"Forty years ago, London was stolen by bats."
Forty years ago—give or take—London found itself in a terrible predicament. The Prince Consort of Britain, long admired and beloved, had fallen ill with typhoid fever. At first, there was hope—his recovery seemed assured. But then, one fateful night, his condition took a sudden and devastating turn. By the next day, December 15, 1861, his death was announced.[1]
His death shattered the Queen. Grief consumed her; she draped herself in mourning black, veiled in sorrow, and ordered the palace to be shuttered.[2] Her love for him was boundless, desperate—so much so that she would do anything to bring him back. It was that love that drew the attention of the Masters of the Bazaar.[3] They came with an offer.[4] They would preserve the life of her beloved in exchange for everything she owned. And that included London.[5]
So it was that on February 14, 1862,[6] the Masters came to London and took it downward into the vast, lightless cavern known as the Neath. It fell upon Karakorum, the Fourth City, crushing it and becoming the Fifth City.
The Fall
On the day of the Fall, the sun began to fade around three o’clock in the afternoon, the sky turned a deep red. A tremendous, dreadful “bang” erupted from the direction of Westminster, sending up a cloud of dust and prompting the tolling of bells. In the midst of the ensuing panic, a horseman clad in the regal attire of the palace rushed through the streets, commanding everyone to go indoors in her Majesty’s name. Almost immediately after, the sky was swarmed by bats: an overwhelming, almost unimaginable number that blanketed the heavens.[7]
As the citizens scrambled for safety, many rushed indoors; the homeless crowding into churches and under bridges.[8] Amidst the panic, the iconic symbols of London faltered: Parliament and Elizabeth Tower were swallowed by the Thames.[9] The city itself, Balmoral—one of the Crown's Scottish holdings—and everthing the Thames touched[10] was dragged into the Neath.[11] Yet, the rest of England, along with a peculiar section of London spared by a technicality,[12] remained on the Surface.[13]
Aftermath
Countless souls vanished in the catastrophe, their fates reduced to whispers, their bodies discovered as scattered remnants in the days that followed.[14] The sun did not rise on London again. Survivors found themselves trapped in a limbo of trauma and uncertainty.[15] Many locked themselves in their homes, both out of fear and to avoid the alien dangers lurking beyond their doors.[16]
The citizenry began to have encounters with the supernaturality of the Neath.[17] Faces disappeared from corpses, stolen by creatures Londoners would later call Snuffers.[18] Streets twisted and shifted without reason.[19] Sightings of Parabola in mirrors.[20] The Masters of the Bazaar[21] wrote commands in the Correspondence[22] that disappeared structures.[23] Sapient, speaking animals emerged in the city.[24]
The first person to come back from the dead was a gentleman by the name of David Landau, who had the unfortunate distinction of also being Fallen London’s first murder victim. At first, his resurrection sparked awe, with some hailing him as the Jewish messiah.[25] But when it became clear that returning from the dead was simply another property of the Neath, the excitement faded.[26]
Nature itself was not spared. A month after the Fall, on March 20,[27] entire trees that once symbolized life in London withered and died overnight,[28] their decay caused not just by the deprivation of sunlight, but something else as well.[29]
As food supplies dwindled, starvation took hold.[30] People ate what they could: pets, vermin,[31] strange creatures dredged from the Thames.[32] Eventually, the Masters announced that they had stores of food and would distribute them to the people.[33]
References
- ↑ My Kingdom for a Pig, Fallen London "...enjoyed such invariable good health... and lived so regularly all his life, that the public thought nothing of his illness until they were startled yesterday morning by the bulletin announcing a restless night and the appearance of unsatisfactory symptoms..." [Editor's note: This is a snippet from a newspaper announcing the death of Albert in 1861]
- ↑ My Kingdom for a Pig, Fallen London "Hushed hallways. Velvet. Black velvet. A scratch as matches flare and candles burn in the blackness. Speak softly, for my head still aches. I cannot bear the sun. Only candles. Bring them closer. I wish to see his face. Bring me the laudanum, quietly, quickly, for my head aches."
- ↑ Mr Pages: Theories or Manifesto for Archie, Mask of the Rose "We performed the acquisition. I was not alone in the emporiance. My influence was greatest in the matter of selection. Mr Iron opposed me. It is antiverbiant."
- ↑ My Kingdom for a Pig, Fallen London "Nobody can enter. Nobody can leave. Except for the thing on the roof. Have you witnessed its wings? Amongst the towers, perching, preening, entering and leaving when its talons tap the shuttered windowpane. Tap, tap, tap. Let me in. I have come bearing gifts. Tap, tap, tap. Let us in. We have come bearing gifts."
- ↑ Mr Pages: Theories or Manifesto for Archie, Mask of the Rose "Her consort was dying. A loss not to be contemplemitted. We preserved him. In exchange: everything else she possessed. London and all that lies in fluminate propinquity, together with the oddments of the imperial hoard."
- ↑ "London Stolen By Bats!", Failbetter Games
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Introduction, Mask of the Rose "The dimming of the sun at three in the afternoon. The sky turning the colour of rust. The horrible bang and the cloud of dust from the direction of Westminster. The tolling of the bells. The horseman who rode down the street, liveried in the garb of the palace, shouting: In her Majesty's Name, go indoors! And then the sky was full of bats."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Introduction, Mask of the Rose "People went indoors then. If they'd ignored the criers. Those that had no house crowded into the churches and under the bridges."
- ↑ "The building that was Parliament is now drowned in the Thames. No one alive can give a good account of it."
- ↑ Ask about the Arborist's Hands, Fallen London "But, see, the Masters paid handsomely for the river. When the Masters brought the river down, it happened to have burst its banks. Flooded the pub clean through. And the terms of the agreement were 'everything the water touches'..."
- ↑ Mr Pages: Theories or Manifesto for Archie, Mask of the Rose "London and all that lies in fluminate propinquity, together with the oddments of the imperial hoard. A Scottish castellation, flocks of swans, a bowl of tenants' peppercorns."
- ↑ The Bones of London, Fallen London "[...] When London fell, there was a piece that didn't belong. That couldn't be traded, like. Me old dad was drinking there, and when we went to fetch him, there was a hole in the city where the pub used to be. [...] You pay the fellow for the ageing street sign. It reads: E_Y PLACE. [...]"
- ↑ Griz: Surface Contact, Mask of the Rose "The rest of the world is all still there. The remains of England, France, all the rest as it was. Only London was abstracted."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Introduction, Mask of the Rose "So many people vanished that night and have never been found since. Only a few of them left corpses in the morning."
- ↑ After the Fall, needing to lie, Mask of the Rose "It's a long list and every item on it is open to attack. Insomnia, accompanied by a sharp pain high in my abdomen, like something gnawing its way out. Faces sometimes in the mirror that are not my face. Nightmares when I did sleep; fever dreams that didn't melt on waking, but left a detritus of imposter memories."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: After the Fall, failing to heal, Mask of the Rose "There were days when I couldn't leave my room and I couldn't (also) think of anything that had happened or anything that was going to happen. [...] I go about now and my days are better, but what was wrong has not come right. A wound that does not close as lips do not close when they have something still to say."
- ↑ "London settles slowly into the influence of the Neath. The return of the dead, the articulacy of beasts, these will become more common."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Horatia offered Harjit a place to bring the wounded, Mask of the Rose "One young man was crushed by a beam across the middle. Someone had come and taken off his face."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Introduction, Mask of the Rose "Once, around midnight, Griz went upstairs and opened the door to the street, but she came right back down again. She said the cobbles were galloping about. It wasn't safe to walk outside."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: I glimpsed something in a bit of mirror, Mask of the Rose "In a mirror, I saw something that wasn't my reflection. A Mongolian woman. She sat at a desk in a flooding palace, and the milky water had come level with her knee. She wrote in haste; her hands were gory with ink; ink stained and dimmed the firebirds embroidered on her sleeve. The glimpse of me goaded her. The ink bottle upset; blue-black bloomed in the floodwater."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: Something troubles me about the stranger who marked the curb, Mask of the Rose "Once I peered out of the basement window and saw a figure walking down the street. [...] It was a Master of the Bazaar, a creature the height and shape of Mr Pages. But its robes were sooty, not stained with ink – as I recall."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: There was a stranger across the way, Mask of the Rose "It paced out deliberate steps to the kerbstone opposite Mrs Chapmans, and on the stone face it wrote letters of fire."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: There was a stranger across the way, Mask of the Rose "Come the morning, that house was gone, and its neighbours on each side were sharing a party wall."
- ↑ Ferret: More Newfound Animal Skills, Mask of the Rose "They can talk. Not those ones. They ran away when we took the wall down. But others what I met afterward. One of 'em up and says to me, 'Where d'you think we got the notion to build traps then?' Only it was more fancy-spoken. Whoever taught it English, taught it to talk posh."
- ↑ David: Visitors, Mask of the Rose "We've had reporters on my resurrection from the newspapers. We've had medical men. We've had an artist who wanted to capture an eye-witness account of Death's appearance for his next painting. But above all, we have received half of Jewish London."
- ↑ David: Decreasing Visitors, Mask of the Rose "David: I'm not the only person who has returned from the far shore. Rachel: Several of them were women. Naturally, that put an end to the thought that returning could make you the Messiah, or even Elijah."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: A month or so after the Fall, all the trees died, Mask of the Rose "March 20. Equinox."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: A month or so after the Fall, all the trees died, Mask of the Rose "Griz: Nonsense. The trees were already half dead. Harjit: Half. They'd been withering and losing leaves slowly. Now look at them. Overnight, they're all dead. And in some places they're gone entirely."
- ↑ Recalling the Past: A month or so after the Fall, all the trees died, Mask of the Rose "There was a notice in the broadsheets about the phenomenon. And a profile of the Totteridge Yew, the northernmost tree to have fallen with London. 'Overnight, something drank that tree to her dregs, consuming all that the Sun had endowed, leaving only bitterness.'"
- ↑ Griz: Extra Supplies, Mask of the Rose "The first few days weren't bad. People had food in their pantries still. Old loaves of bread, leftover joints, roots and jams. But nothing new was coming into the markets: no new fish, no vegetables from the farms."
- ↑ Griz: Extra Supplies, Mask of the Rose "When they got hungry, people turned inventive. All the pigeons around Saint Paul's, they caught and plucked. More than one society lapdog was turned to stew."
- ↑ "The Masters warned me against eating things from the river."
- ↑ Griz: Introduction, Mask of the Rose "When there wasn't a bite of fresh meat or an unspoiled apple to be found in London, the Masters announced themselves. They had stores, they said. There was plenty for every cooperative citizen, they said. Just line up here and follow your instructions."
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