Tales From The Sunless Sea: The Clayman Chronicles

First Zee-Captain --- Previous Zee-Captain --- Next Zee-Captain

The clayman had a successful run at being a captain, much longer than many of his predecessors. This was mostly owing to its agelessness and cautiousness. With most of the crew being immune to things such as religion, illness, and curiosity, it was an ideal situation for the ocean. They were also cautious, as most civilised places would not take too kindly to a ship of sentient claymen, so they covered themselves in shadow and spent little time roaming the cities.

Due to the difficulty mingling with city-folk, the claymen dealt mostly in some of the forbidden trading - finding themselves doing runs for underground organisations in London, dealing with the Khantae, and even finding themselves spending great lengths of time working with those on the Isle of Cats. Before they did all this, however, they did need to recruit more people to help run such a large cruiser. The people who joined were... odd. It takes a certain kind of individual to join a crew of claymen, thus a certain kind of individual they were.

To carry on to more specifics, the clayment sought improvements to their life at zee. As they had no intention of retiring to London - improving their state at zee was significantly beneficial to them. So they sought out legends and tales of special ship parts, and engines. They needed to keep their money, up of course, so they traded in coffee beans and wine as well as gaining the trust of some of the more disreputable trade markets. They gained trade with the Khan himself, and sought out some of the harder to find markets in the Iron Republic. The admiral of London also cared not for who brought information and shipments of red honey to him, so this was useful for income.

It seemed all set and useful, with these trade routes, but then pieces started to fit together. The plan was to recruit a co-captain who was human, set up a trustworthy set of officers and hunt down the Fulgent Impeller - an engine that can efficiently power the most grand of vessels. The clayman also heard of some powerful weapons he might seek out in due time, as if he had any aspiration, it was either to find peace or to hunt the most dangerous of zee-creatures. Whichever came first.

With these careful goals, trade routes were planned and success came in great swathes. His crewmates were helpful, also - bringing in all kind of outsider information as well as some of the stories and information gathered from those who had come before.

The shadow clayman, whilst hunting information of the Fulgent Impeller, happened upon an island named 'Aestival', which had the rarest of resources blasting down upon it. Sunlight. The clayman was said to have stood on that island in awe, overstaying his welcome at the peril of his human crewmates.

Though he never spoke of it, there are some who claim that finding the little island changed the clayman. As if he was reinvigorated. Perhaps, he had just found a new goal in life. Whilst visiting the Grand Geode, there was one who claimed to have overheard the clayman talking about a way of making the island habitable. There also happens to be a book upon the shelves of his quarters that is entitled 'Aestival' - though none have ever seen inside of it.

All this being said, the one thing that is known for sure is that it gave the captain an idea. An idea to go to the surface. Which he did. Many of his human crewmates never made it back alive, whether dying from the harsh sunlight (as direct sun is fatal to us Neath Dwellers), or those who could withstand it were said to have stayed. Nevertheless, it did not affect those clay-crew on board. So with plenty of fuel and supplies, they sought out the surface and traded in Naples to make some money. Few stories have ever reached back to us about Naples. Would that I could say more about the place.

The captain, upon his return was particularly sneaky, however, as it is said, that secretly even to some of his crew, he had filled up a few suntrap boxes of sunlight for some underground dealings in London. This was the financial boost that was necessary to set the Clayman on his path. After some long discussions with engineers, he finally found a man who thought he may be capable of creating the Fulgent Impeller - and thus outlines the resources he would need.

Next on the agenda, then, was to ransom a particular prisoner out of the prison on the lilypads of Wisdom - and it would not be easy...

To Be Continued...
---Howard Sterling, Chronicler of the Fallen London University

To The Moon - Memories vs Happiness

Personally, I adore the game To The Moon. If you have not played it, I shall not be spoiling anything that happens in the story, only the main premise of what it is about, so worry not. In a long and convoluted sentence, the idea is:

To the Moon is an interactive novel-style game that focuses on two workers on one of their jobs of entering the memories of people on their death-bed, with the purpose of altering what they believe to be the course of their life, in order for them to die contently.

With that in mind, the main story follows the pair inside the memories of one man who wants to go To The Moon. In order to do that they go back through his memories in order to find a place to put him on the path of becoming an astronaut and uncover a particularly interesting and emotional life in the process.

I shall not mention any more, as I recommend the experience thoroughly. However I would like to focus on a key point that is mentioned in passing, and what one of the bonus episodes, not included in the main game, touches upon: the ethical factor. A company such as the one in To The Moon is one that if it were real, people would have a lot of problem with. The main job of the company is to enter people’s dreams before they die to alter their memories. Of course, your memories are particularly important to your character and who you are. So some people would find this idea unnatural and therefore upsetting.

        In the bonus episode, we see that outside of the building where the character work there are a whole bunch of protesters. So the question is: is it really so bad?

        On the one hand, of course living naturally is really important and one should never underestimate the importance of their story they created while alive. On the other, surely people have the right to die happy, as if even for a fleeting moment they could believe they were amazingly successful and be content with that, that ought not really be a problem.

        One way we can reason the value of each side would be under the belief of an afterlife. It would appear that is one believes death is final, then allowing them to die happy doesn't really have any major problems. However, if these memories of your life persist into the beyond, then perhaps that is a bit more an issue. However, we have no way of knowing if there is an afterlife, so it's not a point I will push.

        One thought experiment we can use is that of the experience machine by Robert Nozick in 1974. Nozick claimed that the increase of pleasure alone isn't the only reason we do things: even if most of the things we do are things that result in increased pleasure. What he hypothesised is that if we could just plug ourselves into a machine for the rest of our life and only have positive experiences, then we would not want that. We would not have the things that come with the positive experience, just live a pleasurable life indistinguishable from the life outside of the machine.

         The idea here is would we really prefer a life of heightened pleasure if the pleasure wasn't natural, or real, or full of negative experiences, too? Perhaps it seems most people would prefer the "whips and scorns of time" (Shakespeare quotes for the win!) as there is added value to the hard work and reality of the pleasure we experience.

         Is this thought experiment the same, however? As rather than genuinely feeling those fake pleasurable experiences we have opted into, we are just choosing to, on our deathbed, have believed we lived a better life than we did. That in itself is only one pleasure filled with inaccurate memories of success. So if we change the experiment to briefly only having one pleasurable experience at the cost of your memories - maybe more people would be willing to opt in for that.

        It seems if we had the choice to gain a pleasurable experience at the cost of nothing, we likely would all opt in for it. So what cost is too much a cost for that pleasure? These are the kinds of thoughts that play on your mind off the back of the story To The Moon. I want not to ramble on too much about this topic, but I figured it was interesting food for thought. Would you opt in for the treatment of having your memories changed on your deathbed, or do you treasure your real life events too much?

        Do let me know, I'm always up for a discussion. I would also be happy to return to covering this game again if people are interested - I think there's a lot of great stuff going on in this story.