So just a question anyone ever heard of Fallen London, Sunless sea or Sunless Skies?
They have some of the best damn writing in a Lovecraft horror style probably ever.
I played Fallen London for a while. Did just about everything you could while being a free to play player. It's a good setting.
I'd LOVE to see some fallen London or Sunless Seas TV series.
Def could work amazingly with there being a set of characters, each focused on the different stats with one focused on the Zea and foreign shores and another focused around exploring the lore....
The Scorned Socialite
The Irritable Investigator
The Harried Hunter
The Tricksome Thief
The Zeesworn Zailor
The Absent Academic
Each focused on exploring different aspects of fallen London and the sunless seas.
The best part of the entire thing is Fallen London is a love story. Every tale seen or sought after.... It's all about love of various sorts and all the horror and wonder that brings.
If we do it animated it could definitely become something TRULY special as we can showcase things special effects budgets cannot do.
Edit: Give me a second to write up backgrounds for each
Edit 2: Here we go. The first one. The Scorned Socialite
The Scorned Socialite: A mysterious woman who wears a mask and hides under the false title of "The Masked Madame". In truth she lived out the fallen London equivalent of a Cinderella tale. Her father has given his soul to the devil's to promise to look after her should she ask for it and had fallen comatose not long after due to missing his soul.
In his absence her stepmother took over the family affairs using his state as an excuse to take full reigns over this holdings and promote her two natural born daughters seeking matches with higher nobility.
The Scorned Socialite, eventually, spoke aloud the words in ear shot of a devil "If only someone would help me to live like they do, even if for a bit" and from there the devils moved to keep their pact.
They remade her, shaped her using their resources and abilities making her lovely to behold and stunning to speak with and arranged a ball in which the most suitable of suitors were invited. For a single night she lived as she imagined her step siblings did and a man of high birth declared his love for her.... But like Cinderella once the clock rang it all vanished.
She sought out the man who has proclaimed his love for her only to find he was already wed... And thus she went from The Forgotten Sister to the Scorned Socialite and she decided never again to let her heart yearn for that which she could never claim for herself.... Unknowing that the man she had met at the ball was not the same man she had found but a man with a similar pact benefitting him.... The devils fulfilling the wish to live a day as his employer.... And he never forgot her.
Thus the story for her is a game of social politics and unfounded spite all the while she crosses paths with the servant who she had met and they had mutually fallen for.... Yet he is unable to betray the ideal he holds for the woman he met and she unable to put aside her hurt to see the truth of things.... Yet all the while it hints that perhaps that could change....
She serves as a solid lense at the higher ups, the games of rumor and politics of the city
Edit 3: The Irritable Investigator
The investigator has been around for a while. Having ended up in fallen London chasing a lead he found when he worked in New York. A lead about his missing brother who has left new York on an expedition in search of new discoveries... And never returned.
7 years later, one expulsion from his career as an investigator for the police due to refusing to drop a case, and a lot of alcohol he gets a postcard one day on his desk, having appeared in the space between blinks.
On one side it showed London, the city that vanished overnight, the tower of Big Ben clearly on it. "Greetings from London" is said on that side of the slightly damp post card.
On the back though, that was the real meat.... A message from his brother, telling him he needs help. That he has stumbled into something as grand as it is terrifying. A place of impossibilities, where dreams are distilled into commodities to be sold, where souls are but products to trade with crimson eyed men, men of clay working to fulfill tasks and behest of their creators.... And a darkness pervading it all. He asks for his brother's help, begs for it, that in this place he is in danger, even directing him to transportation to the fallen city.... Namely that of a strange, rusted bronze coin with the letter Z on it.
The Irritable Investigator looks at his dingy apartment, the bottles of cheap booze that sit, the dishes in the sink and then to the portrait of him and his brother as children and makes his choice.... He always looked after his brother and seeing he was alive and in trouble.... Well there was hardly anything keeping him here.
From there he seeks out the docks at the specified hour and tosses in the coin into the water and asks for passage in the dark docks and a fog rolls in and from it a faint light is seen.... And a fog horn sounds.
The love of a brother, of family, can move many a man to greatness.... Or inspire the greatest tragedies of all.
He would serve as a primary look at fallen London from an outsider's pov as well as a solid primary main character
Edit 4: The Harried Hunter
The Hunter had once been known as the Courageous Huntsman. He, who has hunted all the beasts of the world from the Americas to the dark continent you who had trophies from them all.... You who had heard of hunts beyond the world of the mundane and found greater challenges below in the world below..... And then you found.... The Beast of Beasts. And you ran even though you knew with horrified intensity that it had your scent.
From that moment you became prey. You became the Harried Hunter. You fled back to London, seeking solace in its streets but the beast has followed you here and all you can do is prepare.
You had once loved the sport, the chase, the thrill of the hunt. But now you have seen what it is to be the rabbit chased before the hounds... And it sickens you.
Your only solace was once the fact that the beast would hunt you alone. You alone were it's prey.... And then it began hunting the streets of London, the streets of the city you have come to call home and, dare you say, love.... And you realized that you had done naught but lead your hunter to your den... And it is now your responsibility to find and destroy this terrible foe... Thus begins your work to regain that which you had lost or pawned in your desperation to hide, to regain your gear and your edge and gather a hunting party to put down this beast once and for all.... To rise from being prey to becoming a huntsman once more.
He will serve mainly as a look at Fallen London itself from the citizen pov. Someone who loves the city and is willing to protect it to the last.
Edit 5: The Tricksome Thief
Fallen London ain't a place for kids with no folks to look after them. Nah, that's why those who grew up like that tend to get real good and getting into places where they don't belong and snatchin' things that ain't entirely theirs.
The ones who get good at it make it. Those who don't.... Well, ya might find one of them wanderin all soulless of they're lucky.
The streets of London ain't kind to your sort so you grew up quick and learned to look after yourself first.
So it was that the Tricksome Thief got his title for his cunning plans to keep himself out of trouble and his unfortunate sponsors guessing.... Of course luck eventually runs out.
Caught by the thief taker he:s set to lose a hand when they're stopped by a young lady of the upper ranks who takes him into her employment.... The thief is shocked by this and makes plans to rob her and her family blind but finds..... They treat him well despite his origins and the thief finds himself hesitating.... Then he hears of a mysterious figure, seeking the ruin of the ones who had taken him in.... The Scorned Socialite wants ruin to fall on the family so, recruiting the Dutiful Steward, his mentor in the family's employ, works to fight the forces from the shadows using his own experience in them, working the criminal element.... All for the sake of the ones who have him a chance....
This character will serve to give us a solid look into the underworld of fallen London as well as help tie together some of the plot lines
Edit 6: The Zeesworn Zailor
The Zailor had been but a boy when London was stolen by the bats. A boy driven to explore and see more.... When London fell the world fascinated him but nothing more so than the zee. The great underground ocean called to him in ways he could never explain and, as a boy, he has joined a s cabin boy and never turned back....
Since then he has been all over the ever shifting zee and seen much in terms of horrors and wonders and, to this day, answers the calls of those on the surface who know how to call him and the fees to pay.
His takes usually revolve around him in a port city telling a tale of the zee where it shows a flashback of the events of the young Zailor as he explored the world. The terrors and wonders of far off lands and the depths of the zee.
Overall think Eldritch, more grim one piece but less pirate king and more "to see every shore"
He will serve as a way to show off more of the world but will likely be less than frequent focus on the show
Edit 7: And the last of them.... The Absent Academic
The Absent Academic had always sought to explore the oddities of the world. The fantastical. The fringe. Few believed or supported him besides his elder brother. His brother who helped put him through school once their parents passed, who supported him even when he wanted to travel to further his research.... His brother who he could never return to due to his own damned curiosity.
On an expedition investigating the place where London once sat he found something.... Strange in one of the caves..... A journal of a man who had found a way back to the surface from fallen London, which told the tale of what truly happened to the city and many others dating back to perhaps Atlantis itself, and how he finally found a path to the surface.... The final words stating how much he longs to feel the sun on his skin again....
The Academic chose to investigate, heading deeper into the caves and finding them leading deeper and deeper underground.... The Academic soon lost track of time, not even feeling hunger or thirst as he descended deeper, curiosity driving him to follow this strange path until he passed over a ridge.... And saw the lights of London.
For a short time he had been a minor celebrity, a man who had found a way down without taking the Zee passage.... But soon enough such renown faded and by the time it occurred to him that perhaps he should return it was too late.
Daylight from the surface had been snuggled to fallen London and the effects of it upon those who have spent too long below were discovered.... The moment sunlight touched them they would turn to dust, proof that those who remain too long are condemned to the earth's embrace.
The Academic refuses to give up and begins his research to find a way to get home and, for many years, he works.... Eventually he has a break through but finds that those who had invested in his work wanted him removed from the picture now that he is useless so they could monopolize his invention so he takes his notes and hides, sending a postcard to his brother and leaving a trail for him to follow and slowly inform him about the truth and dangers of this world he has drawn them into.
He will mainly be seen in flashbacks and sort of journal entry scenes as the investigator digs deeper into things before joining his brother at the end of the first or second season only to find those after him had followed his brother....
Not sure what to do after that but overall it does make for a compelling series I think
