Notes taken by Alastair and Samantha Beadle.
Session 5.8 Index Session 5.10
On the good ship 'Prudence', somewhere north of the Wash, in the North Sea, we are considering what to do with the contents of the armoury of the Tower of London while Servo uses his radar vision to keep watch from the crows nest. It being the middle of the night, the only lights are the running lights of the blacked-out ship.
As he keeps watch, he spots a pair of aircraft approaching the ship at fairly low level, and contacts the rest of us on the receivers he made for us.
We join him on the deck and discuss contacting the aircraft by radio to find out who they are and what they are intending. At least until one of the French prize crew points out that radios in this world are much too big to fit into an aircraft. Damn.
By this stage we can see that they are making an attack run on the Prudence, diving down towards us.
Struck by an idea for a way of signalling the aircraft, Noesis begins to spread himself out across the deck of the ship, covering it with a giant version of the French flag (it being the only Octuple Alliance one we have seen), three fleur-de-lis on a blue background.
This does not seem to give the aircraft much pause, and we see a twinkling of machine gun fire from their wings. All of us apart from Truth dive for cover, carrying crewmembers with us, while she reflects bullets into the sea.
Bullets hammer into the deck as each aircraft releases a bomb towards the ship. Servo sees this with his radar vision and shouts a warning, while blowing one of the bombs up in a blast of radio energy. In the light of this, Void sees the second and gates it away from us.
We also see that the aircraft are emblazoned with a rectangular insignia consisting two sets of red, white and blue stripes divided by an extra white stripe. Dutch, perhaps?
We realise that signal lamps (which the Prudence does possess) can be used to contact the aircraft and tell them we are friendly. A crewman is ordered to signal the aircraft with a lamp, and begins to do so.
Meanwhile, with the aid of the crew, Void drops a length of heavy chain through a gate into the air into the path of one of the aircraft. Not seeing this, its pilot runs into the chain, which clips a yard or so off the end of one wing. The aircraft begins to fall towards the sea. We see both crewmembers bail out and take to their parachutes. Void scoops them up with a portal and deposits them on the deck as the aircraft tumbles into the sea and explodes.
The second aircraft makes another attack run, dropping another bomb that is again destroyed by Servo. Noesis' huge fleur-de-lis design seems to be ignored. It then turns away and begins to fly off.
The two crew who have been gated onto the deck in their flight suits and flying jackets reach for their pistols. Truth relieves them of these, and Servo serves them tea and biscuits which are hastily brought up by a crewman. They look confused.
Noesis attempts to inflate himself into a huge fleur-de-lis patterned barrage balloon and hover over the ship. However, he cannot generate helium, and is unwilling to fill himself with flammable hydrogen, so gives up on this idea and returns to human form.
After some consideration as to the best language to speak to the prisoners in, Blitz speaks to them in German and explains the situation.
They do not seem inclined to believe us, but despite this we offer to send them back to their side of the North Sea. We consider where best to send them, then decide that the best place is to Baron Charles de Bourges in France.
Void opens a gate to the cave, and the airmen are sent through. Blitz goes with them to explain the situation.
On the other side, the Baron is at the table in the and greets Blitz as he appears.
Blitz explains the situation regarding the airmen, and the Baron agrees to see that they are debriefed and sent back to their unit. He also asks the Baron if there is some way we could identify ourselves to friendly aircraft. The Baron considers this, and then gives Blitz a seemingly random sequence of letters to transmit in case of need, and tells us that this will, in future, be recognised by pilots.
The Baron is thanked for this, and Blitz returns to the Prudence.
That done, we discuss our next move against the New Commonwealth.
After some talk back and forth, we agree on a plan to go to Ely, this being the centre of resistance in the un-drained Fenlands of East Anglia, home of the Fen Tigers resistance group. We intend to go there, free the captives of the local security forces, identify any freedom fighters amongst them and give them some of our hoard of weapons.
To help confuse the New Commonwealth about our true target, Servo will also destroy the radio transmitters and telegraph wires to various other places around the country. From here Norwich, Hull and York are probably the easiest targets, so we agree that he will go there.
However, it is now the middle of the night, so we decide to rest and proceed in the morning.
The French prize crew are left on watch while we all go off to bed.
Once we are asleep, we each once again dream of the grey, misty place through which we travelled to this world and these bodies. Our counterparts are there again. However, we discover that we cannot speak to them - our mouths move, but no sound seems to come out. Noesis instead manages to establish communication using paper and pen that he 'dreams' into existence.
"Hello," he writes.
His counterpart, Dr Raymond James, seems to get the idea as he sees Noesis writing, and also dreams some paper into existence. He doesn't bother with a pen, simply dreaming words into the paper. "Who are you?" he asks.
"I am Noesis, whose 'body' you are occupying."
"You are in Hell, then!" responds Dr James.
"My world is Hell or yours?" Noesis asks.
"You, personally. You are crippled."
"Yes. Crippled but lucky to be alive."
"Lucky!?!?!" Dr James responds incredulously.
"It is better than the alternative - eternal sleep."
"Heaven would be preferable to that."
"Heaven will come soon enough. In the meantime I have God's work to do on Earth."
"The Devil's work, you mean!"
"I spend my life helping people, curing illness and fighting evil," writes Noesis. "How is that the Devil's work? Godliness is as Godliness does."
"I have seen your world."
"It is better than yours."
"I disagree."
"Is there any message you want passed to your wife?"
"Not by you," writes Dr James.
And with that the 'conversation' ends.
The rest of us just ignore our counterparts.
And in the morning we all wake up and assemble in the ship's galley, where we discuss our dreams, and Noesis' in particular, over breakfast.
There is a wireless in the galley, which seems to be tuned to a French channel, currently playing some (to us) rather odd-sounding music.
In his head, Servo can hear other stations too. He listens to the MBC, broadcasting from Boston, and as he hears the news coming on, re-broadcasts this to the wireless so we can all hear it.
The MBC reports that the "scheduled demolitions" of several London sites have continued with the demolition of the Tower Of London.
We wonder how many people in London actually believe this rubbish. In other news the MBC reports the execution of several 'spies', the names of whom are then broadcast. They include Mehitabel, Daniel and Ithamar James, Tabitha, Abner and Mary Forfar and Asenath, Zacharias, Samuel and Deborah Gordonston. That is, the immediate family members of the counterparts of Noesis, Servo and Void.
Truth, remembering the news report mentioning their arrest that she found when we raided the MBC headquarters, and which she then destroyed without mentioning it to the rest of us, hastily leaves the room at this point and goes and hides in the toilet.
She is not seen for some time...
Despite that, we decide to begin today's mission.
Before Servo goes off, however, he, Void and Noesis sense a presence appearing around Void. Void suspects that this is Bethany returning, and this proves to be correct when she speaks to him in his head.
They welcome each other and discuss recent events, with Void relaying Bethany's words to the rest of us.
As part of this discussion, Bethany tells us something of the Scarlet Enigma. From what she knows, it has these strange 'space-folding' powers, but that its powers seem to vary with time. It may sometimes have some limited teleporting powers. No-one knows where it came from, or what it is, but it certainly seems to work for General Paul Windebanke, who commands the Major-Generalship of Britain.
There is some concern that it might now be dead. It was all right after ten minutes or so underground, but we do not know whether it will still be all right now, hours later.
That being so, Void opens a gate into the cavern Noesis made, and peers through it to see if the Scarlet Enigma it is still there.
It is, but it is now at least a hundred meters closer to the surface now.
At this point, Bethany also declares that she knows where Cromwell and his retinue are at present.
Through his portal, Void sees the Scarlet Enigma apparently sense his portal, and begin to fold itself down towards it.
Shouting through the portal to it, Void attempts to communicate with the Enigma. It does not respond, and does not stop advancing, as well as unfolding long scarlet 'tentacles' towards the portal.
That being so, Void closes his portal.
Hearing the commotion on deck, Truth emerges from the toilet and joins us there.
Noesis suggest that we punish the Enigma for this hostile activity by filling in a large part of its hole, undoing its work.
Void agrees, and opens a portal into the bedrock to one side of the cavern. Noesis goes through into the rock there, out of contact with the rest of us, and begins to close the cavern.
As Void holds the portal open, a pair of long, thin, scarlet folded tentacles appear out of it, and begin to quest around in the air. This hurts, as the powers of Enigma interact with his. To Servo's radar vision they appear very odd, as if space is folded in them, so his radar is illuminating and reflecting from parts of it from odd directions.
Noesis feels the tentacles spear through him as he sits in the rock in front of the portal. Ouch.
He flees through the rock away from the Enigma and the portal.
It does not follow him, but rather continues to attack through the portal. As the tentacles quest towards him, Void shuts the portal, and the tendrils disappear back through it with a 'pop'.
In the rock, Noesis feels the portal vanish, and continues to fill in the cavity, closing it entirely. Even so, he continues to crush inwards, but the rock seems to vanishing into something, presumably the Enigma.
That being so, he stops and uses his powers to build a diamond roof above the Enigma. Unfortunately, this does not stop it, and he feels it begin to move through it and upwards again.
Wanting to retrieve Noesis, Void opens a portal close to where his previous one was.
In the rock, Noesis feels the portal open, and pops through in the form of a lump of 'stuff'. Closely followed by folded scarlet tendrils, much bigger than before. This hurts quite a lot, so Void hastily closes the portal, and again the red tendrils disappear back through it before they are trapped in it.
Noesis shifts back into human form, and explains that he had no effect on the Enigma.
He suggests that a portal to magma would be the best idea for dealing with it.
Everyone else thinks that it is best to just leave it alone.
With everything calmed down again, Bethany tells us that Cromwell is back in Boston. Apparently he and the rest of his entourage all flew back to there soon after the rally, and our first attacks.
Also taking advantage of the calm, Servo asks Truth why she left us.
She tells the rest of us that she knew they had all been arrested when we raided the MBC.
"Never mind, I don't care about them," Noesis tells her.
No-one else seems too bothered either, and we conclude that we didn't have enough time to have made it to Boston and saved them anyway.
Bethany tells Void, in his head, that there was time to save the families if we had acted straight away.
Void, also not really caring either way, shrugs this off.
With all of this over, we decide to move on to the mission in Ely.
With the assistance of Void, who gates him to and fro, Servo goes off on his mission to knock out the radio transmitters and telegraph wires of Ely, York, Norwich and Hull.
Servo flies around cutting the radio lines of communication to Ely (still an island in the un-drained Fens of this world) and cities close to it (Hull, York and Norwich).
Noesis tells everyone he wants to construct a giant Virgin Mary into a hillside, just because.
There is some murmuring from the rest of us at his seeming obsession with doing something like this, but we wish him luck if he can manage it.
But with this done, it is time to go off to Ely.
Scanning through Void's gate, we find that the centre of the New Commonwealth regime in Ely seems to be a fortified manor house in a walled compound close to the Cathedral. There is a radio mast on its roof and telegraph wires running into the building. There are also many people - soldiers and others - running around in a concerned manner - presumably worried about the blown up radio station and loss of wireless communication.
With the place given a cursory scan, Noesis goes through Void's gate to a discrete corner of the compound and infiltrates the manor house.
He quickly locates the cells, down in the cellars, and then seals all of their doors to stop any movement of prisoners, or attempts to execute them. With that done, he then scopes out the rest of the house. He finds that most of the armoury has been cleared, and the people in the compound are clearly preparing for some kind of attack. That being the case, he locates their main forces and then returns to the rest of us, again via Void's gate.
He then tells everyone what is going on. We decide that Truth, as our only essentially bullet-proof member, will be sent in first to demand the surrender of the New Commonwealth forces.
So Void opens a portal into the courtyard, and Truth steps through with her faceted force field glittering around her. In a loud voice she demands that they all surrender.
They consider this. One of the soldiers runs off into the manor house.
Truth tells them that they shouldn't fire.
"We have heard of you," says a captain. And they do not.
After a few minutes the soldier who ran into the manor house returns with a number of people in officers uniforms, including a General.
The general asks Truth what we want.
She asks for their complete surrender. As she says this, she notices some people moving around behind her, perhaps with grenades, and asks them to stop.
The general agrees, and gives an order to the soldiers, who move back. He asks to be allowed to leave here with his troops, and under arms.
Through the portal, Truth asks the rest of us for our opinion on this.
Although initially we wish to completely disarm the New Commonwealth troops before allowing them to leave, the general points out that if we do that, then they will all be slaughtered by the locals as they depart. Hmm.
We consider this. It is finally agreed that we will let them leave with small arms, but only pistols. That should be enough for them to protect themselves.
That didn't seem to go quite the way we expected. Oh well...
We advise them to round up any other New Commonwealth officials in Ely and take them with them too.
The general nods, and begins giving orders. And in fairly good order, and quite a short time, the troops leave.
The local people in the streets outside look very confused at this.
With the troops gone, Noesis creates and hauls up a flag bearing the British Royal Standard over the manor house, and over the town. A small cheer goes up from the people outside. With that done, Noesis and Blitz go down to the cells to see to the prisoners.
Truth goes and has a wander around the manor house, looking for anything of interest.
In the cellars, Noesis unseals the prison cells to free all of the prisoners, who are in various states of disrepair. He heals all prisoners, and tells them that we are here to help, as the British Liberation Army Militia (BLAM), and explains that we are trying to contact the local resistance fighters of the Fen Tigers. We have a few spare arms from the Tower of London we would like to distribute to them.
One of the prisoners, a big, burly man, tells Noesis that he 'might be able to get word to them'. Jolly good.
Noesis and Blitz tell him that we will leave a large pile of weapons in the main hall of the mansion upstairs and then give him the keys of the mansion. They are all then free to pass the weapons on to the resistance.
Noesis continues to suggest that guerrilla action would be a good thing to use the weapons for, rather than trying to take and hold a single, attackable, position, such as here in Ely.
They agree that this is the best way forward.
At this point Voids senses Bethany disappear without a word.
Upstairs Truth finds that a large pile of papers has been comprehensively burnt in a fireplace, apparently with the aid of petrol and so on. She can pick up a few words on some un-burnt shreds, but nothing containing any information of use.
Back in the cells, Noesis asks the prisoners there about the right flag to use.
"The Union Jack," suggests the man we are talking to.
We cannot help but notice that the prisoners do not seem very friendly. Oh well.
Upstairs, Void feels Bethany return. He asks her where she went.
She tells him that she has been to the local Fen Tiger resistance leader and told them what has happened here so that they do not waste any time. A fair point.
With the mansion searched and the prisoners freed, Void opens a gate back to the Prudence and, with the aid of the sailors there, we transfer enough weapons for a few hundred people - about twenty percent of the total - through to the main hall of the mansion before giving the keys to the place to the man we spoke to in the cells.
And with that done, we gate back to the Prudence.
Back on the ship, over tea we discuss what to do next.
After a little while we decide that the best way forward is to move the armaments to a big hole in the north of England, a metre or so below the surface, where they will be safer than on this ship, and also accessible to people other than us should we wish to give other people the opportunity to get their hands on them.
That being so, Void uses his gate to scan around the north of England until he finds a suitably isolated and largely uninhabited area. We go through, and Noesis uses his powers to excavate an underground cache, following which, with the assistance of the French crewmen, we move all of the remaining weapons there before sealing it and returning to the Prudence.
We seem to have no further use for the Prudence now, so we decide to abandon it.
We thank the crew for their help, and then Void gates them back to the navy base at Dunkirk.
Wanting to practice using his powers to sink ships, Void then uses his gate to send water into the Prudence and, over a little while, sinks the ship; it takes a while due to the limited size of his gate, but it does work. Glub, glub, glub.
We regroup at a random point in Britain from which Void finds us an isolated barn to shelter in. We go there and discuss the way forward from here.
Noesis decides that now is the time to put his 'graven image' plan into action. He chooses York Minster as his first target for this, specifically the four faces of its spire, upon which he wants to put four graven images.
However, this plan is put on hold for a little while, while we discuss on what we should do next. Should we conduct more attacks on cities, like the one we just carried out in Ely? Should we begin some other form of attack? Or should we attack Cromwell directly now that we know he is back in Boston?
Before a final decision is made the York Minster plan is put into action. Void transports Noesis onto the spire, and he merges with it and in the dull grey February day begins to re-shape it as he wishes. On its four side the spire acquires giant portraits of the Virgin Mary, St Christopher, Jesus and a nativity scene respectively.
The day being dull and wet, and people on the streets of York mainly walking with their heads down, no-one seems to immediately notice these changes.
Noesis leaves back through the gate to the rest of us.
Wanting more information upon which to base our decisions, we decide to return to France to discuss things further with Baron Charles de Bourges, and gate through to the cave containing the stone circle.
The Baron and Master van der Stel are there, and greet us.
We request permission to see the prisoners we have delivered here so far. We have decided that how they have been treated will affect what we do next.
The Baron agrees that this may be a good idea, and so he quickly pens us a letter of introduction before telling us to go to a chateau ten miles north of here and present the letter to the guards there.
We thank him, and Void, after a short period of scanning through his gate, takes us there.
The chateau, a large baroque structure in large ornamental gardens, appears to be quite heavily defended. There are several armoured cars parked in front of it, and machine gun nests set up about the place, as well as lots of French soldiers moving about.
We march up to the front door and pass on the note to the guards there.
They take it, and after reading it, summon an officer, a captain, who has the authority to decide these matters.
When he arrives we ask to see General Nelson, who we captured in Belfast.
The captain agrees that we may do so, and assigns a pair of soldiers to escort us to him.
We are led down into the cellars of the chateau, past an extensive wine cellar to some rooms that seem to have been hastily adapted into prison cells. We are led to one and let in. General Nelson is strapped to a chair inside, in front of a table. He is clearly rather the worse for wear, having apparently been quite badly beaten. However, he does not seem to have suffered any permanent damage.
Void tries to reason with General Nelson, but he does not seem inclined to co-operate.
We ask the captain about this mistreatment, and whether any of 'our' prisoners have been executed.
He tells that none of the prisoners have been executed, yet. We are also told that there are strong guidelines about how to treat prisoners - but they are not agreed internationally. However, he assures us that the General is being treated in an entirely legal and above-board manner. Oh.
We ask to see some of the other prisoners we sent here, and are taken to some other cells that contain guards from the Ministry of Security. They also appear to have been badly beaten. Oh again. Apparently some of them will be executed at some later stage "For their crimes." Oh a third time.
We ask about the results of these brutal interrogations. The captain tells us that they have, apparently, revealed much about the workings of the Ministry of Security.
"The intelligence people here are also making good use of the paperwork that you stole," the captain tells us.
Apparently there are a number of double agents within the cause of the British resistance.
We ask to see this information, and after a short delay copies of the papers are provided to us.
We scan them, but given our ignorance of the details of the British resistance movements, to us they provide little information.
However, Bethany, still lurking inside Void, seems to make much more of it all, and volunteers to go and tell the various resistance groups the names of the double agents within them that have been revealed by the French examination of the papers we took from the Ministry of Security.
We agree to this, and she fades away again...
We decide that we have seen enough, thank the French captain, and return to the barn to discuss all of this.
Given that neither side here appears to have much of the moral high ground, we are not sure how to proceed.
"We should kill Cromwell and start a revolution in Britain, and then leave them to it," Blitz suggests at the end.