#chainrambles

[szilverer]

while i am now Aware that LF's iconic Consequence of Your Actions is a mechanic plot hole going against pre-established lore regarding how death seems to work in the Neath (i.e. your body does not get moved with you to the boat), it is still one of my favourite horror moments in fallen london just bc of the sheer psychological aspect of it

it's kind of an open-secret at this point but still. spoilers for what happens when you are too sussy baka in the orphanage under the cut

do you have any idea how hard you have to bang your head to actually die from it . like. bro.

yeah what was logically supposed to happen is inhumane torture (slowly but surely withering away both physically and mentally until you starve to permadeath prob), but the alternative of what you are forced to do if you don't have a snazzy giant plant is also a whole other type of hell

it simply blows my mind (lol) how, going strictly by the text, smashing your skull open is the method the PC chooses to go out. it's just so. feral. like, literally feral. the most primal response possible to being locked in a claustrophobic cage versus your most basic instinct to not hurt yourself lethally.

the pc could have tried to bite off their tongue but no!! traumatic brain injury time, baby!!!

and you need to bang your head over. and over. and over again. you gotta either be insane enough to do it or become insane enough to do it. and keep. doing it. over. and over. and over again. your head throbs and swells and there's the blood and the crunching noises from inside your head and the oxygen running out and asphyxiating you. you're forced to commit suicide in an absolutely brutal manner. it's just. ugh. it's just so good???

and don't even get me started on the intricacies of eddie boy choosing this method specifically.

which leads to my previous bandaid headcanon to all those that actually killed themselves in that coffin: your sheer desperation/determination caught the personal attention of the boatman and he did you a little favour getting you out of there. as a treat.

my present (dare i say evolved) headcanon to fill up this specific mechanic plot hole ties into the evolution storyline. if you've done it you can pretty much guess what it is. destinies and whatnot

[szilverer]

Reisz used to drink wine. When that wasn't enough, they turned to the heavier stuff. When that wasn't enough, they turned to honey, and other bohemian pleasures. And when that wasn't enough, well, they turned to the thrill of danger, and then all of that at once.

Not sure that can be called "coping" but beating people up in the docks and beating other people's nightmares has been working well so far. The strangest part is probably how they every so often sing to themself in the middle of the violence. Only way they can get to sleep is by either exhausting their body completely or getting knocked tf out.

It's almost impossible to make it out unscathed when it comes to living in the Neath, and not everything can be fixed with just a cuppa and a stint in the Beth (for given value of "fixed" when the Beth is involved). For all the strange things your characters have gone through, what are some strange things they do to cope?

[szilverer]

ya ever groggily go spend your actions after waking up from a nap and promptly kill your pc in two taps

[szilverer]

"Of course they'd finish with combat," opines a passer-by. "They want to end with glory. Who'd stand against a tiger?"

so i came back to FL on 07/08, which means dear lil Reisz woke up in the middle of last Estival just in time for A Tournament of The Body. getting diced by tigers and sliced by soldiers of skite was one of the first things they chose to do, and they did it over and over, as much as they could (bc i was grinding for the medal lol), failing countless times in the process.

failing, but learning.

Looking back, jumping straight to that arena when the most dangerous thing you had done was catching a few rats was an obvious sign that there was something wrong with you. But who's freer to take risks than those with nothing to lose?

The Armoured Veteran is all swagger [...] Her eyes burn. Her armour gleams. Her claws flex in anticipation of the fights to come. Few can bear to meet her gaze for long. If nobody can overcome their fear, then she will surely win.

She howled with laughter when Reisz first volunteered. Anyone could tell they weren't a fighter with a single glance. And yet, how come it was this empty-headed nobody that seemed to gaze back at her most intently? Well, maybe she could use them as warm-up. Scare them a little, bite a few holes in their flesh, toss them around a bit. That'll put them in their place.

She did so. Again and again. Alas, they fainted, they woke up, they chugged bottles of something suspicious and kept their flesh together with tight bandages, then politely requested another match also again and again. They were quick on their feet, at least, and that much tolerance to pain was unexpected, but the dagger felt lost in their hands, the grip too unskilled, the difference in their sizes too great. They could never reach her for a counterattack from the distance they kept when dodging her claws.

There was an odd lack of fear in these eyes, but the body was another matter.

"I can tell you want to be an apex predator just like me, little cub. So why aren't you charging like one?"

Reisz eyes widened with the unexpected advice.

"I can easily kill you. The fact you cannot do the same, and yet still don't strike to kill, borders insult"

They hesitated, taken aback, and she roared, promptly knocking them out in retaliation by striking them on their side and sending them flying against a wall.

Consciousness returned to Reisz only after being dragged to a medical tent. Flashes of the previous sparring matches ran through their mind. She was right. Every time they tried an attack, something kept them at bay, their own body held them back as if begging not to do it, begging to get away, to run, just run- it made Reisz circle around her in perpetual avoidance.

Ah. Instinctual fear.

Reisz had to charge right through it.

The Tournament of Body was coming to a close, and soon the Armoured Veteran would start preparing for some actual challenge. They were lucky she gave them any time at all, truly. Reisz had one last shot. Downing some more bottles of Gebrandt's Tincture of Vigour, adrenaline seemingly pumping from anticipation, they walked back to the arena while strapping the dagger firmly to their forearm, and leaving their tattered black shawl on the floor.

No more concerning themself with a loosening grip from the damage in their bitten muscles and no more concerning themself with obscuring their face, as they always felt compelled to do.

No more concerning themself.

The Armoured Veteran gave a single chuff upon seeing Reisz again. She said she had no more time to waste on warm-ups, but she also said she liked their eyes. One last time, then.

This time they would charge right at her.

...it took some tries to trample over their own instincts. The body wanted them to stop, begged them to run away. But finally, Reisz started dodging without subconsciously pulling away. Focused on not insulting her, with barely any time to think, they found themself swinging at her neck.

Next thing they knew they were on the floor after a explosion of pain in their head. It felt as if blood flowed like tiny warm waterfalls from their face to pool down on the ground. They tried to lift themself up, but the world spun as their vision failed. That would be most concerning to the average person, but only two things echoed in their mind:

One, she really had been just playing with them up that point. If they hadn't taken a step back, she could have easily snapped their neck-- Ripped their head out, even. Reisz had... actually startled her into losing control of her strength for a moment there? Even if just for a sliver of a fraction of a second, she had seen them as an actual threat?

Reisz smiled to themself, nearly giggling, and the increasing pain on their lacerated face kept them conscious. Staggering, they stood up, slowly, hearing sand. Curiously, the Armoured Veteran waited for them.

Two, good thing this dress is red.

A deep breath.

You and the Armoured Veteran circle each other, your weapons red with her, her lips red with you. Her stomach growls as she approaches, a noise repeated in her throat. She leaps – surely she has you? – but the shadow passes. There is a blade in her belly: yours. She pulls herself free, limping towards the medical tent. A paw raised: good fight.

...

Reisz returned the gesture as the few onlookers that were watching roared and cheered. The sheer euphoria they were feeling was indescribable. Their body was falling apart at the seams, the pain was starting to make them nauseous and they had never, ever felt happier.

(They had no idea at the time but from then on, Reisz had little choice but to spend the rest of their days trying to chase that high.)

[szilverer]

gotta confess that although i decided to give reisz the amnesia trope beam just bc i wanted to start playing before having to settle on their background, i did have a barebones semi-canon backstory for them all along.

its just that. out of all the canon-compliant manners of messing with memories that i came across so far (mostly mentions of irrigo & bottled oblivion). the One idea that i like the most just had to be the most convoluted possible

it wormed its way on the back of my head from the very first week or so when i was thinking about making a seeking alt and came across random unmarked nemesis ending spoilers in the discord.

the idea is reisz as the returned loved one of a nemesis alt, yeah.

naturally, the whole thing didn't work out that well for the two of them in the end..........

(…whenever i make a new Main oc it's like a curse. it doesn't spawn on its own, no. it comes in twos and they always come with an unsatisfying enmeshed relationship from a shared past. so those nemesis spoilers made me point like the dicaprio meme and BOOM second doomed character materialised in my head instantly. and cuz im a simple cliche bastard, a sucker for foils and mimesis whose autism craves narrative patterns, these two would have had inversely parallel developments.)

nemesis is just about the perfect ambition for a seeking alt bc it seems like the natural next step for a ultimately compassionate person that decided to commit their life to a vengeance that did Not pay off (due to the whole. not remembering thing.) so if i do decide to canonize this idea the matter of her current whereabouts is already answered: NORTH. and now that reisz got their first (and last) weeping scar. well. they match <3

i'd be playing events from years past but going north means she doesn't get to do the railway or any of that other stuff, so it fits nicely in the phantom's timeline.

this also would give me two very good explanations for their memory issues:

somehow rebooted themself on purpose bc they simply Couldn't Deal (same reason the… avenger? scourge? went north. they got to watch the beginning of her self-destruction, of course.)

it's an occasionally reoccurring consequence of whatever the hell got done to bring them back to life (i do not know what it was . i know there's cider involved but idrk what cider is.)

the only reason im wary of canonizing this right away is that aside from vague ending spoilers i Do Not Know what happens in nemesis. i Do Not Know if this idea is viable for a pc or if the circumstances of being brought back this way would contradict what a pc can or cannot do.

am in a weird spot that i Need to know more spoilers to check if everything would fit in a way that makes sense, and bc i want to play the ambition someday i don't want to spoil myself by trying to look it up!!1 flops down on the floor.

alas. i promised myself i'd only make an alt once im way into the endgame with reisz, so this boutta be their Schrodinger's Past for a good while. and if i do get to the end of nemesis a year from now and find out it doesn't actually fit, well . that's a problem for future me

[szilverer]

My case is a little funny bc my character was almost a fresh POSI and didn't know much about the Neath. (still don't tbh)

They didn't know what was up with the cat X fingerking feud, how deep it ran, or what was at stake, they just knew it existed. They had barely interacted with fingerkings up to that point too, so my PC literally just chose the cats because they had fun with the tigers last Estival and it seemed straightforward enough, as they also had No Clue Whatsoever why the sneks were angry with them. They found out cats had nobility at the exact moment they became one even, it was a trip.

However, if anyone had explained beforehand what would happen to the Sun + what it actually was. Well Reisz would've skinned themself as an apology instead. To them, the whole thing was just a giant misunderstanding and between you and me... they love Parabolan sunlight. Thank goodness it's still there.

(ooc though? i would've picked the shawl, in hindsight. the cat affiliation is great but it directly powercreeps the other ((optional)) affiliation i got from LF and it would've been more efficient to not have two ambition items in the same slot. buuut being addressed as Lyon is cool af so it's not a big deal lol)

Welp, I've arrived to the choice between Cats and Snakes in light fingers without deciding which one I want to pick-

So I want to ask people who've played it or are playing and already know which one they want, what was your in-character reason for picking either one? (i imagine that if I ask about ooc I'm going to get a lot of "I wanted to be a cat" lmao)

[szilverer]

hewwo

made this blog primarily to dump oc content & maybe liveblog a bit (its my first time engaging in a fandom space like this so im pretty lost, do lemme know if i mess up with tagging or etiquette or smth. more about me here.)

my main FL acc (Hreisz) is from 2016 but i only really started playing last august! ive finished my ambition in october but theres still a lot i dont know about the lore n stuff. recently made two alts & am slowly getting around to write/draw nice profile pages for everyone.

"H. Reisz", aka The Twilight Phantom // The Clawed Captain | LF (Looked Upon Fondly) | Oneirotect Silverer | ???

Hyacinthe R., aka The Sombre Pursuer | Nem | future Correspondent & Seeker | English-Romanian

"Zé Brito" or "Sev", aka The Zealous Backlander | BaL | future Monster-Hunter | Mixed Brazilian-British

feel free to send a CC or even just random in-character letters & menace help reqs :3c im a lil rusty but i'd love to write more

always open to asks/interactions here as well, just keep in mind i might take A While to respond as i am but an hermit with the barest of executive functions

trying to use this hyperfixation to practice digital art so there'll be random experimental doodles here as i try to find out wtf i am doing. everytime i open a canvas its a surprise. youve been warned

tags:

#chaindoodles -> art tag, #chainrambles -> text tag #fl liveblogging, #flore (fl lore)

#the twilight phantom -> the (main) blorbo

#nightmarriage -> my blorbo hoards trash. block this to be spared from witnessing their arguably most questionable decision (i.e chaining their stalker to themself so they won't be alone)

content warnings:

#light fingers spoilers (also general tag for LF) #nemesis spoilers, #evolution spoilers

just to be safe, i tag eyestrain/bright colours for some art.

#suggestive in case i draw (or write?) smth that can be perceived as saucy, spicy, horn knee, overtly kinky or implied nsfw. there wont be anything Actually explicit here though

i like #blood and injuring my characters both mentally and physically. so uh. that. possibly violence.? jokes aside, i like exploring heavy themes: mental health & psychological issues; abuse; general horror; death & grief; alienation; one's relationship with pain & self-destruction, intentional or not - these are all concepts that are gonna be present in the things i make one way or another. some mild religious iconography as well bc although im not religious i was raised catholic & i like playing w/ the aesthetic.

#body horror (mostly the shapeling arts kind)

??

#poor edward

So who's this "Twilight Phantom"?

I play a strict game with myself when it comes to my main blorbo: 99% of what the FLPC does, in the exact order i do it, is canon.

This also applies to small things like their possessions/wardrobe, for example - they pretty much only have the in-game items I own in the account to wear. Finding out reasons to explain why they keep the things they own is part of the fun. (this game made them out to be a weirdo, naturally.)

It's been lots of fun to see this clean slate (and i do mean clean - i knew nothing about the setting/lore, or who they were as a person, so. well. this guy didn't either) get shaped by RNG, the narrative, And my mechanical wiki-fueled optimization decisions.

another extra rule i made for myself as a treat was making them a sponge to compensate for their inherent emptiness. this means they incorporate something from each important NPC they get involved with. they are a singer because of Clara and her twin. they only own a lab & got interested in studying & research bc of Dr. Vaughan. they got a taste for exercise bc they accompanied Hephaesta's workouts for so long. and so on and so forth.

ill make a better, dedicated profile post eventually but for now have a playlist + an old vague intro + some early refs below:

[last updated: never. this is my self-callout to write abt recent developments bc ohh boy evolution was an entire year's worth of timeline progression.]

The first thing you notice about them is the cowl lazily draped around their head and shoulders, swaying behind their back like a cape in the colours of sunrise-- or, perhaps most familiarly, the velvety twilight that the newest star every so often provides to London.  The second thing is the deep scars covering one side of their face, and the third thing would probably be the heavy eyebags under their sharp, dark eyes.

A relatively freshly-minted Silverer, H. Reisz spends more time in Parabola than London nowadays. Not that they had been in London for too long anyway, and it's not like anyone knows where they were before that either. The surface, yes, but it's a big world out there, right? They don't actually remember seeing the sun, or the sky, but H cannot deny the soft colours of twilight and sunrise have a special place in their heart. They recognise it without the memory of experiencing it, just like they recognised love in the depths of a certain Labyrinth. Hmm, two Labyrinths, actually. There was that one heiress too... and the Orphanage was inside one hell of a maze too... if they had a coin every time they found themself inside labyrinths, they'd... Uh, where were we? Well, anyway, being a new face, they had nothing to be known for so they simply gave out their surname instead. Or well, what they assumed to be their surname. "H. REISZ" were the letters sewn-in on a diminute corner of the tattered black veil that wrapped their head back when they woke up for the "first" time. They were surrounded by near-empty bottles of dried mouldy honey, absinthe, and who knows what else. Ah, the decadence... they couldn't even remember what honey could do at the time but they could recognise the stench of self-destruction right away, haha.  Alas, if things were so bad they got to that point-- maybe this explains why moving on was so easy. Maybe they had somehow lobotomized themself on purpose. Who knows? They sure don't. It was only now, a year or so after waking up, that an epithet has started to stick around-- specifically by their actions as a Silverer and the services they provided. From nightmare-slaying to fishing out vestigial memories (the irony of an amnesiac doing this is not lost on them) to guiding and safeguarding lost dreamers, their glimmering signature cowl and the way it flowed rather phantasmagorically in Parabola started to leave an impression. To many dreamers, seeing a hint of pastel twilight colors signaled safety. It signaled someone you could trust to get inside your head. :)

[szilverer]

on returning

was thinking about the intricacies of reisz being a [nemesis spoiler], and defined how that... works exactly. added some new rules for my playthrough too.

(TL;DR in red)

i didnt canonize my old returned one idea right away bc unfortunately my brand of autism makes me care about canon compliance with my own oc stuff-- i even decided to be extreme abt it with the ghostie's account for fun: 98% of the actions i take in-game + the descriptions given to me are canon whether i like it or not! i worried that'd clash with the possible canon about returned loved ones & being resurrected, info i do not have access to. (if there is even any tbh. from what i gathered the aftermath is pretty vague?)

...but then i realised that the FLPC, by virtue of being the FLPC, is already the most specialest blorbo ever. the canon + logic surrounding death, wounds, and healing thereof doesn't apply to the FLPC the same way it applies to NPCs.

so. technically. going by my own rules. being a returned one it's not actually that far-fetched???¿¿? it's a way one can explain why the FLPC Cannot be permakilled. all FLPCs are, by the end of the day, mechanically immortal. well then. whatever. (cracks knuckles) let's go all in.

the ghostie, none the wiser: I'm here for a good time, not a long time! me: lol

wait, but the FLPC still dies!

they do indeed! going to the boat is the very proof of that process. the FLPC is sturdy as all hell but still gets lethally hurt. here's how I'm reasoning it: the magic only kicks in when the body falls apart. (also i think the boatman simply can't row them to the far shore bc of it lmao.)

it's less of an invulnerability thing and more of a phoenix thing: you moult away your damaged shell and come back to life to a fresh healthy body regenerated anew from your own remains.

(i was uncertain whether to make it so the damaged parts get entirely rebuilt or if something is left behind. since there apparently are hijinks in which the FLPC leaves behind body parts ill cover my bases)

this was how reisz was able to carry so many scars for so long. this is how they lived for almost two years with multiple sequelae of traumatic brain injury that, although diminished with time, never went away. they survived with their normal metabolism (being buried alive ended in a boatman ex machina, so they didn't smash their head in enough for their brains to spill all out. but they were very close. in evolution it was rather unclear whether the ex machina happened as well or if we simply finally starved to death).

there was no need for the cider that remade their flesh & imbues their cells to get to work, which is only when something extreme that would permakill anyone else happens.

like being torn to pieces by a zee-monster.

(before & after status illustrated below.)

tfw you lose part of the identity you didn't even realize you had, rip.

hence my new rule! :D reisz' body gets soft-reset every time i get them killed too dead. i enjoy drawing scars on characters that lead dangerous lives, and reisz abruptly discovered they quite cherished the ones they used to have (each one was a memory after all: the trajectory of their short-lived life), so that's some low stakes Consequences for me to be mindful of. hehe.

design-wise am gonna miss their anisocoria though 😔 the mismatched slit pupils made them look so silly

aside from the whole uhhh reviving from your own gore thing, rei gets a few bonus freak vitality points that could be suspicious when you look back knowing there's something... off about them, but would raise little alarm on its own. they:

heal much faster than other people, often skipping the inflammatory response stage altogether (i.e. the FLPC being able to go from Agony and Desperation to Scratches and Bruises in a matter of a few actions, leaving no consequence whatsoever.)

build tolerance stupidly fast and can't Actually get drunk (or hangover) for long. same with drugs :(

have never been sick. not a single cold. (just bc i genuinely dont remember a single mention of the FLPC getting sick? food poisoning is a whole other thing.)

a completely broken, mayhaps even missing, sense of fear. which in hindsight? explains a lot about the way they live their life.

these ^ are mostly from extrapolating what supercharging your white cells with immortal juice could result in, but there's an extra:

that weird fondness for bones & skeletons that makes them impulsively bring home whatever abandoned body part they come across? it stems from the fact that. well. reisz Was bones. reisz might not remember but the body always does.

[szilverer]

whenever a storyline takes me to parabola i always gotta take a second to remember all this cool shit ain't silvering, it's just regular glasswork. advanced glasswork sure but still just glasswork.

the more time passes the more i understand complaints about silverers being boring or lacking identity. from what i gathered parabola wasn't accessible back then, and the profession kinda lost charm when it opened up to everyone. (let's not even mention the entirety of oneiropomping.)

on the other hand, the same way everyone can dabble in advanced correspondence shenanigans, that doesn't make them a professional. and thinking about it i haven't really seen the same complaints about correspondents. but maybe they're out there and i just haven't stumbled on them?

i still think silverers are wicked sick from what it's implied that they can do but. FL rly doesn't do much pushing further the more unique aspects of the profession, or providing unique choices (i can really only think of the fathomking option.) that might be a problem with all professions though so idk rly but my point stands that there's missed potential here

speaking of which. it's a travesty we don't have social actions regarding nightmares. @/fbg come on.

[szilverer]

i have been stuck with decision paralysis abt the end of evolution for two days now. my full candle taunts me.

[szilverer]

you ever go ask for directions and end up thoroughly banished from the place instead? a story in 7 acts.

extras

they also had this very conveniently timed dream that was definitely not menacing (and strangely alluring?) at all. anyway

railway progression is so close i can almost taste it-- (remembers i need 16 more lab experiments) fug.

for the first time ever, hedonist is about to lose its spot as their highest quirk. considering they racked up a lot of heartless in the labyrinth (they did catch & release okay?) there's been some interesting lightning-fast character development into an arguably worse person ever since they joined the board. guess this is what being an investor does to you lmfao.

[szilverer]

not me only seeing the notifs days later help

@oneirotecture heheee tysm ;v;!!! and hello there fellow br fl player maining a silverer with a facial scar who wears a piece of clothing based on an in-game item both closest to bohemians & friends with sussy snakes & (funniest coincidence of all by far) who only go by surnames bc they both forgor their first names insira spiderman pointing meme here. i hope ppl in the neath dont ever mix the two of them up & misplace their mail or smth bc that'd be. so embarrassing to this newcomer. am so sorry warden.

the more i think about it the more im certain zé would be hilariously miserable in a land sem UM PINGO de sol lmfao. & you gave me such a lovely idea with the cordel, it would be a super fun project to try making little comic strips in that style in the future!! (and well shes a seeker but there is a chance she doesnt knock... only time will tell...)

[szilverer]

hallowmas aftermath: had to drink my coffee and lose sleep to reach the highest title i could last night, but. success

officially assigned stalker at fool.

legendary unhinged charisma is also happening & considering the way they gained 68 levels of persuasive i can only make sense of this as a dnd CHA (intimidation) bonus kind of thing. all this for a evening on the cart and a few dozen kissus....

worth it tbh. now to think what kinda consequences™ that peckish 10 are gonna leave on them bc THE VOID sounds kinda like a big deal