Orichalcum Universe: The Unity Awakens...

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

Almost from the precise moment of that first meeting with Herr Nagel,
Barrington-Shaw was ill-at-ease, uncertain of just why, and at a loss for
what to do about it. Nagel was charming, erudite, the very picture of
suave and self-possessed gentility, and yet Barrington-Shaw did not
trust him, could not relax around him, and could not figure out why
Nagel bothered him so. From that first night at the party, Barrington-
Shaw was unsure of Nagel, doubtful of him, and would in fact have been
quite pleased if he never encountered the man again. This inner distrust,
and the utter lack of any visible or rational basis for it, bothered
Barrington-Shaw, who thought of himself as a modern, sophisticated,
rational sort of person, even after his discovery of his own family's
shocking secrets.

But Barrington-Shaw found he could not readily get Nagel out of his
life, because his own doubt and distrust of Klaus Nagel was matched,
in an eerie mirror image, by a mysterious and, to Barrington-Shaw,
dismaying fascination in Priscilla. At first this reaction was not much
noticeable, but they encountered Nagel many times over the course of
the next few months, they were moving in similar circles, and with
each meeting both Barrington-Shaw's unease and Priscilla's peculiar
fascination seemed to grow in tandem.

Barrington-Shaw considered the possibility that his unease about Nagel
could be based on jealousy, but that didn't really make sense either.
For one thing, both he and Priscilla had had their share of affairs, and
they certainly were not married and had made no commitments to
each other. None of her previous amorous adventures had produced the
unease Barrington-Shaw now felt, nor had she ever seemed quite so
obsessive as she now began to be toward this man.

Barrington-Shaw's mood was not helped by his strong suspicion that
Nagel recognized both Priscilla's fascination and his own doubt, and
found both deeply amusing. Nagel made no overt sign of this, but
Barrington-Shaw fancied he could often made out a half-hidden smirk
on Nagel's face when he was around them, and there was something in
his mannerisms that spoke of disdainful amusement, under the nearly
flawless surface of gentlemanly sophistication.

Matters came to a head some three months or so after their first meeting.
Ironically, they were once again at the very estate at which they and Nagel
had first met, for yet another society function, if anything a wilder and
more popular gathering than the first one had been. Yet again Barrington-
Shaw and his lover were present for a weekend stay, and yet again Nagel
was as well. When he learned Nagel was present, Barrington-Shaw attempted
to persuade Priscilla that they ought to make their excuses and cut short
their stay, but by now her fascination with the man had grown to a point
where she dismissed Barrington-Shaw's worries out of hand, and told
him he could leave if he wished, but she was staying.

Barrington-Shaw still had nothing concrete to base his worries on, but on
that very night what had been unease escalated to true fear. Barrington-
Shaw was certainly unwilling to leave Priscilla alone (well, alone amid the
crowd) with Nagel, and so he remained and they both turned in late that
night for a tired sleep after a long evening of dancing and gambling.

A few hours later Barrington-Shaw awakened to find Priscilla gone from
their guest cottage. She had apparently left without waking him, which
was unlike her, and to Barrington-Shaw's surprise, he saw that she had left
her street clothing in the cottage, apparently having gone out in her night
clothes on a cold, damp late autumn night. The clock reported that it was
nearly 2:40 a.m., and Barrington-Shaw grabbed a lantern and went looking
to see what had possessed his lady love to do such a thing.

It took Barrington-Shaw nearly half an hour to find her. Fortunately the
ground was damp from rain earlier in the day, and Priscilla had left some
footprints sufficient for Barrington-Shaw to follow her trail, though they
were hard to see in the dark and none too deep, having been made by a
slender woman in her bare feet. He lost the trail several times, and had to
search back and forth in the dim and flickering light of the kerosene lantern,
chilled by the gusts of breeze coming from the approaching autumn storms.

Barrington-Shaw finally found his love when he heard her call out his name,
and he found her at the bottom of a short slope of wet turf that bounded one
side of the formal gardens. She was still clad in her sleeping garments,
she was disheveled and had numerous small cuts and scrapes, apparently
from the foliage of the gardens that she had passed through in her nocturnal
perambulations. She had no idea what she was doing in the gardens, she had
apparently been sleepwalking and the fall down the slope had awakened her.

Barrington-Shaw was alarmed, he had known Priscilla Newcale for over
four years, fairly well, and in all that time she had never sleepwalked.
In fact, she was a very deep sleeper, often hard to rouse. Further, he had
followed her track across the gardens and he had a fair idea where Priscilla
had been walking in whatever dream had guided her: they were only a
stone's throw from the cottage occupied by Klaus Nagel, and Priscilla's track
had gone fairly steadily in that direction almost from the moment she left
their own small guest house. From where they were, they could see the
guest house in which Nagel was staying, it was one of the more luxurious
ones on the estate, and they were no more than 200 feet from it.

There were no lights on in the windows, and Barrington-Shaw had no
desire to arouse any attention, as he helped Priscilla back to their
own quarters, and she told him that she couldn't even remember any
dreams that might have been driving her to sleep walk. The last thing she
remembered was turning in to sleep at about midnight, and then finding
herself lying on the wet grass, cold and chilly and scared and half-dressed
in the darkness. She had heard Barrington-Shaw a few moments later,
and had called out, recognizing the sound of his step.

Barrington-Shaw had no doubt of her veracity, it was not like her to lie to
him, and even if she had been trying to intentionally sneak off to Nagel's
bed, it was hardly likely she'd have gone out into the cold, chilly, damp
night barely dressed and in her bare feet!

However, this incident only reinforced his certainty that there was something
very, very bad associated with Klaus Nagel, and he was more sure than
ever that he wanted no part of the man. In the darkness of their quarters,
Priscilla was now more receptive to his worries, and the lovers agreed that
come morning, they would make their excuses to their hosts and leave.

As they went back to sleep in their warm bed, his arms now wrapped
snugly around his lover against the possibility of any further nocturnal
roaming, Barrington-Shaw tried to shake the feeling of impending doom
that had lain over him since they arrived, but in spite of Priscilla's
agreement that they should depart, he could not quite shake the sense
that it was already too late.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The next morning saw Barrington-Shaw up early, packing and making
ready for a departure that could not come too soon for him. At that time,
Priscilla was ready enough to join him, aiding him in packing and in
making up a polite excuse to depart. However, by mid-morning, when
they were packed and largely ready, Priscilla seemed less eager to go,
as if her fear during the night was being erased by the bright morning
sunlight that had taken the place of the night's rain.

They had planned to make their excuses around the noon meal, and leave
for the nearest town to take the stage to Paris. But just about that time,
to Barrington-Shaw's dismay, Priscilla suddenly informed him that she
had changed her mind, and was staying!

Barrington-Shaw tried in vain to persuade her to leave, but her nocturnal
uncertainty had been replaced by a blithe confidence in the day.

"Come on, William," she chided him, "it was just a dream, nothing to get
so upset over! We let it spook us last night, but there’s no need to panic
or do anything stupid just because I had a weird night!"

If Priscilla had regained her self-confidence, her sudden turnabout left
Barrington-Shaw more nervous and afraid than ever. He had no
intention of leaving Priscilla there alone, though, so their departure
was canceled, and they never even told their hosts that they had been
planning to depart.

That night, at a dance, Barrington-Shaw watched in nervous horror as
Nagel monopolized Priscilla's attentions, dancing with her throughout
the evening, to the point of ignoring his own attractive female
companion. But to Barrington-Shaw's surprise, that woman seemed
unconcerned, blithe, as if it did not bother her at all. In fact, though he
could not put his finger on exactly what it was, Barrington-Shaw had the
distinct impression that Nagel's putative lover was uninterested in anything.
He had a hint, a faint sense, that she was almost unaware of the world
around her, as if she were going through the motions of some rote play.

After the dance, Barrington-Shaw returned to their guest quarters with
Priscilla, but she told him she'd forgotten her shawl just before they
reached their cottage, and said she'd be back as soon as she retrieved
it. Priscilla returned to the main house, and Barrington-Shaw waited
for her to return...and waited...and waited. He kept trying to tell himself
that he was worrying needlessly, that she had just stopped to chat with
their hosts or someone, but with every passing second his nerves were
higher strung and his stomach tighter.

When over half an hour had passed, he went to the great hall to see what
was going on, only to be told by a surprised footman that Priscilla had left
the estate! Just a few minutes before, she and Klaus Nagel had been seen
leaving together in his private coach, leaving behind both Nagel's own
putative companion and Barrington-Shaw.

Barrington-Shaw immediately set out in pursuit, not really thinking about
what he would do if he caught up to them, he 'borrowed' a horse from his
host's stables, and rode through the night at a rather reckless pace in the
darkness, hoping to catch up. It was half an hour's hard ride through the
night to the nearest town, but when he arrived nobody knew anything
about either Nagel or Priscilla, nobody had seen a coach matching the
description of Nagel's, and though Barrington-Shaw waited through the
night, they never showed up.

Barrington-Shaw was emotionally roiled, devastated by Priscilla's
apparent betrayal, and torn by his deep worry for her safety, because
he remained convinced that Nagel was a very dangerous man. There was,
however, little he could do, because he had no idea where they were at
or where they were going, and no easy way to find out. When he tried
to track down leads toward Nagel, he quickly found that all the trails
rapidly evaporated. Even their hosts did not really know him well, and
now he seemed to have vanished into thin air, taking Priscilla with him.

Barrington-Shaw went to Paris, and there he went, more or less, on a wild
bender, drinking and wenching his way through the bars of the city for
about a month. Though he was disgusted with his own behavior in his
more sober moments, it would prove more or less fortuitous that he did
this, because about six weeks after Priscilla and Nagel had gone away
together, news of Priscilla arrived...bad news.

The news reached Barrington-Shaw by letter from an acquaintance in
Prussia, and it informed him that Priscilla's dead body had been found
in a seedy hotel in Berlin. She had very clearly been murdered, and the
authorities were looking for anyone connected to her in their search
for information. Normally some suspicion might well have fallen on
Barrington-Shaw, who well known in their circles as Priscilla's regular
'companion', but his bout of dissipated activity in Paris alibied him,
he could easily prove he had been in Paris at the time the murder had
to have happened, with many witnesses.

Barrington-Shaw traveled to Berlin, seeking to learn what he could about
what had happened to his lady love. This proved to be not much. Nobody
knew how she ended in Berlin, or in the low-class hotel that was so unlike
her familiar haunts. Her body was...damaged. Barrington-Shaw
learned that she had clearly been beaten before she died, there were various
burn marks, and the authorities thought that her right arm had been dislocated
before her death. The actual final cause of death was obvious enough
by any standard: strangulation with a silk scarf, which had been left neatly
tied around her neck by the murderer.

A relatively short time later, the Barrington-Shaw estate in England was
surprised by the advent of a late-night arrival: William himself, having
come home after attending Priscilla's funeral.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

It was on a chilly, dreary, rainy night in Cheshire when Donald William
arrived at his family home, and his arrival a little past midnight
might have raised some anger among his relatives except for the fact
that he was so clearly at the end of his rope. His eyes had a wild
look in them, and he was soaked to the skin, he had walked from
the train station to his family home, in the dark and the rain, a walk of
several hours. He collapsed into bed, so exhausted that he more nearly
passed out than fell asleep, as soon as John, the family's head
manservant, had helped him up to his old rooms.

William would spend most of the next two days asleep, waking only long
enough to eat, and talk a little with his worried parents, before sleeping
some more. He had hardly slept at all in the week since Priscilla's funeral,
and before that he had been running on an overloaded, stressed out behavior
pattern that had worn his reserves down to nothing.

When William did finally catch up on his sleep sufficiently to function,
his family found him...different. Gone was the smart-mouthed, often
disrespectful young hellion, gone was the man who took nothing seriously.
Priscilla's murder had worked a change, something in William had died
and someone else had been born. William's father Michael had no idea
of exactly what it meant, the new William was a man who kept his own
counsel, but the change was unmistakable.

William had known, before this all occurred, about the odder aspects of
his family heritage, or at least he had known the outline of it. Now
William showed deep interest in the details, and plunged into the esoteric
lore available to the family. Where before he could barely be troubled
to pay attention to the family's traditions or activities, now he was
voracious, pouring over old texts, talking to those of his relatives who
knew things he found relevant, and he was asking penetrating questions.

The reason was that William had come to suspect that Nagel, who he was
quite certain hard murdered Priscilla, was a psion. William also suspected
that Nagel had used telepathic mesmerism to ensnare Priscilla and lead
her to her doom, and he was determined to learn enough to judge whether
his suspicions were possible. Beyond that, William had conceived a
desire for revenge on Nagel that was now giving his formerly directionless
life a definite, if not necessarily entirely healthy, organizing motif.

William also spent some of his own share of the family money seeking
information, as discreetly as he could, about Klaus Nagel. William was
hardly shocked to learn that there appeared to be no such person, he had
already concluded from his own encounters and things he had heard that
'Klaus Nagel' was just a pseudonym. He was, however, surprised at just
how little trail 'Nagel' left behind him. The only line of investigation that
produced any results at all was the search by physical description, there
were quite a few people who had seen the man who matched 'Nagel's'
description, but nobody actually knew much about him.

The search was hindered by William's efforts to keep it discreet, as well.
The last thing he wanted was to risk alerting 'Nagel' that he was being
tracked and trailed, by preference, William preferred Nagel not even
suspect anyone was seeking him. To that end, William made a public
show of putting his old life behind him, of being ready to grow up and
settle into a respectable life.

William made a point of avoiding his former haunts, most of his former
companions, and of being seen with his family in London during the
summer Season, of staying close to home, and of being overheard saying
that he just wanted to leave his past behind. Most people accepted this,
it made perfect sense after his apparently being abandoned by Priscilla,
followed by her horrible murder. This was even partly the truth, but not
even close to the whole truth.

William spent over a year in all this activity, as well as getting to know
his family and childhood friends again, and slipping back into his life at
home. Gone were the all-night parties and drinking binges, instead
William was usually up before six a.m., regardless of his plans for the
day, and he began to take an interest in the mundane doings of the
Barrington-Shaw clan as well, including managing their lands and their
business investments (these latter were somewhat indirect, due to the
aristocratic prejudices of the time).

What William really wanted to do, though, was speak with 'Cousin
Lucy', and he first got a chance to do this about a year and a half after
his return home.

MORE LATER.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

William Barrington-Shaw's chance to talk to 'Cousin Lucy' came in 1883,
when she paid a visit to the Barrington-Shaw estate for the first time since
William was a small boy. 'Cousin Lucy', formally Lucille Annette Diane
Barrington-Shaw, had last been seen to pay a visit to her supposed home
place in 1859, when William was only nine years old, and he remembered
her only dimly, through a small boy's distracted recollections. He had since
learned from his parents and his other 'in the know' relatives and retainers
that she was not even genuinely a relative, but rather an old friend of the
family. A very old friend of the family. A very, very old friend of the
family, in fact. By most standards, she was an impossibly old friend
of the family, but William had come to know other standards of ‘possible’.

None of William's relatives knew exactly how old the woman who he
knew as 'Cousin Lucy' really was. They knew that she was at least
three hundred years old, because the Barrington-Shaw family had been
interacting with her at least that long, there were family records that went
back to the 1500s that clearly made reference to the woman. By her own
account, she had been alive when the Pyramids of Giza were built, she
claimed to have been alive, in fact, before Atlantis sank. If true, that
made her at least six thousand years old, if the family information
about the Atlantis story was accurate. She had never been willing to give
them any precise date for her 'creation', in part because, by her own account,
she was not exactly sure about that information herself.

This was the part that left William most unnerved and amazed, because if
what he had been told was true, 'Cousin Lucy' was not just nearly immortal,
but in fact not exactly human, and she wasn't born at all, she had been
'created' by another being entirely. William was foggy on this, on what
entity could make a being like Lucy, and why, and how, she'd never been
very forthcoming about that, and William's father was of the opinion that
she did not know all the answers herself. [1] [2]

Now that he was an adult, William could be told more than he had known
as a child, including Cousin Lucille's actual name, which was more than
twenty syllables long. The usual practice of her confederates was to address
her by the first few syllables, or 'Aradel'. None of the Barrington-Shaw
family knew what language this name came from, it was older than Atlantis. [3]

It was in July of 1883 that 'Cousin Lucy' arrived at the Barrington-Shaw
estate, for a visit with William's father. When he set eyes on the woman,
for the first time since he was nine years old, he instantly realized that he
should have known all along that she was not really a relative, even
when he was a boy. For one thing, she did not look remotely like the
other Barrington-Shaw family members. His first impression of her was
that she was almost unbelievably beautiful, and remarkably tall for a woman,
standing easily six feet in height in flat shoes. She held herself erect and
confident, and was graced with long flowing brown hair and intense green
eyes, she made an instant, almost startling impression on William when his
father introduced her to the now-adult younger Barrington-Shaw.[4]

It would be several days before Lucille/Aradel concluded her discussions
with William's parents, and some of the other family members. It was only
two weeks after her arrival that William found a chance to speak with her
about his own interests, an opportunity he arranged while the two of them
were out riding with several other family members. William managed to
arrange for himself and 'Lucille' to ride separately from the rest of the party
for a while, and it was then that he brought up the matter of what he thought
had happened between his lover and 'Klaus Nagel'.

It turned out she already knew what he wanted to talk about. The faint tingle
he had occasionally felt in his head since she arrived was, she explained, the
sign of a telepathic mental probe, she had actually read his mind and had a
good idea of what he wanted to discuss. William was not sure if he found
this frightening, offensive, or a relief, or all at once, but it certainly did simplify
the task of bringing up the matter.

MORE LATER.


[1] In fact, 'Cousin Lucy' was an Eldren Avatar, of the same 'race'
as the Eldest of Atlantis.

[2] This too is true, at the time she was first created by the
particular damaged, partly-trapped Eldren who brought her into being,
there were no civilizations, calendars, clocks, or other time-keeping
mechanisms on Earth. 'Cousin Lucy' genuinely does not know precisely
how old she is. How old is she? We shall see.

[3] In fact, it was the language of the Avatars, the 'bioroid host
organisms' used by the crippled Familiar Eldren as their eyes and hands.
The language was rooted in the telepathic 'language' of the Eldren
themselves.

[4] In GURPS 3e terms, 'Cousin Lucille' had Very Beautiful
Appearance and several levels of Charisma.

[Apache]

So, basically, you're telling me 'Cousin Lucy' is the Ultimate Cougar.

:)

[Sword-dancer]

Interesting PC family.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Apache

So, basically, you're telling me 'Cousin Lucy' is the Ultimate Cougar.

:)

She can be if she wants to be. :grin: But you'd better have it all together it you want to impress her, because she really has seen it all before (in every sense).

Seriously, the Avatars are hell on wheels at seduction, or at least they have the potential to be. They have partial control over their features and skin color and even a little ability to adjust their height (though all that takes some time), so they can make subtle changes to fit a local culture's definition of 'attractive'. They have a very high HT, in the neighborhood of 18-22, and most of them have lots of experience, sexual, emotional, etc. Further, they are telepathic and if you don't know how to defend your thoughts, they can pick out whatever pushes your buttons from your mind and use it against you (or for you, depending on how you look at it). This is true of both sexes of the Avatars.

But they can also be very scary to someone who knows what they are and what s/he is dealing with. Their age, knowledge, and raw power can be unnerving to a mortal...and a few of them have an 'alienation problem', they get to alienated from mortals and normal people by their nature and long lives that they actually lose the ability to use their assets effectively to influence people (other than by brute force, physical or telepathic). These particular Avatars have the looks and other resources, but tend to creep everyone out instead of attracting them.

Originally Posted by Sword-dancer

Interesting PC family.

Thanks!

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

The discussions between ‘Cousin Lucille’ and William went on for days,
hours at a time, and it was only partly conducted in spoken language. A
normal human listening in would have heard what sounded like an oddly
'broken' conversation, as one or the other switched to spoken language
and back to thought again, a conversation carried on by virtue of the vast
telepathic power that was possessed by ‘Cousin Lucy’.

William told her what had happened to him and his lady love, and she
confirmed for him that it did indeed look and sound like an example of
the use of telepathic power to influence behavior.

'Cousin Lucy' revealed to William that he himself was possessed of what
was, for a Human, a significant 'psychic' potential. It was a product of his
ancestry, and with training he could use it. Over the course of the summer
and autumn of 1883, Lucille/Aradel did just that, she trained William in the
use of the potential power he had been born with. At first William found
the process terrifying and exhilarating, then fascinating, and he made rapid
progress. Lucille also began introducing William to various high-ranking
personages that she knew in the British Government and the Imperial
administration during this time.

Lucille/Aradel did not do this entirely out of altruistic motives. Though
she did indeed sympathize with William's loss of Priscilla, she also
suspected that the ‘Klaus Nagel’ who had blighted William's life was
connected to the collective entity known as the Unity, and she was quite
willing to assist William in his personal quest for vengeance because this
in turn had the potential to undercut the Unity. She did not conceal this
from William, and William understood the bargain he was making.

William's primary motive in those days was his own personal quest for
revenge on Nagel, but he was profoundly disturbed by what ‘Cousin
Lucy/Aradel revealed to him about the real history of the Human race,
about Atlantis, and about the Unity. The Unity had played a major role
in the Downfall and Cataclysm by which Atlantis and an entire global
civilization had been destroyed, and it represented a tremendous potential
threat even in 1883, a threat that had the potential to take any of countless
forms, all of them bad.

By 1885, William was working, unofficially, for the intelligence apparat
of the British authorities, aided by his secret psionic powers, and by the
area knowledge and shady contacts he had made during his younger days.
William was street smart, clever, intelligent, well educated, and secretly
possessed of substantial psionic powers and significant skill in the use of
those abilities. He turned out to be a very effective spy, serving
Britain and her variegated Empire through the period from 1885 to 1900.

By 1900, the motives that drove William had changed, or at least expanded
beyond his initial impetus for revenge. Much can happen in fifteen years,
and William led an eventual and active life during that time, he saw most
parts of the British Empire (and many other places) during that time, met
a large variety of people, and learned much about many things.

While he still earnestly wanted payback against Klaus Nagel, he had never
quite managed to come to grips with the man, he had come close a few
times, but somehow Nagel always managed to elude him. On the other
hand, William had become a British agent and supporter for its own sake,
and he had seen enough signs of the damage the Unity's invisible empire
could do to make him an ardent foe of that entity on its own terms.
William had come to be morally sure, based on his own studies and
investigations, that the Unity somehow hovered invisibly within or behind
the German Reich, but he was not sure about the details of the matter,
and he was always seeking more. [1]

He made many contacts during these years, in both the seedy bars and out
of the way dark corners of the British Empire, and in the refined aristocratic
circles in which his family moved, and in all sorts of places in between.
Some were merely contacts and acquaintances, some were deep friendships,
some were political alliances, some partook of all three. One such alliance
was with a rising young Member of Parliament by the name of William
Lloyd George, who represented Caernarfon and who was becoming known
as a bit of a firebrand in the Liberal Party. They were not close
friends, William Barrington-Shaw did not fully trust Lloyd George, he
thought his overall intentions were good but that he was tactically a bit
too clever and unprincipled for his own good, or anyone else's. They
were not just allies, though, there was a certain friendship between them.

As Lloyd George rose in the ranks of British politics, he became something
of a quiet patron for William Barrington-Shaw. This was a bit ironic,
because Lloyd George was something an a political enemy of the old
landowning class out of which the Barrington-Shaw family came, he was
a proponent of land reform, disestablishment, and the early incarnation
of the future British welfare state. The personal good will between the
two men helped overcome this, as did some shared interests.

One such shared interest was a common desire to put a limit to the massive
military expenditures that had been underway, each for their own reasons.
Lloyd George wanted a program of domestic spending to alleviate class
differences and reduce the influence of the aristocracy, Barrington-Shaw
in his capacity as a player in the intelligence apparat and ‘unofficial’
government work sensed the emerging possibility of some kind of major
European war, and he wanted to try and defuse this, and hoped reducing
British military expenditures might help.

MORE LATER.


[1] This Reich was the realm of reunified Germany created by
the efforts of Prussia and Bismarck.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

This goal was made more difficult by the ongoing tension between Lloyd
George's Liberal Party and the Royal Navy. The First Sea Lord, Jackie
Fisher, was pressing for Parliamentary authorization for several new
battleships, in response to a naval shipbuilding program on the part
of Kaiser Wilhelm II and his government in Berlin. By old tradition, the
goal of the Royal Navy was not just to be the world's strongest navy,
but to be sufficiently strong that they could at need engage and defeat the
next two strongest navies at once. This goal was becoming a serious
economic challenge for the British, because of the growing industrial
strength and assertiveness of the Germans (along with some other reasons,
but Germany was the largest factor).

One of William's goals was to convince the Germans to back off a bit on
their own naval construction, and one of his tactics in this was to try and
encourage the anti-naval factions in the Reichstag and German government,
and to discredit the pro-naval faction. This was an overall goal of the British
government as well, seeking to convince Wilhelm to focus his ambitions
on continental, land-based forces. This was actually an ancient tendency
in British policy, after their loss of their French possessions, the British
had tended to focus on control of the oceans, and to swing their weight to
maintain a balance on the European mainland, not permitting any one
power to become totally dominant. [1]

While the British authorities sought to tilt German policies by means of
subtle persuasion, William was working behind the scenes by means neither
legal nor ethical to undercut the naval faction in Berlin. One of his goals
was to ferret out personal foibles and embarrassing secrets of the various
pro-naval spending players in Berlin, and by means of discreet blackmail,
change their goals. His psionic powers made this easier, but contrary to
popular myth, not all politicians are corrupt, and not everyone has an
embarrassing secret to be found. William had to operate very carefully. [2]

In 1908, William had reason to suspect that one of the naval officers in
Berlin pushing hardest for expansion of the German Navy had been
engaged in some rather embarrassing extramarital activities with lovers
of both sexes, and was now being blackmailed by at least two of them for
money. William had in mind determining if this was true, and if so, either
applying pressure himself by threat of exposure, or perhaps he could swing
the officer into line with his own policies by offering to 'take care' of the
blackmail problem from the former bedmates. [3]

In order to find out, William had to get close enough to the officer, for
long enough, to get a look into his mind with his own telepathy. William
was fairly skilled with his telepathy, but his physical range was only about
fifty feet or so under average conditions. Berlin was sub-average, the
constant mental noise of the huge population and the combined antipsionic
field they generated cut his effective range down to about twenty-five
feet. The opportunity presented itself when this particular officer and his
wife were invited to a social event at which William was also present as
a visiting aristocrat.

William managed to finagle a seat at the same table as the officer, and as
he made small talk with his six table-mates, he was working his mind
gently into the thoughts of the German commodore. [4]

It was tricky to converse and try to probe someone another mind without
the victim sensing anything untoward, but William had plenty of practice
at this arcane art. He had successfully carried out such activities many
times before. This time, however, just as he was finally about to achieve
his goal, his world exploded in pain! The entire dining hall seemed to spin,
his head throbbed in agony, and the next thing he knew he was lying on
his back, his hosts looking worriedly down at him and a doctor who had
been a guest at the party was checking his vitals.

His head throbbed, he felt weak, his thoughts were disoriented, and it
took him several seconds to realize what had happened: he had been
struck by a telepathic attack of considerable power, just when he was
most vulnerable due to his effort to probe someone else's mind. [5]

All his hosts and his table-mates knew was that he had passed out with a
cry of pain, and his efforts to assure everyone that he was all right
were undercut by the fact that he was too shaky to get to his feet
unaided for nearly ten minutes. Indeed, simply thinking coherently was
a significant challenge at first.

He finally managed to assure his hosts that he was all right, not entirely
convincingly, but he was able to hail a cab and make his way back to his
hotel. He had no idea where the attack had come from, but it had been
both strong and skillful, and caught off-guard as he was, it had taken
everything 'Cousin Lucy' had taught him just to keep it from doing
permanent damage. His defenses had been taught by an expert and were
almost automatic, which was the only thing that had protected him from
suffering permanent damage to his mind.

William was recovering rapidly, and he took the time to load a gun and
have it handy, because he knew he was not safe. He had a fair idea
that the main reason he had survived the attack was that his unknown
enemy wanted him alive and 'intact' to interrogate, otherwise anyone
with the power and skill to launch the attack he had experienced could
have easily taken him out, given how off-guard he had been. Whoever
it was had 'held back', and William knew it. He debated whether to wait
and see if his attacker would show his (or her) face, but on balance
William thought that was a bad idea, he wanted to meet the other psion,
but he wanted to do so on his own terms, it would be far safer that way.

Unfortunately, there was not sufficient time to change the odds, because
even as William finished packing and was about to head to a different
hotel, he felt another blast of psychic power strike him, one even more
potent than the one that had earlier impacted him. It was actually less
effective, though, because he now had his defenses up and was ready for
it, his mind was not made vulnerable by having all his senses wide open.
It was still some effort to repel the attack, though, and moments later
several large men, dressed in black and wearing masks, crashed through
the door of his hotel room. They all carried guns, and William was
outnumbered six to one. He might have had a chance against one or two
of the men, but with his psychic strength dazed by the effort of repelling
the mental blows, he knew he had no chance against six.

William knew the better part of valor was called for, and did not resist
pointlessly as his captors transported him, blindfolded and with his ears
plugged, through the streets of Berlin. Normally, William's own potent
espersense would have enabled him to sense much of his route and
surroundings in spite of having his eyes and ears blocked, but someone
with potent psychic strength was interfering, periodically William felt a
mental blow slam into his mind, not strong enough to do anything permanent
but potent enough to require his active effort to resist it. It was quite
sufficient to keep him from doing anything useful with his espersenses.
For a mundane sensory equivalent, it would have been like trying to listen
for faint sounds with cymbals crashing in your ears every few moments.

By the time they arrived at their destination, William was already rather
disoriented, tired, and very afraid, and he made little resistance as
his captors tied him to a chair in a cold, moist place. When the mask over
his head was removed, and the earplugs removed, he blinked, and saw that
he was in a dark room with wooden walls, a stone floor, and he could
faintly make out the sound of water moving. He suspected that he was
near the River Spree, but he had no way to be sure.

As his disorientation faded a bit more, he made out the soft glow of several
gas-powered lanterns, noted that there were more dark-clad figures present
than just the six who had captured him, and then his eyes fell on a table
and chair sitting a few yards away, the chair behind the table, a man sitting
in it facing him. William recognized the man and his blood ran cold, even
though it was the first time he had laid eyes on him in well over twenty years.

It was 'Klaus Nagel'.

MORE LATER.


[1] This tendency to change alliances in accordance with shifting
power balances in Europe was one of the several reasons the British
were sometimes called 'perfidious Albion', but in fact the policy made
perfect sense given Britain's oceanic strength and land-based relative
weakness.

[2] William was not utterly without moral qualms, he was prepared
to blackmail military officers and civilian officials over their own
indiscretions, but he drew the line (usually) at blackmailing them over the
doings of their relatives. It should be kept in mind that William was not
the only player in the game, either, there were German agents doing exactly
the same thing in London...and some of them were psions too.

[3] Espionage work is not always pleasant or fair.

[4] Actually a German naval rank roughly comparable to 'commodore'.

[5] In GURPS terms, he was hit by a mental blow attack, the effect of
which was magnified because he had his own mind tuned to maximum
'sensitivity'.

[Johnny1A.2]

LATER.

William's blood ran cold, it took all his self-control, learned over a good
many years in secret work, not to show any reaction. He wanted to show
no reaction both because any reaction could be used by his captors, and
because 'Nagel' did not look the way he had looked back in 1881. In fact,
to a casual eye the man sitting behind the table bore almost no resemblance
to "Nagel', the hair color, eye color, and skin tones were different, he sat
in a different way, his limbs lying 'casually' in different ways, it was clear
that the man had been in disguise then, or was in disguise now, or both.

Though a casual acquaintance would likely not have associated the man
behind the desk with 'Klaus Nagel', William was different. He was a
trained and practiced observer of fine details, and Nagel was burned
into his memory by the traumatic death of Priscilla. Even after decades,
William still sometimes dreamed of Priscilla and what had happened, there
was no way he could be in the same space as 'Klaus Nagel', by whatever
name and face the man was using, and not recognize him. What he did
not know was whether Nagel realized that William had 'made' him from
their past encounter, and as long as it was possible that Nagel did not
know that, William was determined to keep that advantage. [1]

Even as he was processing the shock of encountering the bane of his life
in person so suddenly, another part of William, the part that had learned
by practice and training to work almost automatically, was taking in every
detail of the situation, and of the man, and analyzing what he was seeing.
In the first few seconds, William observed that the man behind the desk
had dilated pupils, he was sweating and at the same time there were vivid
goosebumps on his exposed flesh, and though he was sitting calmly, he
seemed...shaky, as if his body wanted to tremble and it was all he could
do to suppress the reaction.

Those traits alone might have indicated any of several physical problems,
but William also sensed a potent, roiling psychic potential radiating from
the man behind the table, a psychic pressure that pulsed in synch with the
barely-concealed tremors the man's body was showing. There was no
question that this man was the source of the psychic power that had been
attacking him, the 'feel' was definite. This all added up to a single answer.

Damn, William thought, this bastard is hyped on ryshyl. [2]

Ryshyl was a drug, a very dangerous drug, that was sometimes utilized by
psychics to boost the intensity of their powers. It was certainly effective,
it could magnify the psychic strength of a user by a huge margin for a
short time, if the user did not mind the risks associated with the drug, or
the nasty side effects. William had never used it, he was not prepared to
pay the price or risk the addiction it could carry, but he had encountered
psions who did use it, and it could make them very dangerous, both
in terms of raw power and effects on their intellect and emotional stability.

William knew that the effect of the drug was short-lived, which meant that
the intense psychic strength he was sensing from this man would soon fade
down to whatever was its natural level. From the look of the symptoms,
and what he knew of the effects of ryshyl, that should not be more than
fifteen to twenty minutes away.

Unfortunately, that could be an eternity for a man in William's position.
It seemed very unlikely that 'Nagel' would allow William to live long
enough for the fading of the drug to give him any advantage.

All this passed through William's mind in a few seconds, before 'Nagel'
even spoke. When Nagel did speak, William focused his attention as if
his life depended on it, because he knew that his life did depend on it.

MORE LATER.


[1] William knew from years of experience in tight situations that
staying in possession of himself, not letting emotions rule, was
critical.

[2] Ryshyl is an anglicized spelling of a word from the Atlantean
language. For details about ryshyl, see here:

http://forums.sjgames.com/showthread...13#post1267013