Moon-Misers

"There are some things we were not meant to know, they say. But you wouldn't be down here if you took that seriously." Beyond this point lie spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include midgame or minor Fate-locked content. Proceed with caution. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"You open the box, and something climbs out. Something has a glistening carapace the colour of smoked sapphires. Something is made almost entirely of legs. Too many legs."

Moon-Misers, or simply Misers, are insectoid creatures that reside on the roof of the Neath. Their bioluminescence is visible from London, which has led to Londoners calling them the False-Stars.

Glim-Bugs

"A moon-miser! They live on the roof – you know, the false-stars. Shed their carapaces and glim falls. And on the roof they stay. Even the Masters understand that."

A White Glim Telescope.

Moon-misers are crustacean-like creatures with several pairs of legs, hundreds of dark eyes, and blue, chitinous exoskeletons. Their legs can dig into the hard stone of the Neath, allowing them to scuttle across the cavern roof, and the blueish glow the misers produce is known as moonish light, which turns apocyan when reflected off the crests of the waves of the Unterzee.

Moon-misers shed their chitinous exoskeletons regularly, which then fall into the Unterzee in a process called glim-fall, heralded by an enthralling purple haze. The pieces they shed are called glim, which is used in crafts, as a trade good, or is burned to create glimmering-lamps, light sources that unfortunately also emit noxious fumes. Glim that is sourced directly from moon-misers is called skyfire glim, notable for its high quality, and white glim is highly sought-after and can be used in telescopes to reveal strange hidden sights.

Biology

"Are you quite sure you want to know this?" Beyond this point lie major spoilers for Fallen London, Sunless Sea, Sunless Skies, or Mask of the Rose. This may include endgame or major Fate-locked spoilers. Proceed at your own risk. You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"Not locals, the moon-misers. They don't share any biology with us worth speaking about. Internally, they're more like Rubbery Men. Now isn't that fascinating?"

The moon-misers hail from the planet Axile, where they were apparently purposefully bred as mounts, apothecaries, and light fixtures. Along with the Flukes and the Rubbery Men, they were brought to the Neath by the Bazaar as part of its mysterious schemes.

The misers are notably carnivorous, with a taste for human flesh. The Starved Men on the roof tend to their appetites and pay handsomely for sacrifices - willingness being optional.

Moon-Milk

"Anyway, the moon-misers exude this stuff. Moon-milk. Acts like one of those love potions out of a silly romance tale. You come across that?"

Jewels in the far air.

The most valuable product produced by the moon-misers isn't glim; it's moon-milk, a sickly yellow liquid that oozes from their bodies like a venom or pus. This substance has a dangerous property: when a creature is exposed to it, it causes them to fall madly in love with the first thing they see, be it a person, an object, or even a color. This obsession eventually fades over the years; however, if a person exposed to moon-milk is separated from their object of desire for too long, they may go insane, die, or suffer from "avulsion".

Moon-milk is actually used by the moon-misers to ensnare their prey while hunting. The moon-miser spits its moon-milk at its quarry, and the poor target becomes infatuated with the moon-miser, leaving them vulnerable to its powerful jaws.

The Moon-Mother

"You need to go up to the roof. Yes, the roof. I've been there before, but I'm not going back. You have to get up there somehow, and find a moon-miser brood mother. They're easy enough to spot, twice the size of the others and more legs." " – ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES ALL CHILDREN SHE EMBRACES – "

The Roof of the Neath

Moon-misers have brood mothers, which are twice as large as their offspring and possess many more legs. One such matriarch is the Moon-Mother, also known as the Static Star, who is so large she may be confused for a great stalactite, and her glim carapace is the shade of a dark mirror. Starved Men have hollowed out her insides, practicing their Shapeling Arts within the Amber Chamber using her amber secretions, and they also act as servants of the Moon-Mother to tend to her well-being, revering the Moon-Mother as a highly sacred deity of sorts. The Moon-Mother is also capable of unfurling her carapace into a pair of gorgeous mirror-wings, and when those wings beat, a gateway to Parabola may open.

The Moon-Mother exudes a mysterious red strain of moon-milk in the chamber of the Holy Passage, a place of horror and madness that claims, asserts, insists that the Mother accepts all children and only wishes for them to be happy. Exposure to this substance can result in a strong desire to never leave the chamber of the Holy Passage, but its exact properties and purpose are unknown.

The Birthing Ceremony

"A Moon-Miser can only be born when the stars align. It must also be coaxed from the womb with a Song of Birthing. Customarily sung by the Moon-Mother, of course." "Once the baby is born, we must have something to feed it and something in which to wrap it. Otherwise it will not survive."

The reproductive cycle of the moon-misers is as strange as everything else about them. One is born each decade or so, and to herald their birth, the false-stars align in a particular arrangement called the Counterfeit Constellation. The child is then coaxed from the womb using the Song of Birthing, customarily sung by the Moon-Mother and highly dangerous for human throats. The infant then feeds on a strange substance from the roof, possibly the jellied remains of some burrowing ceiling creature, called Stalactite Nectar, which usually extracted by its father, and must then be swaddled in its mother's silk, called Moon-Silk, while its carapace develops.

The Masters and the Misers

"So. Box is opened. Our box. No more. Disappointed. Didn't need glim. Needed moon-milk. Devils interested. Valuable trade opportunity lost."

The value of the moon-misers and their myriad secretions has not escaped the attention of powerful parties in the Neath, including the Masters of the Bazaar. Some seek to use the power of moon-milk to further their own goals for London; others would do anything to stop them.

Fires

"Since the very beginning, I have had the best interests of London at heart. In the longer term, the Hybrid's milk is the only thing that can save the city. Once seeded across the populace, all love stories will be rendered suspect. Any love, no matter how pure or moving, could simply be the symptoms of an aberration's venom. Love will be robbed of its allure. The Bazaar will not know which stories it can truly believe in."

The Orphanage

Mr Fires has a particular use in mind for the moon-misers: as part of its many schemes to ensure that London remains in the Neath indefinitely, it planned to use moon-milk to taint London’s supply of love stories with artificial love, so that the Bazaar cannot extract any more usable stories from the city. Its plan was doomed to failure, however, as the effect of moon-milk is more akin to a shallow obsession than to real love.

For its plans to work, it required a more potent, but also palatable, strain of the milk, so it set up the Orphanage as a depraved lab and testing ground by trapping an unfortunate moon-miser in a contraption that restrained its limbs and brutally extracted its secretions. Fires then exposed many unfortunate prisoners in the Orphanage to moon-milk, driving them to near-madness as a result, and it has attempted to breed the moon-miser with a human host, hoping that the resulting Hybrid will produce a more potent milk, with an effect indistinguishable from true love.

Stones

"...and Mr Stones is furious that its box has gone missing again. The Clay twins are tearing the place up looking for it. No box means no moon-milk. And that means our exiled captain won't provide it with the troops it wants. It'll just have to wait for its blessed Sixth City."

A Heavy Iron Box.

Another Master has a different potential use for the moon-milk; an Exiled Captain from Hell offered to trade the use of their army in exchange for a sample. Seeing an opportunity, Mr Stones abducted a small moon-miser from the roof and locked it inside a heavy iron box, along with a collection of Fourth City love letters from the Gracious Widow that Stones stole from Fires.

If Mr Stones' scheme were to come to fruition, Stones would gain an army and let the devils raze London to the ground, forcing the Bazaar to steal a Sixth City ahead of time and bring the Master closer to its ultimate goal: to presumably return to the High Wilderness. As would be expected, this plot has brought Stones in conflict with Mr Fires, who works tirelessly to sabotage its plans.

Life Cycle and Astrology

"Surface astrologers believe that celestial bodies exert forces great enough to affect people's lives. That's why events can be predicted by observing their movements. Moon-misers must be doing something similar, but I'm not sure what. Perhaps they secrete something into the air?"

The Entomological Astrologer

The Counterfeit Constellation is only one of the many peculiar arrangements that the moon-misers can take on. The newly-developed field of entomological astrology revolves around identifying these patterns, and using them to divine the future. The aptly titled Entomological Astrologer has identified four such patterns, which repeat in a regular cycle, and she believes that the stage of the cycle a person is born under can determine aspects of their personality, and that the movements of the false-stars can reflect present and future events. Regardless of any apparent effectiveness of the method, it enjoys little credibility, and is treated with outright hostility by more established fortune-tellers, such as Madame Shoshana.

As it turns out, moon-misers form colonies which operate as a larger entity, and have life cycles that develop in stages. Each stage of the moon-miser's life cycle has a special role in these colonies, and moon-misers of a similar age within a colony form constellations that have unique shapes.

The stages of the moon-misers' life cycle, and their constellations, are:

• Eggs are laid in large quantities by the colony's brood mother and are tended to by the adult members. Their constellations take on the form of a cluster, and the Astrologist describes those with the sign of the Egg as austere loners who can't live in the moment, as all of their focus and time goes into thinking about the future.

• Larvae are large enough to be viewed from a telescope on the ground. They apparently do little else but eat, and do not produce phosphorescent light. Their constellations take on the form of a line, and according to the Astrologist, those with the Larva sign enjoy life, enjoy company and new experiences, and leave themselves open and vulnerable to others.

• Pupae are silk-wrapped cocoons, waiting to emerge as adults. Their constellations take on the form of a circle, and according to the Astrologist, those with the Pupa sign are austere, but forward-thinking and ripe with potential for growth.

• Imagoes are the adult forms of the moon-misers and are commonly observed as the "false-stars". They form hive-minded colonies with each other and tend to the colony's eggs. Their constellations take on the form of a cross, and according to the Astrologist, those with the Imago sign are collaborative and utilitarian, and can achieve great things together, but often cannot enjoy life very much.

Other Constellations

"The lookout shouts! Far above, the false-stars in the cavern roof are shifting: a rare and ominous event. What now?" Other known constellations that the false-stars can assume include: The Cedar Tree The Beehive The Rose The Eating Bear The Forked Tree The Cask of False Drugs The Prison Gate The Debtor Asleep The Khan's Stallion The Sickle The Haymaker The Knotted Man The Fork with Twenty Tines The Dragon's Tongue The Lanced Pustule The Roving Headsman The Huntress and her Hounds The Cantigaster The King of Ways

References

Original article by HappiestIguana