Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
We are in a barn outside the village of Moneyreagh, some ten miles from Belfast, with all of the prisoners we freed from the dungeons of Belfast Castle, plus all of the weapons we liberated from the Castle armoury.
Around half of the freed prisoners have gathered around Finneas O'Toole and the weapons cache. They seem to be getting themselves organised. The other half are milling around. All seem to be wondering what to do and looking a little nervous at their new situation. Some of them are looking resigned, some like they really want to leave. Everyone is giving us a wide berth.
After a short time spent talking to 'his' people, Finneas O'Toole calls the uncertain half together and addresses them.
To the uncertain people he admits that they (the other half) are part of the Irish Royalist Army and tells them that they too are now part of the IRA by default. Given what has happened the New Commonwealth is sure to tar them all with the same brush. He apologises to them for this but follows up quickly with a thinly veiled threat should they decide the best way out of this quandary is to discuss the situation with the representative of the New Commonwealth.
Some of the uncertain people take this well. There is a sense that at least someone is telling them what to do, that there is some way forward from here.
Others look disgruntled but accept the situation.
A few people head for the door. However, Finneas' men with the assistance of Truth intercept them and prevent them from leaving. They grudgingly rejoin the main group.
"As new members of the Irish Royalist Army, is there a manifesto that we should sign up to?" Void asks O'Toole.
"Well, no, not really," he replies. "We're just interested in getting rid of the bloody Puritans and getting our Church and country back."
Void pushes his manifesto idea, gaining the support of Noesis along the way.
As the conversation progresses O'Toole describes his vision of a Catholic Ireland. He seems to want things pretty much the same as they are now, but with the Catholics replacing the Puritans. "No! We won't burn them! We'll just, er, shoot 'em in the back of the head or something," he says, as an example, on the subject of Protestants when we ask who they'll be burning.
Noesis and Void work on Finneas for a while, suggesting that he attempts to hold on to the moral high ground and aim for a more liberal rule should his side come to take control of the country.
He listens, but doesn't seem to be too convinced. He does not reject the idea out of hand, however.
Discussion moves around to the Heir to the British Throne, who might take over should we manage to kick out the New Commonwealth. As far as Finneas is concerned the true heir to the British Throne is King Charles the tenth, who is rumoured to be in exile at Versailles in France.
An alternate plan is suggested by Truth. Perhaps we could steal some New Commonwealth codebooks, intercept their signals, track down the 'cursed' (that is, the remaining New Commonwealth superhumans) from these signals and attack them directly.
O'Toole declares that he and his newly expanded army plan to set about a guerrilla campaign in the province, using the stolen weapons to make themselves much more effective than they might otherwise have been. He agrees with us that, at present, attempting to take and hold any actual territory would be a major mistake, as it would leave the people holding that territory very open to attack.
At this point Void and Noesis start to notice a subtle change in one of the female members of O'Toole's group. It is not obvious, but her body language has changed, almost as if she is a different person somehow.
Noesis turns to her. "You, madam! What have you to say?" he demands.
"Erm, er, yes, that sounds fine," she says, turning from a non-Irish to a fake-seeming Irish accent on the 'er'.
"What is your name?" he demands.
The woman pauses. Void notices that her accent has slipped back into an English one, and asks Truth to detain her.
Truth efficiently does this.
Void describes his suspicions to the others. Noesis nods in agreement.
Wanting to clear up what is going on, Noesis finds someone who knows the woman.
Finneas says he does. "Yes, that's Fiona O'Reilly," he says.
Noesis goes 'doh', as Finneas has just told her the information we wanted to know.
Finneas gets the idea, and goes 'doh' himself.
Noesis asks 'Fiona' for her middle name instead.
"Rebecca," she says.
Finneas nods. This is apparently correct.
"Don't hurt her," the woman then says, in an English accent.
We question her about who she is, and what she is doing here.
The woman's alter ego tells us that she is called Bethany. "As that's my name."
She claims to be on O'Toole's side, and tells us that Fiona is allowing her to occupy her mind.
We ask O'Toole about this.
He tells that he is aware of Bethany and agrees that she has "sort of" assisted them in the past. He also seems to be quite impressed that we managed to spot her.
Truth puts the woman down and Void apologises to her.
She accepts this in good grace.
We ask her how she came to be here like this. Where is she, really?
Bethany tells us that she no longer has a body of her own. In fact she has been dead for some time. She tells us that she can only control the bodies of those who are willing, but that she can secretly inhabit the bodies of the unwilling. She can move from body to body by touch, but if she forges a strong enough link with a person (which can be without their knowledge) she can also jump from one body to another over long distances. For example, from Britain to North America.
She says that she uses these powers to assist the resistance, in all its forms, not just the IRA. Obviously being able to discrete travel long distances very quickly and spy through people without their knowing are quite useful things to be able to do.
We ask her what she has been able to do with Cromwell, and getting close to him.
She tells us that she has had difficulty getting close to him, for the same reason that we have - The Witch-hunter. He is able to spot her moving into a person in much the same way as we just did.
Void asks Bethany if she can possess him.
She says that she can. Fiona steps close to Void and touches him.
He feels Bethany pass into him. He can feel her presence inside him, and Noesis can also sense that the transition has taken place.
Void allows Bethany to control his body for a while. As long as he lets her do so, this seems to work without any problems.
"This isn't your body, either," Bethany observes after a short while. It seems can sense our strange 'body-hopping' state.
We admit that this is true, and who we really are. Or at least that "we have come here from a higher place to make this one better."
Void mutters that this is the 'third circle of Hell' as far as he is concerned, referring to his previous dimension-hopping experience.
"Are you Angels, then?" she asks.
"Not exactly, no." says Noesis.
With some um-ing and ah-ing we manage to leave things at that.
From talking to Bethany further, it turns out that she was an English Puritan before she died, under some unpleasant circumstance that she does not discuss in detail. It was only when she died that she found out she had some kind of Blessed power. And it has only been since her death that she has found out about music, dancing, laughter and so on.
With all of this sorted out, we discuss which plan to follow next.
As part of this discussion around this topic comes the fact that the Lord Protectorship passes along a line of succession, though always from Cromwell to Cromwell.
From what Bethany knows, Matthew Cromwell does not currently have a son, although as we know, he is married. That being so, the current heir is his nephew Ephraim Cromwell, presently aged sixteen.
Noesis and Blitz think that attacking the Puritan Blessed is necessary. Anything else, they say, would just be a temporary setback.
We decide to go to London to get some further information. This will let Bethany spy for us to find the Blessed, an activity she is quite happy to perform. We may also cause some distractions while this is going on, such as perhaps attacking the Tower of London.
During this conversation the term 'nuclear weapons' is mentioned.
Bethany asks what these are as they sound, to her, like something useful.
"Oops," we all go.
We tell her that they are bad, really bad, and refuse to go into any more detail.
Bethany appears to accept this, though she is obviously still curious as to what we mean.
But anyway, it is now time to go.
The Irish wish us farewell and say we can come back at any time.
We thank them.
Blitz suggests that the introduction of Rock and Roll music would help to destabilise the Puritan system.
We aren't sure this would work, and the Irish, who have never heard of such a thing (obviously) just look confused. And with that Void opens a gate and we head off.
Needing an intermediate location to go to, we arrive in a copse of trees outside Newbury, then gate on to London.
As an initial location from which to reconnoitre London, Truth suggests the area around the former 'Voice of Liberty' warehouse the raid on which she participated in. The Voice of Liberty warehouse was the one inhabited place in an that seemed to be largely abandoned. This seems like a sensible idea, so we go to that area.
Scanning through Void's gate, we see that the Voice of Liberty warehouse has been burnt to the ground, and is now nothing but rubble and ashes, perhaps with a few bones (perhaps human, perhaps not) protruding up out of the ash. The other warehouses in the area are in fairly poor repair, but he moved his gate into one of them and we look around.
Inside, there turn out to be a few people around, apparently people who cannot find other places to live, even in the slum areas adjacent to this. They all seem grubby, desperate, and very rough, and we cannot help but worry that were we to stay there for long one or more of them might turn us in to the authorities in the hope of some kind of reward.
That being so, we decide to check into a nice clean hotel instead.
We consider the Hotel New England, then decide that that would be just too risky. Instead, Void scans around for a bit, and eventually we find a smaller, but still decent-looking place in a side street off the Strand not too far from the Hotel New England, the Hotel Bethlehem. He opens a gate into a nearby alley and we step through before making our way into the hotel.
The desk clerk greets us as we come in through the door.
We ask for rooms.
The clerk tells us that they have plenty available, and he asks us for our identity papers and Permits to Travel. We have the former, but not the latter. Damn.
Blitz hands over his papers to the clerk, who begins writing down their details in the large guest book on the counter.
Noesis swears and says that he has left all of our papers behind. He strides out of the hotel and off into a dark corner, where he merges with the ground and then returns to the hotel in the form of the floor.
The rest of us distract the clerk, mess about with our papers and so on. Truth 'accidentally' spills the contents of her handbag on the floor, and more time is spent finding everything that was in it and putting it all back properly.
Sneaking behind the front desk, Noesis does not find the personal papers of any guests there. However, looking at the board of room keys to see which rooms are taken he finds the first room that is occupied - room 11 - and sneaks out of the lobby and up to the first floor.
Sneaking into room 11 he finds the room deserted, but with an open suitcase on a stand by the wall. Searching this, he finds a set of travel papers secreted inside. Copying these he then replaces them and leaves, slurping back down to the front desk and out of the Hotel Bethlehem.
In the alley around the corner, Noesis reappears out of the ground and uses his powers to make us five sets of Permits to Travel, making sure they all have different serial numbers and so on.
He then walks back into the Hotel Bethlehem and hands travel papers for us all over to the clerk. He tells him that he left them in the place we came from.
"This is so obvious," Bethany comments in Void's head.
"This is subtle for us," Void replies. Bethany seems unconvinced.
The clerk, however, appears to detect nothing amiss. He copies down the details from the Permits and then hands over the keys for rooms 22, 23, and 24.
We thank him and move away towards the stairs.
As we go up to the second floor we suggest that perhaps Noesis should go back and amend the records in the guest book to match those of previous legitimate guests. So that we are not given away by our made-up Permit details should the clerk send them to the authorities in the near future. This sounds like a fair plan.
Bethany knows of some people in the government into whom she can move herself, and offers to go and see if she can, by looking through their eyes without their knowledge, find out where Cromwell, the Witch-Hunter and so on have gone.
We agree that this is a good idea, so she goes off to seek out the info we are after. Void and Noesis sense her fade away.
While we wait, we decide to hit the Tower of London.
That being so, Void opens a gate to the Tower so scout the place.
Through this, we can see that inside the castle keep there are lots of buildings, filling most of the space inside the walls. It is heavily defended, with machinegun posts and anti-aircraft guns mounted on the towers. The moat is water-filled, and there are what appear to be a pair of gunboats moored on the Thames-side wall.
While Void does this, Servo begins to disassemble the telephone in the room with the intention of turning it into a set of radio receivers for us all.
Considering the best way to conduct our raid, we wonder what to do with the weapons and so on that we are intending to steal. After some discussion we decide that the best thing will be to put them onto a ship out at sea.
Void moves his gate from over the Tower of London and sends it down the Thames to locate such a ship. There are plenty of ships moored in the docks, but these are not what we want. Further out, there are lots of ships, both anchored in the river and its estuary or under way, coming into London and going out from it, some of them low in the water (heavily loaded) and some riding high (empty). Also visible moored in a few places are what are clearly prison ships, or at least hulks.
None of the ships we see really take our fancy, so Void sends his gate further out. At the mouth of the Thames, on both side of the estuary, there are comprehensive fortifications of various kinds. Beyond the mouth of the Thames, there are also plenty of ships at sea, including some warships. Most of the cargo ships seem to be turning north and heading up the coast that way. Scanning onwards, we soon identify a large cargo ship in the North Sea heading northwards and riding high. It is named the 'Prudence'.
With the target selected, Void expands his gate and puts Truth and Blitz onto the bridge of the Prudence, which is manned by the captain and a few other crewmen. Given the element of surprise and their superhuman powers, Truth and Blitz very quickly take over.
The rest of us come through. Servo reacts to something the rest of us do not sense, and tells us that he is blocking a signal someone is trying to send from the ship.
He leads us to the radio room, where the radioman is trying frantically to send a distress call. He is quickly taken into custody.
With the radio silenced, we move on into the rest of the ship, from the engine room up to the crow's nest, where there is a man on watch with binoculars (radar does not seem to have been invented in this world). The crew turns out to be quite large, perhaps forty or fifty men, but none of them are superhumans, and soon the ship is ours. Via Void, we move the crew to France, to the cave. Of course, now we have only limited control of the ship, but...
Given that it is much easier for Void to make gates to stationary targets, we would like to be able to anchor the 'Prudence'. However, for that we really need a crew. We decide to go and ask the Baron for one.
Given that he is the only one of us who speaks French, we send Blitz to France to get a crew.
Servo goes up to the top of the mast and mans the crow's nest, just in case. Truth mans the wheel.
Appearing in the cave in France, soldiers quickly direct Blitz to the Baron Charles de Bourges, who greets him. Void holds a tiny gate open and observes through it, so he can bring Blitz back when required.
Blitz tells the Baron we need a crew for a ship.
The Baron looks a little surprised, so Blitz advises him of what we have done, and what we are planning to do.
At his request, Blitz describes the ship to him, and the Baron leads him outside to a tent, where there is a telephone. Picking up the receiver, he has himself put through to someone at the other end and speaks to them briefly before putting the receiver down again.
He quickly writes a note, then turns to Blitz. "If you go to Dunkirk, and give them this note," he says, handing the note to Blitz. "Admiral de Rochefort will see that you get a crew."
Blitz thanks him.
Seeing that Blitz in done, Void reopens his gate, and Blitz steps through back to the ship.
Void says he knows the place, and that being so he opens another gate.
On the 'Prudence', Truth has some control of the ship's course, although it is not heading in the nice straight line it was previously moving along.
After a little scanning around, Void locates the Dunkirk naval base, a large and busy-looking facility, and opens a gate there. He and Blitz step through.
The base guards look surprised and jump to alertness, beginning to point guns at them.
Blitz tells them why they are here, and presents the note.
One of the guards reads it, and then nods and leads them off to Admiral de Rochefort.
The Admiral turns out to be a stern-looking man in his mid-fifties, in an ornate uniform different to anything Blitz has been before. He takes the note the Baron gave Blitz, reads it, and nods. "The crew you require are assembling now, monsieur," he says. "Although they will not be gift-wrapped."
Blitz thanks him.
At the orders of the Admiral, one of the guards leads Blitz out to the dockside, where the crew are assembling. As stated, they are not wrapped. Nor are they in disguise. Instead, they all seem to be dressed in standard French naval uniforms. Oh well.
On the 'Prudence' Truth and Noesis discuss basically stupid ways forward from here while Truth steers the ship. These include setting up a pirate radio station on the ship, flying pirate flags, and so on.
In Dunkirk, the French crew are quickly ready to go. That being so, Void opens a gate and transports them all onto the 'Prudence'. Upon arrival they quickly move to halt the ship, heading off through the ship to their posts. They seem perfectly familiar with this type of ship.
Noesis suggests that the course has perhaps been a little erratic. Truth's steering has not, after all, been great. Truth willingly hands over control to the French captain.
The captain gives orders via the speaking-tubes and slowly the ship comes to a halt and the anchor is lowered.
With the ship stationary (and thus a much easier target for Void) we make ready to go.
We discuss the situation with the captain, and agree that they will call 'Mayday' (M'aidez) if they need us.
And with that Void opens a gate and we return to London, appearing in the shelter Noesis built on a Covent Garden rooftop.
From this place of safety, we begin to plan our assault on the Tower of London.
Void sends his gate off, hunting for potatoes and jars of produce that might be useful in blocking the barrels of the many guns that are there.
While he does this, we discuss what to do. Before long we agree that our prime targets are the guns stored there, and the contents of the armoury in general. If there are any prisoners, we should also release them.
Noesis agrees to go in undercover via a gate to see if he can locate the weaponry and so on that we want. Before he goes, Servo issues us all with small radio receivers that he has constructed from the parts he has got his hands on in the last few hours. They are nothing fancy, but are very good work considering the time available.
And with that, with Noesis doing his best to incorporate his radio receiver into himself so that he can shapeshift with it, Void opens a gate to a quiet corner of the Tower of London, and Noesis slips through, merging with the substance of the place and vanishing from sight. He begins to scout around.
Scouting around the Tower Noesis cannot help but notice that they seem to be on a higher state of alert than normal, or at least than when we broke into the Ministry of Security - we can't think why! There are quite a lot of four-man patrols moving about the Tower, seemingly at random
However, they do not look like they are ready to deal with people appearing in the middle of the place or inside the ground. Bad luck for them, really.
Noesis tunnels through the grounds of the Tower, leaving a small tube open behind himself so he can exit quickly should the need arise, without having to shift the ground to move through it.
After a while he gets an idea of the layout of the place. The main weapons store is inside the White Tower, the castle keep, which has smaller armoury and weapons making facilities built onto its outer walls. Most of the rest of the space inside the walls of the Tower taken up by barracks, garages for tanks and armoured cars, offices, stables and so on. Unlike the case in our world, the Tower's moat is full of water; there being no Tower Bridge in this version of London, the Tower simply stands on the riverbank. One thing he does find in the White Tower are a number of canisters of poison gas. They are marked 'poison'. but the actual name of the poison means nothing to any of us, although we suspect they could be something like chlorine or mustard gas.
After several hours Noesis has mapped the Tower to a fair degree of detail. No prisoners have been found.
That being so, he rendezvous with Void's gate and rejoins the rest of us before passing on what he has learned.
Noesis suggests that perhaps we need gas masks to cover ourselves, just in case the gas canisters get breached for some reason.
It is suggested that we need to remove the gas canisters instead.
Void points out that his moving them into space would be entirely possible. No-one thinks this is a bad idea, not even Servo, who thinks that even should the canisters fall back to Earth, any toxic gas will dissipate to harmlessness in the upper atmosphere long before it could do any harm.
With everyone in agreement, Noesis is gated into the front of the White Tower, where he merges with the door and seals it. He then reinforces the door to make it harder to break down.
When this is done, the rest of us follow via gate, stepping through into a storeroom filled with crates of guns and ammunition. Then we begin quietly to shift things out of here and to the 'Prudence' by way of Void's gate.
There are grenades, guns, ammunition, mortars and shells, bayonets, machine guns, artillery shells, explosives, and all kinds of things. We begin to clear out the tower.
After about half of the contents of the White Tower has been cleared out the door handle of the storeroom we are currently in rattles, then we hear the guards beyond begin to raise the alarm.
Void quickly uses his gate to send the canisters of poison gas into space, just in case anyone tried any funny business. We begin to set out some of the plentiful supplies of explosives here ready to blow up the place.
While people do this, Void starts to Hoover things up, while Truth steps out of a storeroom and sets upon the guards.
After quickly subduing them, she searches them and finds that they are carrying large and primitive-looking gas masks. She takes one of these and offers the others to the rest of us. We accept these gladly, and don them.
The less subtle emptying of the White Tower continues.
Guards are knocked out whenever they appear.
Servo tells us that we cannot destroy the building because of the number of guards inside. We take this under advisement.
We continue to clear the tower.
Noesis decides that it is time to keep watch, so he goes through one of his small tunnels up to the roof and keeps a look-out.
The guards there, manning the machine guns and anti-aircraft guns, are looking a little worried, but are showing no signs of deserting their posts.
Just to make sure they do not, Noesis seals the trap door up onto the roof so that they cannot leave. Which could be a problem for them if we decide to blow up the tower, but that is a risk Noesis is prepared to take.
At this point, from his vantage point on the roof, Noesis notices that something red is approaching through the air from the west. It seems to be a bright red combination of lines and planes folding itself across the sky. It is really quite weird. It does not seem to moving as such, but instead is just folding itself into itself on one side and unfolding itself out of itself on the other to move forward. By this means it seems to be approaching at some fifty or sixty miles an hour.
Noesis sends part of himself down through the small tunnels he has left through the structure of the White Tower to where the rest of us are and tells us what is going on. As he does this he listens to the guards up on the roof in case they can shed any light on the approaching red thing. "Oh no! The Scarlet Enigma!" he hears one of the say to his comrades.
We prepare to leave.
Void gates all of the unconscious guards to France, then we all leave too, back to the 'Prudence', and watch the situation at the Tower through Void's gate.
The Scarlet Enigma reaches the tower and hovers over it. Then it appears to see Void's gate, and reaches out red folding lines towards it.
Void closes the gate and reopens in the room wired to detonate the tower. The pin of the grenade that we have left as a trigger is pulled, and Void hastily closes that gate before opening another one at a distance to observe.
Through it, we see a large explosion tear open the White Tower. It shudders and stones fall, then its turrets topple and a fireball rises into the night sky. The Scarlet Enigma is lost to sight in all of this. Secondary explosions are heard from inside to White Tower, and other buildings also fall as the force of the explosion washes over them.
Void moves his gate further away, giving us an aerial view of the conflagration.
Underground petrol tanks blow up, adding to the general carnage.
As the dust clears and the fireball dissipates, the Scarlet Enigma is seen to still be there, hovering in mid-air over the site of the White Tower. However it is now not moving as much as it was before.
Blitz suggests attacking it right away, while it is vulnerable.
No-one really disagrees with this.
Servo fires a radio blast at it through Void's gate. This has no apparent effect but the Scarlet Enigma does start to move up through the air towards us.
Void drops a grenade on it and closes his gate.
Another gate is opened some way off, and we watch through it. The Scarlet Enigma seems a little rattled by the grenade blast, but not too bothered.
Below, in the Tower of London, explosions continue.
There is a brief discussion on what to do about the Scarlet Enigma. Should we teleport it into space (a plan rejected by Servo, as that might kill it), try to imprison it (would doing so even work?), or just leave it to whatever it is doing?
We decide to try imprisoning it.
That being so, Void opens a gate a mile down into the bedrock under London. Noesis reaches through the gate to the rock beyond and uses his powers to create a large empty sphere in the rock, dumping the waste mass out through the gate to where we are, and turning it into a large statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary at the same time.
When he has done this, Void attempts to chase the Scarlet Enigma with a gate, the other end of which is in the new prison. He seems able to move his gate rather faster than the Scarlet Enigma can move, so this looks hopeful.
The Scarlet Enigma appears to see the gate in some fashion, and moves towards it, unfolding red 'tentacles' towards it.
Its tentacles enter the portal and pass through into the 'cell'. This causes Void some pain as its powers appear to interact with the portal and his gate powers in some way. However, he can handle this for now.
Appearing to sense what lies beyond the gate, the Scarlet Enigma starts to withdraw from the gate.
However, because Void can move the gate faster than it can withdraw from it, it passes through into the underground prison cell and the gate is closed. Phew.
Void and Noesis go for coffee in London while they wait for ten minutes to see what happens to the Scarlet Enigma.
After the ten minutes have passed, Void opens another gate into the bedrock close by where Noesis built his cell. From there he merges with the rock and moves to spy on the Scarlet Enigma.
Peering into the cell, lit only by the red glow of the Enigma itself, he can see that the Scarlet Enigma appears to be eating its way through the rock upwards out of the cell. It seems to be 'folding' the rock into the lines and planes of itself, where it is disappearing. It has gone roughly three metres in the ten minutes, so they estimate that it will be out in a few days assuming nothing else changes.
We can live with that, so they leave it to its meal and also return to the 'Prudence'...