#bebe rivera

As for their outfits, Basil's was of course based on the Victorian era (and honestly modern day too) trend of dressing children in sailor suits, and was based off this fashion plate in particular.

Bebe on the other hand I wanted to draw her with a Mesmeric Parasol, so I wanted her dress to match without being too flashy and competing with the parasol rather than complimenting it. This of course led to me giving her a teal and pink color scheme (which I've actually already done with her bedroom design), and I think it suits her really well.

As for how she's managing both the parasol and her wheelchair. I have a few options in mind.

She's having Poppy push her around so she can hold her parasol like a little lady.

She's making Basil hold the parasol over her when she moves bc she thinks its funny. Poppy probably tried to do this too since its lowkey his job, but Basil keeps insisting he can do it. He pretends not to notice why a rough and tumble boy is trying to be a gentleman.

Bebe probably just balanced the shade on the chair's back when she's moving. Simple and effective, though she probably has to deal with the handle poking her in the back or side.

A Crypsis Catastrophe

A bright young entomologist has arrived at the university with an exciting discovery! A cocoon, as large as a person! In more unfortunate news, the blasted thing hatched earlier than expected. Emery Ender requires your help in tracking down the creature before anyone gets hurt. or more importantly; before word gets out. And keep an eye on your pockets while watching the sunless sky. They say thieves have been prowling the streets.

This story features:

The University

Criminals

Starved Men

Unique options or text with:

Knowledge of the Arts

A False-Star of your Own

A Kitten-Sized Diamond, Liberated from the Mountain

Potential Rewards:

Lamplight Terror Wings, clothing providing +5 Persuasive, +1 Respectable, and +1 Monstrous Anatomy (Turn in The Well-Intentioned Thief)

The Well-Intentioned Thief, an affiliation providing +7 Shadowy, +5 Watchful, and +1 Shapeling Arts (Protect The Well-Intentioned Thief's identity)

Hell's Bells Chime

The Museum of Prelapsarian History has become home to a set of brass altar bells, and it has caused quite the conflict. The Devils are insistent that the item belongs to Hell, and that it must be brought to the Brass Embassy at once. The Bishop of Southwark is of course suspicious of the Devils' intentions, and is demanding that the bells be handed over to the Church instead. Gebrandt and her assistants would prefer the bells remain with them so they can be researched properly, but the Devils have sent an unfinished clay woman to intimidate them and the Church has sent a charming young deacon to try a more persuasive method. Perhaps you could be of assistance in some way?

This story features:

The Church

Devils

Clay Men

Parabola

Unique options or text with:

Your very own Infernal Contract

Mired in Clay

Seeking Mr Eaten's Name or The Seven-Fold Knock

Stain on Your Soul

Cross of Southwark

Set of Cosmogone Spectacles

A Crooked Cross

Potential Rewards:

The Saint's Bells, a weapon providing +5 Persuasive, 5+ Dangerous, +3 Watchful, and +3 Bizarre (Keep the bells for yourself)

The Devilish Clay Woman, a companion providing +5 Dangerous, 3+ Watchful, +3 Dreaded, and +1 Neathproofed (Give the bells to the Devils)

The Insatiable Ingenue, a companion providing 5+ Persuasive, +3 Dangerous, +3 Respectable (Give the bells to the Church)

The Silvering Sin Eater, a companion providing 5+ Persuasive, +3 Dangerous, +1 Glasswork, and reduces Scandal build up (Give the bells to the Church + Unique Option)

The Dose Makes the Medicine

A mysterious doctor has set up shop on Ladybones Road. He's clearly quite competent, and his patients have nothing but praise for him, but there are rumors of people who have disappeared after entering his doors and a strange medicine he only offers to certain patients. Besides, the beaked mask draws plenty of questions on its own. If you're hoping to learn more, step inside. The doctor will see you shortly.

This story features:

Snuffers

The Unterzee

Unique options or text with:

Snuffer's Face

Renown: The Docks 5

Sophia's

One Who Has Indulged in Unknown Pleasures

University Laboratory

Guaranteed Rewards:

Blood Red Laudanum, a curiosity item

Potential Rewards:

Zee-Shell Bracelet, an adornment providing +1 Inerrant and +1 Zeefaring (Keep Dr. Poppy's secret)

A Crypsis Catastrophe

This one is a fairly simple borderline monster of the week plot, and is even on the comedic side, but its HEAVY on the bug horror. To recap; an entomologist named Emery Ender, remarkably young with lots of money to spare, arrives at the university with a large cocoon. Unfortunately, it hatches earlier than calculated, and a giant moth is unleashed on London. At first, Emery brings you in to help deal with it quietly before the news even reaches the press, but this turns out to be more difficult and dangerous than expected. While the moth isn't actively killing people, it is feeding on the blood of corpses, which would be expected and even harmless on a smaller moth! Especially since there's no mate for it to lay eggs with. But in the Neath, people tend to come back from death, so the creature is doing a lot of long-term harm to people and even permanently killing some. Thus the papers dub it the Lamplight Terror, and to make matters worse; now Monster Hunters are after it!

The whole time, there's also a subplot about a string of robberies going on and every time you and Emery meet up to capture the moth she has more and more expensive methods that she's somehow paying for. This finally culminates in you actually running into the thief, and they turn out to be Emery, who has been selling their stolen treasures to fund their research and has been using shapeling arts to stay hidden. With the cat out of the bag, you and Emery use their criminal connections and shapeling arts to finally recapture the Lamplight Terror. Of course, now that the public is fully aware of the monster, they want it dead, but as head of the project Emery is insistent on keeping the moth alive and continuing his study. This is where you have the option to either out Emery's crimes, overriding their say and arresting them so the bug can be put down, or keeping their double life a secret and allowing them to take the moth unharmed. In the former case, you receive the Lamplight Terror's wings as a reward, and in the latter Emery essentially becomes a business partner, giving you an affiliation with their Well-Intentioned Thief persona to get ahead in the criminal world.

"Crypsis" is actually the term for when animals, plants, or bugs blend into their surroundings through methods like camouflage, mimicry, or even nocturnality. One of the most well-known examples is the underside of moth and butterfly wings, which tend to be colors like brown to blend in with wood and dirt, and some moths even use auditory crypsis to confuse predators like bats. Which is partially how something as big as the Lamplight Terror can avoid capture. In this case, it also alludes to how Emery has two identities that he maintains by altering his appearance.

Hell's Bells Chime

To not repeat myself too much from last time, brass altar bells are taken the museum. Devils want it so now the Church wants it too, and they send their own respective agents to convince the museum to give it to them. You get involved and meet these two women for yourself. Fae, the Devilish Clay Woman, who works for the Devils, and Sibyl, the Insatiable Ingenue, a deacon mentored by the Bishop of Southwark. You're able to meet with the two of them on several occasions, as both want your help convincing Gebrandt the bells belong to their respective authorities.

Fae oscillates between flirting with and threatening you, depending on which is working and how the clay men as a whole see you, and during your conversations with her it becomes apparent that she's been an outcast since day 1 due to her unusual appearance and nature as an unfinish clay person, and works for the Devils because they're among the few who accept her as she is, even if its for their own use. It also becomes apparent that she doesn't actually know why the Devils want the bells so much and is just following their lead. Sibyl on the other hand is a lot friendlier than one would expect of someone the Bishop of Southwark sent, and is even trying to convince Fae and the Devils to cooperate with the Church. But she's very naive and keeps getting distracted by sudden cravings. If you're currently Seeking Mr Eaten's Name or have the Seven-Fold Knock, you're able to recognize the signs that she's becoming a Seeker, and you have the choice to either get her to turn back while she's still in the early stages... Or encourage her to continue.

In the midst of the chaos, something takes the bells and escapes to Parabola, so you, Fae, and Sibyl must follow after it and retrieve the bells, as the Devils finally reveal why they wanted it so badly. The bells belonged to one of the former princes of Hell, who were overthrown by the Devils, and its sudden reemergence after all this time has them just as worried as the Church is about them having it. Before leaving for Parabola, one of Gebrandts' assistants quietly informs you that because of all the trouble the bells have caused, she's willing to let you keep them. After some time through the mirror, your ragtag group is able to recover the bells, but Sibyl and Fae have differing opinions on what to do with it, but not for the reasons you might think. Sibyl has been frightened after hearing why the Devils need the bells and believes it should be returned to them, while Fae has become frustrated with the Devils' secrecy and thinks the bells might actually be better off with the Church, or at least with anybody but the Devils. Ultimately, it is up to you to decide who takes them back to their respective factions.

If you keep the bells for yourself, Fae and Sibyl agree to bend the truth to stop their people from going after you, and aside from a suggestion that Gebrandt will want to meet with you at a later point, you end the exceptional story with a new weapon. If you choose to give the bells to the Devils, Fae decides that she needs a bit of a life outside her work and likes your company, becoming a companion. Similarly, if you choose to give the bells to the Church, Sibyl wants to explore her faith away from the ministry and wants to keep in touch with you. However, if you encouraged her to continue Seeking, this manifests differently, as she actually gets excommunicated due to her behavior escalating and everyone else catching on that she's seeking the name. She has now taken an interest in becoming a silverer and is hoping that you'll help her with going North in exchange for taking scandal meant for you. In this ending she becomes your companion not as The Insatiable Ingenue, but The Silvering Sin Eater.

"Hell's bells!" is a phrase used in both the UK and USA, used typically as an expression of anger or annoyance, with its earliest printed use being in 1840. It is sometimes given extensions, such as "Hell's bells and buckets of blood!" but there is no actual meaning to the phrase beyond a simple rhyming scheme, though this ES provides a fictional explanation for the phrase. It is also sometimes parodied to be Hell's Belles, which fits the central focus of two ladies with their connections to Hell.

The Dose Makes the Medicine

As mentioned in the original post, weird plague doctor opens up a doctor's office in Ladybone's Road, generally well received but some people have disappeared with their last known whereabouts being a visit there, and Dr. Poppy has a strange red medicine he only offers to certain patients. You have to get yourself wounded and then drop in to investigate, and once you're inside it becomes obvious that the bottle contains goaler's honey, and you quickly come to suspect that he's trafficking patients to the cage gardens. Taking a risk, you manage to convince him to give you the special medicine, and he obliges after some coy denial. It immediately becomes apparent that the red honey was covering up a FUCK ton of opium, that you've actually been poisoned, and you promptly pass out while experiencing the memories of someone who went through the exact same thing.

You then wake up in a basement with the good doctor about to unleash a maddened lamplighter bee into your head, but you're able to free yourself and in the struggle you knock off the doctor's mask, at which point it's revealed that he's actually a Snuffer. It's also around here that a misunderstanding gets cleared up. He's not working with the cage gardens, but rather he's luring red honey addicts for the purpose of finding someone. You see, his patient and unofficial adoptive daughter, a little girl named Bebe, was kidnapped, and one of the few things left at the crime scene was drops of red honey. So Dr. Poppy has been using and cultivating the drug to lure potential suspects to him in the hopes of finding out where Bebe was taken. And now knowing an innocent child is in danger, you decide to help track her down, and the search leads you two out to zee. Here my idea gets blurry, maybe Bebe was taken to the Isle of Cats and is part of the cage gardens there, maybe she was just taken somewhere else and one of the kidnappers happened to be a red honey user, either way though the two of you manage to rescue Bebe and return to Fallen London.

And now that the little girl is safe and rescued, you have the choice to either reveal Poppy is a Snuffer to the Department of Menace Eradication, since he still hurt a lot of uninvolved people in his search for Bebe, or if you want to leave the pair alone and let him be. If you turn him in, Poppy goes without a fight under the condition that Bebe is placed in good hands, and even gives you his mask since he won't be needing it much longer. Bebe is not happy with you for this. If you leave them be though, Bebe wheels up to you with a zee-shell bracelet she made on the boat as a thank you. Either way, you are given the last bottle of the red honey/laudanum mixture, and the exceptional story ends.

So as some of you might be aware, some might not- all of my PCs are based off pre-existing OCs I have with readjustments to fit into the world of Fallen London. I have yet to do a run for Nemesis, and won't make the account for it until later this year, but I've decided on the character I'm going to use. A plague doctor whose face and name are unknown to most everyone, who is seeking to gain vengeance for the murder of a little girl in his care. Importantly, he was not human when I originally made him.

This led me to getting the idea to make him a Snuffer, to explain why he's always wearing the plague mask and is sparse with personal details. He literally doesn't have a face under there. This would also add an interesting bit of stakes to his quest for revenge. He only has one shot. Snuffers don't come back from death like others in the Neath, so if he dies in the process, it's over.

However, this also presents my biggest problem; I would have to awkwardly write around any deaths I do experience as him (because I'm not going to just stop playing if I do die lol), whether by accident and misfortune or as a required part of Nemesis since that's not unheard for the ambitions. I would also have to ignore a lot of the text explicitly saying the player and their loved one are from the Surface, unless there was a reasonable way I could have had my character go up to the Surface.

So I ask the question; is it worth it? On the one hand, I really like this idea and find it interesting, both for how I'd play Nemesis and frankly- I already have two human PCs, I'd like to shake it up a bit and explore the other species that inhabit the Neath. On the other hand, it's a lot of awkward work arounds I have to do that might not be fully compatible with gameplay/this ambition and considering I'm still trying to figure out the lore a part of me is just a bit scared of overstepping. I already have to pester Tumblr with clay man questions for Fae every now and then. Perhaps there's even yet another important detail about them I've missed until now. (And I don't mean the fact that they rip off people's faces and wear them and eat candles and come from the Garden and some want to return there, I know that)

So first thing's first- Obviously I'm going to go for the ending where you revive the loved one. I genuinely hope nobody saw that I made my Nemesis guy's dead loved one a little girl in a wheelchair and thought I would keep her dead. I'm not saying that can't be done tactfully, but it's just not my style to do that in such a blatant manner.

As for why it’s something I want to talk about, that mainly comes down to a lot of my thought process for why Poppy chooses to revive Bebe rather than take his revenge. Nemesis players have debated the ethics of bringing someone back from the dead, especially when they turn out to not remember anything about their previous life. They play up a lot of this for drama, and I love every bit of it.

However, Poppy has a very simple reason for why he chooses this outcome and why he wouldn't choose differently if he had to do it again. Bebe may be his daughter in all but blood, but he is first and foremost a doctor. And she was his patient. As a doctor, he has oaths to save his patient's life regardless of circumstance so long as its even possible.

When Mr Cups tells Poppy that Bebe can be brought back, Poppy's goal immediately switches from "avenge patient's death" to "save patient's life." If he went through with killing Mr Cups, it would mean breaking his oath and practically killing Bebe himself.

And as for the whole amnesia thing, Poppy is able to rationalize that very well. Sometimes when someone goes through a life-saving surgery, they lose their memories. My own mother is actually an example of this, as after a surgery she had to go through she lost a lot of her memories and had to have the hospital staff explain how a phone worked to her. Even to this day she often struggles with memory and kinda switches between two modes of it. Sometimes remembering things that happened, sometimes not.

And of course, there is Bebe's perspective to consider in all this. But her being only six when she died is a bit of a strange blessing in disguise, morbid as that is to say, as it's a lot easier for her than most to completely start over. She still had a lot to learn about being a person and more tutoring to get through regardless, so as long as Poppy isn't particularly pushy about things there's not much of an old life to live up to. He might even be purposely vague with details so as to not trouble a literal child with her own murder. The main heartache I can think of at the moment is her not really having the emotional connection to Poppy to understand why she gave him that name in the first place.