streetfelineblue
Posts: 1459
6/29/2012
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The real problem here is it could actually be quite possible. Come think of it, we don't really know exactly the Cantigaster's anatomy. The main hindrance would be his high poisonousness, but the Duchess is almost surely immortal and quite possibly immune to it (it could be the reason why she personally milk him - or it could just be that she does so because she loves him, or both). AND, the son shows evidence of having being conceived AFTER the horrible change that affected the Cantigaster. There's also a daughter, seemingly perfectly normal and even quite attractive... It seems a long shot to postulate that she was born before the transformation; maybe she just resembles the mother more? Anyway, for horrible the Cantigaster may look, there's really no evidence that he can't somehow... Erm... You know, "get along". The implications are appalling.
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Twitter: @streetfelineblu
Blue's LiveJournal
Blue's Echo Bazaar profile
Blue's Night Circus diary
Link to Ocelot's Enigma Ambition hint page; PM for clarification. No direct solutions provided.
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Estelle Knoht
Posts: 1751
6/29/2012
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Seems reasonable to me that a child conceived before your lover turned into an abomination will look normal / not posthumously mutate. And considering how devoted these ladies are... well, I wouldn't put it past our ladies-in-high-places to have a go at ROMANTIC ATHLETICISM WITH VENOM-DISPENSER* (LIVING CORPSE).
*: I don't mean the Sardonic Music Hall Singer, if you catch my drift.
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Estelle Knoht, a juvenile, unreliable and respectable lady.
I currently do not accept any catbox, cider, suppers, calling cards or proteges.
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Cedric Appleby
Posts: 121
6/29/2012
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Well, it's possible that the abomination in question still hs the same genome as before, right? Maybe it's just like... a particularly unpleasant disease. Being immortal is hardly the same as being invulnerable.
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That is, in fact, a beak. Tea is difficult.
@21stCenturyBird on Twitter. -- In-game profile.
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Genny
Posts: 85
7/8/2012
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To answer the OP's question, I've been on the boat a couple of times. I don't really mind dying -- but I refuse to give up my soul, no matter how many times the devil and the deviless keep coming back for it.
I do wish the Cantigaster would show up a little more. Probably the most intriguing character yet. Jack's a little twit compared to the Cantigaster.
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Kitty Rivershack
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Kitty~Rivershack
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Twoflower
Posts: 264
7/8/2012
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streetfelineblue wrote:
The real problem here is it could actually be quite possible. Come think of it, we don't really know exactly the Cantigaster's anatomy. The main hindrance would be his high poisonousness, but the Duchess is almost surely immortal and quite possibly immune to it (it could be the reason why she personally milk him - or it could just be that she does so because she loves him, or both). AND, the son shows evidence of having being conceived AFTER the horrible change that affected the Cantigaster. There's also a daughter, seemingly perfectly normal and even quite attractive... It seems a long shot to postulate that she was born before the transformation; maybe she just resembles the mother more? Anyway, for horrible the Cantigaster may look, there's really no evidence that he can't somehow... Erm... You know, "get along". The implications are appalling.
I'm off to go vomit now.
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Miss Dodexon
Posts: 9
7/27/2012
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Byron Man wrote:
Just checking to see how many delicious friends has never died once so far - I mean death by Wounds only.
I am beginning to worry that avoiding the boatman entirely might not be of any consequence in the long run, but I think I am going to stick to it no matter what. Even if you offer me an Overgoat just to meet the Boatman for small talk. Or the Cider.
Well, the first time I "met the boatman" was when a looked at the heart mirror in Mrs Plenty's most distracting carnival. It was really funny, because I never actually planed on dying ever, after all, my wounds quality was only 4 then! I was also new to the game then, for my highest quality at something like "Watchful 15". Then much, much later after that I found the big (stop reading now, you don't want to know if your dangerous is < 65) Spider Council and feigned my knowledge on the
Correspondence. My wounds quality was only 2 then, hehehe...so after I recovered I just ran away and burned the chapel.
So I guess I've only been there two times. I was never trying to go there, but guess i was never really pushing not to go. It's not like "I don't like having wounds because I think I'm gonna die!" it's more like I don't like wounds because it's plain embarrassing ('Limping and Cursing'? Really?), I can't battle the black ribbon duelists of quality (like Feducci or Chi Lan) and I feel like dying really wastes my time, (what's so great about playing chess with the boatman?). So every time my wounds reach 4 or 5, I push it to zero.
Yet don't call me too cautious I still like going mad now and then for fun, and seriously beating up Feducci and Mr Inch in duels to the death. And after all I never planed on leaving, I'm immortal down here, so just have some fun.
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Miss Dodexon
A Sagacious and Lethal Lady
"Don't stop me from Going to Polythreme!"
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"Have you ever seen Mr.Wines drunk? Have you flirted with devils? Have you zailed the zee to places unknown? Have seen things no-one else would dare see? I have."
Miss Dodexon, an inescapable, and terrifying lady of some importance. (Loyal servant of the masters and hell.)
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THE
Posts: 2
7/28/2012
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Miss Dodexon wrote:
Byron Man wrote:
Just checking to see how many delicious friends has never died once so far - I mean death by Wounds only.
I am beginning to worry that avoiding the boatman entirely might not be of any consequence in the long run, but I think I am going to stick to it no matter what. Even if you offer me an Overgoat just to meet the Boatman for small talk. Or the Cider.
Well, the first time I "met the boatman" was when a looked at the heart mirror in Mrs Plenty's most distracting carnival. It was really funny, because I never actually planed on dying ever, after all, my wounds quality was only 4 then! I was also new to the game then, for my highest quality at something like "Watchful 15". Then much, much later after that I found the big (stop reading now, you don't want to know if your dangerous is < 65) Spider Council and feigned my knowledge on the
Correspondence. My wounds quality was only 2 then, hehehe...so after I recovered I just ran away and burned the chapel.
So I guess I've only been there two times. I was never trying to go there, but guess i was never really pushing not to go. It's not like "I don't like having wounds because I think I'm gonna die!" it's more like I don't like wounds because it's plain embarrassing ('Limping and Cursing'? Really?), I can't battle the black ribbon duelists of quality (like Feducci or Chi Lan) and I feel like dying really wastes my time, (what's so great about playing chess with the boatman?). So every time my wounds reach 4 or 5, I push it to zero.
Yet don't call me too cautious I still like going mad now and then for fun, and seriously beating up Feducci and Mr Inch in duels to the death. And after all I never planed on leaving, I'm immortal down here, so just have some fun.
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Miss Dodexon
A Sagacious and Lethal Lady
"Don't stop me from Going to Polythreme!"
Actually the first time I met the boatman was through a mirror too
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http://www.fallenlondon.com/Profile/The~Heavenly~Error~
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Abraham Bounty
Posts: 251
7/28/2012
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Recently I've begun avoiding The Boatman again. Every time I die, I wind up having to explain to him again how the horsey piece moves.
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News in the Neath: Noted citizen of Fallen London, Abraham Bounty, has acquired six hundred and sixty six souls. Additionally rumour has it that the lion's share of those souls was from a theft of The Brass Embasy itself. We are quite certain that this portents nothing ominous for him. Well, nothing unusually ominous anyway.
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Twoflower
Posts: 264
7/28/2012
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Abraham Bounty wrote:
Recently I've begun avoiding The Boatman again. Every time I die, I wind up having to explain to him again how the horsey piece moves.
"The opponent looked long and hard at the board.
The abbot waited to see what long-term, devious strategies were being evolved. Then his opponent tapped a piece with a bony finger.
REMIND ME AGAIN, he said. HOW THE LITTLE HORSE-SHAPED ONES MOVE."
-Terry Pratchett, Small Gods
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Samuel Goodall
Posts: 64
7/29/2012
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How high does your watchful need to be to be able to beat the boatman after you hit the Watchful cap of 140? Do you need to be Overgoated?
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Doomlewa
Posts: 60
7/29/2012
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I don't know how high it would be with an overgoat, but I know the challenge rating flips back up to impossible at 143.
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The same on twitter https://twitter.com/Doomlewa
http://www.fallenlondon.com/Profile/Matt~Goerwell My Mantelpiece
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Amalgamate
Posts: 435
7/29/2012
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Samuel Goodall wrote:
How high does your watchful need to be to be able to beat the boatman after you hit the Watchful cap of 140? Do you need to be Overgoated?
You don't need any particular amount. As your watchful increases, the easier options will lock and you'll go back up to hard. The best you can do is to make it a 'modest' challenge - if you increase your watchful more than that, it flips back up to 'almost impossible'. So it helps to have a lot of items so you can micromanage your watchful to either go UP or DOWN to the nearest 'modest' point.
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http://www.fallenlondon.com/Profile/amalgamate
Social invitations of all kinds welcome, especially games of chess and deadly sparring!
Also happy to help with nightmares, send sips of Cider, and plant battle.
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wlerin
Posts: 27
7/30/2012
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Just noticed on my last visit that there's a new option that becomes available at Watchful 163. I'm almost certain that's not possible without an overgoat, as I have most if not all available Watchful items aside from the goat, and am only at 161.
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Anathema
Posts: 8
8/1/2012
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Oh man I have met the boatman SO MANY TIMES. My character cares not a flip for death.
But then again my character is also a female automaton of mysterious origins. I figure that she just writes passing time off on the River as her self-test routines running while the auto-repair is finally kicking in. Humans have reptile brains lying deep beneath their consciousness, she has a chess algorithm, and it just kinda… spins for a while… when she's rebooting. She keeps on meaning to go hunting around the Bazaar Sidestreets for someone who can get that the auto-repair run more frequently but you know how it is - there's always something else to do when you've got an Ambition to chase.
Curiously enough, she's refused to let her demonic lovers persuade her to give up her soul, despite being pretty sure she's soulless. If she does have one, she's worried it might be all that keeps her from being a very elegant chess machine. She might feel different after discovering if she can actually bet it in the Marvellous.
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They say she's a weapon from behind the stars. They say she's a cunning clockwork simulacrum. They say her virtue's for sale. They say she's kind to spiders. All lies, of course. Except about the spiders.
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Sagacitas
Posts: 9
8/1/2012
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I avoided the boatman assiduously at the beginning, in order to preserve hopes of revisiting the surface... but then I made a bad decision when encountering a Spider-Council, and was summarily dispatched with a single blow. Since then, there doesn't seem to be much point in worrying further.
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Eudoxia
Posts: 13
8/29/2012
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Just had a thought: hasn't Failbetter said that there are no hidden qualities? And since there isn't a quality to track whether you've died or not, that means that there's no point in avoiding the Boatman so you can get back to the Surface. If we get a chance to go back to the Surface in the endgame, it's going to hinge on something else. Maybe Boatman's Opponent will keep us out, maybe Hesperidean Cider will be required to go back.
It's weird, because the game's mythology states that if you die you can't go back to the Surface, but that fact isn't built into the game's mechanics. Maybe the plot will kill us at some point, to get around this. Did I miss something?
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ebz profile: Eudoxia. Lookit my progress on the path to riches!
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Abraham Bounty
Posts: 251
8/29/2012
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As it stands, the Surface isn't written into the game's mechanics yet. There's very little point to restricting us from being able to go to a place that doesn't exist yet. Should the Surface ever enter into the game as a valid destination, then maybe Failbetter will add a quality, hidden or otherwise, detailing if you've died. That said, can you have the quality 'Boatman's Opponent' without dying first?
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News in the Neath: Noted citizen of Fallen London, Abraham Bounty, has acquired six hundred and sixty six souls. Additionally rumour has it that the lion's share of those souls was from a theft of The Brass Embasy itself. We are quite certain that this portents nothing ominous for him. Well, nothing unusually ominous anyway.
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Dave
Posts: 215
8/29/2012
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Eudoxia wrote:
It's weird, because the game's mythology states that if you die you can't go back to the Surface, but that fact isn't built into the game's mechanics. Maybe the plot will kill us at some point, to get around this. Did I miss something?
Maybe it already has.
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The Dave, a terrifying, lethal, inescapable and sagacious gentleman
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Eudoxia
Posts: 13
8/29/2012
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They're planning on it, though - we might not get to visit the Surface, but we will be seeing the routes that lead there. I have the feeling that returning to the Surface might be an endgame choice.
Even though the Surface isn't written into the mechanics, it's written into the lore. And the lore implies that they would have had to track "Visited: A slow boat" from the start of the game. There aren't hidden qualities, so we know they haven't. And they can't do it retroactively, can they? Besides, Failbetter's super careful about warning us when we're about to make serious choices - if dying cut us off from content irreversibly, there would be bold italic text everywhere.
(As far as I know you can't become the Boatman's Opponent without dying, but you can die & heal a thousand times without playing chess, of course.)
Dave wrote:
Maybe it already has.
Aha! What if we get to the endgame & Failbetter's like "Psych! You died when London was stolen & then woke up resurrected in New Newgate. No Surface for you! Mwahaha!"
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ebz profile: Eudoxia. Lookit my progress on the path to riches!
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atheistcanuck
Posts: 51
8/29/2012
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the Nemesis ambition implies you got yourself shipped to the jail on purpose just to get into the Neath.
I think they'll probably just assume you died at some point, after all, how many people are going to make it to the endgame without dying, especially with how many people get bored and start Seeking the Name when they hit content boundaries.
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