Moon-Misers
|
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."[1]
Moon-misers are mysterious, insectoid creatures that reside on the roof of the Neath. Their colossal size and bioluminescence makes them visible from London, which has led Londoners to call them false-stars.
Biology
"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. Their exudations – well, the informal name is 'moon-milk'. Horribly dangerous substance. Powerful, though."[2]
Moon-misers appear to be insects with many pairs of legs, many eyes, and hard chitinous exoskeletons.[3] They use their powerful legs to walk along the cavern's roof.[4] Much like the Rubbery Men and the Flukes, the moon-misers hail from the planet Axile, where they were used as mounts.[5] They were likely brought to the Neath by the Bazaar long before the time of the First City, along with other Axiles, and have since colonized its roof. Their blueish glow is known as moonish light, and it turns apocyan when reflected off the crests of the waves of the Unterzee.[6] They are carnivorous, with a taste for human flesh. The Starved Men tend to their appetites, and pay handsomely for willing or unwilling sacrifices. [7]
Moon-misers are the source of a few particular substances. Their shed chitinous exoskeletons fall to the Unterzee, and the pieces are called glim.[8] Glim is used in jewelry,[9] or burned as a light source to create glimmering-lamps, which unfortunately emit noxious fumes.[10] Glim that is sourced directly from moon-misers is called skyfire glim,[11] and is notable for its high quality; white glim is highly sought-after and is used in telescopes to reveal strange hidden sights.[12][13]
Mother's Milk
|
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. |
The most valuable product of of the moon-miser is moon-milk, a substance which causes the imbiber to fall madly in love with the first thing they see, be it a person, an object, or even a color.[14] This obsession fades over years, though, and is shallow in comparison to real love. Perhaps a hybrid between a moon-miser and a human could produce a variant more amenable to human digestion, creating an effect indistinguishable from true love... [15]
The matriarch of the moon-misers is the Moon-Mother.[16] She is so large as to be confused for a great stalactite, and her glim carapace is notably darker than usual.[17] Starved Men have hollowed out her insides, and practice their Shapeling Arts within her using her amber secretions.[18] The servants of the Moon-Mother have retained more sanity than most of their kind, and tend to her well-being.[19]
These beings' reproductive cycle is as strange as everything else about them. One is born each decade or so, and for this to happen, the false-stars must align into a particular arrangement known as the Counterfeit Constellation.[20] The child is coerced from the womb using the Song of Birthing, customarily sung by the Moon-Mother.[21] The infant feeds on nectar extracted from stalactites by its father (the jellied remains of some burrowing ceiling creature, perhaps),[22] and must be swaddled in its mother's silk while its carapace develops.[23]
The Masters and the Misers
"...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."[24]
The value of Moon-misers and their myriad secretions has not escaped the attention of powerful parties in the Neath, including the Masters of the Bazaar. Some, like Mr Fires, would use the power of moon-milk to further their own goals for London; others would do anything to stop that...
As part of Fires' many schemes to ensure that London remains in the Neath indefinitely, it plans to use moon-milk to taint London’s supplies of love stories with artificial love, so that the Bazaar cannot extract any more usable stories from it or future cities.[15] This behavior has frequently put it at odds with Mr Wines and Mr Spices, who shoulder the responsibility of collecting love stories of all sorts for the Bazaar, and take their job very seriously.[25]
Nevertheless, Fires' plan is doomed to failure, as the effect of moon-milk is not quite true love. For its plans to work, it requires a more potent version, so it has set up the Orphanage as a testing ground for the effects of the milk, and has attempted to breed a human with the moon-miser it has locked up in the basement.[26][27][28] Fires hopes that the resulting hybrid will produce a more potent milk, with an effect even closer to what it intended.[15]
Another Master has seen a different potential use for the substance. An Exiled Captain of Hell’s Aristocracy is willing to trade use of their army in exchange for a sample.[29][30] To that end, Mr Stones has 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 it stole from Mr Fires.[29][31][32] If this scheme comes to fruition, Stones will have an infernal army, and London will be razed to the ground by devils. This would force the Bazaar to steal a sixth city ahead of time, and leave Stones one step closer to its ultimate goal of returning to the High Wilderness.
Astrology?
The Counterfeit Constellation is only one of many peculiar arrangements that the moon-misers take. The field of entomological astrology wishes to identify these patterns, and use them to predict the future. One Entomological Astronomer has identified four such patterns, which repeat on a regular cycle. She believes that the one you are born under determines aspects of your personality, and that the movements of the false stars reflect present and future events.[33]
The Egg, taking the form of a cluster, is prudent, restrained and solitary. All their energy goes to the future, leaving them unable to enjoy the present.[34]
The Larva, taking the form of a line, revels in the sensation of being alive. They are open to people and to experience, and leave themselves soft and open.[35]
The Pupa, taking the form of a circle, seldom enjoys the present, but is forward-looking and full of potential.[36]
The Imago, taking the form of a cross, is collaborative and utilitarian. They seldom savor life, but can achieve great things together.[37]
These four constellations reflect the life cycle of the moon-misers. Despite the apparent effectiveness of the method, it enjoys little credibility and is treated with outright hostility by more established fortune-tellers, such as Madame Shoshana.
References
- ↑ Open up, Fallen London
- ↑ An authority on the matter, Fallen London
- ↑ Talk your way in, Fallen London
- ↑ Light Fingers: Lonely as a Cloud, Fallen London "A moon-miser crawls ahead, all gleaming glim, its powerful legs splitting into the roof to keep it from falling."
- ↑ A fellow spirit recognised, Fallen London "You mount the glistening carapace of your miser and ride forth."
- ↑ Echo Bazaar Facebook, Facebook
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "The Moon-misersh draw closhe," [The Starved Man] expectorates. "They musht be fed. You have the honour of shlaking their lust for flesh."
- ↑ Glim-fall!, Fallen London
- ↑ The Keen-Eyed Lapidary returns, Fallen London
- ↑ Open up, Fallen London "Some of it is cracked and pitted, but the quality is extraordinary – what they call 'skyfire glim'."
- ↑ Snow in the Neath?, Fallen London
- ↑ White Glim Telescope, Fallen London
- ↑ Eminently respectable?, Fallen London "Anyway, the moon-misers exude this stuff. Moon-milk. Acts like one of those love potions out of a silly romance tale."
- ↑ 15.0 15.1 15.2 Draw out as many answers as you can, Fallen London "[Moon-milk] is not a convincing forgery; it creates only a shallow obsession that fades after a few years [...] [The Hybrid's] milk is more suited to human ingestion. It will be be able to create something indistinguishable in all meaningful ways from true love..." Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "Ultimatum" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ The list, Fallen London "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."
- ↑ Light Fingers: The Citadel, Fallen London "The Static Star is not a natural formation of stone, but of a darker, mirror-like glim. Indeed, it is not stone at all: it is the Moon-Mother."
- ↑ Peer in the Amber Chamber, Fallen London
- ↑ Bring the Starved Men what they need, Fallen London
- ↑ What does she mean about the stars aligning?, Fallen London
- ↑ Ask about the Song of Birthing, Fallen London "The Moon-Mother sings the Song of Birthing to induce the larva to emerge. An otherworldly sound. I doubt a human throat could ever reproduce it."
- ↑ Something to feed it?, Fallen London
- ↑ Something to wrap it in?, Fallen London
- ↑ The devil you don't know, Fallen London
- ↑ Fires' next move, Fallen London "And [Mr. Fires]'s always messing with the love stories. Wines and Spices do most of that work, and they fair hate its guts. But Fires is subtle enough, and they can't do much against it in the open."
- ↑ Sneak your way in, Fallen London
- ↑ Charm offensive, Fallen London
- ↑ Ambition: Light Fingers! - Meeting Doctor Vaughan, Fallen London
- ↑ 29.0 29.1 The devil you don't know, Fallen London "No box means no moon-milk. And that means our exiled captain won't provide it with the troops it wants." Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; name "devils" defined multiple times with different content - ↑ Fires' next move, Fallen London "So. Box is opened. Our box. No more. Disappointed. Didn't need glim. Needed moon-milk. Devils interested. Valuable trade opportunity lost."
- ↑ Open up, Fallen London "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."
- ↑ Fires' next move, Fallen London
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "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?"
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "Eggs are prudent, restrained and solitary. All their energy is channelled into preparing for the future, so they seldom enjoy the experience of being alive. [...] Its constellation is a cluster."
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "Larvae revel in the sheer sensation of being alive, and feel uneasy on their own. [...] The larval constellation is a line."
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "Pupae are restrained and solitary, but forward-looking and alive with potential. [...] Its constellation is a circle."
- ↑ Written in the Glim, Fallen London "An imago's defining characteristic is their incredible ability to co-operate with others to accomplish things they would never have achieved alone. They're utilitarian, and seldom savour life. [...] Its constellation is a cross."
