What Happened At the Ball, Part Two
Game date: 10 Mar 2012
Present: Everyone
Beignet is investigating the attack on Colonel Fleming at Weest Wycombe. He has Hanny Saulnier cast a fire spell to scry what happened in the room where the Colonel was attacked by reading the flames still crackling in the fireplace there. This affects all open flame burning from gaslights to candles to fireplaces and many people looking at the flames when the spell is cast are mesmerized. Evie is downstairs, disappointed that the dancing is over (and the owner of several calling cards of eligible young men) when she is captured by a vision in the fireplace where she is. Every fire of Evie's lifetime is replayed for her, including her mother's funeral pyre. She is agonized by the memory and cannot look away and sobs for her loss.
What Hanny sees (being whatever happened before all sources of open flame in the entire house) is:
- The Colonel going upstairs with Selene
- Several people were in the room with him in succession: Selene, Alexi(briefly), and several people in costume.
- One of them was a person in a Gryphon costume, about 5'-6", similar to Josephine's, who attacked the Colonel.
- A befuddle spell was thrown on the Colonel before he was attacked.
- The attacker turned into a cat--a large housecat kind of cat, but far bigger, the size of a puma or tiger--slashed up the Colonel, and jumped out the window.
- The gryphon illlusion was made to look like Josephine's.
Beignet finds physical evidence left behind by the attacker, a piece of cloth. He finds Alexi (currently burning up the sheets with Countess Scarpelli) to have him do a sensate Reading on it. Alexi Reads the cloth and confirms it belongs to a blonde, slightly balding Hercules. This matches the description of Sir Hensleigh Wedgewood, a guest at the ball in Hercules costume who has since left the estate.
Katherine heals and saves her father. She gives him something to help him sleep and rest--which doesn't last long when Beignet delivers his report of his findings: the attacker is Wedgewood and is trying to frame Selene for the crime. After Beignet leaves, the Colonel dispatches a message to London at once and makes ready to leave for the City. Katherine convinces her father to allow her to accompany him. She leaves a note for Beignet telling him where she and her father have gone and they both ride the Colonel's carriage to London.
Josephine leaves the ball with Selene Dashwood for the Diogenes Club, a carriage ride of a few hours. Rebecca Reads Flora for her memories, looking for any information as to her real identity. Bertie and Ezekiel go to London to investigate the information thus gained at a brothel called The Lark's Nest.
Selene's carriage is attacked by Sir Hensleigh in London. Hensleigh shoots the left carriage horse and causes a crash, the two women climb out, and are set upon by 5 of Hensleigh's thugs. Hensleigh himself shoots Selene and wounds her. Selene goes into a rage and attacks Hensleigh, causing him grievous wounds. Four of his thugs dogpile on Selene, who unleashes magic blue fire to burn them off her. They break off and run away, injured. Josephine manages to fight off the fifth thug, sustaining some injury while doing so, and stop Selene from killing Hensleigh. Selene leaves for the Diogenes Club on foot carrying a large blanket-wrapped egg from the trunk strapped to the back of her ruined carriage. Josephine follows her pushing a blanket-wrapped Hensleigh in a commandeered wheelbarrow.
Meanwhile, Bertie and Ezekiel arrive at the Lark's Nest and when they get out of their carriage, two things happen: Ezekiel is struck by a vision of the planes of Hell and is immobilized while Bertie is attacked by 3 Pinkerton agents. After what seems like months of torture in Hell, Ezekiel manages to snap out of the vision and come to Bertie's aid. Ezekiel runs one of the Pinkertons with his sword, wounding him. The Pinkerton disappears into thin air--an illusion spell, perhaps?--while the other two agents run away. Fight concluded, Ezekiel and Bertie enter the establishment, despite their own wounds from the fight and ask to see the proprietess. They are shown up and they interview her (bribe her 200 pounds), discover that Flora's mother was the wife of the 7th Duke of Leeds by French Marriage (bypassing the Royal Marriage Act) and that she and Selene were related. There is some mention of a note saying the Army was holding something for or on Flora's mother and that note was thrown out as a confusing bit of trash. On their way out, Ezekiel and Bertie notice two soldier statues in alcoves in the foyer and pay to take them.
Back at West Wycombe, Katherine and the Colonel go in one carriage to the Diogenes Club. Beignet, Hanny Saulnier, Rebecca, Flora, and Evie go in another. In Beignet's carriage, the intertwined relations between the Dashwoods and the Duke of Leeds through Flora's mother and Selene are revealed and through a fairly complicated run of logic, Beignet manages yet again to lay out a plan to steal a fortune--in this case the succession involving the rightful heir of the 7th Duke of Leeds, Flora--and bestow it on another, Evie, in order to maintain Flora's fiction that she is the Dashwood heir, since she cannot claim her rightful inheritance as the Duke's heir. By the end of the carriage ride, Evie is at least convinced not to dismiss the windfall out of hand.
Everyone arrives and regroups at the Diogenes Club. Katherine speed heals Hensleigh, who confesses under the pain of the healing. Selene reveals the egg is a dragon a mere few days from hatching, a dragon she's created by manipulating the life strands she'd discovered. Of further note, we discover that two separate parties were working on two separate sides of a msytery. The gnome Wescott, whom Josephine encountered, had been hired to find out more about Flora for one party. The gnome Willingham, whom Beignet had encountered at the ball and who first claimed to be Wescott, had been hired by an unknown party to do something not known at this time. We conjecture that Willingham was responsible for gaslighting Flora into writing the notes to herself and attempting to kidnap/drown herself. We also suspect he is responisble for the magical mental whammy laid on Ezekiel upon his arrival at the Lark's Nest. We know he had nothing whatsoever to do with the attack on the Colonel. At the moment, we do not know where Willingham is. Plans are made to have the Colonel, Ezekiel, Katherine, and Selene to retire to the Flemings' Yorkshire estate for the hatching and subsequent care of the baby dragon. Bertie and Flora make plans of their own. Josephine and Evie return to Josephine's digs to find a letter waiting for Josephine. It is a message fro her father from Wales, stating he needs her help and she is to meet him there.
Later on, Evie turns her Crime Lord position over to Billy Butcher and Pop Weasel--she will no longer need the work as she has decided to take on the title of Duchess of Leeds. Her magical amulet will cast the illusion that she is human, just as Flora has done, and so she is clear to take up the title without hinderance. Hanny Saulnier has agreed to take up the task of teaching Evie Parisian French, while she and Rebecca will train her in the finer points of comportment the heiress of the 7th Duke of Leeds shall need to know. She shall have to marry someone suitable to take the seat in the House of Lords and will have to produce an heir, but it seems a small price to pay for such a fortune.
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