The Fathomking
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"This is the salt-blown heart of the Hold. The Fathomking floats in his throne: a gem-starred bowl of sea-stone, the size of a banqueting table. He's wearing a dressing gown of purple brocade, soaked dark with salt water. He leans his chin calmly on his hand. Beneath the surface of the water in his throne, his hidden regions pulse, constantly, insistently."[2]
The Fathomking is the mysterious and notoriously unpredictable ruler of the Drownies.
The Zee's Wild Card
The Fathomking himself is quite the character; his favored term of address is "Your Complexity". Above all, he values a good story, and of course zailors have plenty of stories to tell. As such, the Fathomking has designated time for receiving visitors, during which His Complexity pays handsomely for information and stories.[3] He allows all comers from across the Unterzee - from Visage's crocodile-masked envoys[4] to Khaganian emissaries.[5] Executions - which are held in front of all guests - appear to be commonplace in response to certain transgressions, such as buying silk from spiders,[6] and His Complexity particularly dislikes when Chelonite visitors get too entitled.[7] Conversely, he particularly appreciates "gifts from the Myceligaean Mother," like blemmigans[8] and other mementos from the Uttershroom.[9]
The Fathomking is capable of reviving the deceased, albeit for a very steep price.[10]
The Fathomking's Hold
"Like an iceberg, like a Bazaar-Master's scheme, like the Neath itself, most of the Hold is invisible."[11]
The Fathomking's Hold is an enormous coral structure that lies within the Promised Sea. Like the base of an iceberg, most of the Hold is hidden,[12] and its depths are lit a bioluminescent green.[13] It is implied that while the King can travel as he pleases - albeit with some help to move about on land[14][15] - a portion of his consciousness and/or power may lie within his Throne-Cyst or some other part of the Hold itself.[16][17]
The Pentamerous Bride
The Fathomking's partner, the Pentamerous Bride, is a Lornest-Fluke.[18][19][20] She is an enormous and nigh-incomprehensible being - one of her eyes alone is the size of a zubmarine[21] - that dwells at the bottom of the zee near Mutton Island.[22] The Fathomking readily admits that she is the source of the majority of his power.[23]
As a creature of Axile, the Bride cannot feel love, experiencing it as an absence and an ache.[24][25][26] The Fathomking, however, loves her fiercely in return,[27] and established the Fruits of the Zee Festival and all its strange traditions to bring her joy.[23]
According to the Fathomking, his Bride likes technology[28] and dislikes sorrow-spiders.[29][30] The latter is ostensibly the reason the Fathomking executes any of his courtiers who trade with spiders, but the reason for this enmity is not known.[6]
It is implied that the Fathomking's partnership with his Bride is what reshaped him from an ordinary human into the intriguing creature he is today.[31][32] As a side effect of this union, the Fathomking can now claim Stone as a sister-in-law. It would be unwise to harm Mt Nomad on his watch.[33]
References
- ↑ Greet the Fathomking, Fallen London "You know the King-in-Coral by another name. This is the Fathomking [...]"
- ↑ The Fathomking, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Listen to a Khaganian Emissary, Sunless Sea "At last the King nods, and awards the Emissary a pouch of drowning-pearls. The hour of audience is past."
- ↑ Watch a Crocodile-Masked Visitor make an offering, Sunless Sea
- ↑ Listen to a Khaganian Emissary, Sunless Sea
- ↑ 6.0 6.1 Witness an execution, Sunless Sea "Two silent guards in thorned exoskeletons drag a babbling Drownie forwards. "No!" she shrieks. "I am no friend of spiders! I have never purchased silk! [...] The guards fling the Drownie into the pool. [...] "Next," the King says peaceably."
- ↑ Listen to a Chelonate Envoy, Sunless Sea "The King watches in satisfaction as they swarm the hunter, snipping the flesh from his bones."
- ↑ Put a blemmigan ashore, Sunless Sea ""A gift from the Myceligaean Mother [...] The Fathomking will be pleased. Here. For your trouble.""
- ↑ Give the Fathomking an Uttershroom Sporule, Sunless Sea "The Fathomking's chamberlain takes the Sporule from you [...] accepts the gift, and abruptly drops it into the throne-pool. It disappears into the churn of the King's under-regions. The King sits upright, blinking. "My," he says. "The saucy old creature. Perhaps I should not share this story with my Bride. A very satisfactory service, Captain! I will have you sent certain leaves from my library. And you have fulfilled my request..." "
- ↑ "I have come to plead for a zailor's life.", Sunless Sea Game note: This is an expensive way to gain crew. (There are also actions to revive specific crew members depending on player choice.)
- ↑ The Fathomking's Hold, Sunless Sea
- ↑ The Fathomking's Hold, Sunless Sea "Like an iceberg, like a Bazaar-Master's scheme, like the Neath itself, most of the Hold is invisible. You see only a tiny portion of sculpted coral - the rest waits below the surface. The Fathomking's bone-rooms and aquaria. His pearl-snares and his dining-chambers..."
- ↑ The Fathomking's Hold, Sunless Sea "Phosphor-cells burn green."
- ↑ An Audience with the King-in-Coral, Fallen London "In the shadows of a lesser-visited cove, the kelp-draped litter of the King-in-Coral rests. His attendant Drownies mill by the water's edge. From within the litter's scalloped shell rises a vast and lumpen bulk – barnacle-clad and salt-bitten, crowned with branching coral. His skin is green as kelp, and a damp mask has plastered itself to his face, but there is no denying it."
- ↑ Greet the Fathomking 2, Fallen London "The Fathomking's litter is cumbersome and huge, and requires four Drownies to manoeuvre it around the revels. The Fathomking himself is buttoned into a straining dinner jacket that hides the majority of his more unusual appendages."
- ↑ Leave, Sunless Sea "The light is the familiar glow of false-stars, not the piercing green of the Hold's eyes."
- ↑ Greet the Fathomking 2, Fallen London ""We are here now as honoured guests, and we have left our duties with the Throne-Cyst.""
- ↑ Beg audience with this ancient power, Fallen London "The fluke is a rolling landscape of star-travelled geography. You have – perhaps unwittingly – begged its indulgence. And now you are here."
- ↑ Bear witness to the Principles' End, Sunless Sea ""My Bride's family," he tells you. "They have long grown eccentric, and the Principles was the most eccentric of all. Yes, that is sufficient. Come closer, and I will tell you something of other dissolutions..." "
- ↑ Ask about the mind at the bottom of the trench, Fallen London ""My bride [...] I thank you for visiting her. Her kind have ever been prone to change, and unalloyed they become eccentric. Paranoid, even. [...] It is not her fault. She was taken advantage of, by a deal struck in desperation. Now she and her kin are permitted little else but grief and anger. Such sentiments have shaped them so very cruelly.""
- ↑ Beg audience with this ancient power, Fallen London "The eye is the size of a zubmarine, unblinking, a spiral-irised vortex of shifting pigment that pulls your gaze into its pupil. You could swim into that blackness – could lose yourself in alien seeing, become part of another creature's perception. It is unclear whether it can even detect your pinprick consciousness in its domain. [...] The patterns of spines around its cyclopean eye repeat in radial segments. Spines shift, and that shift is echoed fivefold around its cathedral body [...] five barbed tips brush your skin—"
- ↑ Wreck-Diving in the Southern Archipelago, Fallen London
- ↑ 23.0 23.1 Accept a briny gift, Fallen London ""Many kings would be too proud to admit such a thing." The King-in-Coral straightens. [...] "But not I. The truth is, my Bride is the source of much of our power. This," he spreads his arms wide to encompass Mutton Island, its revellers, the remnants of its devotions to the zee, "was all for her.""
- ↑ Wreck-Diving in the Southern Archipelago, Fallen London "Something is missing. Given. Stolen. Bear it in your pharynx, coiled like a shout. Hold it in your heart, an oyster-treasured pearl. This feeling, this knowledge, that you have been forbidden to seek or name, this feeling whose shape might be felt from its absence."
- ↑ Wreck-Diving in the Southern Archipelago, Fallen London "The absence is soft, as you once were, your fronds flexile and suckered, offering comfort in the shaping pools. Now, only harshness remains; the currents only flow one way, ever-sharpening, ever-angering. Absence and regret and waste-simmered hatred extrude in sharp and painful growths."
- ↑ Wreck-Diving in the Southern Archipelago, Fallen London "An ache. An absence. Was it ever otherwise? How do you remember that which has no name, that which is barred from thought? Unseen sentiment flows beneath the thermocline. Perhaps that are shapes that would pain you less."
- ↑ Accept a briny gift, Fallen London ""It is my honour to love my Bride." Genuine warmth enters his dead-fish eyes now, tempered by a boiling fury. "And to do so deeply and truly, so that she might remember such joys as have been robbed from her. To give her a light to reach her Arts towards."
- ↑ Ask for assistance, Sunless Sea "And bring me something scientific. Modern. Cutting-edge, I believe, is the term. My Bride enjoys that sort of thing. "
- ↑ Present the spider which was the heart of the Tree of Ages, Sunless Sea ""Charmless beasts," the Fathomking remarks. "I'm very glad to see this one ended. They are no friends of my Bride.""
- ↑ Offer the King your Grasping Coral, Fallen London "Left in the King-in-Coral's grasp is a pair of delicate gloves, silver and laced. The King hands them to you with distaste. "Sorrow-silk, from Saviour's Rocks. Benighted things, those fugitive Councils – or so my Bride tells me. Take them. We relinquish our claim upon them.""
- ↑ Introduce the Fathomking to your Nacreous Survivor, Sunless Sea ""You will be my cup-bearer," the King announces. "You will learn the shapeling arts from my Bride.""
- ↑ Listen to the Drownies' songs (Restored), Fallen London "They sing of the Fathomking's intemperate, obdurate love for his bride. They praise her immeasurable age, her fivefold symmetry, her star-travelled wisdom. She gives of her flesh, and he of his heart."
- ↑ Present Mt Nomad's Heart, Sunless Sea ""Were you aware," he enquires, "that this is the heart of my niece? By marriage, not by blood; and I doubt you have truly ended her. She is robust. Nevertheless...""
