CameoAppearance
Posts: 146
5/4/2014
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Just about every time I've seen somebody's death referenced in Sunless Sea, it's been permanent, although I can recall it being vaguely mentioned that death tends not to stick in reference to the tomb-colonists and I know the Drownies are referred to as dead. But there don't seem to be any mentions of impermanent death on your ship or in port, and there are some apparently-permanent deaths from what seem to be ordinary stabbings and bullet wounds and suchlike. I mean, there are also lots of deaths where it's reasonable for the body not to be recovered (especially if your starving crew ate it), or that are mangly enough that it'd make sense for them to be permanent even in Fallen London, or where the assailant would want to make sure the person they killed stayed dead (like the mutiny ending), and if your body ends up in the Unterzee you'd probably only come back as a Drownie. If a zee-monster didn't eat you first. But still.
It took me a bit to notice this, but now that I've noticed it it makes me sort of sad, since one of my favourite things about the setting is how death isn't permanent and this leads to the characters having an entertainingly cavalier attitude towards being stabbed or poisoned or whatnot. And it does seem to matter to the overall story of the Fallen London universe, too, with the way the people from the Presbyterate are more immortal than Londoners but the Snuffers don't get to come back from the dead at all, and the fact that only people who've never died can return to the Surface, in addition to the amusing references to, for instance, poisoning your rival so they won't be able to upstage you at a social event. I'd like it if there were more references to one of your crew dying and this putting them out of commission for a while, just for flavour, on top of the ones that subtract that zailor from your crew headcount for good.
Possibly it was left out on purpose, but I'm still hoping there will be more references to temporary deaths in the finished product. Hopefully I'm not the only one who misses it.
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Dr Cameo “Scary Teeth” Thurlow, that toothy androgyne with the wickedly sharp curly quotes
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
5/4/2014
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CameoAppearance wrote:
Possibly it was left out on purpose
It was. I wrote the original FL lore with the peculiar treatment of death, and I developed the underlying rationale for it, so I'm attached to it as anyone. But when I came to writing the content and building the systems, it required constant rationalisations, rewrites and write-rounds. It works in FL because so much of the narrative occurs in purely social situations, and where Scandal and Suspicion are literally as punishing in death. It doesn't really work in a setting which we sell hard as being fatal.
So it weakened the theme of SS, and it was going to confuse non-FL incomers, which was the final straw. It vexed me to lose it, but the price was worth paying. There is a canonical rationale, which is already hinted at in extant content, but the fundamental reason is so I could write better content more quickly.
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Alexis Kennedy
Posts: 1374
5/4/2014
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The canonical answer is that it's still a little harder to die at zee than on the surface. It's just, uh, less harder.
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Lily Fox
Posts: 346
5/6/2014
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One could make a distinction between the essence of a person, their 'spirit' in an alchemical sense, and the divine spark that could be the soul. The base and the divine, two components that, along with the material corpus, form a whole person.
The spirit leaves an impression upon the soul, making an echo of itself, but if the soul is stolen the spirit remains. That is why the soulless amongst us still possess reason, intellect, sentience et cetera but have lost their spark.
I could be on to something. Or I could have overdone the mushroom wine, excuse me.
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@LilyLayer4
Fallen London character: Lilith B.
Author of Maelstrom - Play - Discuss
Author of City of Phire - Play - Discuss
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Xaphedo
Posts: 44
5/6/2014
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So this is how a debate at the Department of Ectanthroplasmology would be like. I love it!
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Betrothal To Prosody
«He knows. Why of course, there's no other way. Unless...»
A comfortably unpredictable individual
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SarahTheEntwife
Posts: 50
8/10/2014
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Ah, I was wondering about this; I'm glad someone asked. Several times now my crew has been actually eaten by something, and presumably then you're not really reconstitutable.
And now I'm *very* curious about ghosts in FL...I guess someone who's sold their soul really shouldn't be able to become a ghost going by standard ghost-lore, since they kind of already are, just stuck in a little bottle somewhere. But then presumably there is *something* else running the body, since the soulless are still able to do pretty much everything except get invited to the better parties at Somerset, and I guess that could have some lingering presence after death? Hrm.
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http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Strel Retired zee-captain turned scholar. Open to social interactions of various sorts.
http://fallenlondon.storynexus.com/Profile/Winona~Tintenfisch Winona Tintenfisch, aspiring street urchin. Would definitely be up for some fisticuffs or loitering.
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Mordaine Barimen
Posts: 670
8/10/2014
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Hauntings do occur in the Neath; I have a ghost as a companion. Of course, the ratio of ghosts to Parabolic events as the sources for reported hauntings in the Neath is likely a hotly debated (and violently repressed) debate subject.
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I'm sorry, but due to policy clarifications, I will no longer be giving detailed mechanics advice on the forums.
If you still need help, try the IRC channel.
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EmilyAriel
Posts: 124
8/11/2014
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Mordaine Barimen wrote:
Hauntings do occur in the Neath; I have a ghost as a companion. Of course, the ratio of ghosts to Parabolic events as the sources for reported hauntings in the Neath is likely a hotly debated (and violently repressed) debate subject.
Of course, it's entirely possible that you (and I, for that matter) actually have a Fingerking as a companion, and there are not actually ghosts in the Neath.
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Zasadzka
Posts: 4
5/5/2014
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I was actually sort of thinking about this - or well, at least death as it appears in the game which is close enough. In Nethack - which I think of often while playing Sunless Sea due to the amount of times I have starved to death in both - you would occasionally meet (and kill or be killed by) your own ghost from earlier playthroughs while going through the game. That seems like it might be an interesting way to both allude to the iffy nature of death AND serve as an inescapable reminder to players of their own mortality! Also ghost ships! Always fun.
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