#horticulture hell

[thedeafprophet]

I still can't believe they played us like this.

the poster change is cool af tho

[the-insouciant-scientist]

Tag yourself I'm Responsible but not Accountable

[c-schroed]

So, the first pic of the new Superman costume dropped...

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...and all I could think was

Holy crap, is that thing in the back the Starved Men Eyeball Laser Thing from Fallen London's last Estival event?!

Horticulture Hell surely left an impression on me. Thanks, @failbettergames!

[geographynerdaaaaa]

Fallen London giving us the option to run away and be safe or drive right into the death machine like yeh of course I'm going to drive right into the death machine.

[cadaver1ne]

guess who JUST got back from the LF roof trip when this event started. anacleto merida

[neathbound-fiends]

My rough timeline of the major plot points for the Horticultural Show for people who didn't play it

It came to my attention from a friend being like "bestie WHAT is going on over there" that the fact that the plot moved so rapidly and had a lot of different moving pieces was hard to understand from just discussion and the dash, so here is my (rough) sequence of events for clarity and handy dandy purposes. If anyone else wants to correct something or add on, please do!

Garden festival (yay! Everyone spent the first day gardening and having fun!)

the opening ceremony happens, and during that Starved Men start attacking the City. no one is happy about this happening

we begged for help, and everyone said no :(

Sinning Jenny and the Admiralty actually end up helping (Jenny organizing volunteers for the relief effort like tending to the wounded and repairing damaged buildings, the Admiralty organizing volunteers for trying to drive the Starved Men out with violence)

this isn't working! at all! so we get sent to go look for clues about the Starved Men and how to actually defeat them and what they might want from us

we get a bunch of clues and now we can actually start hurting them and getting them to leave! everyone is excited about this part because it's the first time it feels like there's actually hope

we capture a few Starved Men that surrender, and who are the last ones in the City, and they're held prisoner in the brig on one of the ships while scholars try and figure out how to communicate with them

we can talk now! yippee! the Admiralty thinks these guys suck and doesn't wanna talk, Jenny wants to understand why. they tell us that it looks like the City is gonna be destroyed so they came down to try and make it Weird™️ in a way it'll survive this. there is also revealed to be another group of Starved Men who think it would be kinder to us to just murder us all instantly and are planning to flood London with sunlight. we are all distressed to hear this

we are now working on a two pronged approach: gather more allies to help fight with us and destroy the weapon (an oculus, which is basically a big sphere that's gonna have the light hit it and then it'll make the light go everywhere and burn everyone to death), and to actually FIND where they've got it. people get to take airships to the roof to look for the weapon, and you can take your ship and other things to other locations to recruit allies

we found it! now we have to destroy it. your player character goes with the group that's actually there to destroy it. other groups are running interference and trying to keep you safe to make it through

if you took too much damage, I guess you just land? I'm not sure, because I passed all my checks to not get smoked. I failed the check to destroy the oculus with the cannons, but even if you passed it, it doesn't actually destroy it, so you can't win. you either try and evade and land or you can crash your ship directly into it and the shaft of sunlight that will definitely permanently kill you

it doesn't! you get killed by the crash before you're killed by the sunlight, so you're good! everything worked out in the end!

the Boat Man confirms that London is not destroyed, which is handy because although it would be INCREDIBLY funny to have an event that ends the game completely and unexpectedly in concept, people would not like it if it actually happened. you get the option to either be relieved by this, pessimistic because what's the point if it'll probably happen again, or so outrageously overjoyed you start bellowing songs (and the Boat Man thinks you're so annoying he instantly clears your wounds so you go away)

you can plant stuff in a new community garden because Londoners decided to replant as a symbolic thing of moving forward! a Starved Man comes and you can either be like "fuck this guy, get out of here" and then destroy the flower he plants, or "come in friend and plant your thing" (I chose to let him plant the thing and then planted my own thing)

[cautionary-tale]

I have a friend that’s mildly interested in Fallen London (she doesn’t play but I like to tell her about my misfortunes in the game), and I’ve been keeping her up to speed on what’s happening right now.

So today I sent her a text saying “Yeah we’re currently trying to stop a bunch of people from destroying the roof and bathing London in sunlight. Because if we don’t then we all die,” and her response is to just be distraught and concerned.

It’s like she’s on the surface, found a hole in the ground, and is watching what’s going down in London with a pair of impossibly good binoculars and thinking “What the hell is going on down there.”

[neathyingenue]

As a low-level character, this event is so funny because I couldn't go anywhere for clues or diplomacy, yet the powers-that-be have *still* decided that a person with only 1 stat above 100 is competent enough to be named captain of her own airship