- Joined
- Nov 26, 2014
Several years ago, I played a text-based browser game called Fallen London. It is set in an alternate 19th-century London where a sinister deal between Queen Victoria and the mysterious Masters of the Bazaar resulted in London being dragged deep beneath the earth into a vast and unearthly cavern known as the Neath, where the laws of physics have degraded to mere strong suggestions, death comes less certainly, and mysterious squid-faced gentlemen openly walk the city streets. The game has very strong writing, as well it might since it has no real graphics to speak of beyond the icons it uses for items, locations, and the like and it wouldn't survive financially if the only thing it had to offer wasn't good.
They also had non-binary gender before it was a thing.
Anyway, they also have perhaps the most infamous single quest in a (debatably) massively multiplayer online game; admittedly, "No Russian" is a single "quest" that has gotten more publicity, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isn't even arguably an MMO. I am referring of course to "Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name" (SMEN), and I am wondering if anyone knows of any remotely comparable quest in any other MMO. You see, MMO quests in general make your character stronger, wealthier, more famous, or otherwise better-off in some way. It's part of the MMO power fantasy of relentless, continual progress for your chosen character.
But SMEN is fundamentally different. Rather than driving your character to greater and greater heights of power, SMEN is fundamentally a story of utter, catastrophic, and unrecoverable personal loss. A story of systematic and deliberate total self-destruction, carried out in spite of immense difficulty and in the face of countless warnings for you to stop, warnings that are both completely true and come from both NPCs and the game itself. A story where you must betray your friends, both NPCs and your fellow players, many times in order to proceed. A story that will take real-time months of work to complete, even if speedrun. A story that will result in your character becoming permanently literally unplayable. So let's see what this is all about, shall we?
The Masters of the Bazaar who are the real powers in Fallen London now are a group of shadowy, cloaked, seemingly hunchbacked individuals who all use a name of the form "Mr. (noun)": Mr Apples, Mr. Fires, Mr. Mirrors, Mr. Veils, and the like. (If you've ever seen the movie Dark City, you know that this naming pattern is a very bad sign.) Despite using the honorific "Mister", no one thinks that they are actually men; they are too weird and creepy for that. They are also nearly immortal, as London is the Fifth City they've taken and dragged down to the Neath. (The ruins of the first four cities remain; some are thousands of years old.)
Mr. Eaten was once one of their number, under another name, and the search for that name is the initial goal of the quest. But the by the time you learn the Name, you've learned of how he was betrayed, murdered, consumed, and his remains thrown down a well. Ghosts aren't actually a thing even in the Neath. But nevertheless something of the late Mr. Eaten still stirs, and whispers, and influences. And one thing is clear: This isn't over! A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely!
Just learning the Name is no small thing, however, for the remaining Masters took great trouble to conceal any and all evidence of their treachery. The laws of physics (such as they are in the Neath) no longer allow the Name to exist. You must first find the Number, and carve it into your body, mind, and soul. Seven weeping scars that will never heal. Seven memories of chains; you will never dream without a chain, a manacle, a rope, a cell. Seven stains upon the soul; even one will result a soul so befouled even the devils will no longer willingly purchase it from you. (Tricking them into taking it is a... bad idea.)
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look at how we get started on this long and difficult road of pain. Having recurring dreams of death by water can eventually lead to a particular dream that starts the quest. You can be started on the quest by being betrayed by a "friend" who is at the point where he must betray seven people to proceed. There are an options during the Christmas season event involving choosing to receive certain "gifts" from a mysterious robed, sack-carrying individual that visits you in the night that will also start the quest. If you are already prone to nightmares, exploring the abandoned ruins of the Fourth City may lead to hearing a mysterious voice echoing hollowly in your dreams, which can lead you onto a dark path of self-destruction.
But the most insidious way to start the quest involves various unconnected events that you may stumble upon in various places in the game that infect you with a mysterious inexplicable hunger, increasing your levels of a peculiar Menace stat called Unaccountably Peckish. What is a Menace? It's a temporary stat that you don't really want and will inflict some unpleasant fate on you for having it. The common Menace stats are Wounds, which leads to a fortunately temporary death when it gets too high, Nightmares, which leads to a bout of insanity and institutionalization when it gets too high, Suspicion, which leads to being sent to jail for a while when it gets too high, and Scandal, which leads to being forced into temporary exile when it gets too high. What does Unaccountably Peckish do? Well, from the linked wiki page:
Options that lower Unaccountably Peckish have a tendency to raise your levels of the Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name character quality, progressing you along the quest. Thus, you will need to fall into this sinister, unnatural hunger again and again in order to proceed along the quest. Proceeding with the quest will unlock a number of new options, most of them bad, although there is also an option to quit at any time. This is a recurring theme to the quest: all options that progress the quest involve painful sacrifice, yet not all painful sacrifices lead to progress. You will have many opportunities to throw away your health, wealth, fame, hard-won stats, and even real-world money in exchange for nothing at all. I will point out examples of this that I find particularly amusing throughout the rest of this post.
For example, one of the options from the black-bordered card that pops up if you have a high enough level of SMEN and Unaccountably Peckish is Scream out of the window at passers-by. This severely damages your social standing and gives you a level in the quality Reputation: Abomination, but does not advance the quest at all. Seekers are a bit of a known quantity in the world of Fallen London, you see, and virtually no one wants anything to do with them. An example that can be seen if you have enough of the poisonous item Flask of Abominable Salts, you can take the option to sell them to a certain person who wishes to use them on the Seekers who keep bothering him for information:
Sending dead rats to people when you feel guilty doesn't exactly help with reputation either, either of Seekers in general or yours in particular (you get more Reputation: Abomination). Eating live ones doesn't make your reputation any worse, but it's just one more way to consume a resource (talking rats are bought at the pet shop) without getting anything for it. In fact, by the point your are drawing the Knight of Feasts card, you're so hungry that eating any of your pets will do you absolutely no good.
Anyway, after doing numerous insane things like eating your own teeth, asking people a Question and hearing the answer in their silences between words, spree arson, and forbidden rituals that destroy extremely rare and valuable items, you will eventually advance the SMEN quality, at some cost to your health, sanity, stats, reputation, and material things. At this point, you know the Number, and set about cutting it into your flesh in the form of sevenfold Weeping Scars that will never heal, even in the Neath where death is usually more of an annoyance than anything else. (Which is a good thing, because each of the seven Weeping Scars you get requires you to die. But that is not enough. Not nearly enough. You're just getting started.
The next step is to get involved in criminal conspiracies, and arrange your own betrayal, leading to your incarceration. This gives you a new item you can't get rid of, Memories of Chains, that scars the mind as you have scarred the body. Of course, it must be done seven times. Oh, and previous incarcerations due to crimes carried out for your own reasons don't count. Only incarcerations deliberately arranged in the service of the Name count, so don't think you'll get out of it that way. Oh yes, and there's a chance of failure each time you attempt it, as the expected betrayal doesn't happen.
Next, you need to stain your very soul. This part can be problematic if you previously sold it for money. You'll also need the assistance of the notorious Starveling Cat, a strange creature who you will need to acquire in a any of a number of various ways (he's technically considered a "pet" and companion slot equipment, although trying to actually pet him is a bad idea. At the time you'll need him for SMEN, you'll unlock an option to attract him if you don't have him already. If you don't happen to have any corpses of deceased baptized talking rats to offer him to eat, he'll also eat souls floating in spoiled milk. Another way is to get another player who doesn't want him to give him to you; if they aren't Seeking themselves, this usually isn't hard, as they have no real non-Seeking uses and their mere presence in your inventory unlocks numerous self-destructive (yet hilarious) actions. Starveling Cats are practically an unlucky cursed item like the Eyeless Skulls, as attested to by the message when you choose to let someone give you one:
In fact, the Starveling Cat is practically Fallen London's mascot creature, alongside the Exceptional Hat. Many of the random snippets of lore that appear on each page (much like Kiwi Farms' own lolcow quotes) feature the Starveling Cat. The narration wherever the cat is concerned has a tendency to rhyme, for example The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Bad idea to offer him that! (Note that there are multiple opportunities to try to sacrifice the Starveling Cat, and it never, ever, works.)
Anyway, once you have your very own "deranged and monstrous clot of spitting mangy fur" that "follows you about and tells wicked lies! And it eats all the food in the larder" and have purchased a frightening quality of the best laudanum (tincture of opium; it's helpful for lowering Nightmares, although you can become addicted to it), you'll be ready to begin. Once again, it is possible to fail this, wasting your laudanum for nothing; one possible reason is that the spirifer, those despicable individuals who trade in human souls and who possess the secret of abstracting them from their owners, actually has moral qualms about what he is being asked to do:
Eventually, though, after increasing levels of Wounds, consumption of truly staggering levels of laudanum, having lost your Starveling Cat several times and having to go find one again, you'll stain your soul for the seventh and final time and endure another mandatory (temporary) death. Done? Not even close. Soon, you will realize that you now need the seven candles of the seven false saints: Saint Arthur, Saint Beau, Saint Cerise, Saint Destin, Saint Erzulie, Saint Fortigan, and Saint Gawain.
Let's start with Saint Arthur's Candle:
Gaining Saint Arthur's candle involves committing a series of betrayals. Seven of them, of course. There are a number of NPCs who you may have the friendship of for one reason or another, most whom are locked behind paywalled content and thus don't appear on the wiki anywhere. Naturally, once you betray them, they are lost to you forever, even if you subsequently abandon the quest. There are also a few items that are actually companions that can be betrayed as well, although naturally they tend to be rare and expensive. Finally, you can betray your fellow players, inviting them in for a chat where you rant and rave about your quest, thus infecting them with the urge to Seek as well. Simple enough. Make a final bonfire of souls and claim your candle. Next up is Saint Beau's candle:
This candle is in the custody of a former fellow Seeker, Miriam Plenty, who runs a well-known carnival in the Neath. You've had the option of visiting it since very early on in the game. You'll have to track her down in a strangely warped and dangerous midnight version of it to progress. Naturally, most of the attractions will harm you in one way or another without actually making any progress towards your ultimate goal. For example, perform in the empty Big Top!
Somehow, this alienates those in High Society, despite the fact that no one is here to see you. Perhaps they are here in spirit? No matter. LET'S EAT.
Or, you can go the carnival clairvoyant's tent to have your future read. She isn't in; it's midnight, after all, so you'll have to read your own future. Except that since you're doing this quest, you don't actually have a future, so you wasted a (weirdly expensive) carnival ticket for nothing. Think wasting 333 moon pearls is bad enough? Try wasting around ten bucks (depending on how much FATE, the purchaseable in-game special currency, you buy at a time). What do you get for it? A ride on a carnival wheel, that, well:
Returning to the sunlight after having spent an extended period of time in the Neath is extremely unwise. You see, the stars are actually living beings called Judgements. Their divine law is encoded in symbols of a very special language called the Correspondence that is transmitted by light. It scorches those who have transgressed against the laws of physics imposed by that same light, such as those who have spent time in the Neath. (This is why reading graffiti in Fallen London is very unwise, as Correspondence sigils risk setting your hair on fire.) You really should read those Game Instructions. But then if you did that, you would have turned back long, long ago, like the Game Instructions have been consistently urging throughout the entire quest.
Lore-wise, this ride should by all rights permanently kill your character deader than dead. And in fact, one well-known player actually filed a bug report upon having had the the temerity to pay real money to take this ride and find themselves still in existence afterward. As it is, you die, and you don't even get a funny message. All you get is a useless special quality, Scorched by the Sun, whose description merely notes "You were very unwise."
But all these carnival attractions are mere expensive entertainments. You need to go to the House of Mirrors and find the one mirror you need, which requires 10 carnival tickets, Nightmares 7 (Nightmares 8 will send you insane instead so be careful), and 150 Memories of Light. Hope you brought what you need (and meet the Nightmares condition), as leaving the carnival prematurely will also drive you insane. You'll meet up with Mrs. Plenty herself, and have a conversation, one where she'll try and persuade you to give up. She will ask you why you are doing this to yourself; you have many choices but the one that amuses me is unlocked with Hedoism of at least 12 (and causes Mrs. Plenty to regard you with complete disgust).
Assuming you choose to continue, you'll next have a choice of what to give up. You can give up every residence that you possess, and take up residence in an abandoned crypt. You can give up all of your hard-earned favors and connections with every faction in the game. You can take the easy way out and give up your health, setting all the major menaces to 8 and resulting in using up days' worth of actions to recover from death, insanity, criminal conviction, and temporary social disgrace and exile. Or you can pay yet more real money to avoid this hard choice. Assuming you didn't choose to do the sensible thing and turn back, you've obtained the candle of Saint Beau and next up is the candle of Saint Cerise:
The candle's description isn't quite accurate. You see, normally to get the candle, you'd have to murder someone by throwing them down a well. But one of the professions is Author, and one of the things an Author can produce (with real-world weeks worth of labor) is a Classic Short Story. This is a story destined to be beloved, like Shakespeare's plays, or Dicken's A Christmas Carol. It will be remembered for centuries to come, and your name with it. It will shape the culture. It will be your lasting contribution to humanity as much as a child of flesh and blood. All these things make it a worthy sacrifice, and a fine thing to throw, unread and unremembered, down a well.
You can also attempt to sacrifice your Starveling Cat. (Don't do that! Don't do that!) It doesn't work, of course. The cat is basically a fellow Seeker who just happens to be small, four-footed, and furry. He's been at this longer than you have, and hangs around people for whom betrayal is a religous obligation. He expects betrayal at every turn. Probably gets some idiot trying to chuck him down a well every month or two. Regardless of who or what you sacrifice, though, around this time you'll be able to take a little side-trip on the quest to obtain Mr. Eaten's Calling Card?:
The self-sufficient way of obtaining it involves paying a visit to the deep archives of St. Cyriac's College. You'll have to bring with you exactly 2542 pieces of Proscribed Material to set ablaze to obtain what you seek: a special edited version of Matthew 25:42:
But it isn't there. Someone has taken it and left the calling card, which you get instead. Alternatively, once another Seeker has obtained the card and used it for its intended purpose, they don't need it anymore and can send it to you.
However you get it, sleeping with the calling card crumpled in your fist will take you to the Winking Isle, a small island with a well and a lighthouse that does not exist. If you did things in a different order and got the candle of Saint Destin before coming here, or if you just come back, you'll have to opportunity to waste the candle of Saint Destin (the candle that does not exist) to explore the interior of the lighthouse (that doesn't exist), meaning that you'll have to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain it all over again in order to proceed.
Besides wasting your candles, this island exists to house the well that exists so that you can raise your Fasting and Meditating to a Foolish End quality, which can in turn be used at the well to raise your SMEN quality to a higher maximum than the previously accessible steps could take you. (It also provides a clue as to the locations of all seven candles.) This step is extremely time-consuming and chancy, as there are numerous chances for your meditations to fail.
However, first you must sacrifice most of your remaining possessions before you can meditate at the well. This doesn't require anything irreplaceable to be given up, but is financially very, very painful. If you sacrifice even more, you can unlock a third posible Question, with each Question giving you a slightly different ending to the whole quest.
Next up is the candle of Saint Destin:
There are multiple ways to obtain this non-existent candle. The one that can be done at any time of year with no help from other players is to sacrifice your profession (think of it as character class), Notability and Person of some Importance status. A certain Mr. Slowcake's publishes a guide to who's who in Fallen London, and every so often he sends his amanuensis to visit such people and gather updates for his next edition. Tearing out the page with your entry and eating it while the amanuensis looks on in horror will instantly and thoroughly destroy your social importance, and cause the amanuensis to flee and leave no candle behind him. Fortunately, the candle you seek is indeed "no candle", and this will in fact progress you in your quest to become no body.
If you have the cooperation of another Seeker who already has the candle, however, and it is the right holiday, they can share it with you:
I'll just mention now for no particular reason that in the Shinto religion of Japan, the gods are spirits that can possess both objects and people in any number at once. The process of putting a Shinto god into a new receptacle while it also remains behind in the old one is often compared to lighting a candle from an already-burning candle; the old flame is not diminished at all by the existence of the new one. Anyway, the sender of Saint Destin's candle will receive their major stats permanently reduced by HALF and a message:
The recipient also takes some stat damage and receives the candle and a message:
The third way also requires waiting for a holiday, but you get a destiny if you do it. I think I need to explain what a destiny is first, because in game design terms it is actually quite interesting. Fallen London is, like other MMORPGs, a story-based game that is designed to be played indefinitely, with your character participating in new stories on a regular basis. In other words, such games are designed without an "end" to your character's personal story; the "end" comes whenever you just get bored with the game, and as such is decidedly unsatisfying from a storytelling point of view.
So what Failbetter Games did, was allow you to play special content that gives a glimpse of your character's long-term future, and allows you to choose what it is. And this is called a destiny, and it is also an equipment slot; if you are destined to do certain things eventually, that gives you certain bonuses to related stats. For example, if your destiny is to successfully bring about the Liberation of Night, overthrowing both natural and political laws, you get a destiny called Gloom that boosts your Shadowy stat (which aids you stealth, criminal endeavours, and general underhanded shenanigans).
Completing the Seeking, of course, throws any previous destiny you had solidly in the toilet and flushes repeatedly. But take the proper route to getting the candle of Saint Destin, and you'll get a new destiny to replace it: Torment. And as a bonus, you'll get an idea of the long-term future of the Neath if you complete the quest:
It doesn't have one. And neither do you. But then, you already knew that.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, you still have a lot of torment to undergo first before you can savor the luxury of the final death that marks the true end to your quest. Saint Erzulie's candle awaits:
While many of the other candle names are references to Arthurian myth, Erzulie is a voodoo goddess. As such, she possesses people. Fittingly, this the candle that will ask you to abandon your solitude. To obtain it, you must venture into the Cave of the Nadir, a zone filled with toxic amounts of irrigo radiance. What is irrigo? It is one of seven new impossible colors, like H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space".
Irrigo is probably the worst of the lot, as it dissolves memory. The faction of spies and manipulators known as the Midnighters are notorious for their use of irrigo, particularly in their performance of their secret rite to Saint Joshua, patron saint of spies and intriguers. These rites are in fact so secret that the Midnighters themselves don't even know them; they practice them in an irrigo glow, so that they forget them almost immediately afterwards. Which raises the question: if you have two identities, and neither remembers what the other does, in what sense are you one person?
Certainly the woman you seek in the Cave of the Nadir is no longer one whole person. The Lilac you encounter in the Cave is just a fragment of what she once was, but she is the custodian of the candle of Saint Erzulie. How does one obtain this candle? Well, there is a quality called Obscurity. One must renounce many things, forever. Some of the things that you sacrificed earlier in the quest were gone but could be earned back. But now, many aspects of your character will be permanently locked. Of course, you almost have the Name. You can ask Lilac to tattoo it on your skin:
Seven more sacrifices to raise your Obscurity to 7. You must give up your tattoos (which raise stats and are effectively an equipment slot). You must give up your profession (effectively your character class). You must give up your Notability. You must give up your Ambition, which is basically one of four special extremely long-running core stories with huge rewards that you choose for your character; effectively your Ambition is what would be the "main storyline quest" in other MMORPGs. You must give up your Enigma, which I don't even properly understand what it is, but apparently it's some sort of super-secret Easter Egg thing for literature nerds who have read deep into the literary inspiration behind Fallen London, so most people won't even be giving up anything really. And if you didn't already get the Torment destiny, you'll be giving up any other destiny you might have once possessed, with no ability to get a new one to replace it. And finally, give up your solitude:
Lilac's disembodied voice, (in parentheses), will haunt you and guide you for the rest of the quest. (There is an alternative.) But most people who've gone this far and sacrificed this much would sneer at the idea of taking it. The last two candles, of Saint Fortigan, and Saint Gawain, await. But you'll need to find a place called the Chapel of Lights, sacred to Mr. Eaten. Fortunately, Lilac knows where it is. It's a creepy place full of madmen worshipping a dreadful undead entity that causes people to ruin their lives doing insane things, but you just need to attend some sermons to get the candle of Saint Fortigan:
Before you can finally obtain the last candle and sail NORTH, you must first sail south. You must find a man known as the Advocate of Illumination, who will teach you the dreaded Seven-Fold Knock to open the Gate that you will find when you go NORTH. As you might have guessed from the name, he's in favor of flooding the Neath with sunlight, which will kill most of its inhabitants and destroy the various natural law-defying wonders that can exist only here. He'll tell you that the whole thing has been planned by the White. There are no further sacrifices required to obtain the Knock, and after he gives it to you you can go to sleep, which will cause you to be transported back to the Chapel to get the last candle, the candle of Saint Gawain:
This candle isn't an item, it's a quality. That's because you don't accept the candle, you become the candle. And yes, one way to do that involves getting your head cut off. You'll get Your Own Severed Head as item (equip in the hat slot, it will raise your Candle of St. Gawain quality allowing you to complete the quest).
Almost done! Now all that's left is to sail NORTH, an action that will cost you your ship when you beach it on the ice, but you won't be needing it any more, right? Before that, the game warns you that you will permanently lose your character:
Sailing NORTH will, finally, give you one last choice. One last chance, to turn back, forever, or lose your character, forever. Turning back at this final point will give you the only reward this terrible insane quest will ever give: The Seven-Fold Knock, as an equippable item. If you don't turn back? Well, as promised, your character becomes permanently unusuable. It isn't deleted. You can even still log in. But where you are, there is nothing productive to do, and no possibility of exit. There is nothing but suffering. This is it. This is the destiny of Torment you were promised. If you received the destiny, you know what will happen after an indefinitely lengthy period of pure agony: the Neath will be illuminated, its violation of natural law ended, its inhabitants and treasures all destroyed for their unlawfulness.
So, that's Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, the most notorious quest in all gaming (there have been multiple articles written about it when the rest of the game attracted no notice from the press whatsoever). Is there anything else like it? What did you think? Any questions?
They also had non-binary gender before it was a thing.
Anyway, they also have perhaps the most infamous single quest in a (debatably) massively multiplayer online game; admittedly, "No Russian" is a single "quest" that has gotten more publicity, but Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 isn't even arguably an MMO. I am referring of course to "Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name" (SMEN), and I am wondering if anyone knows of any remotely comparable quest in any other MMO. You see, MMO quests in general make your character stronger, wealthier, more famous, or otherwise better-off in some way. It's part of the MMO power fantasy of relentless, continual progress for your chosen character.
But SMEN is fundamentally different. Rather than driving your character to greater and greater heights of power, SMEN is fundamentally a story of utter, catastrophic, and unrecoverable personal loss. A story of systematic and deliberate total self-destruction, carried out in spite of immense difficulty and in the face of countless warnings for you to stop, warnings that are both completely true and come from both NPCs and the game itself. A story where you must betray your friends, both NPCs and your fellow players, many times in order to proceed. A story that will take real-time months of work to complete, even if speedrun. A story that will result in your character becoming permanently literally unplayable. So let's see what this is all about, shall we?
The Masters of the Bazaar who are the real powers in Fallen London now are a group of shadowy, cloaked, seemingly hunchbacked individuals who all use a name of the form "Mr. (noun)": Mr Apples, Mr. Fires, Mr. Mirrors, Mr. Veils, and the like. (If you've ever seen the movie Dark City, you know that this naming pattern is a very bad sign.) Despite using the honorific "Mister", no one thinks that they are actually men; they are too weird and creepy for that. They are also nearly immortal, as London is the Fifth City they've taken and dragged down to the Neath. (The ruins of the first four cities remain; some are thousands of years old.)
Mr. Eaten was once one of their number, under another name, and the search for that name is the initial goal of the quest. But the by the time you learn the Name, you've learned of how he was betrayed, murdered, consumed, and his remains thrown down a well. Ghosts aren't actually a thing even in the Neath. But nevertheless something of the late Mr. Eaten still stirs, and whispers, and influences. And one thing is clear: This isn't over! A reckoning will not be postponed indefinitely!
Just learning the Name is no small thing, however, for the remaining Masters took great trouble to conceal any and all evidence of their treachery. The laws of physics (such as they are in the Neath) no longer allow the Name to exist. You must first find the Number, and carve it into your body, mind, and soul. Seven weeping scars that will never heal. Seven memories of chains; you will never dream without a chain, a manacle, a rope, a cell. Seven stains upon the soul; even one will result a soul so befouled even the devils will no longer willingly purchase it from you. (Tricking them into taking it is a... bad idea.)
But we're getting ahead of ourselves. Let's look at how we get started on this long and difficult road of pain. Having recurring dreams of death by water can eventually lead to a particular dream that starts the quest. You can be started on the quest by being betrayed by a "friend" who is at the point where he must betray seven people to proceed. There are an options during the Christmas season event involving choosing to receive certain "gifts" from a mysterious robed, sack-carrying individual that visits you in the night that will also start the quest. If you are already prone to nightmares, exploring the abandoned ruins of the Fourth City may lead to hearing a mysterious voice echoing hollowly in your dreams, which can lead you onto a dark path of self-destruction.
But the most insidious way to start the quest involves various unconnected events that you may stumble upon in various places in the game that infect you with a mysterious inexplicable hunger, increasing your levels of a peculiar Menace stat called Unaccountably Peckish. What is a Menace? It's a temporary stat that you don't really want and will inflict some unpleasant fate on you for having it. The common Menace stats are Wounds, which leads to a fortunately temporary death when it gets too high, Nightmares, which leads to a bout of insanity and institutionalization when it gets too high, Suspicion, which leads to being sent to jail for a while when it gets too high, and Scandal, which leads to being forced into temporary exile when it gets too high. What does Unaccountably Peckish do? Well, from the linked wiki page:
Options that lower Unaccountably Peckish have a tendency to raise your levels of the Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name character quality, progressing you along the quest. Thus, you will need to fall into this sinister, unnatural hunger again and again in order to proceed along the quest. Proceeding with the quest will unlock a number of new options, most of them bad, although there is also an option to quit at any time. This is a recurring theme to the quest: all options that progress the quest involve painful sacrifice, yet not all painful sacrifices lead to progress. You will have many opportunities to throw away your health, wealth, fame, hard-won stats, and even real-world money in exchange for nothing at all. I will point out examples of this that I find particularly amusing throughout the rest of this post.
For example, one of the options from the black-bordered card that pops up if you have a high enough level of SMEN and Unaccountably Peckish is Scream out of the window at passers-by. This severely damages your social standing and gives you a level in the quality Reputation: Abomination, but does not advance the quest at all. Seekers are a bit of a known quantity in the world of Fallen London, you see, and virtually no one wants anything to do with them. An example that can be seen if you have enough of the poisonous item Flask of Abominable Salts, you can take the option to sell them to a certain person who wishes to use them on the Seekers who keep bothering him for information:
Sending dead rats to people when you feel guilty doesn't exactly help with reputation either, either of Seekers in general or yours in particular (you get more Reputation: Abomination). Eating live ones doesn't make your reputation any worse, but it's just one more way to consume a resource (talking rats are bought at the pet shop) without getting anything for it. In fact, by the point your are drawing the Knight of Feasts card, you're so hungry that eating any of your pets will do you absolutely no good.
Anyway, after doing numerous insane things like eating your own teeth, asking people a Question and hearing the answer in their silences between words, spree arson, and forbidden rituals that destroy extremely rare and valuable items, you will eventually advance the SMEN quality, at some cost to your health, sanity, stats, reputation, and material things. At this point, you know the Number, and set about cutting it into your flesh in the form of sevenfold Weeping Scars that will never heal, even in the Neath where death is usually more of an annoyance than anything else. (Which is a good thing, because each of the seven Weeping Scars you get requires you to die. But that is not enough. Not nearly enough. You're just getting started.
The next step is to get involved in criminal conspiracies, and arrange your own betrayal, leading to your incarceration. This gives you a new item you can't get rid of, Memories of Chains, that scars the mind as you have scarred the body. Of course, it must be done seven times. Oh, and previous incarcerations due to crimes carried out for your own reasons don't count. Only incarcerations deliberately arranged in the service of the Name count, so don't think you'll get out of it that way. Oh yes, and there's a chance of failure each time you attempt it, as the expected betrayal doesn't happen.
Next, you need to stain your very soul. This part can be problematic if you previously sold it for money. You'll also need the assistance of the notorious Starveling Cat, a strange creature who you will need to acquire in a any of a number of various ways (he's technically considered a "pet" and companion slot equipment, although trying to actually pet him is a bad idea. At the time you'll need him for SMEN, you'll unlock an option to attract him if you don't have him already. If you don't happen to have any corpses of deceased baptized talking rats to offer him to eat, he'll also eat souls floating in spoiled milk. Another way is to get another player who doesn't want him to give him to you; if they aren't Seeking themselves, this usually isn't hard, as they have no real non-Seeking uses and their mere presence in your inventory unlocks numerous self-destructive (yet hilarious) actions. Starveling Cats are practically an unlucky cursed item like the Eyeless Skulls, as attested to by the message when you choose to let someone give you one:
In fact, the Starveling Cat is practically Fallen London's mascot creature, alongside the Exceptional Hat. Many of the random snippets of lore that appear on each page (much like Kiwi Farms' own lolcow quotes) feature the Starveling Cat. The narration wherever the cat is concerned has a tendency to rhyme, for example The starveling cat! The starveling cat! Bad idea to offer him that! (Note that there are multiple opportunities to try to sacrifice the Starveling Cat, and it never, ever, works.)
Anyway, once you have your very own "deranged and monstrous clot of spitting mangy fur" that "follows you about and tells wicked lies! And it eats all the food in the larder" and have purchased a frightening quality of the best laudanum (tincture of opium; it's helpful for lowering Nightmares, although you can become addicted to it), you'll be ready to begin. Once again, it is possible to fail this, wasting your laudanum for nothing; one possible reason is that the spirifer, those despicable individuals who trade in human souls and who possess the secret of abstracting them from their owners, actually has moral qualms about what he is being asked to do:
Eventually, though, after increasing levels of Wounds, consumption of truly staggering levels of laudanum, having lost your Starveling Cat several times and having to go find one again, you'll stain your soul for the seventh and final time and endure another mandatory (temporary) death. Done? Not even close. Soon, you will realize that you now need the seven candles of the seven false saints: Saint Arthur, Saint Beau, Saint Cerise, Saint Destin, Saint Erzulie, Saint Fortigan, and Saint Gawain.
Let's start with Saint Arthur's Candle:
Gaining Saint Arthur's candle involves committing a series of betrayals. Seven of them, of course. There are a number of NPCs who you may have the friendship of for one reason or another, most whom are locked behind paywalled content and thus don't appear on the wiki anywhere. Naturally, once you betray them, they are lost to you forever, even if you subsequently abandon the quest. There are also a few items that are actually companions that can be betrayed as well, although naturally they tend to be rare and expensive. Finally, you can betray your fellow players, inviting them in for a chat where you rant and rave about your quest, thus infecting them with the urge to Seek as well. Simple enough. Make a final bonfire of souls and claim your candle. Next up is Saint Beau's candle:
This candle is in the custody of a former fellow Seeker, Miriam Plenty, who runs a well-known carnival in the Neath. You've had the option of visiting it since very early on in the game. You'll have to track her down in a strangely warped and dangerous midnight version of it to progress. Naturally, most of the attractions will harm you in one way or another without actually making any progress towards your ultimate goal. For example, perform in the empty Big Top!
Somehow, this alienates those in High Society, despite the fact that no one is here to see you. Perhaps they are here in spirit? No matter. LET'S EAT.
Or, you can go the carnival clairvoyant's tent to have your future read. She isn't in; it's midnight, after all, so you'll have to read your own future. Except that since you're doing this quest, you don't actually have a future, so you wasted a (weirdly expensive) carnival ticket for nothing. Think wasting 333 moon pearls is bad enough? Try wasting around ten bucks (depending on how much FATE, the purchaseable in-game special currency, you buy at a time). What do you get for it? A ride on a carnival wheel, that, well:
Returning to the sunlight after having spent an extended period of time in the Neath is extremely unwise. You see, the stars are actually living beings called Judgements. Their divine law is encoded in symbols of a very special language called the Correspondence that is transmitted by light. It scorches those who have transgressed against the laws of physics imposed by that same light, such as those who have spent time in the Neath. (This is why reading graffiti in Fallen London is very unwise, as Correspondence sigils risk setting your hair on fire.) You really should read those Game Instructions. But then if you did that, you would have turned back long, long ago, like the Game Instructions have been consistently urging throughout the entire quest.
Lore-wise, this ride should by all rights permanently kill your character deader than dead. And in fact, one well-known player actually filed a bug report upon having had the the temerity to pay real money to take this ride and find themselves still in existence afterward. As it is, you die, and you don't even get a funny message. All you get is a useless special quality, Scorched by the Sun, whose description merely notes "You were very unwise."
But all these carnival attractions are mere expensive entertainments. You need to go to the House of Mirrors and find the one mirror you need, which requires 10 carnival tickets, Nightmares 7 (Nightmares 8 will send you insane instead so be careful), and 150 Memories of Light. Hope you brought what you need (and meet the Nightmares condition), as leaving the carnival prematurely will also drive you insane. You'll meet up with Mrs. Plenty herself, and have a conversation, one where she'll try and persuade you to give up. She will ask you why you are doing this to yourself; you have many choices but the one that amuses me is unlocked with Hedoism of at least 12 (and causes Mrs. Plenty to regard you with complete disgust).
Assuming you choose to continue, you'll next have a choice of what to give up. You can give up every residence that you possess, and take up residence in an abandoned crypt. You can give up all of your hard-earned favors and connections with every faction in the game. You can take the easy way out and give up your health, setting all the major menaces to 8 and resulting in using up days' worth of actions to recover from death, insanity, criminal conviction, and temporary social disgrace and exile. Or you can pay yet more real money to avoid this hard choice. Assuming you didn't choose to do the sensible thing and turn back, you've obtained the candle of Saint Beau and next up is the candle of Saint Cerise:
The candle's description isn't quite accurate. You see, normally to get the candle, you'd have to murder someone by throwing them down a well. But one of the professions is Author, and one of the things an Author can produce (with real-world weeks worth of labor) is a Classic Short Story. This is a story destined to be beloved, like Shakespeare's plays, or Dicken's A Christmas Carol. It will be remembered for centuries to come, and your name with it. It will shape the culture. It will be your lasting contribution to humanity as much as a child of flesh and blood. All these things make it a worthy sacrifice, and a fine thing to throw, unread and unremembered, down a well.
You can also attempt to sacrifice your Starveling Cat. (Don't do that! Don't do that!) It doesn't work, of course. The cat is basically a fellow Seeker who just happens to be small, four-footed, and furry. He's been at this longer than you have, and hangs around people for whom betrayal is a religous obligation. He expects betrayal at every turn. Probably gets some idiot trying to chuck him down a well every month or two. Regardless of who or what you sacrifice, though, around this time you'll be able to take a little side-trip on the quest to obtain Mr. Eaten's Calling Card?:
The self-sufficient way of obtaining it involves paying a visit to the deep archives of St. Cyriac's College. You'll have to bring with you exactly 2542 pieces of Proscribed Material to set ablaze to obtain what you seek: a special edited version of Matthew 25:42:
But it isn't there. Someone has taken it and left the calling card, which you get instead. Alternatively, once another Seeker has obtained the card and used it for its intended purpose, they don't need it anymore and can send it to you.
However you get it, sleeping with the calling card crumpled in your fist will take you to the Winking Isle, a small island with a well and a lighthouse that does not exist. If you did things in a different order and got the candle of Saint Destin before coming here, or if you just come back, you'll have to opportunity to waste the candle of Saint Destin (the candle that does not exist) to explore the interior of the lighthouse (that doesn't exist), meaning that you'll have to make the necessary sacrifices to obtain it all over again in order to proceed.
Besides wasting your candles, this island exists to house the well that exists so that you can raise your Fasting and Meditating to a Foolish End quality, which can in turn be used at the well to raise your SMEN quality to a higher maximum than the previously accessible steps could take you. (It also provides a clue as to the locations of all seven candles.) This step is extremely time-consuming and chancy, as there are numerous chances for your meditations to fail.
However, first you must sacrifice most of your remaining possessions before you can meditate at the well. This doesn't require anything irreplaceable to be given up, but is financially very, very painful. If you sacrifice even more, you can unlock a third posible Question, with each Question giving you a slightly different ending to the whole quest.
Next up is the candle of Saint Destin:
There are multiple ways to obtain this non-existent candle. The one that can be done at any time of year with no help from other players is to sacrifice your profession (think of it as character class), Notability and Person of some Importance status. A certain Mr. Slowcake's publishes a guide to who's who in Fallen London, and every so often he sends his amanuensis to visit such people and gather updates for his next edition. Tearing out the page with your entry and eating it while the amanuensis looks on in horror will instantly and thoroughly destroy your social importance, and cause the amanuensis to flee and leave no candle behind him. Fortunately, the candle you seek is indeed "no candle", and this will in fact progress you in your quest to become no body.
If you have the cooperation of another Seeker who already has the candle, however, and it is the right holiday, they can share it with you:
I'll just mention now for no particular reason that in the Shinto religion of Japan, the gods are spirits that can possess both objects and people in any number at once. The process of putting a Shinto god into a new receptacle while it also remains behind in the old one is often compared to lighting a candle from an already-burning candle; the old flame is not diminished at all by the existence of the new one. Anyway, the sender of Saint Destin's candle will receive their major stats permanently reduced by HALF and a message:
The recipient also takes some stat damage and receives the candle and a message:
The third way also requires waiting for a holiday, but you get a destiny if you do it. I think I need to explain what a destiny is first, because in game design terms it is actually quite interesting. Fallen London is, like other MMORPGs, a story-based game that is designed to be played indefinitely, with your character participating in new stories on a regular basis. In other words, such games are designed without an "end" to your character's personal story; the "end" comes whenever you just get bored with the game, and as such is decidedly unsatisfying from a storytelling point of view.
So what Failbetter Games did, was allow you to play special content that gives a glimpse of your character's long-term future, and allows you to choose what it is. And this is called a destiny, and it is also an equipment slot; if you are destined to do certain things eventually, that gives you certain bonuses to related stats. For example, if your destiny is to successfully bring about the Liberation of Night, overthrowing both natural and political laws, you get a destiny called Gloom that boosts your Shadowy stat (which aids you stealth, criminal endeavours, and general underhanded shenanigans).
Completing the Seeking, of course, throws any previous destiny you had solidly in the toilet and flushes repeatedly. But take the proper route to getting the candle of Saint Destin, and you'll get a new destiny to replace it: Torment. And as a bonus, you'll get an idea of the long-term future of the Neath if you complete the quest:
It doesn't have one. And neither do you. But then, you already knew that.
But we're getting ahead of ourselves, you still have a lot of torment to undergo first before you can savor the luxury of the final death that marks the true end to your quest. Saint Erzulie's candle awaits:
While many of the other candle names are references to Arthurian myth, Erzulie is a voodoo goddess. As such, she possesses people. Fittingly, this the candle that will ask you to abandon your solitude. To obtain it, you must venture into the Cave of the Nadir, a zone filled with toxic amounts of irrigo radiance. What is irrigo? It is one of seven new impossible colors, like H. P. Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space".
Irrigo is probably the worst of the lot, as it dissolves memory. The faction of spies and manipulators known as the Midnighters are notorious for their use of irrigo, particularly in their performance of their secret rite to Saint Joshua, patron saint of spies and intriguers. These rites are in fact so secret that the Midnighters themselves don't even know them; they practice them in an irrigo glow, so that they forget them almost immediately afterwards. Which raises the question: if you have two identities, and neither remembers what the other does, in what sense are you one person?
Certainly the woman you seek in the Cave of the Nadir is no longer one whole person. The Lilac you encounter in the Cave is just a fragment of what she once was, but she is the custodian of the candle of Saint Erzulie. How does one obtain this candle? Well, there is a quality called Obscurity. One must renounce many things, forever. Some of the things that you sacrificed earlier in the quest were gone but could be earned back. But now, many aspects of your character will be permanently locked. Of course, you almost have the Name. You can ask Lilac to tattoo it on your skin:
Seven more sacrifices to raise your Obscurity to 7. You must give up your tattoos (which raise stats and are effectively an equipment slot). You must give up your profession (effectively your character class). You must give up your Notability. You must give up your Ambition, which is basically one of four special extremely long-running core stories with huge rewards that you choose for your character; effectively your Ambition is what would be the "main storyline quest" in other MMORPGs. You must give up your Enigma, which I don't even properly understand what it is, but apparently it's some sort of super-secret Easter Egg thing for literature nerds who have read deep into the literary inspiration behind Fallen London, so most people won't even be giving up anything really. And if you didn't already get the Torment destiny, you'll be giving up any other destiny you might have once possessed, with no ability to get a new one to replace it. And finally, give up your solitude:
Lilac's disembodied voice, (in parentheses), will haunt you and guide you for the rest of the quest. (There is an alternative.) But most people who've gone this far and sacrificed this much would sneer at the idea of taking it. The last two candles, of Saint Fortigan, and Saint Gawain, await. But you'll need to find a place called the Chapel of Lights, sacred to Mr. Eaten. Fortunately, Lilac knows where it is. It's a creepy place full of madmen worshipping a dreadful undead entity that causes people to ruin their lives doing insane things, but you just need to attend some sermons to get the candle of Saint Fortigan:
Before you can finally obtain the last candle and sail NORTH, you must first sail south. You must find a man known as the Advocate of Illumination, who will teach you the dreaded Seven-Fold Knock to open the Gate that you will find when you go NORTH. As you might have guessed from the name, he's in favor of flooding the Neath with sunlight, which will kill most of its inhabitants and destroy the various natural law-defying wonders that can exist only here. He'll tell you that the whole thing has been planned by the White. There are no further sacrifices required to obtain the Knock, and after he gives it to you you can go to sleep, which will cause you to be transported back to the Chapel to get the last candle, the candle of Saint Gawain:
This candle isn't an item, it's a quality. That's because you don't accept the candle, you become the candle. And yes, one way to do that involves getting your head cut off. You'll get Your Own Severed Head as item (equip in the hat slot, it will raise your Candle of St. Gawain quality allowing you to complete the quest).
Almost done! Now all that's left is to sail NORTH, an action that will cost you your ship when you beach it on the ice, but you won't be needing it any more, right? Before that, the game warns you that you will permanently lose your character:
Sailing NORTH will, finally, give you one last choice. One last chance, to turn back, forever, or lose your character, forever. Turning back at this final point will give you the only reward this terrible insane quest will ever give: The Seven-Fold Knock, as an equippable item. If you don't turn back? Well, as promised, your character becomes permanently unusuable. It isn't deleted. You can even still log in. But where you are, there is nothing productive to do, and no possibility of exit. There is nothing but suffering. This is it. This is the destiny of Torment you were promised. If you received the destiny, you know what will happen after an indefinitely lengthy period of pure agony: the Neath will be illuminated, its violation of natural law ended, its inhabitants and treasures all destroyed for their unlawfulness.
So, that's Seeking Mr. Eaten's Name, the most notorious quest in all gaming (there have been multiple articles written about it when the rest of the game attracted no notice from the press whatsoever). Is there anything else like it? What did you think? Any questions?
