You, little rabbit, are not the Reckoning.

So the lore book exists! It's 14 whole pages long with no new lore no new images and only like covers two ports per area, four enemies and the different trains you can buy. With no information on those ofc.

(1) the jaguar is not a villain just because it's a carnivore! it's a symbol of power and beauty made even more poignant for indigenous people in the wake of the conquista!

(2) the lords of xibalba weren't seen as these great guys! in fact, the popol vuh, the mayan creation myth, features the heroes defeating the lords of death (xibalba) in a ball game!

(3) yes, there were ritual killings in the pre-conquista americas, but they were way rarer than colonial history would have you think. also like literally every culture has ritual killings, it doesn't make a culture inherently violent

(4) holy shit the idea of a deferential indigenous leader who turns out to want your blood is so pervasive in racist conquistador accounts (if you haven't read hernan cortes's journals, don't, they are disgusting) holy shit

tl;dr the es puts its own assumptions onto maya culture! like thinking jaguar=scary=bad, or existence of underworld gods=people worship those gods=people worship death=people are bloodthirsty, or colonial-era accounts of indigenous people=how it actually was back then. at best that's ethnocentric, at worst, it's white supremacist!!

The Third City is deeply changed by its descent to the neath and the despotism of its priest-kings that SHOULD NOT be taken as some deeper moral read about the maya as a culture, but more a reinforcement of the core anti-monarchic themes of the entire fallen london.

Kings are bad. Simple as.

There is no "good" royalty, just less bad. Any monarch that would trade a city for personal gain is, at their core not one of the less bad ones.

The Priest-Kings are not exempt from this -- they're the most emblematic.

(1) the jaguar is not a villain just because it's a carnivore! it's a symbol of power and beauty made even more poignant for indigenous people in the wake of the conquista!

(2) the lords of xibalba weren't seen as these great guys! in fact, the popol vuh, the mayan creation myth, features the heroes defeating the lords of death (xibalba) in a ball game!

(3) yes, there were ritual killings in the pre-conquista americas, but they were way rarer than colonial history would have you think. also like literally every culture has ritual killings, it doesn't make a culture inherently violent

(4) holy shit the idea of a deferential indigenous leader who turns out to want your blood is so pervasive in racist conquistador accounts (if you haven't read hernan cortes's journals, don't, they are disgusting) holy shit

tl;dr the es puts its own assumptions onto maya culture! like thinking jaguar=scary=bad, or existence of underworld gods=people worship those gods=people worship death=people are bloodthirsty, or colonial-era accounts of indigenous people=how it actually was back then. at best that's ethnocentric, at worst, it's white supremacist!!

The Third City is deeply changed by its descent to the neath and the despotism of its priest-kings that SHOULD NOT be taken as some deeper moral read about the maya as a culture, but more a reinforcement of the core anti-monarchic themes of the entire fallen london.

Kings are bad. Simple as.

There is no "good" royalty, just less bad. Any monarch that would trade a city for personal gain is, at their core not one of the less bad ones.

The Priest-Kings are not exempt from this -- they're the most emblematic.

(1) the jaguar is not a villain just because it's a carnivore! it's a symbol of power and beauty made even more poignant for indigenous people in the wake of the conquista!

(2) the lords of xibalba weren't seen as these great guys! in fact, the popol vuh, the mayan creation myth, features the heroes defeating the lords of death (xibalba) in a ball game!

(3) yes, there were ritual killings in the pre-conquista americas, but they were way rarer than colonial history would have you think. also like literally every culture has ritual killings, it doesn't make a culture inherently violent

(4) holy shit the idea of a deferential indigenous leader who turns out to want your blood is so pervasive in racist conquistador accounts (if you haven't read hernan cortes's journals, don't, they are disgusting) holy shit

tl;dr the es puts its own assumptions onto maya culture! like thinking jaguar=scary=bad, or existence of underworld gods=people worship those gods=people worship death=people are bloodthirsty, or colonial-era accounts of indigenous people=how it actually was back then. at best that's ethnocentric, at worst, it's white supremacist!!

The Third City is deeply changed by its descent to the neath and the despotism of its priest-kings that SHOULD NOT be taken as some deeper moral read about the maya as a culture, but more a reinforcement of the core anti-monarchic themes of the entire fallen london.

Kings are bad. Simple as.

There is no "good" royalty, just less bad. Any monarch that would trade a city for personal gain is, at their core not one of the less bad ones.

The Priest-Kings are not exempt from this -- they're the most emblematic.

 (— You had flown over the city several times before you formally approached them to broker a contract. You took on a disguise to learn their ways and study their culture so you could better offer them something they wanted.

 It had been your first time acquiring a city and perhaps you had been proud about it. You wanted to prove that you could do something as well as Wines, as well as Candles, despite not being bright like them.

 When you finally showed yourself to them, it was you they crowded around, not Wines. That was the first time you anyone but Candles had looked at you with such awe. You would become addicted to the worship. After all, it was something never given to you until now. The others always hoarded the attention of humans. You never thought you wanted it until then.

 Until then, Candles had been enough. Perhaps that’s because you had never tasted more. But now you had.

 You were a god to more than just the Third City. The change to the deity was recorded for all to see and it spread across the continent like wildfire. You were young and selfish and drunk on that.)

 They say: Camazotz will watch all sacrifices to the gods and judge them. If they are found worthy, he will carry the sacrifice to the gods himself.

 (— You had watched it all. You had wanted to store it in your collection but you couldn’t bring yourself to do it. You had tried to find some sort of sick pleasure in it. You couldn’t. The Priests’ work was sloppy, wrong. They had a god laid out and bleeding before them and they couldn’t even comprehend it to the extent they should.

 You don’t think about it anymore.

 But when they were finished wiping their mouths and licking their lips, you grabbed up the remains with bared teeth and took Candles back down to the darkness and deeper still. The least you could do was give it to a well.)

 They say: Camazotz brought light to the humans.

also like....reminds me that fl use to have "Connected: The Orient"

but i'll be honest like... they still have a lot to do. iirc the staff is almost all white people, which doesn't stop them from writing good rep but it clearly means they need to put in the extra effort. even recent-ish stuff like the khanate feels gross with how a nation just as (if not more) storied as london turns into a playground for the flpc to do great game stuff in for their personal benefit. the most you even see of what life there Really is like is the flavor text for the time of the day changing. mask of the rose also has its problems with assuming a christian and british perspective by default—i know they did a lot of research and it paid off but it still feels like it falls flat if the pc isn't allowed to personally engage with it. and of course there's the growing undercurrent of uncritical british exceptionalism (for example, the "uninhabited frontier" narrative of sunless skies. there's a gco option that went "we need to preserve london for the revolution because it's the tinderbox of history" which Yikes i guess none of the real world revolutions from the various colonised countries at the time matter?)

Here's my character lineup of the Bag a Legend NPCs! It's not my favourite writing-wise but it's the one closest to my heart.

Design notes + pics split into layers under the cut:

it was anna's airship. her wife adamantly refused to let her take credit.

"it was your airship. but those grad students did all the work finding the perfect place to wreck it."

several hours ago, at the airship docks, preparing to board, it comes up again. "alright," says anna, "THIS TIME I'm going to crash the airship MYSELF. I'll find a much better place for it too!"

"sure, honey," says emelia, trying to get emil to help zip up her coveralls.

now, staring at the enormous eye set to destroy london, all three are stunned into silence for a minute. their gun has failed. there is only one move left.

"that one," says anna, pointing. "i choose that one."

(five minutes later, all wake up on a boat passing down a dark river.

"i told you i'd find a better place to crash the airship," says anna.

"YOU SURE FUCKING DID," says emelia, laughing.

"GUYS! LONDON ISN'T DEAD!" emil yells from the prow. "ROW, ROW, ROW YOUR BOAT, LONDON ISN'T DEAD--")