So we pick up the game as the other game ended, with our two intrepid detectives tops in a bustling Victorian street before Anna Marie (AM), the now very real ghost that Anna had been seeing in the present.
AM presented a sad case to the duo. Her sister was missing and the authorities could do nothing to find her. Could they help? In 1850, who else would you turn to than the rather incongruous owners of a strange little bookshop?
The trio decided that they should not talk in public so they went to a nearby chapel to continue their conversations. The sister, Abigail, was 18 and was being courted by an aspiring playwright, Henry Charles, whose play - 'A Mirror To The Future' (an amazingly accurate depiction of life in 1950) - was currently being shown at a local theatre. Henry had disappeared as well and her father was convinced that they had eloped but AM thought different. Her father did not approve of HCS as he is 'deformed' with a club foot. She had looked at HCs house and it had not been cleared.
The investigators took their leave and returned to the bookshop and the present - a tactic I had not thought they would engage. Some research into the theatre allowed them to narrate three things about it which were:
1. The theatre burned to the ground in 1850.
2. The playwright was never found after the fire.
3. The theatre site is rumoured to be haunted.
The two changed into their approximation of Victorian female dress (failed rolls resulting in a negative modifier for social rolls) and returned to the past and AM.
They decided to go to the theatre and see the play, Anna producing some appropriate coinage from her magic pockets. As they watched the play unfold they realised that Henry was in the box, watching the play! They went to intercept him, playing the role of Victorian ladies to the full until they ran to intercept him! And he ran, which was quite clever for a man with a crippled foot! Kelly, being more than a little kick ass, rugby tackled him and then he hissed and spat at her, actively trying to scare her. It worked and he escaped. They tried desperately to get the locals to stop him but they could not rally them to their aid, being strangely dressed and 'alien'.
Retiring from the scene Anna used her photographic memory to recall that HC had jumped in a cab and she had heard him mention his house. They decided to investigate, in the middle of the night. Yeah, that would work.
Entering the house through the back door, into a dark kitchen. I described the room in increasingly quiet voice, emphasising the shadows, the creaks, the smells and the whisps of smoke from the dead fire. Anna lit her torch (never knowingly underteched) and I screeched loudly as the cat leapt from its hiding hole. Ok it was a cheap trick but the girls nearly crapped themselves. Mission 'Fear' was going nicely.
And then they decided to split up. Because it was more Dr Who!
Split screen action was handled with aplomb.
Anna ascended to the bedroom only to have HC appear behind her, trapping her and assaulting her. She is useless in a fight and the now revealed Plasmavore (shapechanging alien vampires) began feeding on her. And then it transformed into her! She managed to escape but the transformed Plasmavore crashed out of the window.
Meanwhile, in the cellar (seriously, this was Dr Who not Dead of Night) Kelly discovered the drained but conscious body of HC, the untouched Abigail and ... the very dead body of AM. Which is strange because AM is now standing behind her now!
AM revealed that they were a pair of time displaced plasmavores and that they had tricked them here, creating a temporal disturbance using the revelations in the play, in a hope that someone would take them home. She asked to be taken through the 'unborn door'. Kelly had heard of their dead door, but not the unborn door and she did not want to unleash shapechanging vampires loose anywhere! The vampire tried to assault Kelly but she is a different kettle of physical fish and she knocked the Plasmavore out cold with the lantern she was carrying!
At this point they considered killing the vampire but they agreed they should not do that. Getting the living victims out of the building, they decided to take the unconscious Plasmavore to the theatre to lay a trap for the remaining one. They figured that it would come as it was desperate and that the theatre was the best place as it had to burn!
The Plasmavore did arrive ... Along with a mob of police and people lead by the furious HC. The Plasmavore looks like Anna and tries to persuade everyone that she is 'the real Anna' until Kelly asks her a question that only Anna could answer (about her love life!) and the Plasmavore breaks and pleads to be taken through the Unborn Door. However the mob intervene and somehow a gas lamp is broken and the theatre burns
The Plasmavore is lost in the blaze, her cries echoing through the night. Some say that they still echo around the site, the screams of someone who just wanted to go home.
In denouement we decided that HC and Abigail did indeed elope to avoid the scandal and thus he was never found again (as per the research)
When Kelly and Anna returned they had a very serious discussion about what had just happened and the implications. Should they nail the dead door closed and never go through it again? I was quite taken by the reaction they had - rather than assume that they had to continue 'just because' they questioned it thoroughly. However they decided to honour the wishes of Miss Mulholland.
As an epilogue Anna was cleaning the top floor and noticed a new door. Going through it she found a new room that she has never noticed and a modern almost SF style door. The open light was flashing. Anna realises this must be the unborn door - a door to the future?
Opening it she sees the vista of a bustling star port! And then a short, black clad Judoon figure steps into the door
'Jo Rho Mo Fo Doh. Mo Ho!'
To be continued ...
No comments:
Post a Comment