LMAO im so glad you asked. Samuel has been making very safe and professional expeditions into the Moulin Wastes!! where he definitely doesn't forget to keep an eye on how many supplies they need to get home and he also certainly hasn't been abusing his shapeling arts abilities to travel through impossible spaces so much that the Wastes are trying to reshape him. OBVIOUSLY!!!
The text for getting extra eyes makes it sound like they'll probably eventually disappear on their own, and Sam's abilities could probably cover an eye pretty easily, but it's fun if resisting the Waste's alterations is a little above his paygrade... Maybe he can ask some rubberies to help him fix this eventually, but for now he's just wearing a hat with a brim and hoping it's not too obvious.
He ALSO got a thing that makes you GLOW WITH VIRIC LIGHT around the same time, which for Sam specifically probably makes his scales stand out a lot more than usual? So anyway he's been doing fine. Just head on back to London, mate. Nobody will notice.
Was doing mental math to figure out how many FotZs Sam’s been around for/the likelihood he’s talked to a certain guy at them and then realized he’s Death At Zee Georg and has definitely met the Fathomking through that XD anyways, the question I wanted to ask: what does he think of the Fathomking/Drownies in general?
THIS IS SLANDER! HES ONLY DIED AT ZEE 7 TIMES!! thats uh.... thats still more than you'd generally prefer BUT it's not a lot for a FL PC who spends 80% of his time out at zee!!
In general, Samuel does his best to be respectful of His Complexity and his Bride. I don't know that he's succeeding, but he does his best. The Fathomking seems to him to be simultaneously a very interesting person with laudable ideas about the importance of love, and also an unreasonable tyrant. Most of the time Sam regards him with a sort of render-unto-caesar deference, but he's probably not as afraid of His Complexity as he should be, and respects him the most when he's at his most sentimental. He would drop everything if asked to do something nice for his Bride.
Samuel is not hostile to drownies; he's met enough decent ones. He's just not personally interested in walking off the ship and sinking to his death right now. Some day, though!!
He was devastated to lose most of his crew the one time his ship was shot down, and then almost immediately after that got to meet a drownie in an ES who was happy with his new life underwater, so... y'know, maybe some of them are actually doing fine. Whenever I play the Drownie opportunity card for piracy and get the one rare result that doesn't raise troubled waters, I like to imagine that's Sam catching up with some of his old crew.
Anyway, nobody asked but since I have been trying to keep up with them, here's all his zee deaths:
His Very First Time out at zee he got menaced by some sort of lamprey creatures while trying to find Doctor Vaughan and it knocked his wounds up to 8. INCREDIBLE DEVELOPMENT where he just had the whole "what's dragged your carcass out here" conversation with Dr Vaughan while Technically Dead LMAO. He collapsed on deck after setting out to get his Respectability up
very shortly after this he had a terrible time trying to capture his first plated seal, fed zee beast to his crew and accidentally afflicted everyone with unaccountably peckish, failed multiple cards in a row and eventually got eaten by his desperately hungry crew. HIS MOST ILL-FATED VOYAGE. Extremely funny that this means Sam's crew ATE THEIR CAPTAIN but then faithfully transported the world's most violent seal back to london for him.
after this he didn't die at zee for…. Months? A year??? I focused on getting a ton of zeefaring stuff for him when I realised it was his Favourite Thing, so he was doing great! Until finally one day he got SHOT DOWN BY THE ADMIRALTY while trying to do pirate things. This cost him most of his crew, and getting noticed by the authorities at zee is now the one thing he won't fuck around with
Crushed by glimfall when he randomly failed a completely manageable 90% check in the snares. Samuel.
two more glimfall deaths, one when he was distracted chasing the Pale Tabernacle, and one shortly after he committed himself to the zee (I started making a bunch of risky trips b/c I didn't want to Die On Purpose but was curious if there was any special text for dying while being married to the zee) (I still think there should be a little!!! surely the fathomking has thoughts about such an unconventional sort of devotion!!!)
very recently he got eaten by a fish. it was a casual jaunt across the zee I don't know how he managed this
This doesn't count as a Death At Zee but at one point he had to request an audience with the Fathomking for a thing and he just...... drowned himself.... just hopped in the zee and drowned on purpose. It's very important to know that he had other options and did this instead. Samuel Ashman is a normal man who makes good choices
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[As always, no Fallen London lore hints or spoilers in comments or reblogs please! I really enjoy finding things myself!]
Some months ago a few of my friends were imagining what their flondons would be like in like 10-15 years -- how young flondons would grow up, how adult flondons would age -- and I started to ponder "huh what would sam be like in his 50s" for like 2 seconds before realising "wait no obviously hed be a tomb-colonist by then" LMAO. I kind of suspect he'll end up there earlier than his peers just based on.... lifestyle choices......
But even now, Samuel is Closest To the tomb-colonists as a faction! He has been since he settled into London; initially for a combination of a "well it's only a matter of time, that's definitely going to be me" sentiment as well as a sort of lingering minister's obligation to the outcast and injured. But the more he got to know about the tomb-colonies, the more right this choice seemed. The tomb-colonist-typical stubborn bluntness fits him, the reckless thrill-seeking fits him, the eagerness for duelling and physical challenge fits him. Like, while I'm sure it'll be rough to be more unwelcome in his old home and literally falling apart, I think it's REALLY LIKELY that he'll fit in better in the colonies than he ever did in London. After being declared dead, he might even loosen up a little! And I'm sure his friends will visit.
After playing through the All Things Must End ES, he fiercely wants to be part of the work Tanah-Chook is doing, and given his appointment by the Undertaker I like to imagine they might allow him to join them there when his time comes. What should have been a horrible revelation as he helped with the Undertaker's work was actually the first peace Samuel has felt about death in the Neath since he rowed for the Boatman -- the Far Shore is awful, but he already knew that; now he knows someone is listening to them and working WITH them to end it. There's still work that can be done, there's still people that can be helped.
Sam has had a few different destinies, and maybe one of them really will happen, but he has yet to encounter one he likes as much as the idea of just becoming a tomb-colonist, living as long as he can as a bandaged zailor and brawler, and once that lifestyle really is too much for him, joining Tanah-Chook's strange revolution. I think it suits him.
So, did Sam enjoy the circus? (the horrible clown ES, my beloved)
Samuel had a great time at the circus. :) until he wasn't having a great time at the circus.....
Honestly Sam felt a little... bad? about this, though I don't think he'd choose differently in the end. This ancient denizen of the Neath that truly seemed to be trying to understand and play nice with humanity, but couldn't take "no" for an answer, was someone he would really like to have found some way to compromise with but ultimately had to reject and oppose. The Dreamer's conflicted deliberation sounded less like someone encountering a thing they want, but it's Weird, and more like someone justifying a subpar choice because its attainable. "But if everyone is happy and truly wants this, then maybe it's fine?" was a much harder sell to someone who's seen the Orphanage. Sam never found out why everyone working the circus was so ecstatic to be here, and that's really the most unsettling part.
I've seen both endings of this story and I REALLY like that both feel unsettling, but potentially??? good -- just, one is more Neathy than the other. You have to accept that this strange, eldritch arrangement could possibly be a nice outcome in order to feel good about installing the little rat as the ringmaster, and you have to sympathise with the Rapture-in-Witness to even consider it. Samuel sympathised, but he could not in good conscience encourage that bargain.
Anyway I regret making him say no to volunteering to be a beast. I don't know if it's anything other than a little bit of different text, but I think he should've considered it lmao
you mentioned Sam not having his shrapnel scars in the latest art you posted -- when did he get those/where are they from?
This ask seemed like a great excuse to draw some doodles of scars he's gotten since the last time I posted a reference of his scars:
As to the actual question, a while ago (before he got the glim-scars) Sam's ship was lost with all hands, shot down by the admiralty when it was recognised as a pirate vessel. I never ended up drawing anything for it but I HAD A LOT OF FEELINGS ABOUT IT... the idea of Samuel clawing his way back to life and fighting to get back out to zee to find any survivors he can; of only managing to rescue a handful of zailors and becoming more protective of them than ever; of these few older zailors becoming fully convinced that Samuel's lucky star really means something, as it never appeared once during that doomed voyage; of Samuel returning to Gaider's Mourn to grieve his lost crew and finding comfort in their huge amounts of ritual surrounding death. The first thing I actually did was run Sam out there to buy a bunch of mourning candles as the only thing I could mechanically do haha, I WAS GUTTED.
Anyway for this death I decided on scars pocked across the good side of his face, because he would turn towards the shots hitting his ship, not away. (YOURE LUCKY YOU DIDNT LOSE YOUR OTHER EYE, BUDDY)
And of course since then he's also gotten aNOTHER SCAR FROM GLIM-FALL. PLEASE LOOK UP SOMETIMES SAMUEL THIS IS GETTING OUT OF HAND. I wanted one of the glowy scars in a visible location, so you know maybe he was distractedly leaning out over the water when it caught the side of his head or something...
To put this on some sort of timeline, he got shot down shortly after doing Dream of a Thousand Tails back in May, and then was just on one of his regular jaunts across the zee for fun about a month before Estival when he got crushed by glim-fall the first time, and then very shortly after Fruits of the Zee ended was the second glim-related mishap. He hadn't died at zee AT ALL since that very first disaster voyage where he got eaten, so I guess he's making up for lost time
(In terms of death he ALSO got disintegrated by a law furnace four times and un-shot by 241 blunderbusses during estival but Im at a loss as to what that would even DO scar-wise LMAO)
Sam is that situation of like, guy who thrives on physical touch and handles this by getting in fights. So yeah, arm wrestling would def fall into that. He's quite strong and pretty good at it .....most of the time!
hi! have you done "evolution" yet? i'm curious how sam got along with the youthful naturalist, another man with a... close relationship with peril :)
Samuel is such a funny choice for the Youthful Naturalist to have dragged into his nonsense. Catholic deacon vs man who is SO done with the church. Man self-consciously worried about getting "too bony" to avoid a fate as the boatman vs man whose skeletally gaunt face is because he ALMOST DID BECOME THE BOATMAN. Man who thinks death should be natural and correct and is mostly just upset about the Far Shore thing vs man with an insane scheme to NEVER DIE.
Sam is so exasperated with this kid constantly but also got attached and really wants him to be okay. He is not smart enough to follow 90% of this research, but he's invested in learning more about what's going on with Death in the Neath so HES DOING HIS BEST TO KEEP UP,
Anyway if you don't tell him you're doing this he's literally never going to figure it out. He'll be like "wow what did I eat, did I get poisoned?" and then just grumble and go on with his day because this is London, he's not going to let a little poison stop him. And then the next month he'll just assume that monster that knocked him against a stalagmite while he was hunting the other day must've injured his back in some way because it's hurting longer than he expected, oh well. And this will just continue with each instance seeming like an unconnected consequence of something he did the day before, because he gets injured and poisoned in his line of work and general daily life constantly; it will never stand out enough for him to notice the pattern.
I like to imagine Samuel originally thought that The Monthly Sickness was a debilitating thing that completely took you out, and he would've been shocked to discover his period-having friends and acquaintances were out Doing Things during that time of the month, because it just wasn't talked about enough for him to have an accurate understanding. Once he started zailing, though, zailors are indelicate enough that he would've had to learn very quickly how to accommodate periods and that his period-having crew members are, for the most part, still fully capable of their duties while dealing with this bullshit, so for a Victorian Man I think he has a surprisingly frank understanding of it by now.
But I think that if you DID tell him you were giving him period cramps (a) he would be interested actually!! He would be curious to know what others are experiencing, and novel forms of pain can be enriching for a Sam and (b) he would NOT react Correctly because he started from a zone of "mysterious illness that knocks you out" and getting confirmation that it's just "pretty bad pain every month" would be like OH okay that's doable!! Yeah it's rough but you could captain a ship while this is going on, for sure. And he wouldn't mean it in a dismissive way -- once his brain kicked in he would be genuinely sympathetic about how obnoxious this would be to experience regularly -- but I don't think he's socially aware enough to not be very annoying about it at first lmao
