For an introduction to this alternative London and the London Chronicles, see my earlier post.
A TALE OF SHADOW, STEAM & THE UNQUIET DEAD
LONDON, 1880. Fog thick as mourning crêpe rolls off the Thames. Somewhere in Whitechapel, in a warehouse that keeps its secrets locked behind bonded iron, a girl named Clara Ellington waits in the dark — and something far older than the men who took her waits with her.
A Tale of Shadow, Steam & the Unquiet Dead
Dramatis Personae
THE HIDDEN SOCIETY - Charlotte Holmes, Mr Tonks, The Augmented Man and Voltaire
CHARNEL SOCIETY - Cornelia Ash, The Resurrected Man, Tobias, Emerson and Shamblers
Prologue
Fog rolled from the Thames like funeral shrouds, and somewhere in Whitechapel, a young nurse named Clara Ellingworth waited in darkness.
Three weeks earlier, Clara had vanished. A volunteer nurse at St Mary's Hospital, she disappeared without a trace, and the Metropolitan Police showed little interest in the case. Her employer, Dr Evelyn Farrow, was less inclined to let the matter rest. Unable to get official help, she sought assistance from the Sherlock Holmes Detective Agency.
At 221B Baker Street, Charlotte Holmes listened carefully to the doctor's account before accepting the case. Accompanied by Colonel Hargreaves, she travelled to the Ellingworth family's townhouse in Holborn.
The house yielded nothing.
No sign of Clara. No sign of her captors. Only dust, silence, and the uncomfortable suspicion that someone had searched the place before them.
As they prepared to leave, however, a figure emerged from the fog.
It was Thomas Ellingworth, Clara's brother.
Gaunt and hollow-eyed, Thomas pressed a hastily written address into Hargreaves's hand: a warehouse in Cable Street. They believed Clara was held there, somewhere on the top floor.
Then Thomas disappeared back into the fog.
The investigation had suddenly become a rescue mission.
Cable Street and its Environs
The Warehouse of the Dead
The warehouse was waiting for them.Voltaire announced their arrival in characteristic fashion: with lightning. A blast tore away the upper door, and Colonel Hargreaves plunged into a swarm of shambling dead.
Yet the Shamblers (zombies) were not the worst thing waiting inside.
The Cornelias and the Resurrected Man take on Voltaire and the Augmented Man.
The air itself folded, and from a black rift stepped Cornelia Ash—elegant, deadly, and armed with claws sharp enough to open steel. Another Cornelia soon followed, cutting through Voltaire's arm with a savage claw.
Below, Charlotte and her Symbiot took grenade fire from hidden enemies in the warehouse yard. Emerrson had struck as she tried to persuade Thomas to leave the area. The living metal shielded her from the blast, but Thomas was hurled senseless against the brickwork.
Within moments, the rescue had become a battle.
Within moments, the rescue had become a battle.
Cornelia's Gambit
As the fighting spread through the warehouse, Cornelia ignored the chaos around her. She had come for something more valuable than Clara: secret Society documents hidden within the safe.
But the Rift is a treacherous master.
When Cornelia opened the warded brass tube to place the precious documents in, a pulse of strange energy swept through the building. The Shamblers convulsed—and turned on their nearest living being - in this case, their mistress.
For the first time, Cornelia was forced to fight for more than the prize she had come to steal. Cornelia's predicament brought her guardian, the Resurrected Man, to her side. To protect Cornelia, the construct had to give up on trying to repel Augmented Man and Voltaire from the warehouse's top floor.
Then came another complication.
Inspector Crale and a squad from Division H burst through the warehouse doors, charging straight into a melee of policemen, gunfire, and hungry dead.
London, as ever, had arrived late—but noisily.
Inspector Crale and Division H Arrive. The Original photo and the AI comic version.
Still trying to work out the best way to present this story, so here are two of the options.
Clara's Rescue
The police bought the heroes precious time.
Mr Tonks used the distraction to knock out Tobias as the police officers pushed past him, focused on the warehouse's doors and what lay beyond.
Amid the confusion, Colonel Hargreaves fought his way to the top floor and found Clara's cell standing open.
For one terrible moment, he feared they had arrived too late.
Then he saw her.
Clara Ellingworth was alive—terrified and exhausted, but alive.
Cornelia, meanwhile, had decided that discretion was the better part of villainy. Gathering her resurrected servant and the plans, she tore herself sideways through the Rift.
Charlotte managed one final shot as Cornelia appeared fleetingly on Cable Street, but the bolt merely grazed her. A heartbeat later, Cornelia and her monstrous protector had vanished into the Rift, taking the stolen documents with them.
The heroes had rescued Clara.
But they had lost their quarry.
Mr Tonks, after dispatching Tobias, climbed the warehouse's wall to find that Cornelia Ash had already departed.
What the Ashes Conceal
With the fighting over, Voltaire returned to the strongroom to see what else their enemies had left behind.There, hidden in a barrel, he discovered several small phials of cold grey ash.
It hummed faintly in his hand.
The energy within was neither purely Rift nor purely necromantic. It was something stranger—an impossible marriage of the two.
Something or someone had created it.
Something unnatural.
And whatever that something was, it remained somewhere beyond the fog-shrouded streets of Whitechapel.
The case was far from closed.
To be continued in The Corpse Engine.
Game Notes
This was the first outing for the Hidden Society and proved an excellent test of both heroes and villains.Voltaire and Mr Tonks were immediately effective, while Charlotte took longer to master, especially after the team split early in the game. Cornelia Ash, meanwhile, proved an excellent villain—dangerous in a fight but far more interesting when manipulating events from the shadows.
As always, the best moments were the ones I hadn't planned.
Thomas's being knocked unconscious in the opening turn forced a series of oracle rolls and created an entirely unexpected subplot. The longer the campaign runs, the more convincing these decisions become as the characters acquire their own personalities and grudges.
Most surprisingly, Colonel Hargreaves appears to have developed a soft spot for Clara since her rescue. Perhaps her military family reminds him of an old comrade.
Colonel Hargreaves removed Clara to the Diogenes Club safe medical facility, the Sanitorium, but her unstable links to the Rift remain undeveloped. The mystery surrounding her simply never developed.
Inspector Crale, although unsuccessful, remains undiscovered. Something to develop in a later chapter.
Either way, London has not heard the last of the Ellingworth case.
And some ashes are best left undisturbed.
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