The Prison of Flint

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"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.

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"If the Surface sunset was the blood of the Sun; if it pumped out its heart's last dregs into the mild sea; if the waters stank of copper and the sky was a shroud; then this water would be the colour of a sunset. It is red, red, red."[1]

Where the Bleeding Forest ends, where the colors are green and grey, where Stone's light shines once again: here lies the Prison of Flint.

The Strangest of Wineries

"Here the colours are grey and green. A narrow portal pierces a high and flint-thorned hedge. A crowd of lumpen figures muffled in grey wool guard the portal with weapons of fanged wood."[1]

The Prison was built to hold a pretender-god - the Thief-of-Faces,[2] who dared violate the Mountain of Light.[3] He is long gone, however. The area is currently inhabited by a group of beings called Vignerons (winemakers), who wear masks evocative of grapes and are covered head to toe in wool.[4] Heed their words, communicated through drink. For instance: don't touch the fruit.[5]

A cup of griswine.

Mysterious statues holding cups to their lips pepper the Prison's vineyard. These were once people, who drank grey-colored griswine that turned their bodies into flint; they are sentenced to stay within the Prison until they are freed by a taste of any other wine.[6]

Within the central knoll, where the Vignerons daren't approach, lies the Lesser Wound, a red spring that flows a much deeper crimson than the Nameless River.[7] Terrifying creatures known as Shames, the children of Stone, inhabit these waters; they are powerful beings of stone that protect the Lesser Wound.[8] Within the Lesser Wound are Essences that can change a being rather drastically; the red waters taste of blood and can warp a drinker's face,[9] as the Lesser Wound leaks life.[10]

The only exit from the prison is the Violant Gate. Heptagonal tiles, impossibly tessellated, make up the inside of the tunnel, and various mottoes and graffiti cover the walls within.[11]

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 Flint, Fallen London
  2. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "The prison of the Thief-of-Faces. Not a name that is often spoken aloud."
  3. ↑ Flint, Fallen London ""They have fallen far from what they were [...] But their progenitor, the Thief-of-Faces, was an extraordinary creature. It stole essences from the Mountain herself, the heart of the South."
  4. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "A crowd of lumpen figures muffled in grey wool [...] wears a wooden mask painted to resemble a bunch of grapes."
  5. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "It seems that to enter, one must drink. [...] The flavours unfold on your tongue. The taste of cherries, like a welcome. [...] A forbidding slatiness [...] not to touch the fruits of the Prison. [...] The dissipating berry aftertaste tells you helpfully that this is a vigneron - a wine-maker."
  6. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "One who tastes the griswine will instantly become a statue. The taste of any other wine will free a statue from their prison."
  7. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "The Vignerons will not approach the central knoll. A spring flows from its side into a deep pool – red like the waters of the Nameless River, but a deeper red."
  8. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "“Shames!” she shouts. “Mountain’s get!” She leaps forward, slashing the connective gristle between two lumps of wet and shining rock."
  9. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "Here must flow the Essences [...] You bend your head and touch your lips to the water. It is warm. It tastes precisely like blood [...] "Your face changed,""
  10. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "You see how a far-flung Mountain-limb underlies the Vineyard, and you understand that the Lesser Wound leaks life."
  11. ↑ Flint, Fallen London "A troublesome but necessary connection [...] Violant light swallows the before and the behind. The stones beneath your feet are heptagonal tiles, impossibly tesselated. The walls bear mottoes..."
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