Continuing the adventures of Genevieve Lamballe and the crew of Fair Leonore
in their quest to restore the rightful heir to the Britannic throne. Thanks once again to James DiBenedetto for the write-up to an amazing session.
2 January 1939
Capt. Alastair Hawkesworth
HMAS Richard Lemon Lander
My Dearest Alastair,
It may seem redundant for me to write you when we are in, for the moment, close contact, but I have grown accustomed to recounting my adventures for you, and so I shall continue to do so.
It was with some surprise that we discovered just how much time had elapsed during our time in Faerie, and that it was in fact the beginning of a new year by our shared calendar. Let us hope that this year will be better than the last; with the impending return of Artoria to her rightful throne, it promises to be.
I do not believe I told you all the details of the taking of the cargo airship Glowworm. You will of course recall that I had contacted you upon our arrival at Glastonbury, and that you immediately set off to come collect me and my companions. But the BITC, in the form of the Glowworm, arrived first. Using my Seeing Stone, I observed that the airship was filled with troops, ready to seize Artoria (and the rest of us) in the name of the usurper currently ruling in London. As the Glowworm was formerly one of Lord Crabbe’s vessels, he suggested that our party commandeer it – providing us an escape route and liberating it from the BITC thieves as well. A plan was hastily arrived at; our new sorcerer, Colonel Rasmussen, would use his magics to render Lord Crabbe and Queen Artoria insubstantial, and thus undetectable they would board the airship and make for the bridge. Meanwhile, through the Seeing Stone, our valiant marine Marcus would speak to the BITC troops awaiting orders in the cargo hold of the ship, as though he were speaking from the bridge. He would order them to deploy immediately, and to seek out the Queen and the “rebels” accompanying her in a farmhouse about two kilometers from our present location.
Surprisingly, events went mostly according to plan. Prior to the airship mooring at the nearby BITC warehouse, I used the Seeing Stone to seek out members of the ship’s crew who remained from the prior service of Lord Crabbe, and Lord Crabbe spoke to one such, advising him of the events to come, and ordering him to alert any fellows who also remained loyal to Lord Crabbe. Colonel Rasmussen then performed his magic, and Marcus gave his “orders” to the BITC troops. Unfortunately, a minor problem cropped up – the officers on the bridge heard Marcus’ orders, and began shouting into their speaking tubes, trying to countermand our false instructions. I focused the Seeing Stone on the bridge, and, without any better options, I fired the Taschenprojektor Elektroturmgeschütz through the Stone and into the bridge, annihilating three of the officers, and causing the rest of the bridge crew to either faint or flee. At the same time, the BITC troops emerged from the cargo hold and began to head for the distant farmhouse. Our group then boarded the airship and Lord Crabbe made ready for immediate departure.
The ship was still nearly ready to leave when a tremendous disturbance occurred below; the inn in which we had been taking refuge collapsed in what seemed to be a sudden, and extremely localized earthquake. I can only assume that this was the result of something Colonel Rasmussen had done, or tried to do. He has not spoken on the subject, but I cannot conceive of an alternate explanation. In any event, we were able to escape without further incident, and two hours later we met up with you en route to Cornwall.
You will remember as clearly as I our meeting, and your introduction to my companions, as well as Queen Artoria, and I need not dwell on those details. Nor need I dwell on my visit to you aboard the Lander, except to say that I treasured my visit, as I do every occasion upon which we are able to meet in person.
We arrived at Cornwall without further incident, and after I took my leave of you, I occupied myself with searching for our lost mage, Jude, via the Seeing Stone. After some effort I found him, and thankfully (it seemed, at the time) he was on this world, on Tudor, en route from Oxford to London, and in the company of a woman whom he had last encountered on Geneva, a fellow sorceress by the name of Mistress Wheeler. I was not certain whether Jude was with her voluntarily or not, and so I hesitated to contact him using the Stone; I did not want to alert Mistress Wheeler and possibly endanger Jude. But I saw, only moments ahead of them on the road, men waiting in ambush and prepared to attack them. I waited for a moment when Jude’s head was outside the carriage he rode in, and whispered through the Stone, hoping that Mistress Wheeler would not hear. But, whether she heard my voice or somehow detected the power of the Stone, she was alerted to my presence. I immediately broke the connection, worried that I had made Jude’s situation worse rather than better.
We would soon learn that Jude’s situation, and indeed the situation of possibly every person on Tudor, had become infinitely worse. As I prepared to head to the meeting of all the airship captains and leaders of the forces loyal to Artoria (a War Council, as our Queen called it), I was stopped in my tracks by a sound from the Seeing Stone. It had become active of its own accord, and a tentacle, or so it appeared, black as night, was tapping from inside the Stone. I did not dare to touch it, but threw a cover over the Stone and stepped back. The tapping became knocking, then pounding. Then, for a moment it stopped, and just when I began to believe that the danger, whatever it was, had passed, came an unholy sound; the very fabric of the air seemed to tear itself, the cloth over the Stone was sucked into it, and finally the Stone itself exploded into so much sand. The sand, still in the form of a globe, hung in the air for an instant, and then imploded upon itself, and when all was silent, there was a tiny hole. A hole in space, in reality itself, just hanging there in the middle of the room.
I sought out Colonel Rasmussen, as he was the nearest sorcerer to hand, and upon seeing the ominous tear in the world only a few feet away, he immediately fainted. I began to gather my instruments to study the hole, and as I did so, Lord Crabbe, Queen Artoria and others arrived, wanting to know why the council of war had been delayed. Upon seeing the remains of the Seeing Stone, they immediately understood. My instruments showed that energy was vanishing into the hole; it seemed to be an example of a singularity as described by Professor Einstein in his theories. I never imagined that I would see such a thing with my own eyes, and if I live to be a hundred, I pray that I shall never see one again!
As our magic-wielder had fainted and thus could not offer a solution, I tried to think of a way to remove this evil disturbance, which seemed to grow slightly larger every time I looked at it. It occurred to me that perhaps the answer would be to build an etheric projector and use it to remove everything in the room – including the hole – from this world entirely. And so I commenced to building one. As I worked, Alister Crowley appeared, looked at the phenomenon, was severely shaken, and proclaimed that magic rather than science would solve this problem, and that the answer would not be found here. I had sharp words with him; I believe I said something to the effect that it was his “nonsense words and ridiculous symbols that caused this in the first place, and it is my science that will fix it.” Unsurprisingly, he did not take this well, and he left, with Colonel Rasmussen following quickly behind. I continued to work, and as I did, Lord Crabbe raised a question – assuming that my device worked, and removed the disturbance from this world, where would it end up?
I admit that I had not considered this at first. My immediate thought upon hearing the question was to send it to a dead world, and I asked Lord Crabbe for the coordinates of such a place. But he objected to this, saying that the hole, or whatever might eventually emerge from it, would not remain where we sent it, and it might cause untold destruction throughout the many worlds.
I had no answer to that, except that destruction later and far from us is preferable to destruction now, and right here. But it was at that moment that Jude appeared, with Colonel Rasmussen right behind him. Jude told us what had happened; after I told him of the ambush on the road, his companion began to summon an evil, unthinkably powerful entity that she would use to destroy the ambushers, and Jude broke her concentration at a critical moment. Apparently rather than simply cause the summoning to fail, the result was that the entity was summoned, and possessed (or perhaps consumed is a more appropriate description) Mistress Wheeler. Jude ran for his life, and two miles later, met Mr. Crowley in the road. Mr. Crowley returned him to Cornwall, and then vanished (exercising, as your Shakespeare put it, the better part of valor).
I was extremely angry with Jude, as his action (however reasonable it seemed in the moment) had destroyed my Seeing Stone, and had endangered this entire world. But I put that aside, as his proposal for dealing with the problem angered me even more. He suggested that he could banish the entity that was on the other side of the hole, and which was slowly trying to come into our world. But in order to do so, he would have to first bring it fully through the hole. To be frank, I did not believe that Jude, even with the support of all the other mages present (unfortunately few of them, as the Royal Society had gone to war with itself just as Tudor itself had), could contain the…thing…that was attempting to come to our world. But, as I could not conceive of a safe place to send the hole and the entity within it to, his plan was agreed upon. His plan did involve me; he intended to use my device to help in powering his ritual.
Jude instructed me to incorporate components of his ritual (runes drawn on my equipment, silver used in place of other metals, and so forth) into the device I was constructing, and he went over the ritual with his fellow mages. After much feverish work, the device was ready, as was Jude. I stood well away, out of sight of the hole, with the button in my hand to activate the device on Jude’s signal. It began, and though I did not look I knew when the..thing…had been brought through. Jude continued his ritual, and at the precise moment, he spoke the final word, I activated the device, and the thing, whatever it was, was gone. The spellbook Jude had used for the ritual was gone as well, and I must say I am not at all sorry that it is. Apparently the same book Jude used to banish this…thing…was used to summon it in the first place. Good riddance to such a monstrous thing, I say.
I must credit Jude for his skill and his bravery in removing this threat. But I will say that I much prefer Colonel Rasmussen’s magic to Jude’s. Earthquakes and fiery storms are dangerous, but the worst they can do is kill one, while Jude’s magic can be used to summon inhuman beasts that can consume one’s soul.
In any event, the threat was passed, and the long-delayed war council took place. You were there, Alastair, and so I do not need to recount the fine details of the meeting. I will instead ready myself for the construction of the apparatus that will link all our airships together to serve as a massive, mobile radio transmitter, so our Queen can speak to all her subjects at once, and urge them to her banner. And we will all prepare ourselves for the infiltration of Whitehall and the removal of Mr. Kelly and his malign influence over the usurper Cunningham who currently rules in London. When next I put pen to paper, I expect that Artoria will sit securely on her throne, and we can begin the rebuilding of the Britannic Empire. I look forward to fighting at your side as we do so.
As ever, I remain your most devoted and grateful friend,
Genevieve Chantal Therese de Lisieux Lamballe, la Reine du la Cour d’Automne
