What Happened At the Ball, Part Two
Game date: 10 Mar 2012
Present: Andy, Jim, Ken, Cindy, Kim, and Maer
(Continued from What Happened At The Ball, Part One...)
May 27th, 1868
Evening
Beignet finds physical evidence left behind by the attacker. Katherine heals and saves her father. 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. Beignet also gets a Reading off the evidence he's found and discovers it belongs to a guest dressed as Hercules. Questioning the now-conscious Colonel reveals the attacker as none other than Selene Dashwood's accuser, Sir Hensleigh Wedgewood, who has given his account of the attack to a tabloid paper.
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. 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. Josephine manages to fight off the fifth thug and stop Selene from killing Hensleigh. Selene leaves for the Diogenes Club on foot carrying a large blanket-wrapped egg. Josephine follows her pushing a blanket-wrapped Hensleigh in a commandeered wheelbarrow.
Meanwhile, Bertie and Ezekiel interview the Lark's Nest proprietess (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. 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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