Episode 11 – Reversal
March 31st
Next morning Samhaim got up early and met George at Hyde Park for his dual with Ezra McTavish. The mad Scotsman had his cousin as his second and he continued to insult Samhaim. They duelled and Samhaim killed Ezra in one sweep, slicing him in the abdomen in one stroke. Samhaim said that George could buy him breakfast and they discussed what they were going to do about Lady Blunt. They read the morning papers noting that the death of Queen Victoria had been blamed on fanatics infiltrating the Queen’s guard and that Bismarck had not been killed but was in hospital with serious injuries. Samhaim searched the rest of the paper and noted that Arthur had scored more but smaller victories in North Wales. With Archdeacon Abbott having been called away on an urgent errand, they decided that they needed a military man when they went to the Palace to question Lady Blunt.
Annie meanwhile had an austere breakfast with her new Guardian Jebediah. He told her that she could go to the University to study but that she was to come straight home and cause no scandal. Annie headed to the University by Hackney Carriage and started to work on her design from her Aethercator device.
Samhaim and George went to see Captain Edgington but he was still recovering from his wounds and was indisposed. Instead they went to Lieutenant Day’s apartment and asked him to help, filling him in on the events of yesterday.
They arrived at the Palace and were eventually escorted in to see Benedict Cauldfield. He was expecting to see the Archdeacon but since he had met the others the night before accepted that the Archdeacon had sent them. He called for the Metropolitan Chief of Police and they headed to the Tower to question Lady Blunt. They found her in a well appointed room sitting on a bed reading a book. George was allowed to question her, however all she confessed to was their attempted liaison and would not (even under some coercion from Samhaim) confess to being responsible for the murder of the Queen and her son. With no evidence against her the Metropolitan Police chief apologised to Lady Blunt and let her go.
Outside Samhaim told the others that she had the same green flecked aura that she had the night before. They decided to summon the Count and ask him. He said he’d wait and have a look at her aura and meet them back at the Garrick club. When they got to the club he was waiting for them and he told them that it was impossible for this to happen and he’d never seen anything like it before. Somehow an otherworld entity had fused into the human and awakened self of Lady Blunt. He wanted to know what Samhaim was doing about Arthur, but Samhaim replied that he needed an army to get at Arthur at present.
They decided that they could go and find out a bit more about what happened to Lady Blunt. They went and got Annie and persuaded her to blink them down to Crawley to Lady Blunt’s home. There the butler had been a party to George coming to the house and going off with Lady Blunt. He assumed that they had been having an affair and indicated that he was turning a blind eye to it. They soon realised that the doppelganger (who Annie identified as Drystan) had come here and posed as George just as he had done when Christian Cooper was taken. They realised that they needed someone who could identify him. Samhaim tried to see him but since he had never met Dyrstan he found he could get no purchase. Annie said that Drystan had a legendary lover named Iseulat and if they could find her they might be able to get to Drystan. They decided that they needed some way of finding her. They already knew someone who could identify tattoos (Harvey Morris). He had been kept by Penelope Windthorpe in Dorset. The group decided to go and see Penelope in her office in London. They spoke to a clerk who seemed confused as Penelope had left with Lieutenant Day not an hour before. He asked if she would be back soon. Samhaim spouted some poetry about the Lost Penelope and said he saw her in a vented room strapped into a large Aether machine. Suddenly it all went blank in a flash and Samhaim fell unconscious. He came too shortly afterwards and told them what he had seen.
They dashed outside and asked the doorman where Penelope had gone and he indicated they had headed off towards Pall Mall. Annie decided that if they were using large amounts of Aether her magic detector might be able to pick it up. She blinked over London and started to triangulate the results, indicated that it was probably a house on the northern embankment. As they got there they saw Penelope emerging from the front door of a house. Once she had gone the group entered the house and searched it. In the first bedroom upstairs they found a large Aetheric machine with caskets of Aether. Additionally there were 3 bell jars which Samhaim said contained green entities within them. Samhaim smashed one of the jars and the entity headed to Roger Day and tried unsuccessfully to possess him. When it headed from Roger to Annie, Samhaim attacked it with his sword. Although Annie was no longer Awakened the entity could not get in and it moved on again. Samhaim chopped it again and eventually killed it when it moved on again. Annie meanwhile analysed the machine and said that the pressure of the Aether built up in the machine and eventually it was released in two large blasts either side. Annie decided to test it and a massive blast eventually emitted from both sides of the machine into the chair. Just as the machine calmed down they heard a door bang downstairs. They headed down and outside the front door looking up and down the street for someone unusual. They couldn’t spot anyone and eventually Roger Day went to the back door and noted the gate was swinging on its hinges.
They summoned up the Count again, who by now, was looking increasingly annoyed at being summoned. He told them that the Otherworld entities were called Tawgyr and that they had been hunted down by the Awakened in the war before the third Great Enchantment was created. He said that he thought that they had been completely wiped out, but if there were many here now then the Enchantment must be failing. They decided to destroy the machine and Lieutenant Day decided to take the two jars with him.
Realising that Penelope would know who they were and where they lived. She would now have the resources to hunt them down and they would have to go to ground. The group decided to go their own ways. Samhaim went to his club and was confronted to three soldiers there. He tried bluffing it out with them, but when they tried to arrest him he put the fear into them. The last slightly braver one said they would return with re-enforcements. Samhaim went calmly to have a cup of tea in the back of the Garrick before slipping out the back entrance and going to ground.
George went back to pick up his stuff and his horse from Lambeth Palace and decided to head to Dorset to go and find Harvey. He knew they would need him and he would need to be rescued before he too was infected with an entity and turned to the other side.
Roger Day decided not to go home but decided to look in the Land Registry for who it was that owned the tenant house where the machine was housed. He found that it was owned by a holding company called Blanc Holdings which was owned by a chain of other companies. The whole set up was complex and Roger never fully got to the bottom of it. He decided to go and check the properties to see if the tenants who had seen him before. No one he spoke to had seen him and he eventually decided to settle down for the night in one of the empty properties he found. Just as he settled down the door burst open and a frightened young girl came in. She told him that three men were chasing her and asked if he would protect her. Lieutenant Day decided to ambush the thugs as they burst through the door, killing one, knocking one unconscious and letting the third one run away. The girl was grateful for his help and she hugged him telling him that her name was Isabelle.
Annie meanwhile headed back to her lab in the University. She had time to pick up a few things before deciding to try and find her father. She blinked herself to the address in Lancashire – Pigeon Tower, Rivington and arrived just outside. The tower seemed strange to her faerie eyes, seemingly overlaid onto itself hundreds of times. She knocked on the door and a man of about 45 years opened it. She said “Father” cautiously and he casually told her that she was late. A bizarre conversation then occurred in which Patrick Fogerty told her that she needed to go and get her mother as if she didn’t do it soon she would never be born. After questioning him further she ascertained that her mother was the faerie that they had seen commanding the forces of King Oberon who had accompanied Arthur. Patrick then questioned his daughter and asked what had happened recently as the good futures were disappearing. It transpired that the tower had been split into time after an Aetheric accident some years ago. Annie said she would go and fetch her mother and would return.
Annie did a locator spell on Arthur and found that he was in Chester castle. She blinked there and went up to the knights on guard at the castle. Politely they told her that they would fetch someone and they brought back Lady Patience / Gwenhyfahr to talk with her. Annie told her that she had got rid of her Awakened self Deirdre and that she thought that they needed to work together. There were people in London she said who were getting entities to possess the Awakened. She said that she thought that the two groups needed to work together. Lady Patience said that she could probably work with Annie and maybe Lieutenant Day, but Rhi’ana (George) and Taliessin (Samhaim) would never agree to it. Rhi’ana was someone who did not see when things had to change and was stuck in the past.
Annie asked to see the faerie Melenaria as she believed that she was her mother. Gwenhyfahr agreed and Annie spoke with her alone, eventually persuading Melenaria to go with her to see this mad man.
They blinked back to Pigeon Tower where Patrick insisted that she go back to see his past self. Melenaria would have nothing to do with it, but Patrick insisted fiddling with a large Aetheric machine in the room that opened up a window to the past. When Melenaria went to look closer, Patrick pushed her through. He told Annie not to worry as she would be back at some point.
Annie blinked back to the tower and Gwenhyfahr wanted to know what she had done with Melenaria. She was dubious of Annie’s story and tried a locator spell to find Melenaria. The spell revealed nothing and she told her that she would be kept in the castle until they could clear up exactly what had transpired.
