“The Healing Question”
Earlier this week, [a carefully unspecified number of] players completed the Seeking Mr Eaten’s Name quest line, an epic and long-awaited storyline in Fallen London which ends with the player character’s deliberate self-destruction. You can read more about Mr Eaten here (me talking about it) and here (someone else talking about it).
I’ve generally avoided giving clues or commentary about my more ellipticaI work – if I have to support it with footnotes, it hasn’t succeeded on its own merits. But I wrote the second half of the Mr Eaten line in a blistering week-long burst of overtime, so I could get it done before I left Failbetter, and it may be more elliptical than usual – and also since I don’t work at Failbetter any more, I won’t have a chance to expand or extend it.
Furthermore, I left a request in the story just before the actual ending that people not share it, to preserve the mystery a little longer. I’m delighted to hear that this has been respected – thanks, folks! – but it will of course come out eventually.
So here are seven clues that may help illuminate the story, or how to navigate it.
- If you’ve played Sunless Sea, you might recall what was necessary to go east.
- Mithridacy.
- Staggered hatching of birds of prey.
- Details of colour are important, and details of internal architecture.
- When a ship is decommissioned, it may still sail.
- But recall what the Treacheries did to Vienna and the White in Frostfound.
- Sand.
