Radical notions about “the Natural Environment” are not given much thought in The Empire and rightly so. Indeed, those who profess “Misgivings with respect to the effects of Unbridled Industry and So-Called Progress in our Nation” are dismissed as debased spiritualists that can be assumed to gather in Laudanum Dens to associate with Poets who fill their heads with rambling apocalyptic screeds.
When all is quiet, the Rubbish Beetles scurry from their burrows and perform the duties Nature has seen fit to assign to them.
Continuing forthwith: All et up from that tin of Doctor E. Sanin’s Patent Tinned Meat* Slurry Product? Just toss it aside with nary a care. Divested the shipping crate of its contents of finely enameled bric-a-brac (including a set of commemorative plates featuring portraits of our fine Prime Minister)? Toss it on the heap with the rest of the rubbish. The world provides its obviously limitless bounty to us to be used, dear reader!
Ms. Tortoise (centre bottom) is unimpressed by progress on the new Autopneumatic Lumborium while Edwina Cogwright (centre left) is confused by the floating mechanical eye looking down on her.
In darker news, rumours surrounding the matter of shadows appearing, as Mr. Zedekiah Swinglever’s letter to the Empire Times put it, “most vexingly angular and wrongly geometried” is in perfectly capable hands. It is had on good Authority that Her Majesty’s Ministry for Investigation into Affairs of the Unnatural & Occult has one Mr. Nicholas Vining – an expert in theories & applications of matters pertaining to Luminous Aether – consulting in the investigation into what is clearly a Cultist conspiracy.
We are assured that the issue will be resolved before the week is out and that any cultist rioters, labourist agitators, or suspected Republique Mechanique spies will be shot. Cog save the Queen!
Ooh, is that a corpse flower I see in the first picture? 😀
Gotta love the rafflesia. 🙂
This post rocks.
Yeah, rafflesias are great.
For as long as we don’t have to indulge in their scent, at any rate.
This game just gets prettier and prettier…even if it is rubbish.
Also, thank you, David, for a month of wonderful blogging. I’ve been enjoying it immensely!
The art assets are absolutely gorgeous. The art team is certainly pulling their weight here. I would say that you guys should treat yourselves to a round, but then some little voice in my head suggests that this is gaslamp and therefore much of the art is drawn with people being a little bit tipsy while they draw!
Man we want o see more animations. Like a 30 second Youtube video of citizens going around and working/building a building. and punching each other in the face while poets are reciting in the background!
Motion is seconded!
I just cannot wait for this game! This should be taken as a threat should the game never be released.
Funny thing, we actually kinda suck at video in the Gaslamp office, which is why we only post it super rarely.
We’ll figure it out when we kick our promotion efforts up a notch though, so don’t worry.
Nice variety in vegetation in both pictures. I especially like the bush below Edwina Cogwright.
If your settlement happened to be in some sort of supernaturally possessed meadow, would it become Angry at the piles of refuse left lying around?
You’d have to ask the meadow how it feels about rubbish, honestly.
Love the tags, as usual. Might be interested in buying the novella ;D
Given the people writing it & what the game’s about, I’m guessing it’ll be another Abridged Necrotelecomnicon…
Does the world ACTUALLY have limitless bounties to be exploited (at the cost of sanity?) A real physically sustainable cornucopia (at the cost of sanity) could be quite interesting. Especially since the cornucopia may come with wastes that make the surroundings more insane.
Even if the bounties of the Earth ARE limitless, I’d think one look at the mouths of the rivers (you know, the “beloved scarlet effluvia”?) would suggest that there IS such a thing as using the bounty in the wrong manner. What does the Empire have to lose from being cautious? (Oh, right–getting overtaken in something by the Republique Mechanique, as well as, if in-game, this world’s analogs to Russia, Portugal, the United States, the Papal States, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Ottoman Empire, and/or China. But even so, unless it’s absolutely certain getting overtaken can ONLY mean getting thumped in a conquering invasion within five years of being overtaken, I don’t get what the problem is.)
Wait…”debased spiritualists”? So what, to the Empire would a NOT-debased spiritualist look like? They don’t think EVERYTHING in the spiritual realm is allied with the Mouldless, do they?
(Note: “Mouldless” is my pet term for the Eldritch Abominations in this world, as I expect that’s how the Empire sees them. Horrors precisely because they never allowed themselves to be put into a mould and hardened into a single eternal shape.)
And the Empire writers need to make up their minds. Is nature an ally (“endless bounty”) or an enemy (the source of the “savage mountains” that must be levelled)?
I’d wager to say nature is ‘both’.
vehemently disagree… the appropriate mindset for the imperial class is precisely one that is riddled with contradiction
Put Opium in the game. Like a super laudnum. Or Heroinium, by Dayer Inc.!
The screenshot I was setting up with the lovely poppies actually got cut. But, well — there are lovely poppies. That’s what you meant, right? Right, good.
HA! That’s awesome, and yes kinda… But as Heroin was once an OTC cough remedy and a cure for morphine/Laudanum addiction in the late 1800-early 1900s(though it was release officially in the 1910s), a play on it saying something like Deroin ( IDK your the designers) from Dayer, (Bayer, who was the company selling it) would be funny, clever and a nod toward our backwards view in America with the whole drug/pharmaceutical joke that I wont get into.
oh and btw you guys are brilliant. I love Dredmor and cannot WAIT for CE; and I don’t even really play the genre!!!!! Maybe I will get a Gaslamp tattoo… but I need the cash to buy CE.