The Fallen London OC Creation Challenge: 2026 Edition
Four years ago, I was inspired to try a character creation challenge for Fallen London: 30 different prompts for 30 different types of characters, with the aim to create and share as many as possible. Now, I return to you all with a slightly modified version, and invite you to try the challenge yourself.
32 character prompts now, representing peoples and species from across the Neath and beyond. Humans of the Surface, of London, of the Khanate and more. Devils, Clay, Rubberies, Cats both large and small, Fingerkings. The challenge, if you choose to accept it, is to create a new character for each of these categories! As many as you can imagine, in one sitting or several. And after you have attempted the challenge, you can see who your fellow respondents have created too (unless you're the first, I suppose...)
Have fun, and good luck! Can you become the Sultan of Gloves?
Welcome to Heubristics’s Original Character Creation Challenge for the Fallen Londonverse setting! This challenge is all about stretching yo
The Fallen London Nonhuman OC Survey: 2026 Edition
Five years ago, I created a survey to see which nonhuman species were popular as OCs within the FL fandom, as well as to see the fanons and creativity of the fanbase when it came to nonhuman characters. Now, I return to you once again inviting you to take it yourself (or perhaps take it again), and add your contribution to the list! Then, see how others have responded -- and the characters they've made.
Because it's been five years since I've run this survey. And because there's more than just humans in the Failbetter setting, and they're fu
No person is an island, unless you're the King with a Hundred Hearts. Or the Principles of Coral. Perhaps this was the wrong setting to use this phrase, actually.
No matter! I come to you all with questions about your original characters in FL: specifically, your character's politics. About how much they keep up with the political goings of the world around them, about where and why they stand on several of London's political topics, and about how they get involved in the politics of their communities. I was inspired by thinking again about the Season of Stones, a trilogy of Exceptional Stories that involved the political turmoil of Londoners and -- potentially -- the passing of reform policy.
I enjoy reading people deep-diving into their character's motivations and perceptions, so the more detail and nuance the better! Feel free to answer any or all of them -- or even suggest another political issue that FL characters might face.
To what extent does your character keep up with political news and updates...
in the neighborhood/district they live in?
in the clubs and organizations they're a member of?
in London’s civic governance systems [municipal, judiciary, parliamentary, Bazaarine]?
in London’s criminal/revolutionary underground?
in other Neath-states/nations?
in Surface states/nations?
Where does your character stand on the following political topics, and what do they think should be done (if anything)?
the plight of houseless urchins in London
(example stances: municipal orphanages, municipal apprenticeships, tax breaks for private orphanage owners, relax child labor laws, ship them to the Hinterlands, establish urchin welfare office, regulate and reform the gangs)
the plight of the Clay and Polythremic peoples in London
(example stances: integrate Clay people into existing worker’s unions, establish new Clay specific unions, expand buyer import from Polythreme to liberate them or for cheaper workforce, decrease/abolish buyer import from Polythreme to prevent competition with human workers or to prevent exploitation, establish diplomatic relations with the Clay Warrens, recognize Polythremic apparel/objects as sapient beings)
Intercultural tensions with London's Rubbery peoples
(example stances: sponsor/fund classes for teaching Rubbery languages, teach/fund classes for teaching Rubbery folk English, integrate neighborhoods, have them form their own enclaves, regulate the Amber trade, open diplomatic channels with Flute Street)
Animal rights and welfare
(example stances: Neath-sapient animals raised for slaughter be given good living conditions/euthanasia with minimal suffering/voting rights, sapient animals should be tried for crimes in human courts, sapient animals should be tried for crimes in their own communities' courts, owner-pet relationships should be formally contracted, what’s this voting nonsense let them form their own city if they want human rights)
How does your character get involved in local and/or foreign politics in order to push their views in the above? In other words, what do they do outside of keeping up to date on the news and holding their beliefs/values?
As a congratulations for making it this far, a bonus prompt: what’s a seemingly minor political issue that your characters nevertheless have strong personal feelings about?
(example stances: which plants/trees are acceptable to be planted in a neighborhood, how early costermongers are allowed to raise their voices and ring their bells along Ladybones Road, whether taxes ought to be raised on romantic poetry from the Khanate, if dogs are legally obligated to bark warnings to burglars before chasing them off)
"No two lamp-cats are exactly alike; each is like a species unto itself." - 'Pet a lamp-cat', Close to the Magistracy
You have been graced with the presence of a lamp-cat. What makes it stand out?
1. Long, dense and murk-green fur. A tingling sensation and faint welts on your hands after petting it. It insists on headbutting you whenever you look away.
2. Gummy pale orange with soft scales. Incapable of moving without stretching. It wriggles furiously into your coat at the first sign of affection.
3. Multiple rows of teeth and supernumary toes warn against the alluring violant glow pulsating from its belly, which it presents at every opportunity. It gives the sweetest, wettest mew.
4. Purplish fur writhes with motion and innumerable tiny eyes. Purrs like an automotive engine. A tiny head lifts to sniff the air. Aha - this one’s a new mother, kittens still clinging to her back.
5. Short velvet fur in the darkest of peligin. Eyes as broad and vacant as the full moon on a winter’s night. Once it sits on you, no force outside its whims can move it.
6. Ruddy scars carve between patches of pale fur. The left fin is ragged; the tail is a stump; the right eye weeps zeewater. This one’s a scrapper. If you do not move, it will curl up against your leg and sleep.
7. Big ears and ungainly limbs, barely out of kittenhood. Apocyanic static plays across its bristly fur from constant dashes and tussles. Chases its own lure. Meows like a thunderbolt.
8. Resplendent with shimmering silky fur and fronds that reflect all the colors of the neathbow. It adores compliments and sheds fur over everything until they are given. Incredibly lazy.
9. Tendrils bleached at the tips; silver eyes dulled with cateracts; a cry that is more the quiet trickle of a stream than a rushing river. But its lure remains bright and defiant until the end.
Ladies, gentlemen, and people of other inclinations: may I present to you at last the updated-as-of-November-2024 Mr Chimes' Not Yet Found, version 2.0
Mr Chimes' Not Yet Found contains over 77 Exceptional Story-themed items in the spirit of Mr Chimes' Lost and Found, one for every ES that isn't already represented in the aforementioned canon shop (and even a few retired ones from the first version of this project). Hire on A Blood-Clotted Crew from The Sunken River; acquire An Assortment of Decadent Perfumes from A Newt by Any Other Name; engage in a Metamorphic Research Partnership from Flame, Lead, Clay, Glass.
Plus! 36 items to represent both the canonical Seasons, from Heart's Blood all the way to Endeavor, and including some extra-apocryphal items for completely made up Seasons matching themes of newer ESes. Get yourself a Catalogue of Injustice from the Season of Revolutions or feel the Pulse of the Bazaar's Heart from the Season of Adorations. Then acquire a New Sequence Astrarium from the might-have-been Season of Brilliance, or wear A Molted Collection of Your Peak Selves from the never-was Season of Games.
This has been a long time in the writing: the original Not Yet Found stopped at A Stretch in the Sky, all the way back in 2022. But it's back! And until the end of the November, it is complete. So enjoy, and let me know which items would be a perfect fit for your own characters.
Custom Spouses Template credit to violant-apologia, via Tumblr A note for new players: spoilers and esoteric in-jokes abound! With Friends
I'd like to give thanks to violant-apologia for the original creation of this template.
For the first time, every (well, almost every) fan-spouse I've ever mocked up, together in one place! Over sixty, at this point. Peek ever so briefly into a Fallen London where you could marry the Unlucky Devil or the Efficient Commissioner! Contemplate the tragic storytelling potential of marrying a Lifeberg! Imagine the discourse around the Rat Market being the most mechanically optimal spouse! And many...many more.
Some of these are fan-favorites people have desired for years. Some of these are obscure bone market injokes. Some of these are spoilers for ambition rewards or exceptional stories. Quite a few of them are monsters. And two of them are the Struggling Artist. Reader beware.
For the third time, many talented writers and artists have come together to contribute to this collection of fanworks! The theme was "Field Guide of Biology", featuring many of the wonders and horrors you can encounter across Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies and all of its many secrets and delicious worldbuilding.
Download the Zine in full resolution here!
If you rather have a smaller file size (with possibly reduced image quality), or view it in browser, please follow this link instead!
Thank you to everyone who participated in the Zine and made this possible! <3
Neath to Reach Zine is not associated with Failbetter Games, and this is a purely non-profit fanbased collection of works.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
The people of the White City have spread far throughout the Neath. Their nature is inscrutable, their demeanor never without a tinge of venom. But they are malleable, more so than most; and far from united as they present.
Featuring the profiles of:
Séverin, a Vespinaean Knight of Mount Palmerston
Renelle, a Brazen Barrister and London freelancer
Cristoph, a Brasshearted Renegade of the Iron Republic
Prudence, an Ommatidian Officer of the Brass Embassy
Jay and Amory, a Honeyed Dancer and a Haunted Drone; both in one of London
Hissing Jacky, a Disastrous Gremlin of the Brass Embassy...theoretically
Mandeville, a Dissonant Precentor of the Archdiocese of Hell
Another amazing artwork from Snippity, who was excellent to work with through the whole process. As for the thematic inspiration for its commissioning...one of my favorite texts from the Feast of the Exceptional Rose.
Inspired by a recent post and challenge - accessible here - that created "Airs of X" for their character's version of the City in Silver. Thought I'd have a go at trying the same.
The following city may include: spiders, militants, the breaking of cosmic law for ideological and personal gain, and fungi.
0: Beyond the walls, the distant crack of a gunshot.
1-3: Something humped and many-legged scuttles across the façade of a building, then is gone.
4-6: Shadowy figures cluster around a communal bonfire, laughing and chatting.
7: Tracklayers kneel around a patch of soil and pull strange-shaped devices from the dirt. Some devices hum. Others tick.
8-10: A hinge-hound nudges your side and whines in search of a pet. A bloody Ministry badge dangles from its lower-left jaw.
11-14: Urchins shriek and whoop from the roof-tops as they set off unlicensed fireworks at each other.
15-18: A visiting hobbyist looks on with awkward thanks as her automobile is pulled from the muck by a horse-sized, moon-eyed monitor lizard.
19-22: Spiders spill from an open sewer hatch in a shimmering, emerald tide.
23-26: Moonlight washes gently over the street. Somewhere else, the Internationale is played on union pipes.
27-30: A Young Stag recent to the city walks tentatively, but openly hand-in-tentacle with his rubbery nurse paramour.
31-34: A sudden clearing of the crowd: a reiver patrol has returned to the city. The booming calls and clicks of their terror birds reverberate in the bones.
35-38: False-skeletons from the Bone Market are an increasingly popular novelty fad. Most inhabitants find them kitsch. Some find them aspirational.
39-42: Noises erupt from an ampitheatre. Some are the cheers of the crowd. Some are the bellows of ancient creatures. Some are like nothing you have ever heard.
43-45: Anarchists and cladesfolk from the Roof conduct illicit business in open plazas. Weapons for allies; metal for flesh.
46-49: Phosphorescent scarab hives score mesmeric ribbons of viric and apocyan in the air. Passersby yawn and remember their beds.
50: The city’s vitality leads to miniature ecosystems within the depths of the costermongers’ carts. Leechberries parasitize the helpless flanks of the thunder melons but flee from the predation of needle-carrots. All hide from the vakeapple.
51-53: Amateur aero-enthusiasts and beast-breeders alike surround a recently-docked balloon from the Roof. Talk is already forming of a locally-grown air fleet.
54-57: The side of a wall is plastered with broadsheets, posters, hand scrawled drawings: faces of officials, constables, factory owners. A new arrival walks up to carefully, methodically cross out the face of an Iron and Misery overseer.
58-61: Webs shroud a cluster of streets like banners. Handmade signs advertise the services of silk weavers, scrimshanders, venom mixologists.
62-65: Raucous youth assemble for a trip to London. There is furious argument over whether to see the Museum of Prelapsarian History or Museum of Injustice first.
66-69: Poets of the Nocturnal Ooze movement seek inspiration in the city’s fungal-commons. The more fortunate find their lips and pens fecund with creative spore. The less fortunate are attacked by blemmigans.
70-73: Mist forms on the opposite side of a mirror. The eyes of the aurochs are upon you.
74-76: Tracklayers hack away at undergrowth recently and rapidly sprouted up through an alleyway. The city’s vitality is appreciated, but occasionally overwhelming.
77: Banners with popular phrases of resistance are plentiful on festival days. ‘CAST OFF THESE CHAINS’. ‘DUSK BEFORE DAWN’. ‘DO NOT FORGET. DO NOT FORGIVE’.
78-80: The rattling of an osteomonger’s tambourine. Bones! Bones for the picking!
81-83: Urchins crowd around the storefront of a recently-immigrated Unsettling Toymaker. They stare at a City Seeding automaton with longing and awe.
84-86: A field of puffballs explodes into a cloud of white, soft spores. For a few moments, it is as if false-winter has come to the city.
87-90: A diplomatic deviless discusses opportunities for collaboration with an opportunistic insurgent, mandibles slowly scraping at a tin of tobacco.
91: The air is hazy, clotted and copper-scented. The heart races; the teeth bare. Someone is committing Red Science.
92: Around the armory, the earth shudders and metal screams in birthing-cry: another mortar-beast claws its way out from the dirt to add to the city’s defenses.
93: Shapelings of all forms relax in an amber spring, bathing and contorting their flesh in novel configurations. It is difficult not to stare.
94: Droplets of slobber on your shoulders. Many eyes, watching. You curse whoever decided to hatch enough brachiating spindlewolves for them to breed true.
95: A visiting academic runs from a nearby lecture hall with pale face and heaving breath. “The sigils,” they moan. “They just…cut open the sigils!”
96: A dirigible from Station VIII drifts closer than it should have. Howitzer-beasts stir. Rockets sprout like teeth. A hush falls over the city for several hours.
97: Here, the city’s walls are slick with a viscid slime-mold that stains crimson and splotches like a fresh bruise. Is the city remembering an injury it once suffered? An injury it once inflicted?
98: A furious rain falls tonight, far from the tepid drizzles of London. By tomorrow morning, the city’s walls will have sprouted further still.
99: Tonight the walls drip with amber and the scent of lemon wafts from underneath the city: an auspicious time, according to local legend, for creating new beasts and new families.
100: For the briefest of moments, you can feel the pulse of the city’s heart. For the briefest of moments, there is no light, no cold, no death: only dark, warmth, and vitality. This is the Liberation of Night.
Glory Born from the Liver (the Inspired Vedma)
A vedma of Castle Bielboh, where white bats flock from the nearby Hanging Gardens of Aestival. Reclusive by nature, they rarely leave their personal warren. Respected and feared for their knowledge of the invisible arts: the brewing of potions and poisons, the ways in which one may distill emotions and bottle dreams, the secrets known by bacteria and viruses.
Clad in the Armor of Her Love (the Devoted Warrior)
A clanless warrior of Castle Semargl dedicated in service to Hvezda, the Moon-Mother. They fight in Her name, and bring their castle’s offerings to Her priests. Prefers to engage only opponents with advantage against them, as it brings more glory to the Moon-Mother.
Sleek, silent, subnautical: like a Neither rendered in metalclad plating, sinuous and serpentine. A respectable ship would view her Red Science-scarred workings with horror; she views them with pride. Her bow is painted as a Zee-tiger’s face, grinning gant fangs and mad peligin eyes. When she speaks - and she will - it is through creaks in the hull and whispers from just outside the portholes.
Rakish, renegade; revelrous. On land, they cry for no queens and no masters. She whispers for no fleets, no admirals. She takes partners, not captains; recruits fellow corsairs, not zailors. She flies no colours, and prefers to give no quarter. And when she fights, she deploys scuttling naval mines like a pit-gambler deploys their prized spiders; fires needler torpedos like a devil fires backhanded compliments.
Secret: she is a ship, not a living being, and yet she has a heart. It is a wonder of a heart, all impossible engineering and causality-defying mechanisms. She gifts its existence and use to her most trusted partners. In the future, they will call it an interspatial ballistic missile.
at some point, I realized that despite all my appreciation for spider-councils in Fallen London, and despite all my fondness for making up prospective spouses in Fallen London, I'd never once actually written down a spider-council spouse.
...well, it was inevitable. and now it is here. Maybe this would have ended up being Hotshot's spouse, had he not taken the handicle of the lovely Rubbery Surgeon in marriage first!
On the People of the Third City, and the power of transformative fandom
Warning: self-indulgent rambling, reflection, and hope for writing spurred by the desire for writing that is not present.
I'd been an amateur scholar when it came to Mesoamerican history: just enough to know how much I didn't know. I knew the Third City was Mesoamerican, though I knew not where. I believed, as many, that it referring to a city called Hopelchen (nevermind that Hopelchen was named several centuries after the Third City was supposed to have fallen, and that it was only proposed as a candidate because of the "five wells" sidebar snippet). I personally have interpreted it as Chichen Itza in the past, but I have also heard compelling arguments for Tikal and even perhaps a pre-Nahautl Teotihuacan (and to this day, I still find it amusing, in a frustrating way, how much we know the identities of the Second and Fourth Cities and yet the Third, the one New World city, is still the subject of debate). I knew it was associated with the God-Eaters, and the story of Seeking Mr Eaten's Name.
But as a fan, this was the text that grabbed me first and foremost about the Third City:
Rebels who will not rise
The revolutionaries of the Third City sleep here, fifty-five of them. They would have made their republics in the tomb-colonies. It was not permitted. Their enemies must have hated them, to lay them here to rest where they would never be remembered
- The Catafalquerie, Cave of the Nadir
From this text, interest: what were the revolutionaries of previous Fallen Cities like?
And then, 2016: Election 1894, the first of it's kind. If you chose to back the Jovial Contrarian - and as a revolutionary character, of course Hotshot did - you could choose a Reactionary Tomb-Colonist as your free item for the election. And if you did...
Something old
His bandages run black with ink. Words are scrawled over his wrappings, like the husks of spiders. Not all of it is English. Giddily, he points out choice fragments – "Here, the schematics for a Fourth City catapult we never got to use. This one's the lessons we learned from the Galleries. And here – everything the Contrarian has ever published. I have made a study. This time, for sure." Between the bandages, his dessicated eyes smoulder like spent coals. "Things shall be as they were once and should be again."
Words not all in English? Mentions of the Fourth City weapon "we never got to use"? Evidence on how old this colonist was?
In retrospect, the text was more likely just referring to an old tomb-colonist of the Fifth City. But at the time, to me, it felt like it could point to something else: a rebel who escaped the fate of his colleagues, a revolutionary who continued to fight the Masters and the God-Eaters even long after his city was submerged into lacre.
And from this, Itza Matul was born.
I share the sentiment that the Third City, in canon writing, is almost entirely tied to the God Eaters and Seeking like an albatross around it's neck. What little we get of the one New World city in the Neath, a city from a place whose peoples were horrifically genocided and colonized and thus from which we have enormous holes and gaps in the histories, and it always seems to be related to this one story of betrayal, sacrifice, hunger, and monstrous priest-kings.
I am still not impressed with the idea that the one example of a tomb-republic we have in lore, the same kind of republic as mentioned in the text above, is Tanah-Chook. A Third City tomb-republic, named after a fictional English character whose creator backed at a high enough kickstarter tier.
I have tried my hand at alternatives, using what Yucatec dictionaries and sources I could find that seemed at all reliable for tomb-colony names, people's names, an equivalent to "free citizen". I have tried light speculation on what it might have been like for the people of the Third City, what kind of Neath they might have lived in, how the survivors have adapted as their City was drowned and their peoples displaced and the eventual realization that on the Surface, the place they once called home was overrun centuries later by the colonial empires of Europe. It is not sufficient, but it was what I could contribute.
And all of this is to say...you can do that too. It may not be canon. But it can be something beyond canon. To write in a version of the Neath where the Third City is more than the God-Eaters and the Betrayal, where people lived and struggled as more than just fearful subjects to a monstrous priesthood. And if in the effort to do it justice, you are driven to read more, learn more about the people whose descendants still live in the world, realize how much has been lost and yet how much has not been lost...
I have never regretted realizing I wanted to know more.
Who else is flying the skies alongside your airship?
Roseate Dawn - captained by the Golden-Hearted Lieutenant, envelope decorated with roses growing in light of sunrise; secretly aligned with the New Sequence, hold conceals an Element of Dawn used to convert both Roof inhabitants and new crew members
Gantjack - captained by the Opulent Maurader, envelope decorated with face and maw of slavering wings-of-thunder bat; hails from the Mourn, follows especially daring surveyors and opens fire when Starved are nearby for easier prey
Poisoned Chalice - captained by the Agile Ambusher, brassclad hull etchings depict overthrow of the Vintner Saint; constant droning emitted by attendant flock of imp-piloted rotorcraft
St Arthur's Kiss - captained by the Dead-Eyed Widow, envelope scrawled bow to stern with the visages of heretical false-saints; shrouded by burning smoke and maniac's prayers, when at rest consistently drifts Northwards.
Lungtooth - captained by the Unraveled Raider, skinvelope decorated with records of clan-victories against rivals; claims friendship to the Fleet both due to mutual enemies and to gift of a Caminus Yards Heart-Ender by unknown donor.
Emperor’s Belch - captained by the Dubious Admiral, envelope decorated in melange of designs copied from other ships; officially unrecognized by Admiralty due to ongoing Empire of Hands blockade; hooting war cries and enthusiastic if inaccurate gunfire tend to quickly draw unwanted attention
Postnihilist - captained by the Smiling Demagogue, envelope burnished black and decorated with revolutionary slogans in peligin; purpose in area unclear, Admiralty cautions to avoid contact at all costs until current crisis is over
After some conversation on the FBO discord, I've made a quick survey designed to get a glimpse of the relative popularity - and reasons for popularity - of the different Professional Specializations available to characters in Fallen London.
What are those? Well, it used to be that once your character became a Midnighter, Correspondent, what have you, that was as far as they could go. Well, relatively recently, FBG allowed you the ability to gain a Professional Specialization based on your profession! So a Silverer could further specialize into an Oneirotect or an Ontological Cartographer, for example.
This survey has three parts: the first page to see which Professional Specialization your character account has (or the one you think would be most fitting for the character), the second page to ask what about that Specialization appealed to you, and the third page to...well, that one's just for fun.
Feel free to respond to it for multiple accounts, or even if you don't have one of those advanced professions at all yet! There are options for Doctors and Notaries, as well as those who switch often or simply prefer other game professions altogether.
See here for the survey, and here to see the survey's results so far.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the
Organization for Transformative Works
When the Masters fall, they do not all fall at once. Mr Wines watches them fall, one by one, as the Fifth City shudders with ambition and the promise of revolution.
(Spoilers for all four Ambitions, both canonical and otherwise.)
