"There are some things we were not meant to know, they say. But you wouldn't be down here if you took that seriously."
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"The fluke is a rolling landscape of star-travelled geography. You have – perhaps unwittingly – begged its indulgence. And now you are here."[1]
The Pentamerous Bride is an extremely powerful Fluke, and the partner of the Fathomking.
"'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.'"[2]
The Bride is an enormous and nigh-incomprehensible being that dwells at the bottom of the zee near Mutton Island.[3] She is made up of five radial segments;[4] her eye alone is the size of a zubmarine,[5] and her body is compared to a cathedral.[4]
As a creature of Axile, the Bride cannot feel love, experiencing it as an absence and an ache.[6] The Fathomking, however, loves her fiercely in return,[7] and established the Fruits of the Zee Festival and all its strange traditions to bring her joy.[8] The Bride is the source of the majority of the Fathomking's power.[8]
According to the Fathomking, his Bride likes technology[9] and dislikes sorrow-spiders.[10][11] 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.[12]
Also according to the Fathomking, Mt Nomad is his and the Bride's niece.[13] In addition to the fact that Stone is the Bride's sister,[14] the Thief-of-Faces is a child of the Flukes,[15] making Mt Nomad also the couple's grandniece.
↑ 4.04.1Beg audience with this ancient power, Fallen London"The patterns of spines around its cyclopean eye repeat in radial segments. Spines shift, and that shift is echoed fivefold around its cathedral body. The eye rolls. The spines move. Your little flame of devotion is beheld wholly and utterly, and five barbed tips brush your skin—"
↑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.
↑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."
↑ 8.08.1Accept 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.""
↑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. "
↑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.""
↑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."
↑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...""
