The Ashworth Chronicles, episode 4

 Episode 4: The Invisible City

Yemen, 1884. Lord Ulysses Ashworth leads an expedition through the Rub-al Khali desert, in search of the fabled City of Irem, the Atlantis of the Sands – unaware that he is walking into a trap designed to seal the fate of the Ashworth bloodline. A tale of illusions and whispers, of lost cities and broken dreams, featuring Arthur Rimbaud, cursed poet and historical enigma.

This episode mixed typical Haggardian (Haggardesque?) elements with an almost poetic take on the lore regarding the fabled lost city of Iram / Irem  of the Pillars; one of its most important elements was the elusive character of Arthur Rimbaud - a former poet prodigy turned into a strangely soulless merchant adventurer, completely unaware of his future literary glory. From a GMing perspective, he was a very tricky character to portray - the taciturn, world-weary shadow of the enfant terrible he once had been - a bit like a WoD Changeling overcome by Banality.

With Penelope's neutralization of this fourth Vishklar machination, her mortal family's timeline seems safe from further historical disruptions... or are the nefarious nightmare entities about to up their game?  Stay tuned for the final two episodes of our miniseries! 

The Ashworth Chronicles, episode 3

Episode 3: The Mirror and the Dark

The trail of yet another Vishklar interference takes Penelope and Titus to Henry VIII’s court, a few months after the execution of the King’s fifth wife. Tension, suspicion and ambition are running high in the corridors of Hampton Court Palace and false appearances reign supreme. To unmask her enemy, the Time Lady will have to navigate a maze of intrigue and deceit…

As its title may imply, this scenario had a very strong Wolf Hall vibe. Despite having an 'unearthly' element as its core (the Vishklars' interference with the Ashworth family history), it played out as an almost purely historical episode - with a lot of roleplaying and almost no dice rolls. The big resolution scene had Penelope facing Henry VIII, trying to (and succeeding in) opening his eyes to a few home truths - and it was one of these moments I'd be tempted to refer as "a roleplaying aria", with Sylvie-as-Penelope delivering a very moving, well-crafted (and yet completely improvised) speech that spoke to the monarch's heart and mind. I always try to make encounters with historical personages memorable, no matter how brief - and this one will surely rank among our campaign's "classic moments".

See you soon for our next episode!  

A New Year - and a New Beginning!

Hello everyone!

It's 2025 and Lady Penelope is back (in her 8th incarnation - think of Rebecca Hall in The Awakening is back for more adventures in Time and Space!

We actually started back in 2024 with an Xmas special - which provided me with the ideal starting point for the ensuing miniseries (see my previous post for more details about our new format).

2024 Xmas Special: The Impossible Ghost

What better time than Christmas Eve for a ghost story? Drawn by strange temporal echoes to the stately home of her human family on that unique night of  1924, Lady Penelope meets 11-years old Titus Ashworth II, her future adoptive grandfather – and currently a very lonely boy, haunted by an impossible but very real ghost. A tale of strange ties and new beginnings!

And then we proceeded with the first two episodes of... 

Lady Penelope: the Ashworth Chronicles

Episode 1: Family Trouble

Something is deliberately trying to alter the history of the Ashworth family! Embarking her adoptive grandfather Titus (a dashing aviator who went missing in action in 1941) as her new travelling companion, Lady Penelope rushes to investigate – arriving at Ashworth Manor in 1646, during the English Civil War, the time of a Roundheads, Cavaliers… and Witchfinders!

Episode 2: The Men Who Would be King

Penelope’s hunt for the Vishklar who try to derail the Ashworth family history take her and Titus to 1191 AD, during the Third Crusade, under the besieged walls of Acre. A tale of ambition and power, destiny and mythmaking, featuring various great personages, including Richard the Lionheart, two other kings and (of course) the founder of the Ashworth line!

(to be continued)

As can be gleamed from the above blurbs, the arch / main plotline of this 6-episode miniseries is directly tied to Penelope's adoptive human family and its rich history through the centuries... a history which is theatened by a crosstime conspiracy involving the Vishklar. For more details on those psychic menaces in Lady Penelope's Odyssey, see this previous post.

See you soon for episode 3... set in 1542, at the court of Henry VIII. Tudor troubleshooting, anyone?

 

Season 18 Finale (Episodes 12-13)... and plans for the future!

Episode 12: Where Angels Fear to Tread

Just when the Time Lady thought she could take some Time Off on 2024 Earth, Urgent Unfinished Business comes knocking at the door – in the form of Miss Jones’ ongoing machinations to harness the vestigial power of the defunct Abraxas entity and take control of the space-time continuum. A tale of tough choices, narrow escapes and, yes, Weeping Angels.

Episode 13: The Wake

The hunt draws to a close. Penelope joins forces with alternate versions of the Doctor and Romana to track down Miss Jones, no longer a living Time Lord/Lady but a disembodied entity desperately seeking a new body to possess and reconfigure. The trail of its wounded TARDIS leads them to a house in 1873 Bloomsbury – just in time for the evening’s séance…

And thus ends our 18^th season – which proved to be a somewhat lengthy yet bumpy ride, with more intermissions that I would have wished…

Started in October 2023, this season concluded just before August 2024 – yes, we dragged on for almost an entire year – which really made it difficult to maintain a satisfying narrative pace… but hey, in the end, we managed to wrap it up in a very satisfying manner, with a dramatic farewell to the whole Abraxas motif.

So, why did it take us so long to play these thirteen episodes?  

Well, it was due to a variety of unrelated factors: our decision, after episode 3, to go for a full-fledged season rather than the intended six-episodes mini-series (a decision which, in retrospect, was perhaps not as brilliant as it seemed in the first place), Penelope’s more-or-less unexpected regeneration, the fact that, after more than 200 episodes, new story ideas were becoming more and more elusive and, last but not least, various Real Life contingencies (the dreaded Triad - work, health, family…).

For all these reasons, Sylvie and I have agreed on a change of pace for Penelope’s next adventures. Instead of going for seasons of 13 to 15 episodes, we’ve decided to adopt the six-part miniseries as the standard format for our beloved Time Lady’s excursions in time and space. This format proved highly successful when we tried it back in 2022 (see the Key to Space miniseries) - and it will actually make it easier for me to construct multi-episode stories and will also make easier for Penelope to ‘linger on’ for several episodes in the same location or time period, something that Sylvie is clearly keen on. Of course, it does not mean that each six-part miniseries will necessarily be set in a single setting, as the six-episodes format also lends itself very well to breakneck quests through space and time, giving me all the creative freedom and flexibility I could ask for!  

See you in a few months, for a new chapter of Lady Penelope’s Odyssey!

Season 18, Episodes 10-11

Episode 10: The Long Backlash

A mysterious temporal phenomenon threatens the very existence of New Earth’s Catkind! Going back to the origins of everybody’s favorite felines, Lady Penelope soon discovers that the survival of the exiled Cheetah People has been put in jeopardy by her own past actions. Altering history always comes at a price – and sooner or later, Time always claims its debts.

Episode 11: The House on Bedford Street

Following the Face of Boe’s ominous warning, Penelope tracks down the TARDIS of her new nemesis, the alternate incarnation of the Master known as Miss Jones, to 1773 London. Now masquerading as the madam of an upmarket bawdy house, the life-stealing Time Lord offers her a quid pro quo transaction – with the fate of one of Penelope’s protégées in the balance!

Episode 10 was obviously deeply connected to the TV episode SURVIVAL - you might even think of it as a sort of sequel, tying up the future of the Cheetah People to the past of New Earth's Catkind... and allowing me to bring back an old 'continuity debt' of Lady Penelope, namely her meddling in the historical course of the Sontaran-Rutan War, way back in season 7...  hence the title of the episode (The Long Backlash), in which our Time Lady had to ensure the exiled Cheetah People's survival against everybody favorite potato-headed genociders.

Episode 11 was another "boomerang effect" story - a direct sequel to the much more recent The Beauty and the Beast episode. It ended with Lady Penelope taking her three protégées (the three Australian girls from the Bainbridge school!) to the world of Avalon and allowing her to take a welcome break in order to contemplate some important, post-regeneration decisions. 

See you in a few weeks for the final batch of episodes!

Season 18, Episodes 8-9

Episode 8: The Girl Who Knew Too Much

London, 1967. Less than one year ago, Polly Wright returned to her ordinary life, working as a PA in the Post Office Tower. And although everybody else seems to have forgotten (thanks to the Torchwood Institute’s diligent coverup), she still remembers WOTAN and its War Machines. And somewhere, an all-too familiar signal has woken up… Enter the Time Lady.

Episode 9: Sound

Summer 1967. The Beatles’ Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album has changed everything, redefining the very paradigm of pop music. Is this the end for John Smith and the Common Men? Is electronic music really the answer? And what weird entities inhabit the Plane of Sound? Penelope is about to find out, with a little help from one Delia Derbyshire.

Set in 1967 London, these two episodes had a very different atmosphere.

The Girl Who Knew Too Much felt a bit like an old B&W episode of The Avengers and was also a veritable feast of Classic DW references: in addition to WOTAN, the War Machines and Polly, it featured the character of Dodo and the Counter Measures group, plus some nifty (if I may say so myself) retcon tying the anachronistic tech of The War Machines to the events of Remembrance of the Daleks, all this by the way of Torchwood (who else?).

Sound was a much more psychological affair, with a hefty dose of pop music references and (thanks to Sylvie’s roleplaying talent) some very moving scenes. In the end, the story had an almost poetic feel – with the Beatles’ A Day in the Life providing the perfect soundtrack for its final scene. Its plot resulted from the mix of three separate ideas: the cultural phenomenon of the Sergeant Pepper LP, the electronic music of Delia Derbyshire & co and one of Ramsey Campbell’s early Cthulhu Mythos short stories, The Plain of Sound, from which I borrowed the idea of my plane of sound (and the look of its inhabitants).

Both stories also allowed us to develop the characters of Antonia and Modesty, Penelope’s new protégées and travelling companions, who are now ready to make their first journey to another world – or perhaps the far future?  See you soon for our next episode!

Season 18, Episodes 5-7

Episode 5: The Substitute

Victoria (Australia), 1907. What is happening at the esteemed Bainbridge College for Young Ladies? What dark secrets does Miss Jones, the enigmatic governess, hide behind her severe façade?  And speaking of secrets, the new history and science teacher, Miss Ashworth, does seem to have quite a few of her own in store… A mystery, two strange rocks and no picnic!

Episode 6: The Chemistry of Ghosts

Paris, 1907. One year after the tragic death of her husband Pierre, Nobel prize scientist Marie Curie is about to reveal her latest, extraordinary discovery to a chosen assembly of thinkers and seekers – a discovery involving radium and invisible, psychic presences. Luckily for history as we know it, Lady Penelope (with her three new protégés!) is among the audience…

Episode 7: The Beauty and the Beast

Paris, 1768. As King Louis XV is looking for a new favorite and aristocrats busy themselves with their games of intrigue, a monstrous shadow wolf is stalking the Parisian nights, spreading death and terror in its wake. Could the dreaded Beast of Gévaudan have returned to wreak its vengeance on the kingdom of France? The Time Lady decides to investigate!  

So, our intended mini-series having morphed into a full-fledged season, things have taken a new turn, as demonstrated by our three last episodes!

As can be gathered from its blurb, episode 5 was directly inspired by Picnic at Hanging Rock, with two typically Whovian twists. The first was that the secretive governess Miss Jones was in fact… the Master!  Yes, a new incarnation of everybody’s favorite Time Lord arch-villain (my own variation on Missy, if you will, but with a very different personality and demeanor)… and NOT the Master of Penelope’s own continuum (who, for all intents and purposes, is supposed to be Forever Dead) but the Master from the alternate continuum visited by the Time Lady a few episodes ago (in The Napoleon Stratagem).

At the end of said episode, this alternate Master had been mortally wounded (by Time Agent Jill Harkness – yes, Jack’s own female alternate double) and was starting to undergo the regeneration process – but something (tied to the meta-temporal energies of Abraxas, which he had started to “distillate” in his TARDIS) unexpected obviously happened off-stage, resulting in this new female incarnation AND (more importantly) in her relocation in Penelope’s own continuum… Could the two Time Ladies (who both owe their latest regeneration to the same meta-temporal energies) be tied in some mysterious, Beyond-Space-and-Time way? Only Time (of course) will tell.

The second ‘twist’ tied to episode 5 is that it ended in Penelope taking three young ladies from the Bainbridge College on board of her TARDIS as her new travelling companions (yeah, three’s a crowd – but see the notes on episode 7 below)… removing them from recorded history and actually creating the (imaginary) mysterious disappearances behind the (equally fictional) Picnic at Hanging Rock story!

Episode 6 was based on two ideas I’ve had in store for quite some time: re-use the gaseous (and somewhat underused) Gelth as a story’s main villains and concoct a scenario based on Nobel Prize winners Pierre and Marie Curie’s little-known (but well-documented) interest in mediumship and psychic phenomena – as well as Marie’s very moving expressions of grief (from her private journal) after Pierre’s tragic accidental death. The result was a very enjoyable period piece, complete with the usual DW mix of historical facts, scientific acrobatics (I invented a new, Gelth-related property for radon...) and wild imaginings – and a top-notch performance by Penelope’s player. It was, of course, quite reminiscent of The Unquiet Dead, with a dash of The Girl In The Fireplace for that extra touch of emotion.

Stephen King once defined a story as the encounter of “two previously unrelated ideas coming together and making something new” – and that was the recipe I decided to use for episode 7. The only thing I knew was that Penelope wished to travel to France in the late (but pre-Revolutionary) 18^th century (i.e., somewhen in the 1760s or 1770s). So I asked myself: what are the two (preferably unrelated) things I’d readily associate with this setting?  

Answers: Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the Beast of Gévaudan.

So I proceeded to mix these two ingredients, adding a few echoes from Penelope’s previous trip to this historical era (Lost In Versailles, waaaay back in season one!) and her recent discoveries about the ‘self-aware nightmares’ also known as the Vishklar and the result was a very atmospheric, quite dark tale of sordid intrigues, monster hunting and psychic possession (in powdered wigs). It ended with the departure of one of Penelope’s three new companions, who chose to stay in 18^th century Paris with her newfound paramour, adding an extra touch of melancholy to the story’s conclusion. 

Another great time, with some excellent salon banter by Penelope’s player.

Next stop: London, 1967!