reason they live such long lives. If there's any power they've allied with, it's Stone.

Where is Wry Functionary confirmed to be Akhenaten?

Kukapetal wrote:

I wonder what would happen to them if they ate some of the weirder candles you can find in London, like Mourning Candles, Chrysalis Candles, the SMEN candles, or the old Second Chance candles.

Chrysalis Candles: Stab Flavour!

Mourning Candles: Mummy Flavour! [spoiler] Don't you try to bribe one with Mourning Candles? Those aren't made of beeswax at all.[/spoiler]

SMEN Candles: Bad Decisions Flavour!

Second Chance Candles: RNG Flavour!

It's definitely not Stone who opened the mirrors. Asking the boatman about Stone has him talk about "her daughter" opening the mirrors. He also says that opening the mirrors was a bad idea but "it is the privilege of the young to be selfish" - Stone is definitely not young by any measure.

<snip>

A more satisfying, yet simple way to say it is simply: Influence. The various small individual players want influence over other individuals. The various nations want influence over other nations. And players like the White, well, the scope and desire of their influence extends even further, doesn't it?

edited by Indigo Clardmond on 7/20/2017

The nations of Europe, and beyond, compete for influence. Their plots reach even to the Neath.

"What happened in the last February of sunlight?" is an interestingly-phrased question. I have a feeling it means something more than the obvious ("London was stolen by bats" etc)

For most of these I'm going with the simple answers for now (Admiralty with the Dawn Machine)

I think that manager is May. For proof, here is the echo about May from Calendar Code: http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Menaulon?fromEchoId=9197913
[spoiler] "old lovers separated by dark waters", "hearts turned to stone" – these, to me, are pretty direct allusions to Manager and King with a Hundred Hearts. [/spoiler]