Once, there was only darkness

23 years old, She/Her, writer and world builder based out of the swamps of Louisiana Trans Communanard

[honourablejester]

Judging from a couple of the responses to my Fruits of the Zee post, not everyone was aware that the Flukes are space eldritch sea urchins. Which. Oh babies, this setting is so much fun. I’m gonna put this under a cut, for people who want to bumble into these things the old fashioned way, but.

Some of my favourite parts of the lore/cosmology of Fallen London/Sunless Sea/Sunless Skies:

The laws of reality come from the Judgements, the ultimate powers of the setting.

The Judgements are sentient suns/stars.

The laws of reality are therefore embodied in the light of suns.

The Neath, the cave Fallen London was dragged down into, is as bonkers and eldritch and delightfully nonsensical as it is because it is (at least partially) hidden from the light of the suns, and therefore hidden from the laws of reality.

Judgements, almost universally, are assholes. I mean. There are exceptions here or there, but generally speaking? Assholes.

As a result of the cosmology hinging on sentient suns as the foundational powers of the universe, a LOT of the fun entities in the setting are from space, many of them either exiled to or hiding in the Neath.

Part of the city of Fallen London is a sentient alien space crab that used to be a messenger for the Judgements. Said messenger committed the cardinal blasphemy of falling in love with a Judgement. This did not end well. For anyone. Again, Judgements are assholes.

Flukes are eldritch sea urchins from space.

Devils are eldritch bees from space. I think? I think they’re bees. They rebelled against the suns and lost, and had to hastily flee through the realm of dreams, which is also hidden from the Judgements/the laws of reality, even more than the Neath is. They got kicked back out again quickly enough, but Hell is still on the border with this realm, hence why reality is even more broken there than it is elsewhere in the Neath.

The realm of dreams was hatched from an egg? And is ruled by dream snakes.

There are famously also eldritch bats from space.

One of the gods of the Zee is the bastard love child of the Sun.

One of the gods of the Zee is a massive eldritch dragon from space.

One of the gods of the Zee is an ex-Judgement. A once-star. Who went and got weird. He’s also my favourite of the gods. Jury’s out on whether he counts as an asshole or not. But … you know one of the taglines of Sunless Sea? Lose your mind, eat your crew? The place where you take those specifically named actions is very closely linked to this god. So, you know. Whatever that says about him?

The bastard love child of the Sun had her own bastard child, who is a maddened mobile island mountain that haunts the zee and murders people. In fairness to said maddened island, her father was a face-stealing, shape-shifting primordial bogeyman (for fun points, created by the Flukes, said eldritch sea urchins) who raped her mother, so like … she’s doing her best? She had what you’d call a rough start.

Said island mountain is also, by technicality of her father’s creation, the Fathomking’s niece by marriage. So that’s a fun relationship.

Judgements are assholes. It bears constant repeating, Judgements are assholes. So you have to love humanity, you have to love us, we decided at one point to make an artificial one. An artificial sun. So we could hijack the power of the Judgements. In the hopes that it would go better for us? Yeah. This goes well for us. Obviously. Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies both have fun with this plot.

THESUNTHESUNTHESUNTHESU

It’s possible we did this more than once? I’m not one-hundred percent sure if they’re the same attempt or different ones. If they’re different … like … In terms of sheer boneheadedness …? It went so well the first time, you know! Obviously we had to try again! You have to love us. Or despair. Or, you know. Both.

I can’t find it now, but I swear one of the original taglines for Sunless Skies was ‘Kill a sun’. The sun deserves it. Pretty much all the suns deserve it.

In summary, Judgements are assholes. Heh. Also this setting is delightfully weird, and I love it.

[mamaito]

[cataloguerie]

so how are we all feeling about the fact that the average adult height at 18 in the United Kingdom circa 1862 was 166cm or 5'4" (this is irrespective of gender btw)

current scholarly thought suggests that this is largely due to industrialisation and urbanisation causing an increase in poverty conditions so it's likely very much variable based on class BUT

here's what that looks like compared to one Master we have maybe word-of-god info on height for (Mr Wines):

and for fun, here's what that looks like against the information we have for full-sized Curators. We know they're "locomotive sized" so I used the dimensions of the famous Flying Scotsman, which appropriately chuffed onto the scene first in 1862.

probably not full sized but.. vake-hunters, I salute you.

[your-lowlife-friend]

[fallen-birbnerd]

The Fifth City Wiki has escaped the clutches of Fandom!

I'm delighted to announce that just in time for our tenth birthday (today!), the Fifth City Wiki has finally migrated away from Fandom! You can visit the new and improved wiki here: https://thefifthcity.wiki

With the migration comes a number of new features for readers and editors alike, including: light and dark mode, tidier and more customizable spoiler warnings, hidden/click-to-show spoiler text functionality (like TVTropes' spoiler feature), new and improved interactive maps, a beautiful suite of background artwork by Sevenix, and a refreshing lack of advertisement banners. Further background art and maps will be added over time. An enormous thank you to the people who helped make this happen on the technical side: Nyalan, CarrONoir, Asarta, Bluesidra, FlamingKetchup, and JmeJuniper (Hannah)!

If you have any questions, comments, ideas, concerns, etc., feel free to reach out here or on Discord!

[hellisntreal]

A sun cannot die. A god cannot break. There is no such thing as dusk.

I'll do a full version eventually, but behold! The Clockwork Sun.

[asleepinawell]

Sunless Skies - Failbetter Games

Betray Your Queen. Murder A Sun.

[myopinionisimportant]

It isn't entirely shocking that the Anarchists and the Empress have one or two points they agree on. If you have enough opinions on enough issues, they're sure to overlap somewhere.

It is a little more surprising that their main point of agreement is "we should kill the sun."

[your-lowlife-friend]

He's just an average orange cat, be nice to him

[ericapalmer]

I love this game so much

[theonceunknown]

Trick or treat!

You got a treat from my WIP bucket!! This is the beginnings of a Sunless Skies/40k crossover, featuring a Sky-Captain who is really just doing their best to keep this damn train together and (mostly) intact. For background information, SSkies would be like rogue trader if game were stranger, let you fuck/marry/kill The Horrors, and literally every spacefaring vessel were a train. Have fun! :)

In the farthest reaches of the High Wilderness, beyond the wastes where only corpse-stars reign, exist the skies of Old London. No word has come through the Avid Horizon since the great gates closed, and so Old London became an afterthought before eroding from the Empire’s concerns entirely.

Occasionally, an older Londoner will take a moment to reflect- think back to the Bazaar, and the Neath, and wonder about the city they left behind. But there’s always an engine to catch, a permit to stamp, or a message to carry; the Empire has no use for layabouts. The younger ones never knew the dark stalactites of the Neath Roof, the glory of Knife-and-Candle, the taste of good mushroom wine, and think of Old London as a relic instead of a memory.

Perhaps Sol has set on the English Isles, abandoned so long ago. Perhaps Old London has fallen to ruin. Perhaps it hasn’t. There’s no way to be certain, and it does not matter. For we have built our own Sun, and rest assured, dear reader, it shall never set on our British Empire.

— Excerpt from *Brabazon Schooling Pamphlet*, pending review by the Ministry of Public Decency

—

In the grim darkness of the far future, there is only war. Of course, if you’re a seasoned sky-captain, when you hear war, you think profit. If this damned empire hadn’t repeatedly tried to kill or incarcerate your crew, you wouldn’t have bothered taking a side.

(The next person to sneer xeno at your Meticulous Surgeon, who just so happened to be Rubbery, was getting shot.)

Braving the Storm that Speaks is a task all seasoned skyfarers dread, and today it was inevitable. The Storm brewed directly between the transit relay you’d just exited and the rest of the skies. Staying put was not an option; your supplies were thin enough that risks starvation. Going back wasn’t an option, either; if you missed this shipment, you’d be penniless and have to consider selling your locomotive altogether.

You ordered your crew to stop their ears with wax. It wouldn’t muffle the Whisperwinds, but you’d found that the crew were less likely to throw themselves into the tender mercies of the High Wilderness when they did so. You set your Aunt to ensure your cargo was firmly secured and your Engineer to triple-check the engine for any failure points. The Slightly-Scorched Courier was already at the guns, and gave you a slight nod to assure you that both he and his station were as ready as they could be. It only took a minute for everyone to finish preparing to brave the storm.

“This is shaping up to be a bad one, Cap,” yelled the Adaptive Adept as xe drove the ship into the harsh winds of Storm’s wrath.

No s___, you thought, unhelpfully. Saying that aloud would’ve demoralized the crew, so you refrained. Instead, you yelled back, “You say that like there are good ones!”

Xer shoulders shook with what you thought might be laughter, but the wind had picked up from howling to outright deafening and the sound was lost. It ripped at the locomotive, icy fingers scrabbling for anything the gale could tear off. It found nothing, and instead battered the engine around in great, lurching motions.

What little of Albion’s structures you were able to make out- mostly odd shapes, obscured by clouds- faded into dark nothingness. The lights of the locomotive only obscured the view further, not that there was anything to see. The winds shook the engine like a wolf would its prey, before tossing it through one of the many time-wefts present with the Storm. Time slid strangely- and suddenly-

You were in uncharted skies.

——

Four years and three signalists ago, you had an Obsessive Academic aboard. She was young and bright and always insisted on inspecting sky-sigils when she had the time. She was a weaver who demanded to know through what time was woven. The last you saw her, she’d stormed the Horologist Office to demand answers, and you’d heard nothing since. One of her theories seemed particularly pertinent to you now; that if time were a weft, it must be woven through something. She believed the warp of this mysterious fabric might have been space. The fabric of spacetime, she called it.

You wondered if your engine was traversing along the warp, rather than the weft. Time was… strangely stable here.

At the lookout’s cry, you dismissed your musings. A foolish sky-beast had decided to harry your locomotive, heedless of the fact that it was, one, made of perfectly edible flesh, and two, that you had a cannery aboard. You’d never seen a beast like this one before, but the skies hid all sorts of strange creatures. This one was long, with a segmented body not unlike a centipede. Between each segment, it had grown a pair of wings, their iridescence gleaming with every color that existed, alongside a few that didn’t. 

You would almost feel sorry for the thing, if it hadn’t so conveniently delivered your next meal. 

[mr-barleycorn]

Put the sapphir’d king in the meme dress because I want to see him like this

[thevioletscout]

From the High Wilderness to the Unterzee

Alright! One last submission for @neathyfashioncoalition, and with the current prompt "Dressed for Departure," I figured it was only fitting to draw my captains for Sunless Sea and Sunless Skies.

Since I use one of my Call of Cthulhu investigators for Fallen London, I decided to use my other two as well, so I introduce (in the context of FL); Harker Absinthe and Nadine Hollister, née Greenwald.

These two are definitely very interesting characters to play as in parallel games since in many ways they're sort of foils to each other. Nadine is a cautious and anxious young woman, with a lot of fear for the otherworldly, but also an understanding of sorts that lets her know when compassion is appropriate or not. Harker on the other hand is more erratic with a fascination for the strange, but this leads to recklessness that he usually has to deal with the consequences for. Example: Harker get your ass back IN the train before you either suffocate or get star-madness.

The fashion itself was a tad more simple than my other entries, as I wanted to focus more on the transitioning banner, but Harker's was meant to very much be an adventurer's get up, something cool for swashbuckling journies. In fact it's actually loosely based off some Fallout 4 armor. Nadine's on the other hand is a fairly simple infernal-style dress and a plain blue coat, something comfortable for long periods of time at zee, and of course the locket containing a portrait of her sweetheart.

Used photos from pinterest for reference, and also a 3D model of a train. I am never drawing a train again even with a reference. You can't make me.

Also because I don't actually expect you to put this whole honking thing in the catalogue lol, here's the two parts separated.

[perfumed-gunpowder]

compilation

[anomalouscorvid]

a scavenger basks in the safely filtered light of a distant star...

ms brood for sprout fight 2026, using the 'sunshine' prompt and the macarons palette! behold, it has Clothes

timelapse below cut

[dandelioncasey]

Item: Shiny Object Rarity: ✦ Uncommon

What's a side quest that was better than the main story?

Feed your dashboard by answering my question, blogger.

Is it a cop-out if I say all of the officers' quests from Sunless Skies? 😅 Just because there's so much variety in what you have to do and where you have to go to complete each of them, it really encourages you to explore not only the ports but the entire map of each location in the game, which I might not have done to the same extent if I was just playing the main story

[landofwindandthrowingshade]