The Ashworth Chronicles, final episodes

Episode 5: Ghosts of War

Just when Penelope and Titus thought they were done with the Vishklars’ attempts to derail the Ashworth family history, the Time Lady’s TARDIS catches a new but unpleasantly familiar alert signal coming from the north of Aragon in 1937, during the Spanish Civil War – a time and place where no Ashworth has ever set foot before!  ¿Qué diablos está pasando?

Episode 6: Gorgo, Mormo

Before taking Titus to Avalon to meet his father Lord Ulysses, Penelope decides to take a holiday in 1^st century Rome – visiting old friends, showing Titus the sights and basking into the ceaseless wonders of the Eternal City… unless, of course, she was actually driven there by some mysterious, timey-wimey premonition for a decidedly dark, decisive miniseries finale…

And so concludes our miniseries, The Ashworth Chronicles - but of course, this writeup wouldn't be complete without our traditional post-play notes!

In Episode 5, a shocked and flabbergasted Titus discovered that his young wife-to-be, Victoria Sinclair, a supposedly blasé dilettante, had actually fought along the Republicans and the International Brigades during the Spanish Civil War!  Since he could not run the risk of interfering with her timeline before their very first encounter, Penelope had to keep her future adoptive grandmother from the psychic clutches of the nightmare-twisting Vishklar and keep the family history on the right track. This episode also features one Eric Blair, a very British member of the POUM… who would later become famous as George Orwell.

At the end of Episode 5, with everything seeming hunky-dory on the temporal front, Penelope decided that she would conclude this first bout of adventures with Titus by taking him to ancient Rome, one of her favorite destinations. As the GM, I fiendishly decided that this choice, which was really made on a whim, was actually an unconscious premonition which would lead our favorite Time Lady to the time and place where the Vishklars' Three Mothers were hatching a sinister plot to bring about their own rebirth and Rome’s transition into the next Carcosa. 

Fortunately for everybody in Rome, Penelope was able to save the day (and history as we know it after 86 AD) with her usual flair. This adventure involved quite a lot of historical lore about the cult of Cybele, the Magna Mater (actually a red herring); in case you were wondering, its title comes from a famous litany spoken in one of HP Lovecraft’s early horror tales (but is actually an authentic quote from an ancient author, as I learned during my research phase).

And now… we’re taking a break, with Lady Penelope finally returning to Avalon with her new protégé. We’ll return in a few months, with a new miniseries of adventures in time and space!

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! 

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?

 

Happy New Year... and a New Season!

Greetings everyone!

Happy new year 2024 - and for Lady Penelope, this new year starts with... a new season!

After much ruminating, I've finally decided that Penelope's recent (and somewhat unexpected) regeneration was, well, a game-changer... The basic, 6-part plotline I had in mind for the ongoing miniseries was somehow derailed / sidetracked by this dramatic development. In other words, the two remaining episodes would have felt like a rushed job.

So the four episodes we've played so far (yes, we played a fourth one a few weeks ago - see below for the blurb) have been 'retro-fitted' to become the first four episodes of a whole new season!  In other words, the miniseries has regenerated into season 18!

Here is the blurb of the latest episode...

Episode 4: The Mirrie Dancers

November 2023. Suffering from a bout of post-regeneration melancholy, Lady Penelope (now in her eighth incarnation) decides to take some R&R time among friends, on the mainland of Shetland – but there can never be such a thing as time off for a Time Lady!  Soon, she is drawn to a centuries-old mystery involving unexplained disappearances, ghostly apparitions, local folklore and the majestic, eerie Northern Lights. A tale of past lives and new beginnings.

See you soon for the next episodes!

Mini-Series: Episode 3... and REGENERATION!

Part Three: Becoming Harry

Weston-Super-Mare, October 1964. How could history possibly run astray here and now? As Mods and Rockers prepare for a new, supposedly epic (but potentially tragic) beach battle, Lady Penelope once again tries to preserve the continuum, as her game of cat-and-mouse (or is blindman’s bluff?) with the mystifying Quantum Archangel accelerates toward its ominous end, culminating in an impossible revelation, a fateful decision… and a regeneration!

 

Talk about unexpected developments. 

Sometimes, the best laid plans of mice, men and GMs will simply go awry. But as far as RPGs is concerned (and especially with games like DW), my philosophy is to go with the flow rather than try to shoehorn or railroad things back as they were supposed to run – or, more correctly, as you first thought they would run. This glorious narrative uncertainty is, after all, one of the joys of game-mastering and often leads to golden moments of inspiration and improvisation which, in the end, make the story better, greater and, in the best cases, deeper. 

This is precisely what happened yesterday evening.

As you may recall, the current, six-part miniseries was centered on the conundrum of the so-called Quantum Archangel, an elusive temporal entity which seemed to follow (or rather precede) Penelope and Harry in their travels, creating divergence points in the continuum and apparently feeding off the “unfulfilled possibilities” released by Penelope’s action to mend history back into shape. It was not the first history-altering entity the Time Lady had encountered (far from it!) but it was the first time that said entity did nothing to prevent her from opposing its actions, actually expecting her to circumvent, repair and defuse its attempts to stir history astray – acting more like some sort of personal temporal parasite or ransom hacker than as an antagonist per se.

This weird cat-and-mouse / blind man’s bluff game was supposed to run throughout the six parts of the mini-series, reaching the following conclusion in its final episode.

The big revelation was that the Quantum Archangel was actually one of Abraxas-Harry’s future selves – a version of him which had rejected the whole “incarnation experience” and re-ascended to a kind of disembodied, super-Weeping Angel status (just like when Abraxas was created as a result of Penelope’s continuum-mending back in season 17). 

Manipulating its own timeline to create temporal incidents, potential paradoxes and divergence points, its goal was to force its hypothetical existence into full reality – a potential future trying to gain supremacy over all others as the only possible fate, Singularity-style.

Faced with this vertiginous truth, Penelope would, basically, have had two possible choices. 

The first choice would be to let the Archangel have what it wanted, resulting in the destruction of Harry’s body and awakening humanity and in the (re)birth of a unique, possibly Kronos-like entity (probably not a good idea, then). 

The second possibility was to use the TARDIS’ Chameleon Ark to fully turn Harry into a mortal human being, complete with his own past, present and future (and no memories of having ever been something else, of meeting Penelope or of travelling in the TARDIS), and release him somewhere in history to live his own life, unaware of the larger universe with its time travellers, cosmic entities and quantum uncertainties…

So what happened yesterday evening? 

Well, to cut a long story short, Penelope got to the truth far earlier than I had planned. Fortunately, as the scenario was unfolding, I sensed that we would Get to the Point before the story was finished, allowing me to GWTF (Go With The Flow) and improvise a proper final act. 

Since everything was suddenly falling into place, there was no point in delaying the inevitable or diluting the storyline – so the best option was to end the episode as grandly as possible. Penelope’s realization of the impossible truth was followed by the very emotional decision to bid Harry farewell. The scene where she put him in the Chameleon Arch to erase all traces of his former existence and turn him into a mere (but so human!) mortal was a grand moment of drama – and I’m ever so grateful for having such a talented player!

But there was, of course, the problem of dealing with the extracted part of Abraxas’ being – the timey-wimey, cosmic part that made him a quantum hazard (and a potential successor to Kronos) in the first place. Its power was such that Penelope’s trusty Time Lord fob watch could not be expected to hold it for more than a few minutes. With the help of Nim (her TARDIS’ resident spirit / ghost-in-the-machine), Penelope managed to use the Zero Room as a possibility-void environment where the chaotic energy of the entity could dissolve and fade away without affecting the continuum or the rest of the TARDIS…

It was this delicate operation that resulted in Penelope’s regeneration. This event was more or less in the cards, as a possible (but by no means predestined) consequence of the mini-series’ climax – but the moment had clearly come. The heart-wrenching farewell to Harry (who started his new life on the beach of Weston-Super-Mare, in October 1964…) felt like a necessary but abrupt end – and the feel of the unfolding story demanded that this end gave way to a new beginning.

Enter Lady Penelope’s eighth incarnation:

(Yes, this is Rebecca Hall in The Awakening)

The remaining three episodes will obviously focus on the aftermath of Lady Penelope’s regeneration and her new incarnation’s first adventures in time and space. During our post-game debrief, Sylvie decided that her newly-regenerated character felt quite melancholic (as opposed to bouncy and buoyant) and needed a pause, a short break among friends in a quiet place – so the only thing I currently know about our next episode is that it will be set in contemporary Shetland, where Penelope made some good friends during her seventh incarnation.

And we also decided that the mini-series needed a new title. Initially, I had planned to call “Avatars in Time and Space” (since it was all about two different avatars of the same entity – Harry and the Quantum Archangel) but it is now – far more aptly – titled “Changing Times”.

I hope I’ll be able to cook up episode 4 for next Saturday… Countdown started!  Stay tuned!

 

 

 

 

Mini-Series: Avatars in Time and Space, Parts 1 & 2

Welcome to our new, six-part miniseries - a direct sequel to Season 17!

So, as you might recall, Lady Penelope ended the seventeenth season of her adventures with the cosmic entity known as Abraxas as her, well, ward / protégé / causality child – a new being whom she decided to awaken to the wonders and beauties of human creativity and its achievements (especially in the fine arts), starting with (of course) Italian Renaissance.

But of course, this “grand tour” required a human (or at least human-looking) body for the fledgling entity – a body that was promptly bio-engineered in Lungbarrow by the Doctor himself, who has been experimenting on regenerations and, well, body-making for several seasons now.

Now looking like a male human teenager, Abraxas was ready to travel with Penelope for a series of travels through Earth’s rich history. Before they left Avalon to re-embark on board of the TARDIS, the Time Lady decided to name this human-looking avatar “Harry”, since “Abraxas” might attract undue attention and ring some unwanted bells in some learned circles and has always been a bit of a mouthful anyway…

And now without further ado, the blurbs of the first two episodes…

Part One: The Borgia Divergence

1506. Eight years after his execution, the despotic monk Savonarola is still ruling Florence, crushing the city’s spirit under a fanatical theocratic régime. Where did History go wrong? What unseen cosmic hand is manipulating events in the shadows of Time – and to what ends?  After a daring escape from the gaols of San Marco abbey, Penelope starts looking for answers. Her quest soon takes her to 1497 Rome, at the heart of the Borgia Pope’s palace…

Part Two: The Napoleon Stratagem

Following her first brush with the mysterious Quantum Archangel, Penelope decides to lure it into the open so that she can learn more about the elusive entity. To keep her own time continuum safe from any interferences, she takes her protégé Harry to an alternate 1840, where Napoleon II and Queen Victoria are about to marry. Unexpected consequences ensue, in the form of alternate versions of Captain Harkness, the Doctor and (of course) the Master.

So… what’s next?  Well, it all depends on the Time Lady’s next move!  Stay tuned!

The Key to Space (3/3)

Third Fragment: The Twilight City

I. The Shadow Theatre

Penelope’s quest for the final fragment of the Key takes her to Paris. While Louis XIV is busy building Versailles castle and becoming the Sun King, a sinister Harlequin is treading a secret stage before an entranced audience. But what is the true purpose of the Laughing Mask’s comedy of madness?  Together with her old friend Bellegarde, the Time Lady investigates…

II. The Final Masque

The Shadow Theatre has given its last performance - but the Laughing Mask is on the run, plotting a terrible vengeance against Louis XIV and his court of sycophants. Penelope and Bellegarde must stop the mad Harlequin before his actions derail History. But first, the Time Lady must face the three faceless rulers of Twilight, also known as the Gods of Ragnarok…

 

And thus ends The Key to Space, our six-part baroque cycle, set in the cities and courts of 1668, from Charles II’s London and Oxford to legend-haunted Prague and Louis XIV’s Versailles…

To be fair, it was more of a trilogy or triptych, with each of its three segments being divided in two parts for convenience and ease of play.

So how did our final two-parter go down in actual play?  Well, wonderfully!  But before we get to Penelope’s final decisions, a few words about the historical context, references and personages of the City of Twilight.

The scenario featured many historical NPCs from the world of French classic theatre, including cameos by the famous playwrights Molière (whom Penelope had already briefly met 20 years before, in her previous incarnation) and Racine, as well as some slightly more substantial parts for the doomed actress Thérèse“Marquise” du Parc and the actor La Grange, Molière’s most talented and trusted disciple in his later years.

But the historical figure who dominated the whole show was, of course, the King of France LouisXIV, then aged 29 and in the process of becoming the glorious, so-called Sun-King. The monumental construction site of Versailles castle and the extravagant royal feast that took place there on the 18^th of July 1668 played a major role in the plot, embodying the heady mix of splendor, vanity, domination and extravagance that would define Louis XIV’s reign in history… While he hardly appeared in the scenario itself (he didn’t even have a single line of dialogue!), Louis XIV’s presence loomed over the story from its beginning to its end.

This story gave me the opportunity to create my own imaginary solution to one of France’s most fascinating and enduring historical mysteries – that of the Manin the Iron Mask!  But instead of presenting it as a riddle to be solved, I orchestrated things to make the whole Iron Mask business the consequence of Penelope’s adventure.

To cut a long story short, I made Eustache Danger (the purported, enigmatic identity of the Man in the Mask) a young, revenge-mad architect who had been socially destroyed by his association with Superintendent Nicolas Fouquet, whose fall from grace and imprisonment were one of Louis XIV’s most dramatic demonstrations of power – and have, incidentally, often been associated with the Iron Mask mystery.

Armed with the second Fragment of Morrolan’s Key (which allowed its user to open passages to other dimensions…), the driven architect had come into contact with the Gods of Ragnarok, who had transformed him into a sinister Harlequin, not only able to drive his audience mad with his sarcasms and antics but with the powers of masking himself to other people’s perceptions and of changing his face at will – think of him as a Vampire – The Masquerade Malkavian adept at Obfuscate and Dementation and you won’t be far off. His powers could have given him the possibility of precipitating the King into utter madness – and even to steal his face and rule in his place…

Luckily for history as we know it, the Laughing Mask was stopped in extremis by Penelope and her friend Bellegarde (acting as His Majesty’s most special agent). Naturally, the only way to prevent Harlequin-Danger from using his sinister powers to escape and wreak havoc once again was to trap his ever-changing face in a cage of its own… And thus the Laughing Mask became the Iron Mask…

As for the Gods of Ragnarok (whom Penelope had already encountered with her long-lost friend Everett Blake in this special episode), they played the proverbial role of the “unseen hand”, the “power-behind-the-scene” (quite literally, in this case) that had observed and, sometimes, manipulated events before revealing themselves in the final act.

And yes, Penelope did manage to outwit them and send them back to their out-of-reality place of exile… a feat which she achieved by destroying the three Fragments of the Key to Space, her father’s flawed artefact of power – a dramatic gesture which was the perfect way to close this story.

In a very touching epilogue, the Time Lady decided to go back to Prague to reunite with the English student of alchemy and seeker of arcane knowledge John Wycliffe, who had helped her during the Secret City segment and whom she had to leave without a word of explanation to pursue her quest. And yes, you guessed it, their reunion ended up with Penelope welcoming the 17^th century dilettante scholar as a new travelling companion in the TARDIS…  

See you in a couple of months (give or take) – for season 17 of Lady Penelope’s Odyssey and more adventures in time and space!

The Key to Space (2/3)

Second Fragment: The Secret City

I. The Cursed House

Lady Penelope’s search for the second fragment of the Key to Space takes her to Prague, a city full of stories and secrets, memories and mysteries. Her steps soon lead her to the Jewish Ghetto, where the shadows of the past and the threats of the future lurk at the threshold of a troubled present. There, in a forsaken house, a dying man of wisdom is waiting for her…

II. The Hidden Legend

Now in possession of the second fragment of the Key, Penelope must confront a man who should have been dead for 75 years – former charlatan Edward Kelley, now known as Doctor K, hidden master of the Imperial Secret Cabinet. Meanwhile, a religious pogrom is brewing and a well-kept secret is about to step out of the shadows, into the streets of the Ghetto…

Of course, the Golem of Prague made a spectacular appearance - but it was a reinterpreted golem, made of the very stones of the Ghetto and given life by the combined powers of telluric energy (the 'signature shtick' of Penelope 7 - see our last season) and the collective unconscious of an entire community. Part two was extremely moving, with some very emotional scenes dealing with the trail left in Prague by Morrolan, Penelope's long-dead Time Lord father... Also, that scoundrel Edward Kelley finally met a fitting end - yes, it was the Third Defenestration of Prague!

Next stop: Paris!

The Key to Space (1/3)

In this six-chapter mini-series, Lady Penelope goes on a quest all around 1668 Europe to retrieve the three fragments of the Key to Space, a prodigious (and quite hazardous) device crafted by her late father, the Time Lord Morrolan, also known as the Architect… Who knows what hidden perils, mysteries and revelations await her?

First Fragment: The Shining City

I. The Hollow Court

Lady Penelope’s quest for the Key to Space first takes her to Whitehall Palace in London, the seat of King Charles II’s decadent and intrigue-riddled court. Her search soon brings her to join forces with England’s rising star architect, Christopher Wren, to whom her father had entrusted the first fragment of the Key – which has just been stolen by an unknown party…  

II. The Invisible College

Penelope’s search for the stolen fragment of the Key takes her to Oxford, where she quickly draws the attention of the Invisible College, an ancient secret institution fallen under the influence of the mysterious Twilight People. But what is the true agenda of these elusive entities?  And why are they so interested in Christopher Wren’s dream of a new London?

Aside from Christopher Wren himself, this first two-parter featured quite a few historical guest stars and cameos, including Charles II, his various mistresses (well, as far as 1668 was concerned: Barbara Palmer née Villiers, Moll Davis and Nell Gwynn), his wife and his brother James, the inevitable Samuel Pepys, John Denham (reinvented here as a truly tragic figure), the polymath genius Robert Boyle and Lady Margaret Cavendish, duchess of Newcastle and author of that strangest of utopias, The Blazing World…

Next stop: Prague!