I start this journal, uncertain as to what eyes may someday gaze upon it. I hide this journal beneath the wallboards of my home, in fear of what eyes may someday gaze upon it. Fallen London is a place where secrets are more valuable than one’s own life, because death is not forever but a secret lost may never be regained.
I am uncertain how long I have been down here. I have faint memories of the surface, but the more I grasp at them the less clear they become.
For certain, it has only been two seven-days since I awoke in New Newgate Prison. For what crime I was imprisoned, I do not know, but I awoke with a lump upon my skull and wearing the mask and irons and rags of one who has been stripped of their identity and cast in there to rot.
For my own safety, and that of others, I won’t mention who it was that assisted in my escape suffice to say that it was not something I am certain I could have managed on my own in the addled state that I was in.
Those first few days after stealing back my freedom again were a blur of activity and wonder and horror. Whatever I might have known about this damned city before my time in prison had been forgotten and I was learning the quarters of the city and who not to trust all over again.
There are some who seem to recognize me for who I am, who I was, messages I have had passed to me about people from the surface looking for me. The hungry glance in a devil’s eye sizing me up with a familiarity that is a bit disturbing. The urchins in particular have seemed fond of me and have at times lent a hand to me and I’ve done my part to trade fairly with them in return.
But still… There are things that nag at me, dreams I have in the night that I can make little sense of. Whether they are hints of things I knew in the past, clues to what happened to me that my brain is slowly piecing togethor, or simply the results of breathing the airs and humors of this damnably dark place I know not.
All I have to go on is a rhyme that I find myself humming at times, memories of a jewel bigger than my own fist, and my natural proclivities towards wine, women and song it seems. I just hope that I remember what it was that got me thrown in prison before I repeat the mistake.
– Matthew Hartmont
( the start of a journal about my character in http://echobazaar.failbettergames.com/ )