The Department of Parks and Game

From The Fifth City Wiki

"It is not a large department, but it is a feared one. Perhaps because its Keepers are said to sustain London's last remaining trees on a starvation diet of imported sunlight – a perilous and forbidden commodity."[1]

The Department of Parks and Game is a public body dedicated to keeping the city's parkland alive.

Keepers of Trees[edit | edit source]

"London's last remaining trees are under the care of the Department of Parks and Game. And the Department vigorously denies the accusation that the trees are all dead, and that their corpses remain lifelike only due to a virulent fungal infestation that has entirely colonised them, spreading its spores through the now-rotten sap."[2]

A month after the Fall of London, the city's already-suffering trees all (or almost all) perished in a single night.[3] This occurred after the Bazaar drank away their memories of sunlight, leaving only husks behind.[4] In later years, new stock may have been imported from the Surface;[5] the Department of Parks and Game is known to maintain what it insists are London's last living trees with carefully rationed, illicit sunlight.[6] The Department also struck a bargain with the Summer Schoolmistress, in which she would help them cultivate greenery in London's parks and alleyways in return for steady shipments of supplies to her mansion.[7]

The Keepers of the Department are grim-faced professionals who smell faintly, and disquietingly, of fungus. Some are far more comfortable with weapons than one expects from an association of arborists.[8] No one is entirely certain what the "game" in Parks and Game refers to,[9] though the Department maintains a suspiciously abundant stock of gargantuan beast-remains for use as fertilizer.[10] Their ties with the Rubbery Men are likewise opaque; the Department possesses an improbably large supply of amber,[11][12] which the Keepers use to acclimate their charges to the Neath's unnatural climes.[13] Beyond their hoarded boxes of sunlight, the Keepers keep London's greenery alive, such as it is, through mycoheterotrophy, encouraging the trees to feed parasitically on fungi.[14] The result is that London's parks remain open, but filled mostly with dank, grey-green, half-living trees veined with trailing fungal growth.[15] In truth, there is more fungus than tree.[16][17]

The Department vigorously denies the accusation that the trees are all dead, and that their corpses remain lifelike only due to a virulent fungal infestation that has entirely colonised them, spreading its spores through the now-rotten sap.[18] This is undercut somewhat by the rumor that they like mushrooms a little too much,[19] as well as the troubling ease with which a branch disintegrates into dust when broken.[20] The Department is regarded with a healthy dose of fear, and rightly so: it guards its secrets fiercely, and has killed more than once to keep them buried.[21][16]

Trivia[edit | edit source]

For Fallen London's 10th anniversary, FBG unveiled a new in-game map and teased it on social media.[22] The preview image showed a section of London with conspicuously bright green trees, prompting questions about how such foliage could survive in a sunless cavern. In response, Chris Gardener added the Department of Parks and Game to the Sidebar Snippets to address the inconsistency, and later lampshaded the lore fix.[23]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Sidebar Snippets: The Department of Parks and Game, Fallen London
  2. ↑ Sidebar Snippets: Trees? So far underground?, Fallen London
  3. ↑ 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.'"
  4. ↑ The Summer Nursery, Fallen London "My birth was a process of subtraction. All that remembered the Sun was wrung from my parent like water from a sponge, to satisfy his unrequited pining."
  5. ↑ Evergreens in the Neath, Fallen London "The Department of Parks and Game have transplanted a live Christmas tree to the the Fifth City."
  6. ↑ Sidebar Snippets: The Department of Parks and Game, Fallen London "It is not a large department, but it is a feared one. Perhaps because its Keepers are said to sustain London's last remaining trees on a starvation diet of imported sunlight – a perilous and forbidden commodity."
  7. ↑ The Summer Nursery, Fallen London ""Are you aware of the Department of Parks and Game? I have an arrangement with them." She gestures to the back wall, in the direction of her shadowed greenhouse. "I have a certain facility for botany. In exchange for helping my cousins to grow in your city, they provide me with supplies, and discourage visitors from London.""
  8. ↑ Push your way through, Fallen London "The Department's gamekeepers are stony-faced and smell oddly fungal. Several of them hold backhoes in a way more befitting a weapon than a horticultural tool, but they move aside to let you pass."
  9. ↑ Eye an enormous pile of bones, Fallen London "No one seems to be quite certain to what the 'game' in the Department of Parks and Game refers."
  10. ↑ Eye an enormous pile of bones, Fallen London "This would have made good fertiliser. Bones decay so much slower than muscle or sinew. Or blubber. But I suppose we can spare it. [...] There are many, many more where that creature came from."
  11. ↑ Ask for some Pulsating Amber, Fallen London "The Department's Keepers appear to possess great quantities of the substance. Do they do business with the Rubbery Men?"
  12. ↑ Ask for some Pulsating Amber, Fallen London ""A terrible shame, their plight." The Arborist unwraps a handkerchief to reveal a chunk of ruby-red amber, beating like a heart. "Can you imagine what they might achieve, if they were free to act and feel as they should?""
  13. ↑ Treat the bark with amber, Fallen London "A liberal coating – according to the Arborist – will help the tree to acclimate to the environment of the Neath."
  14. ↑ Claim some Collated Research, Fallen London ""Ah, are you interested in chthonic botany?" The Arborist, it transpires, has authored a number of papers, published with minimal peer review in various obscure and smudgy periodicals. Much of her research concerns a process she has dubbed 'mycoheterotrophy', and whether it might be used to sustain large-scale woodland."
  15. ↑ An Unwise Ambush, Fallen London "You walk in one of the dank green-grey parks of Fallen London. Mushrooms release clouds of spores underfoot. Whitish fungal fronds trail from half-dead trees. Suddenly, your walk is enlivened by footpads!"
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Ask for a pair of dread secrets, Fallen London "Many of London's trees are not real trees, [...] And some of London's real trees roam about. Have you met the daughter of London's oldest yew? [...] Keepers have been killed for divulging less."
  17. ↑ Relax and enjoy, Fallen London "Sometimes, even the dank and mushroomed parks of Fallen London are peaceful. Today is such a day. You sit on a park bench and admire the passers-by in their weird subterranean fashions; […] the hundred livid colours of fungus in perpetual autumn."
  18. ↑ Sidebar Snippets: Trees? So far underground?, Fallen London "London's last remaining trees are under the care of the Department of Parks and Game. And the Department vigorously denies the accusation that the trees are all dead, and that their corpses remain lifelike only due to a virulent fungal infestation that has entirely colonised them, spreading its spores through the now-rotten sap."
  19. ↑ Sidebar Snippets: Trees? So far underground?, Fallen London "A few trees survive in the gloom of London, maintained at great expense by Her Majesty's Department of Parks and Game. It is not a celebrated or prestigious department, being too fond (according to the Home Office) of mushrooms. Why, then, are its keepers so feared?"
  20. ↑ Take a cutting of an overhanging tree, Fallen London "After a few seconds […] It has already deteriorated significantly […] Soon enough, all that is left is a single heavy fruit, poisonous-looking and ripe. The tree's seed? Or a virulent parasite?"
  21. ↑ Ask for a pair of dread secrets, Fallen London "The Department's Keepers are regarded with a healthy dose of dread. Extract your fair share of awful truth as payment."
  22. ↑ Failbetter Games, Twitter "Something our Art Director Paul has been working on for Fallen London's 10th birthday..."
  23. ↑ Chris Gardiner, Twitter "People: We've found a loophole somewhere in ten years of impossibly complicated fictional lore! Me: [Invents some nonsensical justification to plaster over it.]"
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