Amber

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Spoilers ahead: May include midgame or minor Fate-locked content.

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"Warmly glowing and, er, slightly warm."[1]

Amber, also called deep amber, is a substance secreted[2] and traded by Rubbery Men and used in the Shapeling Arts. It is warm to the touch;[3] warmer amber is more potent,[4] and particularly potent amber will tremble[5] or pulsate like a little heart.[6] More powerful amber can contain a great quantity of energy[7] and memories.[8] Pulsating Amber seems to attract Rubbery Men, for some reason.[9]

This substance is also used extensively by Starved Men, who store it in vats to fuel their own practice of the Shapeling Arts.[10] During the events that followed the London Horticultural Show, amber rained down from the Roof above.[11] It is most effective for shaping, regardless of one's species, when heated to a boil.[12]

How Very Colorful[edit | edit source]

"Amber tumbles through your fingers like jewelled rain. It is warm beneath your palms, and it sings of transformation. Deep reds, fecund greens, the blues of lost lightning."[13]

Amber can be infused with various colors of the Neathbow,[14] like irrigo.[15][16] While not explicitly stated, the properties of green-tinted Fecund Amber[17] imply that it is infused with viric.[18] The most potent of amber is the irrigo-soaked[19] core of a Fluke,[20] which contains ancient memories.[21]

Apocyanic amber[22] is also known to exist, as is blood-red amber[23] (although it is unclear whether the latter has any specific properties or Neathbow infusion).

Vital Essences[edit | edit source]

This section contains spoilers for the following Fate-locked content and Exceptional Stories: Flute Street and For A Dream Of Innocence. Proceed at your own risk.

You can find out more about our spoiler policy here.

"...something without an easy translation. Something that humans have and rocks don't. Bats have it, water doesn't, amber doesn't much."[24]

Much of Flute Street is constructed from fresh, clear amber.[25][26] The amber flows and solidifies over time, engulfing older structures.[27][28]

Down here, the Rubbery Men have built labs where they use amber as a catalyst for the Shapeling Arts.[29] The amber traps Vital Essences - life essence - which provides the fuel for transmutation.[30] As such, the Flukes dwelling in Flute Street command the Rubbery Men within their purview to gather Vital Essences around London.[31] Pulsating Amber contains enough Vital Essence that the Rubberies would like to collect it; this energy can also hold a memory of Axile, the lost home planet of the Shapeling species.[32]

The pools of Axile were stores of Vital Essences,[33] and thus were places to practice the Shapeling Arts.[34]

Amber in the Skies[edit | edit source]

"You carefully traverse a thin, treacherous path lined with endless deep, slime filled cavities and basins. All around, the Rubberies work at refining and reshaping amber into new forms and colours."[35]

The Rubbery Men who have taken up residence in the House of Rods and Chains have not lost their fondness for amber. As of 1905, they run the Rubbery Market to trade in it,[36] and still use it for shaping.[37] It still comes in a variety of colors: beige, red, green, blue, gold.

Gallery[edit | edit source]

  • Violet Amber
    Violet Amber
  • Fecund Amber
    Fecund Amber
  • Fluke-Core
    Fluke-Core
  • Soft Amber
    Soft Amber
  • Red Amber
    Red Amber
  • Green Amber
    Green Amber
  • Blue Amber
    Blue Amber
  • Golden Amber
    Golden Amber

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Nodule of Deep Amber, Fallen London
  2. ↑ Chunk of Golden Amber, Sunless Skies ""A fist-sized chunk of Rubbery secretions, shining the colour of hope.""
  3. ↑ Nodule of Deep Amber, Fallen London "Warmly glowing and, er, slightly warm."
  4. ↑ Nodule of Warm Amber, Fallen London "An eye-sized chunk of deep amber. Disturbingly warm to the touch. But oddly hard to put down."
  5. ↑ Nodule of Trembling Amber, Fallen London "It thrills with electric life. Something in it glows like the very most distant of suns."
  6. ↑ Nodule of Pulsating Amber, Fallen London "It looks like a reddish chunk of Deep Amber, but if you hold it in your hand, it beats like a little heart."
  7. ↑ Rubbery liaisons, Fallen London "This piece of amber has been very far away indeed; the colour is a little paler; the surface smoothed out like a river pebble. Rub your thumb gently over its side and it vibrates sympathetically – purrs, even."
  8. ↑ Give a gift (Starved Gifts 6), Fallen London "The Starved Man places a blue lump on the table with obvious reverence. "This contains an extensive record of his personal history," says the Starved Lithologer. "Every change he has made to himself, he has documented in the amber, along with his reasons for doing so. He hopes it will prove illuminating.""
  9. ↑ Nodule of Pulsating Amber, Fallen London "And maybe you can discover why your possession of it draws Rubbery Men to your lodgings. Does it mark you as a Rubbery sympathiser?"
  10. ↑ So Are They Shaped, Fallen London "Those from the Neath's floor have dealt with them before [...] but their motives have remained [...] either as murky as their amber vats or as mutable as their forms."
  11. ↑ Clear the city of amber, Fallen London "It falls from the Roof in great clots, seeping through shattered tiles and cairns of rubble. Great semi-solid flows of the stuff block streets and clog alleyways."
  12. ↑ Ask a Rubbery Man about amber from the Roof, Fallen London "He drops a nodule of amber within the hollow, and a bubbling [...] sound emerges from somewhere within his throat. [...] a passable charade of boiling. So amber is most useful when heated up? An enthusiastic and spittle-rich assent."
  13. ↑ Claim a consignment of seized amber, Fallen London
  14. ↑ Claim a consignment of seized amber, Fallen London "Amber tumbles through your fingers like jewelled rain. It is warm beneath your palms, and it sings of transformation. Deep reds, fecund greens, the blues of lost lightning."
  15. ↑ Something diplomatic, Fallen London "'Irrigo + Proto-City = Non-Memory. [...].' Three passphrase-slips accompany a chunk of oddly coloured amber. When you touch the amber, you hear yourself speak unexpected words."
  16. ↑ The Sky (10 FATE), Fallen London "Irrigo-drenched amber, secreted in the galleries of Flute Street, treated in the depths of the Nadir, surges from the nozzles beneath your craft."
  17. ↑ Fecund Amber Tiara, Fallen London "It's all glowy. It smells good. It gives everyone such lovely dreams. What could go wrong?"
  18. ↑ Nodule of Fecund Amber, Fallen London "It glows like sunlight through leaves. It smells like mushrooms in a storm. Leave it by a window-box, and half-fungoid bubbles will sprout like recurring dreams."
  19. ↑ Fluke-Core, Fallen London "Sentiments and histories coil, prisoned by irrigo as the irrigo is prisoned by amber. Mourn the mind that has passed."
  20. ↑ Why –, Fallen London "Violet light flares and, for a few moments, stutters. The Fluke fissures: it becomes an expanding wheel of dark fragments, gently drifting apart in perfect unity. A single gleaming nodule of violet amber washes up on the pool's edge."
  21. ↑ Extract regretful shapes from a Fluke-Core, Fallen London "In the curlicues of its crystalline structure, the fluke-core remembers the detritus of extinctions past. [...] Long, bent shells that trapped air until the oceans became too dense, and crushed them. Delicate wings turned to gossamer webs that filtered food out of the air, until the air grew too hot for fragile and flammable things."
  22. ↑ 'I bring the Bazaar.', Fallen London "[...] this throbbing chunk of altered amber could be the key to the Bazaar's defences. [...] You paid dearly to get this apocyanic lump into the spire, and more dearly still to get it out, once it had absorbed the imprint you needed."
  23. ↑ Cautious Bracer, Fallen London "A band of blood-red amber; an anchor to an unchanged self."
  24. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London
  25. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "It takes several days to see what's going on. The amber walls are moving. Slowly, the walls are flowing out from this cave. The older walls are cracked and mottled, but here the amber is clear and clean."
  26. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "Half of Flute Street is made of something like amber. And the Rubbery Men trade in the stuff."
  27. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "What's that? A chunk of wall, studded with stupas and half enveloped by amber. Is that from the Fourth City?"
  28. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "You pass a building on its side, entombed in the stuff. It was once a London library."
  29. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "Enough. You must know. You stride into the cave. Inside, there are... devices. Constructions of amber and coral and steel and glass. [...] you deduce their function. [...] are they making new shapes down here?"
  30. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Rubbery Men use amber to capture something... some Vital Essence of those who handle it. With these Essences, they grow, they change, they warp flesh into patterns that please them."
  31. ↑ Flute Street, Fallen London "The Flukes – the spindly things in the pools – sent the Rubbery Men up there to gather... something without an easy translation. Something that humans have and rocks don't. Bats have it, water doesn't, amber doesn't much."
  32. ↑ Listen to it (5 FATE), Fallen London "A rushing sound, like waves breaking gently on the shore, fills your head. [...] For a moment, your limbs drift bonelessly."
  33. ↑ For A Dream Of Innocence, Fallen London "Those [...] retreated to the deepest places, the greatest stores of Essence."
  34. ↑ Accept a memory of amalgamy, Fallen London "When I lay in the pools, limbs shining with amber [...]"
  35. ↑ The Shapeling Vats, Sunless Skies
  36. ↑ The Rubbery Market, Sunless Skies "They trade in amber, a naturally exuded substance of their kind, making trade more ceremonial than commercial."
  37. ↑ The Shapeling Vats, Sunless Skies "You carefully traverse a thin, treacherous path lined with endless deep, slime filled cavities and basins. All around, the Rubberies work at refining and reshaping amber into new forms and colours."
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