Phosphorescent Scarabs

From The Fifth City Wiki

"Cheap but lamentably mobile substitute for candles. Evidence of Londoners' inordinate fondness for beetles."[1]

Phosphorescent Scarabs are glowing beetles that are used as light sources throughout Fallen London,[2] if one can stand the sound of their chittering.[3] They're also used to power the lights in the various buoys scattered throughout the Unterzee, bobbing alone through the darkness.[4]

The light of Phosphorescent Scarabs is not derived from bioluminescence, however; these beetles actually draw their light from the small pieces of Parabola that lie within them.[5] Even after death, they continue to emit light for two hours, gradually intensifying before abruptly extinguishing.[6]

References[edit | edit source]

  1. ↑ Phosphorescent Scarab, Fallen London
  2. ↑ Phosphorescent Scarab, Fallen London "Cheap but lamentably mobile substitute for candles."
  3. ↑ Enough! Burn them!, Fallen London "No more chittering! No more scuttling! Burn them! Burn every last one!"
  4. ↑ The utter loneliness of the light-buoy, Fallen London "Observe the zee-mark buoy that indicates the channel's edge. [...] And consider the lives of the phosphorescent beetle-colonies that serve to light them. They live and die as inhabitants of sovereign nations. Do they conduct wars of territorial aggression, these buoy-beetles?"
  5. ↑ Enough! Burn them!, Fallen London "The smoke is a window, […] a peephole. You can see something. A verdant light seeping through into the parlour. Perhaps you knew this would happen. Perhaps you knew that each scarab holds a shard of that world, the world on other side of the mirror."
  6. ↑ The Frequently Deceased, Fallen London "The scarab ends up pinned inside a glass box, but not before the children have some good satisfying screams. It continues to phosphoresce for two hours after death. At the end it grows very bright, almost painful to look at, then winks out like a blotted star."
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