![]() ![]() The tale itself is grotesque-the defendants confessed to killing and eating their 17-year-old cabin boy after shipwrecking near the Cape of Good Hope-but reaction to the case was perhaps weirder still. Kennedy points to the case of Dudley and Stephens in 1884, a landmark event in British law that created a precedent for the notion that necessity is no defence against a charge of murder. There was even a tradition-there's been some debate about how widespread or explicit it was-the 'custom of the sea,' where it was kind of expected that you would draw lots to find out whose leg was most edible, if you got into that kind of situation." "I was amazed when I started looking into this at how implicit and constant a theme in maritime history it is, because if you are out of food and you are sharing a space with other humans, there's a pretty straightforward conclusion. "Cannibalism, for example," he continues. As the studio's founder Alexis Kennedy notes, the truth may be stranger than fiction. Much of Sunless Sea is outright fantasy-there are ships crewed by talking rats, malevolent living icebergs, and naval outposts that are built inside enormous geodes-but all of it is coloured by developer Failbetter's readings of the history and literature of nautical misadventure. "It was kind of expected that you would draw lots to find out whose leg was most edible, if you got into that kind of situation." And after that? It's time to start drawing lots. If you're unlucky, you may be reduced to butchering the corpses of those who've died of starvation. Run out of rations, and if you're lucky you'll uncover something among the eccentric items in your cargo hold, or stumble on a sea beast whose flesh is safe to consume. Spend too long in the suffocating blackness of the open sea, and your crew might start to experience mass hallucinations, or even mutiny against you. Run out of coal for your steamship, and you may be forced to burn crates of rations or appeal to one of the game's cruel and fickle subterranean gods for aid. ![]()
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