The Great Game

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## The Great Game

Choose a side.

Or another. Art from FL.

### Notable Members

The Tipsy Spy
The Cheesemonger
The Clathermonts

*"The Great Game is played between the Bazaar's Masters, the surface cities, and other powers. Spies and assassins are their pawns."*

**The Great Game** is the main network of spies everywhere, even on the Surface. It's often likened to a game of chess, especially because every spy literally makes moves.

## A Stakeout!

As expected of a city of secrets and intrigue, Fallen London's spy network is infamously complex and multi-threaded. Spies often hide in plain sight, though their disguises and reputations often speak for themselves.

Players of varying ranks are sometimes given titles corresponding chess pieces. The minor spies are called pawns, and the most powerful ones are called **Queens**. The Great Game has its own unique subculture; for example, notable operatives will sometimes receive tattoos from the Clathermonts. Furthermore, when the Game needs someone off the board, it will ensure that they'll be gone for *a long time*; the Game has some of the most brutal execution methods seen in London (of course, said violence takes place in secret). These can range from pits full of sorrow-spiders to being drowned by former comrades. The Game's primary base of operations of is Wilmot's End.

Spies tend to pray to **St. Joshua**, their patron saint. The most experienced spies under his service have shrines to him that are wrapped in irrigo, so they forget their secret rites after learning and performing them every time. These people are called **Midnighters**.

We know from the spies from which nations are still at least somewhat intact on the Surface: Germany (or at least Prussia), France, Italy, Russia, and perhaps a diminished remnant of the British Empire. Austria-Hungary also still participates in the Great Game, and much clandestine activity happens in the city of Vienna, on the Surface.

## Notable Players

It can be hard to find noteworthy individuals in the Great Game, by virtue of their jobs. However, **the Tipsy Spy** is more than happy to converse with any Londoner who can bring her good wine and company.

### The Cheesemonger

*"'I want someone escorted to my shop. ... An account needs to be settled. Kill him if he won't come along.'"*

**The Cheesemonger** is an important player in the Great Game.

The Cheesemonger's real name is **Alice**. She prevented Russian and French agents from killing a Master of the Bazaar, but at the price of a good portion of her family (who were also in the business). She is now a fading star, and she's worried someone might murder her soon.

She has a daughter, **Catherine**, and a sister, for whom a servant at the Shuttered Palace had some affection.

### The Clathermonts

*"Letters in and out of the city are routinely read. But one does not often intimately search a gentleman, and never a lady. So, the rumour has it, Clathermont and his three glum-faced tattooists - triplets, who some say are his daughters - although some hint at a more intimate relationship - hm - where was I? Ah yes. The rumour has it, spies come to Clathermont's to have messages tattooed in less public areas of their skin. This has, of course, been responsible for a scandalous vogue for secret tattoos."*

**Mr. Clathermont** and his tattoo parlor are located in the vicinity of Ladybones Road.

Residents of London may get any number of small Great Game-related tattoos at Mr. Clathermont's parlor, provided one has enough connections to the Great Game to find him.

Clathermont has three triplet tattooists who may be his daughters. Their names are **Edie**, **Myrtle**, and **Lily**.

During the Feast of the Exceptional Rose, residents can also let Mr. Clathermont's wife give them tattoos. She's...mysterious to say the least. And oddly forgettable.

*The Dauntless Hand**The Wheel of Mists**The Unflinching Eye**The Splendour**The Gambit*
## Origins

The Great Game in Fallen London universe is a reference to the real-life Great Game — a simmering diplomatic confrontation between European superpowers (especially British Empire and Russian Empire) that lasted for the most part of the 19th century, full of espionage, backdoor deals, small wars, propaganda, and political maneuvering. In that Great Game, two empires ostensibly vied for control of Afghanistan / Central Asia, an important "crossroads" point that was viewed as a key to Asia and Middle East.

Similarly, in the Fallen London universe, the Neath is a completely new region that offers potentially vast benefits (such as near-immortality, incredible technologies tantamount to magic, and unknown new resources), and also holds immense potential threats (both from unknown creatures and races and from the party that controls the only entry point to the Neath: London). It makes sense that surface superpowers would like to at least know everything there is about the Neath, if not project their own influence there. On top of that, the Masters of the Bazaar play their own Game of secrets and influence using human factions as proxies.