This is what we can do together
Dec. 29th, 2024 10:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
meteordustStill catching up on old posts, and this one is about Estival, the highlight of my Fallen London calendar.
This annual festival takes place in the northern hemisphere summer, and is a unique story every year. The first three years - 2021, 2022, and 2023 - had escalating drama and world-ending stakes, with players having to fight for the very survival of the city itself. After last year, the Failbetter Games team said they would need to reinvent Estival for the future, since it's impossible to keep endlessly raising the stakes, and players would just get "apocalypse fatigue". The official promo this year said:
Summer of 1899 has come around again, and with it, Estival: a time of celebration, intrigue, and, historically, disaster. This year, something stirs beneath the Labyrinth of Tigers, and London is awash with striped and toothy visitors. Closed to all visitors since the Fall, the Sixth Coil of the Labyrinth is opening at last – and the Court of the Wakeful Eye is holding a grand tournament to celebrate the occasion. The Coilheart Games will soon commence!
The Coilheart Games! An exciting idea to bring Fallen Londoners together, as well as spark healthy competition, in a carnival atmosphere. (Surely nothing can possibly go wrong?) It also took place in August, right around the time of the Paris Olympics, which gave an extra nice resonance.
I love Estival, so I always want to do a giant recap post, but that's probably why I've put it off until now. Anyway, I've just put together some notes and thoughts below. For a day-by-day recap of events:
Timeline of events (on the wiki)
Promo post 1 (before launch)
Promo post 2 (at launch)
Notes and thoughts
The prize
The Labyrinth of Tigers is a maze with five levels we can visit, and there has always been a locked door leading into the sixth level. (The levels are called coils, and each one is deeper underground than the last.)
We players are a suspicious lot. When the tigers said the victors of the Games will get to enter the Sixth Coil and tribute will be offered, everyone was like, "That's ambiguously worded. Are we the tribute?" This suspicion was not allayed when it started to look like the tigers were deliberately trying to lose each round.
The games
There were several teams participating in the Games: delegations from the Court of the Wakeful Eye (the tigers), the Khanate (the Eagle and Tortoise Clans), the Tomb-Colonies (the undead), the Bohemians (the artists), the Principles of Coral (the lamp-cats), Skite (the soldiers from the Elder Continent), and the Koloman Republic.
Players were pretty intrigued by the Koloman Republic, who had come down from the Surface. Did they correspond to a real world nation? Were they a new nation that combined existing nations? Had anyone even heard of them before? (They turned out to be a confederacy of spies, but that was a side issue compared to all the other reveals.)
There were four rounds of the Games: the Tournament of the Sciences, the Tournament of Imagination, the Tournament of the Intellect, and the Tournament of the Body.
Players could do various activities to support their chosen team. (Or even support different teams in different rounds.) The winner of each round would get a spot on the final team that would enter the Labyrinth.
The investigation
I always love a scavenger hunt, a familiar part of past Estivals. This time, you are sent by Mr Huffam, newspaper editor, and the Fallen London version of Charles Dickens. He feels that something isn't right, and wants you to find the answers to certain questions.
Some players complain that the hardcore players find the locations of all the clues too quickly, making it feel like their efforts are pointless. But I don't mind coming in late and just looking at the spreadsheet. For me, what's exciting is travelling to each location and collecting each clue, and learning the information it reveals.
I loved that this one happened in stages. There was a new scavenger hunt after each round of the Games, and this let the narrative unfold slowly, and gave players time to speculate and put the pieces together.
The truth
None of the past victors of the past Games had ever been seen again.
The tigers had a terrible secret they were desperate to keep hidden. A secret they were so ashamed of, they built a labyrinth to contain it and procured sacrifices to feed it.
Inside the Sixth Coil, lives the Seventh Coil. An impossible hybrid creature from a forbidden love affair, between an ancestral tiger prince and a Fingerking, the snakes who live in dreams. If the Seventh Coil awakens, it might destroy reality.
The plan
When the truth was revealed, the victors of these Games determined to go into the Sixth Coil, rescue all the lost tributes from past Games, and then seal the doors behind them.
The final scavenger hunt was for the rare items needed for the plan, and then we were ready for the final mission into the Sixth Coil.
I always love seeing the disparate factions and quirky individuals of Fallen London coming together in a common purpose. This is the warm and fuzzy feeling that Estival gives me.
As one forum poster said:
Like, we needed experimental Law giving lightbulbs, Viric fixative derived from the deepest parts of the Is Not, concentrated emotion extracted from someone harboring it for generations, the lock the Judgements use to seal away timelines, and a Sounder strong enough to contact the Surface from the Neath.
For any one group to have everything would've been basically impossible, but the tigers had gathered the strongest, most creative, most inventive, most well-connected people across the Neath multiple times and never asked for help.
Instead they chose to betray and sacrifice them.
The conclusion
The Tiger Keeper, a tiger who had fallen in love with the Seventh Coil, betrayed the tigers to stay with his love in their prison forever. But we managed to succeed in the overall mission.
One description I loved:
Ahead, an eye moves into the light – vast, emerald, ringed with fur, a serpent's eye in a tiger's socket.
Afterwards, we gained an audience with the Banded Prince, ruler of the tigers. We got rewards of new items. And the Sixth Coil is permanently open as a new location in the game.
Favourite scenes
Or rather, those few favourite scenes whose text I remembered to save, from towards the end of the story.
A reunion between two Tomb-Colonist lovers - one who was lost in the Games of the past, and one who came to these Games to find her:
Lost loves
The Cackling Mechanic raises a glass to you as soon as she notices you, bellowing your name across the street so loud that bats take to the air. The Mercies, Lettice and Grace, flank her, propping the crumbling tomb-colonist up as her bandages become ever-more saturated with wine.
"Good sort, you are." The Mechanic pats you on the back with surprising force. "Look at that – swells my heart. Took her a while, but our lass found her missing beau, she did."
She points through the throng. The familiar figure of the Whispering Duellist stands not far away, facing a dark, tattooed woman adorned with jade. You do not hear what the Duellist says. Her expression is hidden by her bandages. But, as the woman leaps into her arms and tension floods out of the Duellist's frame, the emotions are clear as crystal.
The Mechanic coughs. "Give 'em a moment. But not too long! Lots of poor sods from the Third here, and I can't speak a word of it. I'm only eighty – got grandsons in Veilgarden!"
*
The reward ceremony is always satisfying:
A rare recognition
The Banded Prince greets you one at a time, by name. The Cackling Mechanic. The Bohemian Sculptress. The Patient Mastermind. The Weeping Mercenary. You. He speaks plainly. He does not ask you to kneel.
"We are a proud people." Lambent eyes travel down the line, and do not flinch from anybody's gaze. "We were warriors long before we were diplomats. We did what we thought we must in order to secure victory, and safety." The Banded Prince lowers his head, a deliberate act of humbling.
"But you have put us to shame. In retrieving your fellows from our folly, you have exposed our failure. They need not have been performed on our behalf for us to witness, and honour, your deeds." One by one, the Banded Prince – the Prince of the Smoking Shore and Duke of all the Isles, Archipelagos and Peninsulae that were once the Sovereignty of the Humbled Satraps – presses his forehead against your hands.
He is very warm, and very heavy: a barely contained inferno. The feeling does not fade for a long, long time after you leave the Labyrinth – a hot, fierce power in your palm.
The Prince of all the tigers has bowed his head to you.
*
A lovely coda:
To return home, changed
You wake from a dream of forests and fires, black and orange and fierce. It clings to you, like the smell of smoke – a feeling like forgetting the object of a long-held desire. There is something in your mouth, nestled beneath your tongue. A scale.
You turn it over in your hand, and it reflects golden light upon your walls in strange patterns, as if dappled by undergrowth. Your thoughts linger on the Seventh Coil, product of an old anathema, and the tiger who betrayed his fellows in the name of a dream of love. Nested intrigues, lies and deceptions. A shame so deeply buried that whole nations depend upon its secrecy. The proscribed desires upon which the Games were built.
Outside, the lights and sounds of London play out their typical dramas. A few more ships set zail from Wolfstack. More visitors and rescued Tributes leave, or melt into the shadows of the Fifth City until they're no longer visitors at all. After the light and clamour of the Coilheart Games, it looks almost as if nothing has changed.
It is not true. Thousands flooded London for these short weeks, and none have left unaltered. Through competition, through love, through strife and rescue and the friction of other people, all changed. Even deep in the sixth coil, something unexpected burgeons where nothing new was ever meant to tread.
You place the scale on the sill, and it glitters in the dim light of the Bazaar's spires. A reminder, of hidden and secret depths.
This concludes the Coilheart Games, and the opening of the Sixth Coil.
This annual festival takes place in the northern hemisphere summer, and is a unique story every year. The first three years - 2021, 2022, and 2023 - had escalating drama and world-ending stakes, with players having to fight for the very survival of the city itself. After last year, the Failbetter Games team said they would need to reinvent Estival for the future, since it's impossible to keep endlessly raising the stakes, and players would just get "apocalypse fatigue". The official promo this year said:
Summer of 1899 has come around again, and with it, Estival: a time of celebration, intrigue, and, historically, disaster. This year, something stirs beneath the Labyrinth of Tigers, and London is awash with striped and toothy visitors. Closed to all visitors since the Fall, the Sixth Coil of the Labyrinth is opening at last – and the Court of the Wakeful Eye is holding a grand tournament to celebrate the occasion. The Coilheart Games will soon commence!
The Coilheart Games! An exciting idea to bring Fallen Londoners together, as well as spark healthy competition, in a carnival atmosphere. (Surely nothing can possibly go wrong?) It also took place in August, right around the time of the Paris Olympics, which gave an extra nice resonance.
I love Estival, so I always want to do a giant recap post, but that's probably why I've put it off until now. Anyway, I've just put together some notes and thoughts below. For a day-by-day recap of events:
Timeline of events (on the wiki)
Promo post 1 (before launch)
Promo post 2 (at launch)
Notes and thoughts
The prize
The Labyrinth of Tigers is a maze with five levels we can visit, and there has always been a locked door leading into the sixth level. (The levels are called coils, and each one is deeper underground than the last.)
We players are a suspicious lot. When the tigers said the victors of the Games will get to enter the Sixth Coil and tribute will be offered, everyone was like, "That's ambiguously worded. Are we the tribute?" This suspicion was not allayed when it started to look like the tigers were deliberately trying to lose each round.
The games
There were several teams participating in the Games: delegations from the Court of the Wakeful Eye (the tigers), the Khanate (the Eagle and Tortoise Clans), the Tomb-Colonies (the undead), the Bohemians (the artists), the Principles of Coral (the lamp-cats), Skite (the soldiers from the Elder Continent), and the Koloman Republic.
Players were pretty intrigued by the Koloman Republic, who had come down from the Surface. Did they correspond to a real world nation? Were they a new nation that combined existing nations? Had anyone even heard of them before? (They turned out to be a confederacy of spies, but that was a side issue compared to all the other reveals.)
There were four rounds of the Games: the Tournament of the Sciences, the Tournament of Imagination, the Tournament of the Intellect, and the Tournament of the Body.
Players could do various activities to support their chosen team. (Or even support different teams in different rounds.) The winner of each round would get a spot on the final team that would enter the Labyrinth.
The investigation
I always love a scavenger hunt, a familiar part of past Estivals. This time, you are sent by Mr Huffam, newspaper editor, and the Fallen London version of Charles Dickens. He feels that something isn't right, and wants you to find the answers to certain questions.
Some players complain that the hardcore players find the locations of all the clues too quickly, making it feel like their efforts are pointless. But I don't mind coming in late and just looking at the spreadsheet. For me, what's exciting is travelling to each location and collecting each clue, and learning the information it reveals.
I loved that this one happened in stages. There was a new scavenger hunt after each round of the Games, and this let the narrative unfold slowly, and gave players time to speculate and put the pieces together.
The truth
None of the past victors of the past Games had ever been seen again.
The tigers had a terrible secret they were desperate to keep hidden. A secret they were so ashamed of, they built a labyrinth to contain it and procured sacrifices to feed it.
Inside the Sixth Coil, lives the Seventh Coil. An impossible hybrid creature from a forbidden love affair, between an ancestral tiger prince and a Fingerking, the snakes who live in dreams. If the Seventh Coil awakens, it might destroy reality.
The plan
When the truth was revealed, the victors of these Games determined to go into the Sixth Coil, rescue all the lost tributes from past Games, and then seal the doors behind them.
The final scavenger hunt was for the rare items needed for the plan, and then we were ready for the final mission into the Sixth Coil.
I always love seeing the disparate factions and quirky individuals of Fallen London coming together in a common purpose. This is the warm and fuzzy feeling that Estival gives me.
As one forum poster said:
Like, we needed experimental Law giving lightbulbs, Viric fixative derived from the deepest parts of the Is Not, concentrated emotion extracted from someone harboring it for generations, the lock the Judgements use to seal away timelines, and a Sounder strong enough to contact the Surface from the Neath.
For any one group to have everything would've been basically impossible, but the tigers had gathered the strongest, most creative, most inventive, most well-connected people across the Neath multiple times and never asked for help.
Instead they chose to betray and sacrifice them.
The conclusion
The Tiger Keeper, a tiger who had fallen in love with the Seventh Coil, betrayed the tigers to stay with his love in their prison forever. But we managed to succeed in the overall mission.
One description I loved:
Ahead, an eye moves into the light – vast, emerald, ringed with fur, a serpent's eye in a tiger's socket.
Afterwards, we gained an audience with the Banded Prince, ruler of the tigers. We got rewards of new items. And the Sixth Coil is permanently open as a new location in the game.
Favourite scenes
Or rather, those few favourite scenes whose text I remembered to save, from towards the end of the story.
A reunion between two Tomb-Colonist lovers - one who was lost in the Games of the past, and one who came to these Games to find her:
Lost loves
The Cackling Mechanic raises a glass to you as soon as she notices you, bellowing your name across the street so loud that bats take to the air. The Mercies, Lettice and Grace, flank her, propping the crumbling tomb-colonist up as her bandages become ever-more saturated with wine.
"Good sort, you are." The Mechanic pats you on the back with surprising force. "Look at that – swells my heart. Took her a while, but our lass found her missing beau, she did."
She points through the throng. The familiar figure of the Whispering Duellist stands not far away, facing a dark, tattooed woman adorned with jade. You do not hear what the Duellist says. Her expression is hidden by her bandages. But, as the woman leaps into her arms and tension floods out of the Duellist's frame, the emotions are clear as crystal.
The Mechanic coughs. "Give 'em a moment. But not too long! Lots of poor sods from the Third here, and I can't speak a word of it. I'm only eighty – got grandsons in Veilgarden!"
The reward ceremony is always satisfying:
A rare recognition
The Banded Prince greets you one at a time, by name. The Cackling Mechanic. The Bohemian Sculptress. The Patient Mastermind. The Weeping Mercenary. You. He speaks plainly. He does not ask you to kneel.
"We are a proud people." Lambent eyes travel down the line, and do not flinch from anybody's gaze. "We were warriors long before we were diplomats. We did what we thought we must in order to secure victory, and safety." The Banded Prince lowers his head, a deliberate act of humbling.
"But you have put us to shame. In retrieving your fellows from our folly, you have exposed our failure. They need not have been performed on our behalf for us to witness, and honour, your deeds." One by one, the Banded Prince – the Prince of the Smoking Shore and Duke of all the Isles, Archipelagos and Peninsulae that were once the Sovereignty of the Humbled Satraps – presses his forehead against your hands.
He is very warm, and very heavy: a barely contained inferno. The feeling does not fade for a long, long time after you leave the Labyrinth – a hot, fierce power in your palm.
The Prince of all the tigers has bowed his head to you.
A lovely coda:
To return home, changed
You wake from a dream of forests and fires, black and orange and fierce. It clings to you, like the smell of smoke – a feeling like forgetting the object of a long-held desire. There is something in your mouth, nestled beneath your tongue. A scale.
You turn it over in your hand, and it reflects golden light upon your walls in strange patterns, as if dappled by undergrowth. Your thoughts linger on the Seventh Coil, product of an old anathema, and the tiger who betrayed his fellows in the name of a dream of love. Nested intrigues, lies and deceptions. A shame so deeply buried that whole nations depend upon its secrecy. The proscribed desires upon which the Games were built.
Outside, the lights and sounds of London play out their typical dramas. A few more ships set zail from Wolfstack. More visitors and rescued Tributes leave, or melt into the shadows of the Fifth City until they're no longer visitors at all. After the light and clamour of the Coilheart Games, it looks almost as if nothing has changed.
It is not true. Thousands flooded London for these short weeks, and none have left unaltered. Through competition, through love, through strife and rescue and the friction of other people, all changed. Even deep in the sixth coil, something unexpected burgeons where nothing new was ever meant to tread.
You place the scale on the sill, and it glitters in the dim light of the Bazaar's spires. A reminder, of hidden and secret depths.
This concludes the Coilheart Games, and the opening of the Sixth Coil.
