DID YOU KNOW: In the world of Fallen London, the island of Hunter's Keep is home to three sisters called Lucy, Phoebe and Cynthia. This is a reference to Failbetter Games forgetting the name of the third member of boygenius.
The Annotated Taskmaster of the Bazaar, Series One, Episode One - 'Keep hold of your egg'
A collection of annotations, glimpses behind the scenes, and attempts to explain or excuse the first Taskmaster of the Bazaar story!
Mr Wines serves as our first Mr Tasks. With its easy charm and its proven history of inveigling people into agreeing to things that are not in their best interests, it was a natural choice for the role.
THE MANAGER: (waves with eight fingers - no, twelve - twenty - more than you can count… no, the regular number of fingers)
The Manager's hands have long been a subject of speculation. When a Fallen Londoner is beset by nightmares, they might see him waving at them with eight fingers - but does that mean per hand, or in total? Mask of the Rose at last put the matter to rest - we learned that the Manager's fingers 'multiply with the wit of the viewer to perceive'. The madder you are, the more he has.
THE CIVET: (waves, briefly, from under their cloak)
The Notorious Civet is a character we see many traces of but rarely meet in person. They are a cat burglar, or an agent, or both, and the civet is their calling-card. Exceptional Fallen Londoners had the chance to meet them during the Season of Silver, in 2017-18. Incidentally, they're one of the few recurring characters to have no official art at all - not even a generic icon they share with others.
GRIZ: Are you sure this is a justifiable investment of the Bazaar’s time and resources? With the situation in the Elder Continent so tense…
Griz was a delight to write in the Alex Horne role - she's just the right mix of straight-laced, conscientious and secretly cheeky. Her reluctance to oversee the games will not last. Soon, she'll be as enthusiastic as - or more than - the Taskmaster itself.
MOLLY: Marsh-wolf, innit.
Molly's MLE-inflected speech owes a lot to Paul Chowdhry, and, had this chapter not predated Fatiha El-Ghorri's turn on the show, would owe her a debt as well.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: (barely able to speak for wheezing) As it happens, I have a piece that once belonged to a fellow empress - a chaise taken from the private chambers of Catherine the Great!
Catherine's - and other Russian rulers' - taste for lewd furniture has been oft-discussed but never proved. I don't know what the truth is - I just hope someone out there was enjoying some horny furniture!
THE MANAGER: They are one of the silent and invisible myrmidons whose labours keep Her Majesty’s linens as stainless as her chambers are lightless. They came to me suffering from the most dreadful maladies - caused, it seems, by an excess of turning around.
The dangers of turning around were established in 2014 Fate-locked story The Gift.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: Another beautiful day…
This same song was sung by Katherine Ryan in Taskmaster Series 2 Episode 2. It's a good song!
Finally, a harpoon is seen projecting from a high balcony and entering the Folly in a shower of glass, fixing itself in the 17th-century woodwork. The Civet secures the line and climbs up it, hand-over-hand, until they’re close enough to place the letter in Griz’s waiting hand.
The Civet is following the tradition established by Rhod Gilbert in Series 7 Episode 5 - delivering a message to the Taskmaster's assistant by launching a spear into whatever building they are currently inhabiting. Rhod used a javelin and a caravan; the Civet used a harpoon and a folly.
I'd be lying if I said Vyvyan's cornflakes story (from The Young Ones, Series 1 Episode 3) didn't inspire Colonel Molly's message. Vyvyan's story would have won him the Ford Tippex, of course, had the chap delivering his prize not been intercepted by a demon. Colonel Molly had no such luck here, placing third.
GRACE: I picked this one up from a word-smuggler out of Scrimshander.
I didn't intend for 'a word-smuggler out of Scrimshander' to become a running theme, but, as you'll see in later entries, it did.
'There once was a fellow from Pernis…’
Original limerick; do not steal.
'I SAW THE LAST KHAGAN EATING SCONES AT BEATRICES - HE PUT THE JAM ON FIRST’.
Whether the jam or the cream goes on the scone first is something of a recurring mystery in the Neath and beyond - you'll recognise it everywhere from the Candlefinder Society to the distant star systems of Sunless Skies. Personally, I favour lining a baking dish with scones and alternating layers of jam and cream, and then putting the whole thing in the oven to make 'Devonshire nachos'.
we once spent three days crawling through the jungle, trying to catch a glimpse of the Golden Pangolin of Huz…
Pangolins are remarkable creatures. Not for nothing does a Perfect Pangolin appear as a mascot in Sunless Skies, beloved by all the crew.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: Did I tell you the one about the old man of Vienna? He painted his body…
He painted his body sienna, if you're wondering. And the last line ends in 'henna'.
GRACE: B—–ds.
Grace's swearing is, I confess, influenced by comedian Adam Riches' (husband of TM alumna Stevie Martin) Sean Bean impression.
On the screen, the pair can be seen shaking hands in the Taskmaster Manor's laboratory - a spartan room, its walls draped with a protective layer of waxed cloth.
The original Taskmaster House's lab is, I believe, a bedroom with its windows covered and with plastic sheeting on its walls. The Taskmaster Manor is closer to the sprawling, eccentric estate seen in Taskmaster New Zealand than the small suburban home of the original.
(On the screen, the first painting is shown. In a rainbow of colours rarely seen in the Neath, it depicts a grinning figure on a white background. In its large hands are a jeroboam of Broken Giant, a slopping pot of prisoner’s honey, a kitchen knife, a green apple, a teapot, a table-mirror, a leather-bound tome, a candle-stick and a string of pearls.)
It has not gone unremarked upon that His Amused Lordship's 'generic master' costume includes a candle-stick. He does know more about masters and candles than he necessarily wants to.
GRIZ: You’ve seen both paintings - how do you want to score them? Ideally, the two teams’ scores will add up to five - four and one, or three and two, for example.
The real Taskmaster's refusal to adhere to the 'team task points should add up to 5' rule is well-established. Alex occasionally makes an effort to insist upon it, but it's been broken far, far more often than it's been adhered to, and is generally considered defunct.
GRIZ: Civet, this is Sally.
No relation to Taskmaster alumna Sally Phillips, who is generally entirely un-piglike. I just thought it was a cute name for a pig.
If you were to ask a piglet / is Sweetbread’s good for sleep? / how grand to be a big pet / just fall down in a –
His Amused Lordship's stout song owes more than a little to Dorothy L. Sayers' advertising copy for Guinness - she's responsible for the adverts with the toucan and the poem 'If he can say as you can “Guinness is good for you”, How grand to be a toucan — Just think what Toucan do!'
SALLY: Runk.
Did you know that 'oink' was not established as the standard onomatopoeia for a pig's snort until the 20th century?
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: ‘In the height of her pride and wanton braverie, she began to debase the expence and provision of all his costly fare.’ Pearls before swine, eh?
From Pliny the Elder's Natural History, Book Nine, on Cleopatra drinking a pearl dissolved in vinegar.
wiv agony in stony places, shoutin’ and cryin’ in the prison and palace…
T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Part V: What the Thunder Said.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: 'Have the briefcase containing the object that comes earliest the alphabet.
There's something of Sean Lock and Jon Richardson's legendary Carrot in a Box matches about this live task. It's a five-way game of guesswork and bluff.
Colonel Molly waves the Commissioner over and whispers in her ear. The Commissioner nods and shows her how to work the latches.
Not being able to open briefcases is something of a Taskmaster tradition. I recall Mark Watson struggled with one, as did Guy Williams, and, I'm sure, many more.
THE CIVET: I have an anteater in my case. [...] It’s not a real anteater; it’s a drawing of an anteater.
Noel Fielding postulated that there might be an anteater (or a drawing of an anteater) in a sealed briefcase in the first Champion of Champions. His other guesses included some corks, a goalkeeper's glove, and Tim Key.
HIS AMUSED LORDSHIP: You’re not pulling some Odysseus-and-the-cyclops nonsense here, are you?
Homer's Odysseus tricks the cyclops Polyphemus by claiming his name is 'Οὔτις' or 'Nobody'. When Odysseus blinds his captor and escapes, Polyphemus cries out that 'Nobody' is attacking him - so none of the other cyclopes come to his rescue. Presumably, Nobody would find himself in fifth place for his terrible score in the getting-home-quickly task.
GRIZ: Which means that our winner tonight with seventeen points is His Amused Lordship!
I didn't plan for His Amused Lordship to win - I simply wrote the contestants being variously good or bad at each task according to their individual characters, and then found out who had won at the same time as everyone else.
Raul: 'I remember there were some weird stories about him, especially near the end. There was a tell-all in El Periodico de las Aburridas by a starlet House dated. She said they never, um… don't make me spell it out, boss. Anyway, she said all he wanted to do was scan her brain and make her dress up in different outfits.'
Jane: 'Sugar, I may be a robot on the outside, but on the inside, my neuro-computational matrix is an exact copy of Mr. House's favorite girl. Mr. House has a lot of needs, sugar. I take care of all of them, and a lady doesn't kiss and tell.'
You know Roko's Basilisk, the thought experiment that posits that you should care about a future simulation of yourself as much as you do about your current self so you should dedicate your life to pleasing a hypothetical future supercomputer so that it won't punish a simulation of you?
Mr House is like Roko's Pervert - you should dedicate yourself to never dating him so that he can't brain-scan you and create a future simulation of you that he seals up in his tower and forces to pretend to find him attractive. (Actually, I hear that Roko is actually Roko's Pervert, but that's by the by.)
If you want a picture of the future under Mr House, imagine a man creating duplicates of people and reprogramming them to crank his hog - forever.
You're on a three-day journey on the Great Hellbound Railway. You have your choice of cabins in either of the sleeper cars. Unfortunately, the dining car is out of service due to an incident with a chertapple flambé, so you will have to take your meals in your cabin. Which place are you taking?
Some factors to take into account:
Cabins A, B, C, D, E, G, H, I, J and K are doubles with bunks. Each double has generous washing facilities which are shared with the opposite cabin.
Travellers whose portraits are above the diagram have claimed the top bunk; travellers below have claimed the bottom bunk. For example, A represents sleeping below the Bishop of Southwark.
Cabins F and L are singles. They have more modest washing facilities, and they do have doors opening on to the adjoining single.
His Amused Lordship's snoring can be heard from the cabins on either side of him.
Silas the Showman has been known to get blackout drunk and sleep in the bath 'in case of accidents'.
Jasper and Frank share a bunk; one sleeps while the other does paperwork.
The conductors have a betting pool going on whether Tatterdemalion and Summer stop having noisy arguments and start being noisy in other ways before the end of the journey. No-one has bet even a single penny that they will at any point stop being noisy.
Your Aunt and Mr Huffam will most certainly jimmy the lock between your rooms and do some snooping - Huffam for a story, your Aunt for some benevolent familial interference.
