There were two major contributors to this, I think, the first and most obvious is that the first two versions of Sins of Nature saw very few reactions or viewership, which coming in from The Final Voyage, which had an absolutely massive reaction by my standards, kind of hurt. This version had several lurkers, several comments and at least two very, very vocal readers who were actively foaming at the mouth on at least one update, so I'd say that was a huge contributor to my ongoing desire to keep writing.

 

The second contributor was the style. Both of the original drafts of Sins of Nature were supposed to be fanmade Fallen London ESs, which meant that they took place in London and assumed very little about your FLPC, which unfortunately meant that a lot of the writing was very dry. I did take some steps to try and mitigate it, but alas, it was not meant to be.

 

It's hard to really say how much of a contributor this was, but I think a third contributor was time. I can't help but notice that the Final Voyage was a bit of a novelty when it was first created, the idea of someone actively making fake screenshots wasn't unheard of, but using them to create a big narrative arc certainly wasn't common. I imagine that trying to release two big projects back to back led to people getting a little burned out of it, which is understandable. There's about 210 or so screenshots between both projects combined -- to say nothing of my other work such as the Sovereign Moonstone and Stripes of Passion. I think giving Sins of Nature some time to distance itself from The Final Voyage made things a bit more conducive to reactions, and by extension, my motivation to keep going.

 

The time also allowed me to recharge, I did the Writing for the Loom of Irem, The Final Voyage, the Sovereign Moonstone and Stripes of Passion almost back to back to back to back. Sins of Nature was a bit much and led me to a little bit of burnout, which took about two years to fully clear.

 

 

We'll start talking about the very first part of Sins of Nature, the report reading, and this is the part where I need to set some expectations, namely, I do not meaningfully plan my stories.

 

This may come as a surprise to some, as some things may seem to slot in way too cleanly to not have been planned, but it is true. When it comes to the Final Voyage, I had zero plans going into it. I had just come from my in-character writing of the Loom of Irem, and I wanted to make the hypothetical future in which Mr. Ashworth fulfills his destiny into some writing, everything else was functionally unplanned other than "he eventually succeeds".

 

For Sins of Nature, I had a bit of an outline idea from my previous attempts at the work. In the original versions, the very first action of the ES would be when you as a player would choose your faction. The original version had six options: The Tigers, the Fingerkings, The Man in Vienna, the Liberation of Night, the Red-Handed Queen and the Beleaguered King. The second version cut the RHQ and the Beleaguered King because I simply did not know much about them as characters, and didn't think I could do anything interesting with them.

 

It's kind of funny to think that Firmy Chapter 7 basically just gave me the Interesting Stuff to use with the RHQ on a silver platter, funny how things work.

 

Regardless, Part 1 is mostly setting the status quo as it is. Taking place about 10 years after the Final Voyage, this means that Mr. Ashworth has his new name, Berlin is already decently taking care of itself after being freed from the Bazaar, and Ashworth keeps his intrigue work going. In the original versions, you'd be contacted by your faction and given instructions on where to go to find the specifically-prepared honey to enter the Dragonlands. Here, Ashworth has to pour through scattered intelligence reports in order to find the intersecting points.

 

Again, nothing of what I made in this section is setup for a later payoff, other than my knowledge going into it that it had to involve the Tigers, the Fingerkings, the Man in Vienna and the Liberation of Night. Firmy 7 also made sure that I would put the Red-Handed Queen as part of the work. Everything else in this section ended up being created to further support the ongoing intrigue -- although the main exception here was the Intelligencier section, talking about the restaurant where the Silverer is holed up. I'll talk about that one more in depth in Part 2.

 

If you're not keeping track, this means that the stuff I put in "as extra" ended up being the Tracklayer's City section and the Ashworth's Reflection section, which shouldn't be too diffcult to ascertain just by reading. Most of the decisions of what reports would even be options here was effectively made by the idea of "what would Ashworth have contact with which might be relevant to this story". I managed to make most of these fit in one way or another, but while it's obvious that someone like Ashworth would keep a close eye on the Tracklayer's City and have their own Reflection running errands (I mean, the Silent Partner already exists in FL), they weren't 100% connected. That's alright though, what doesn't advance the plot is still good worldbuilding.

 

 

Part 2 is Glim's Bizarre Adventure. This section wasn't too complicated and was, again, mostly just passive worldbuilding. Ashworth is the kind of person who is too high up in society to not delegate a lot of tasks, so of course he would have a capable retainer on hand to do the kind of verification work that needed doing.

 

Fun fact: I made Glim up on a whim during my Loom of Irem in-character writeup. I needed a way for Ashworth to, in-character, discover what Master name he would be using during the 7th city, a personal retainer coming in with reports was the first idea I had, and so was born Glim, the urchin-turned retainer with frankly minimal backstory.

 

Again, this section was written mostly on vibes, but it did serve a purpose, first, to do some quick character building for Glim by the kind of equipment they lug around. They're the type of person to walk around in an oversized hoodie, drive a techno-futuristic motorcycle and solve problems with brass knuckles. I tend to think of them as "an FLPC in stats, if not necessarily in story progression". I also tend to think of them as Ashworth's personal Griz/Efficient Commissioner.

 

The section with the rich woman being interrogated leading to the showdown against the Silverer was initially made as a nod to the original versions of Sins of Nature. Like I mentioned previously, you started the story by choosing a faction, but what I didn't say was that you could also choose no faction, which led to you entering the story by pilfering a random letter from a mail carriage that had an accident. In that version of the story, a Silverer had created a way into the Dragonlands and his cheating wife wanted to use it (not knowing what it was) with her next affair partner. It was supposed to be entirely comedic and tongue-in-cheek in the original, which is a stark contrast to what it ended up being in the final version.

 

This is also the part where I will reiterate: Nothing in this section was originally supposed to be a setup with any payoff. My writing is almost entirely vibes-based and stream of consciousness, even in the rare situations where I have an outline.

 

 

Part 3 is the entry to the Dragonlands and the initial conversation with the Speaker. This is also the part where I have to start addressing the question of the base concept of the story. Namely: How the fuck did I have the idea of a conversation with a repentant Judgement that rules over a dream-kingdom of dragons?

 

I shit you not: It started as an idle thought of a crossover between Fallen London and Touhou. While it's not often discussed, Touhou's most major deity is the Dragon God, and that ultimately led to the idea of having a "Dragon God" creature in Fallen London. Since the Gods in Fallen London are Judgements, making him a Judgement was easy, and since classical dragons aren't really a thing in Fallen London canon, making them from dream stuff was the only real solution. The rest kind of built itself.

 

It was hilariously serendipitous when FBG then decided to make the first classical dragon in Fallen London be a parabolan Nightmare about the end of civilizations. I literally could not have done that better.

 

But when I say it kind of "built itself", I do kind of mean it. Everything else kind of came from exploring that idea in my mind. Why would a Judgement be ruling in Parabola? Maybe they're a refugee. Well, what did they do to become a refugee? Well, they definitely did something quite bad -- no, I did not know what at the time, but it didn't matter. What was their domain? Well, Dragons are inherently fictitious creatures, so stories and fables was a natural pick. Why is the kingdom populated entirely by dragons? Well, the only reasonable explanation for it is if the original subjects were turned into dragons, and any subsequent dreamers were also turned into dragons. Why is Ashworth capable of turning into an Aeginae in this dream? Well, because Aeginae are dragons, and we already know that Storm is an Aeginae and that his dreams infect Parabola through the What the Thunder Said series, so if turning into a dragon is a feature, some select people must be able to turn into Aeginae.

 

You can tease out a lot of interesting worldbuilding stuff just by asking basic questions from a very simple premise.

 

As for why exactly dragons? Frankly, I like dragons. Sometimes it really is just that simple.

 

Of course, just because the basic reason for dragons was "because I like it", doesn't mean I didn't milk the shit out of the dragon symbolism in the story. Sometimes The Curtains Are Just Fucking Blue (And It Still Means Something!)

 

This is also the section which I tried, very briefly, to have each Quality Change Description be a rhyme. I very clearly learned that rhyming and poetry is Way Beyond My Ability To Do Properly and dropped it. Still a neat idea.

 

It also introduces the congregation, whose primary purpose at this point is to just establish the existence of the Curious Dragonling and the fact that people in the Dragonlands are predominantly humans who have decided to stay in the dream over the centuries.

 

One small subtle detail here: The dragoness that greets you is actually part of the Fabled King's original domain, which is why she's the only one there that doesn't talk about her experiences outside the Dragonlands. As the Dragon God later mentions, none of his original subjects remember his original kingdom due to his previous eating.

 

 

This is the slice-of-life section, interspersed with the dreams of the Fabled King's past. This was also the hardest section for me to write mostly because I didn't think I could make this section interesting. I was assured I was wrong.

 

I didn't really have an explicit goal with the slice-of-life sections, rather, I wanted to convey a very specific vibe. A lot of this was "what would a utopian society look like?" plus "what would a place specifically made to be 'perfect' look like?" plus "what kind of places and locales are usually associated with dragons?"

 

Jungles, grassy plains, cities, volcanos, snowy peaks, city, honestly all I'm missing from the fantasy genre is the desert and the swamp level. The black beach was added because I googled "hey what happens when lava touches running water" and then googled "what does a beach of black sand look like" and it looked rad as fuck so I had to include it.

 

Once I had the typical fantasy locales, all I had to do was ask what kind of niche would those locales serve for a utopian society. Grassy plans? Perfect for a thrilling hunt and gorging yourself on game, or taking a nice long nap in the sun. Forests and jungles? Great for scavenging fruits. Volcanos? Lava bath! Wrestling! Smoke to serve as cover for sexytimes! Every idea in this section was conceived of about five seconds before it was written, and it was honestly a blast. It really didn't take much for me to come up with "the reason they still trade when they don't need anything is because sharing your work with others brings joy" and "why do they keep religion? for everyone they left behind when they decided to stay here".

 

The part about becoming a problem was just a natural consequence of all that thinking. I imagine most people would hear "the only rule around here is to enjoy yourself" and immediately go "oh okay so I can just fuck with other people? is that what you think of when you think of an utopian society?" to which the story gives a very simple answer: This is a fuckin' dream, man. There are no consequences and the others enjoy it when you fuck around. 

 

I originally wanted this to increase a sort of "skepticism" quality that made you look at other actions in a different light, like realizing that the buffalo you can hunt and catch in the plains didn't exist before you wanted to hunt, and only narrowly escapes because a close victory is more interesting than a foregone one. I ultimately didn't go that route because it didn't really fit the vibe.

 

The dreams themselves were a bit tricky to get right. I originally wanted all these events to be described and explained by the Dragon God, but as I very quickly learned, a scene where two characters simply sit around and talk isn't easy to make interesting, and is a little beneath a god. Insterspersing the slice-of-life with the memories that give some context to what's to come felt like a natural fit.

 

The first dream only really has the goal of setting up the characters, originally it was just going to be the Fabled King and the White, but with Firmy 7 dropping the Queen of Myrmidons on my lap, I knew I had to include her. I wanted to make sure, from the outset, that people understood that the Fabled King was being groomed by the White, hence his distracted nature and him hiding behind the White. Also, it establishes the fact that he's afraid of the Aeginae, through their queen.

 

The second and third dreams were kind of foregone conclusions. None of what's depicted there is particularly novel for Fallen London depictions of the Judgements. Petty tyrants and petty rulers. I made sure to slip in some characterization in there: the second dream both reinforces the idea that the Fabled King is scared of the Myrmidons, and that maybe, just maybe, he might not be so bad by giving charity the lesser punishment. The third dream might as well be the same ballroom as Twixt Us and the Sun, playing on the same intrigues and webs of lie that are common for this kind of high society game.

 

But I also needed a way to showcase the Fabled King's mounting doubts. I already knew that the Fabled King would end up a rogue Judgement, self-exiling to Parabola for protection, but what exactly made that happen? The Courtesy is an easy answer. Sunless Skies even says it: the "truth" is that there is no state of enlightenment or higher being in the judgements, they're just as petty as the lower links. Which then would obviously beg a thoroughly-groomed-but-still-well-meaning-Judgement to ask, "...So why exactly are we rulers?"

 

But I needed something further than that, because that's the thing about being groomed and traumatized: you're going to downplay and justify your abuser's actions. I needed something incontrovertible that would completely break the Fabled King, something which would force him to go rogue. The fourth dream is not that.

 

Instead, the Fourth Dream is a mock trial, establishing that the Fabled King is old enough to have been in the audience when the Black was Disco Elysium'd. This actually was a nice way to fix a little continuity snarl: When I first wrote the Final Voyage, I wrote the Flame at the Heart of Parabola as being the originator of Parabola, the very egg that hatched that dream realm. Firmy 7 has since told us pretty explicitly who was the progenitor of Parabola, and so that created a bit of a problem.

 

My answer? The Red made Parabola, the Black made the Flame, and the Flame overtook Parabola in a desperate attempt to survive getting Disco Elysium'd. It also very neatly gave the Fabled King a reason to want to seek refuge in Parabola, of all places. He remembers the Flame.

 

Also, the name of the header (The Treachery of Memory) isn't really a canon Treachery, but one I always headcanon'd as being a thing. It doesn't really matter here, I really just liked the name, but I thought I'd mention it all the same.

 

 

This part starts with a conversation with the Speaker where Ashworth is called to the Dragon God's chambers, before the bulk of it is spent with the Congregation.

 

I really don't have a lot to say about this section. Most of it is reiterating the plot of some of Fallen London's stories. The big difference here is how in Ashworth's world he used a Discordance Double to ensure both the Boatman and the Naturalist could coexist and fulfill their Hearts' Desires, but that's more plainly spelled in the Final Voyage and not something I wanted to dwell on. I also mention the story of the Oneiric Pact, which is my Fallen London fanfic that can be found on AO3. Again, it's a big enough deal to Ashworth that it felt disingenuous to not include, but I don't really have anything to say that isn't covered by just Reading The Story.

 

Mostly, I wanted these recaps to focus on the Curious Dragonling -- this one was indeed a setup and payoff for the very short lived reveal that he is, indeed, The Dragon God in disguise. I wanted to give more retroactive context to these interactions, of the Dragon God spending time in learning and interacting with his subjects. He was a Judgement of Fables and he still finds a way to find them even when they are no longer offered to him as tribute.

 

 

Part 6 suffers from the Fanfic Release Timing Problem, of being really short because it ends on an intentional bombshell. The idea that the Dragon God's chambers are high in the sky also comes directly from Touhou, as the Dragon God's essence resides in the sky islands of Bhava-Agra in that series. The chambers themselves being metaphorical spaces also comes from a touhou fanfic, although I will admit that part of that was just the idea that I could do a lot more with the imagery and metaphor by having a deity speak not in words but in concepts and feelings. Again, I didn't know how I could potentially make a section of just characters talking interesting (skill issue on my part, I know), but I think this is overall better.

 

The actual imagery was also in a lot of cases taken directly from the recursive hierarchies I made for the Sovereign Moonstone. This is also the first depiction we have of the Judgement being the Judge in a courtroom. I actually did not plan this at all, I just thought that making a Judgement be the Judge in a courtroom was fitting imagery.

 

I will reiterate: I do not meaningfully plan ahead, I write entirely through vibes.

 

 

This is the bulk of the conversation with the Dragon God, and where I really had to flex my creative muscles. The first action, "who are you?", is the payoff to the Curious Dragonling in the Congregation. The second action, witnessing the reason for his summons, was when I really started to flex a little, and when I started leaning into the courtroom and Judge metaphor. The Final Gavel was created entirely on a whim, and so was its flavor text, which I would later realize has much more layered meanings than it might first appear.

 

I actually had a bit of an outline for this section, I knew I wanted to use the opportunity of the questions to expand on the Dragon God's character and mentality, and I knew I wanted them to exposit on their feelings about the various factions. Most everything was extremely loose though. The questions themselves, "Why you?", "Why is he here?", "Why dragons?" are quite literally the extent of my notes on this section.

 

The thing is, I knew the answer to all of the presented questions, I just needed to convey these answers in an interesting manner. For example: "Why you?" was always supposed to be a bit of a non-answer. Why you? Because you're the first person to enter the Dragonlands while awake, that's all there is to it. Anyone from the lower links would be fit to judge the Judgement in his eyes, because his kind tramples upon them all. This was true even during the pre-Ashworth versions of the story, now I just needed to use the limited space I had for storytelling something that gave that more impact than just "eh you're here", which is why I doubled up and made this the place where they mention their old hunger and the fact their subjects can't be the ones to judge him now.

 

The fact they no longer consume souls is also given as an explanation for why the Dragonlands went unbreached for millennia but are now being breached. It also touches on my very old feelings on the Judgements, back when I actually used to be on their side (I was so young back then!), namely that if all they do is eat us when we die, then uh, that's basically the same thing as us eating cattle, right?

 

It took me an embarrassing amount of years to figure out that BEING LITERAL CATTLE SUCKS, ACTUALLY.

 

The second question of why is he here in parabola is kind of the important one. This is what ultimately answers the question of why he went rogue. The trial on the fourth dream introduced him to the absences of the Discordance, but this dream comes after that, when he goes on a massive expedition to find the creatures that came before the Judgements. I am personally of the belief that the Judgements are usurpers of the Pre-Judgement Sovereigns™ (Sovereigns for short, until we get a canon name for them). As Milton himself says, revolution comes in cycles. This also functionally reverses the causal link I originally had in mind for why the White is hunting him. Originally, he was being hunted for being a rogue Judgement, but here, he is a rogue Judgement because he is being hunted. 

 

Question three got a heavy reaction on the Discord, as this is where the Dragon God reveals that the Dragonlands are actually the remains of his physical body. The protective barrier that prevents others from intentionally entering his kingdom is... literally his skin, alongside all the other things. The symbolism here is spelled outright: for a King to be a Good King, he must give everything of himself to his people, quite literally. I know writers that use subtext and they're all cowards.

 

The Fourth Question, why dragons, was probably one of the most fun to write, but there's actually a history here. Originally, my in-universe reasoning for "why dragons?" is because they represented fables as a whole, as everywhere in the world has some kind of dragon mythos, they're the Apex Story Creature. I actually used to think that the reason everywhere has a dragon mythos is because they're all based off much older myths, maybe based on pterodactyls, that survived since long before recorded history.

 

I have since learned that the reason dragons are so ubiquitous in myths across the world is because of colonialism. Kinda shattered a lot of the whimsy and grandeur of that.

 

Of course, this is where my vibes-based writing can shine, because I pretty quickly managed to pivot to a much more compelling reason as to why the Dragon God decided on dragons for his kingdom: Aeginae can kill Judgements, and he is terrified of Aeginae. By turning every subject into a dragon, he is simultaneously living in constant fear -- what he believes to be the same feeling the subjects of the Judgements regularly feel -- and letting every single one of his subjects be a separate Sword of Damocles over his head, even if they don't realize it.

 

The fact that the Red Handed Queen, the Red Judgement, the Queen of Myrmidons and the Burrower Below all ended up being the same character in the end only further cemented all of this as Actually Great. Thanks Firmy 7.

 

The final question in Part 7 is also where we get the title drop, where we learn the impetus of this whole thing. A concept I like to play with is the Monster That Wants To Do Good (But Still Be A Monster), which I'm sure could be psychoanalysed to have something to do with the fact I am currently engaged to another man. Ultimately, playing with that concept involves a character who is by some measures Inherently Monstrous (in this case, Judgements are not exactly Nice) and who wants to do good (he wants to be a Good King) without inherently losing their monstrousness. 

 

Usually this has to start with the question of why exactly are they monstrous? Any question that deals with a creature being Inherently Monstrous also has to tango with the question of Bioessentialism, which is always a problem. Stories that do this kind of thing usually find a way to circumvent the problem (Vampires need to drink blood but can survive off animals/donated blood bags) or just ignoring the problem entirely (a lot of modern werewolves aren't exactly mindless rage monsters), and while I can understand the latter -- I would love to be a werewolf -- I much prefer the former, as the latter kind of kills the Inherently Monstrous part of the whole dynamic.

 

In the case of the Dragon God, the Inherently Monstrous nature here is simple, Rulership is in the nature of Judgements, and as such, to be a Judgement is to rule over something and someone. To deny that nature is to deny your selfhood, in a sense, and so this leads to the title of the story: The Sins of Nature, or, as I almost wanted to call it (because again, subtext is a tool made for cowards): The Sins of One's Nature.

 

This idea is brought up again and emphasized in the next Part, because it also answers a rather glaring question that you might have had while reading this part.

 

 

Part 8 is where the Dragon God starts talking about the various factions that are related to the story.

 

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Q: What made you decide on having the running theme of that kindness quality?

A: This is a bit of a complicated answer. I said previously that I don't really plan my stories in advance. While Sins of Nature had a fuzzy outline to guide me, The Final Voyage had functionally, nothing but vibes. 

 

A lot of what I wrote for that section in The Final Voyage was, in a way, me venting my frustrations. I believe it was Discworld's death that said "Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy...". This is a struggle I spent a long time mentally fighting with.

 

I won't go too into the details of how I resolved that particular existential crisis (suffice to say, it's still kind of ongoing), but ultimately speaking when Ashworth inscribed that law upon the skin of the Universe, it was in part because I wish I could do that. I wish that there was a universal law, even more immutable than the laws of physics and causality and ontology, that demanded that the universe was, indeed, a kind place. That kindness was the default state of being that others would have to rally against, instead of the opposite feeling like the truth more and more every day.

 

But now, writing what was a chronological sequel to the Final Voyage, I had to ask myself: In the context of the Fallen London Universe, what would it actually mean to inscribe universal kindness as a law stronger even than the Laws of Physics? And what, indeed, does kindness even mean in this context? Clearly bad things still happen, does that mean that the law isn't doing anything?

 

To answer that kind of question, I first had to answer another question: Why is it that this law was inscribed when Ashworth burned? I ultimately arrived at the answer while pondering yet another question, namely, "What is Ashworth's Correspondence Name?"

 

We know the names the Masters go by are just aliases, representative of their physical hoards, but that they also have names in the Correspondence which are representative of their Metaphorical hoards, it's through these names (in part) that we know for example, that Mr. Stones' true hoard is value, that Veils' true hoard is Violence for its own sake, that both Mr. Mirrors and Mr. Cups' hoards are "an empty vessel, whose purpose is to be filled". Due to Veils' love of fabrics, we also know that these hoards have some interpretation to them.

 

And when I remembered that Discordance can be expressed as the negative space of Correspondence, it just seemed logical that much like how you can express these names as Correspondence, you can also do so as Discordance. And so came the answer to that original question of "why was this law inscribed when Ashworth burned?" -- because "No place without kindness shall be without kindness" is Ashworth's name, written in the Discordance.

 

(For those who are curious, Ashworth's Correspondence name translates to "The kindness that breaks the universe.")

 

After I managed to get that sorted out, I ultimately had answers to all my other questions. What does the law actually mean? Well, it's a Discordant Law, which means it affects both the user and their target equally. In this case, the user is Ashworth, and their target is "The Entire Universe". It's not like we don't have precedent for "a culmination of things being treated as a single organism", just look at Port Cecil or The Mind of London.

 

Obviously this leaves the question of "why do bad things still happen?", which then begs the question of what it even means to be kind in the cosmological scale. I'm sure you can probably think of a trillion different scenarios in which Doing a Kindness would actually be cruel; hell, the epilogue even technically has a prime example of that.

 

Ultimately, I like to think of this law as a sort of background radiation. People and occurrences are more likely to both seek and lead to better, kinder outcomes, but within the context of Ashworth himself, he is ultimately limited to making choices that he does not believe are explicitly unkind, which is itself a difficult line in the sand to draw. After all, "lying" is completely blocked out due to the law, "sparing" someone is also completely blocked out due to the law, but murdering the Dragon God isn't.

 

I suppose what I'm trying to convey in so many words is the relatively simple answer of: I want to be a kind person, I want Ashworth to be a kind person, but neither I nor Ashworth are particularly special people in the grand scheme of things. I do not know what "kindness" means on a cosmological scale anymore than Ashworth does, and so both of us both struggle with and explore what it means to be kind, and all of the complicated and messy nuances of it. I suppose all art is a reflection of the artist.

 

 

 

 

---

 

I think my work with the final section where most options for telling his tale are blocked out conveyed what I wanted, namely that Ashworth holds a million doubts and a million reservations about what happened in the Final Voyage, as he is now held to a new promise that he is unsure if he can fulfill. Ultimately, whatever version of the tale he could tell the Dragon God would feel dishonest, trying to deny that he did good would be lying, trying to deny that he still had more to do would also be lying, trying to deny that he Exalted the Sun and saved the Earth and the Neath would be lying, but trying to say that he did it for 100% altruistic reasons would also be lying. Ultimately, all he could do was just tell the story as honestly as he could, from the very beginning, through the frustratingly deep and limited medium of words.