Change of Plans & Coming Soon!

 In my latest post, I mentioned that we still had three episodes to run before ending Season 17... but after discussing the situation with Sylvie (Lady Penelope's player), we quickly came to the following two conclusions:

- Three episodes seemed a bit short to explore the consequences of Penelope's decision to take an incarnated Abraxas on some "grand tour of self-discovery" through time and space.

- The final scene of episode 12 (involving the aforementioned decision) really felt like a season-concluding arc.

So we decided that Season 17 would actually end here, with its twelfth episode as its final story and that we would devote a complete six-episodes miniseries to Penelope's adventures with Abraxas, using a similar format to our previous experiment with the miniseries format - but, obviously with a very different theme and story arc. 

See you soon for more details on our "Travels with Abraxas" sequence! 

Season 17, Episodes 11-12

Episode 11: Sic Semper Tyrannis

Paris, 1794. The Reign of Terror has turned the idealistic dream of the French Revolution into a totalitarian nightmare where Madame Guillotine always has the last word. As a triumphant Robespierre prepares the grand celebration of the Supreme Being, fifty days before his own downfall and execution, unseen forces are conspiring in the shadows… Enter the Time Lady!

Episode 12: Synchronicity

From Carl Jung’s house in 1916 Switzerland to the gnostic theologians of Roman Alexandria, Penelope gathers the last pieces of the Abraxas puzzle, before receiving the final (and quite surprising) Revelation in a place beyond space-time. A decidedly metaphysical adventure, in which the very fate of the continuum depends on the outcome of a philosophical debate…

 

Episode 11 finally gave me the perfect excuse to take Penelope to Paris during the Reign of Terror - not the kind of destination a reasonable time-traveller-whose-TARDIS-operates-perfectly-well-thank you-very-much would be likely to visit without a very good reason. The story itself was centered around Robespierre's tragic downfall, taking inspiration from a variety of sources, including Neil Gaiman's superb Sandman episode Thermidor and a nifty French historical mystery novel, La Sibylle de la Révolution by Nicolas Bouchard.

Episode 12 concluded (well, more or less - see below) the “Abraxas arch”, in which Penelope chased the eponymous entity (an elusive Discordian Chronovore) across a series of pseudo-historical adventures always involving notable or obscure historical personages suddenly gifted (by the mysterious Abraxas) with the power of temporal sensitivity – Nostradamus, the mad prophetess Catherine Théos in the Robespierre adventure, the psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung (whom the Time Lady had already met a few years – and quite a few incarnations – earlier, back in season 3…) and the gnostic theologian Basilides of Alexandria.

Each of these characters was used by the (always unseen) Abraxas entity as an interface / agent / entry point into the historical continuum, apparently trying to twist history according to some mysterious agenda… Nothing Penelope hadn’t seen and handled before – except that, this time, the puppeteer entity always remained off-stage, unreachable and frustratingly unknowable, evidently taking note of Penelope’s interferences in its inscrutable agenda… but never appearing to take direct counter-measures against the interloping Time Lady herself, to her own growing astonishment.

But of course, the Truth was ultimately revealed when Penelope finally got to meet Abraxas itself (themselves?) in an impossible place outside space and time. The look on Penelope’s player’s face when the entity welcomed her (“Greetings, mother…”) was priceless. 

To cut a long story short:

- The entity had (unwittingly) been created by Penelope’s restoration of the continuum after the historical havoc wreaked by Father Ernetti’s machine. Thus, Abraxas considered Penelope to be its mother – and was looking forward to her giving it advice and guidance on its course of action as a newly awakened demiurge.

 - Abraxas had not been created ex nihilo but was actually the coalesced and uplifted version of a trio of Weeping Angels (who had been lurking in the secret Vatican tunnels, attracted by the echoes of Ernetti’s time-warping machine) – a fascinating fact which was made even more ominous and vertiginous by Penelope’s previous discoveries about the link between the Weeping Angels and the eldritch Kronos…

- Because of the particular circumstances of its creation, Adraxas’ omnipotence was actually limited to the period of human history comprised between the Crucifixion and 1958 AD – but within these limits, the entity potentially had the power to reshape history as it wished.

- Abraxas took his demiurgic role very seriously – it wanted to Do the Right Thing for Humanity, mending its world and healing its suffering once and for all, even at the price of every human being’s free will (a concept which was somewhat alien to this quasi-divine being).

- Because of its special connection to Penelope’s timeline, Abraxas had been able to absorb many of her memories and experiences – especially those involving Humanity and the aforementioned historical period (c. 33-1958 AD). And since Penelope always seemed to save lives, help those in need and protect mankind from all kinds of perils, her semi-divine progeny wanted to do the same thing – but, of course, on a much grander and cosmic scale, revealing itself as the “new real god” of humanity and heralding a new era of pure cosmic bliss, without any form of suffering (as well as emotions, since they seem to be the cause for so much pain in the world).

So, what Penelope had anticipated as a climactic psychic battle against an all-powerful entity quickly took a very different turn – that of a fascinating debate about what made human beings what they were, power and responsibility, the meaning of existence and, of course, that pesky concept of free will…

I knew that Sylvie (who is no slouch when it comes to philosophical culture) would be able to give Penelope some pretty solid argumentative power on such subjects but, well, she (once again) amazed me, with a masterful yet improvised discourse which was simply spot on.

The strange metaphysical conversation between the Time Lady and her unlikely “time-child” was the perfect climactic scene to the entire Abraxas arc – and culminated in a very interesting (and quite wonderful, since I had NOT specifically anticipated this beforehand – but hey, going with the flow is one of the joys of GMing in general and Doctor Who GMing in particular) decision by Penelope: since the entity wanted to learn, she simply invited Abraxas to travel with her, as a way to complete its education into “the meaning of life” and “the needs of mankind”.  

At the end of the episode, Penelope took Abraxas’ pure energy essence in her trusty Time Lord fob watch, parted ways with Indira (who had decided it was time for her to get back to her own time) and headed the TARDIS back to Avalon, to discuss the “What Next” with the Doctor (and see if perhaps he could rustle up a proper physical body for Abraxas)…

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

Season 17, Episodes 9-10

Episode 9: Deus Ex Machina

Rome, 1958. It’s not all vespas, cinecitta and dolce vita… On the trail of a mysterious temporal anomaly, Lady Penelope and Indira uncover the Vatican’s greatest secret (forget about the Code, the Grail, the Tomb, the Shroud or the Spear): Father Ernetti’s chronovisor, a miracle machine that sees into the past – and is also about to shatter History as we know it…

Episode 10: Foretold

Having rebooted 2000 years of History to save the continuum from the ravages of Father Ernetti’s machine, Penelope must now track down the dissonances and divergences resulting from the temporal shockwave – starting with the French Royal Court in 1555, at the time of Queen Catherine de Medici, the poet Ronsard and the prophet Nostradamus. Intrigue ensues.

This season (season 17!) is divided into two main arcs or half-seasons. Episode 8, with its climactic confrontation in Carcosa, marked the conclusion of the first sequence, which focused on Penelope’s old enemies the Porphyrs, their fearsome Three Mothers and the use of opium as a gateway to their nightmarish city…

Episode 9 kickstarted the second sequence, which will take Penelope and her current traveling companion Indira at various “weak points” in History as-we-know-it, in the wake of a wave of temporal chaos created by Father Ernetti’s time-viewing machine – and yes, this is actually based on real, historical events (or, to put it more correctly, on a real, historical hoax). I had never heard of Ernetti’s chronovisor before reading about it in Kenneth Hite’s excellent Suppressed Transmission 2 sourcebook – and my reaction, as you can imagine, was: “Oh no, it’s too good to be true”. 

After having absorbed as much background data as possible on Father Ernetti’s story (including a very readable French novel, from which I pilfered quite a few ideas), I decided that this stuff would not only make a great episode but would provide me with the perfect “continuum-impacting event” to build a series of interconnected pseudo-historical episodes!

Episode 10 involved Queen Catherine of Medici, the illustrious French poet Pierre de Ronsard and the ‘prophet’ Michel de Nostredame, better known as Nostradamus. I tried to depict this famous (but quite mysterious) personage as a complex character, borrowing some weird concepts from Valerio Evangelisti’s trilogy of novels Le Roman de Nostradamus and giving them a Whovian spin – the basic idea was that Nostradamus had no real precognitive power… but suddenly found himself assailed by real, powerful and terrifying visions of what the Future had in store for France!  Penelope’s objective was to unravel the mystery of these unprecedented premonitions and keep History on the right track, while navigating Queen Catherine de Medici’s intrigue-laden entourage… 

Precognitive stuff aside, the scenario played out like a pure historical episode, focusing on psychology, interactions and cultural savvy. In the end, the "1555 weak point" was fixed, leaving Penelope with some unanswered questions about a mysterious entity (or place?) called Abraxas... and more "weak points" scattered throughout the continuum to investigate BIITL (Before It Is Too Late). To be continued!

Season 17, Episodes 7-8

Episode 7: Trail of the Vishklar

What better place to rest, recover and have a jolly good time than West End London in 1928? But when Penelope and Indira meet the mysterious master of mysticism known as Dr. Khan, their jazzy holidays take a decidedly darker turn, bringing the Time Lady on the psychic trail of the elusive Vishklar, nightmare entities which were once battled by a dear, long-lost friend.

Episode 8: Carcosa

For the first time in her seven lives, Lady Penelope takes the fight against her old enemies, the Porphyrs, on their own territory, the dimension-locked, entropic city of Carcosa, in the hope of freeing its prisoner, her old friend Everett Blake, from everlasting torment. At the heart of the  temple of the Nameless God, the sinister Three Mothers await. So does the Phantom of Truth…

This diptych concludes the first half of our seventeenth season (we’ll take a short break and return to Lady Penelope’s Odyssey in a few weeks) as well as our Time Lady’s long-running struggle against her old arch-enemies, the Porphyrs… or does it? 

Sure, Penelope’s actions and decisions did bring an apocalyptic Judgment Day (by none other than the mysterious Phantom of Truth…) on the sinister City of Carcosa, its population of emotional vampires and their ruling Three Mothers – but she already knows that some of them have managed to escape the probable destruction of the accursed, trans-dimensional megapolis, like rats fleeing a sinking ship… 

Where and when did those survivors flee to?  And how will they adapt to their new conditions?  Will the scattered, homeless Porphyrs evolve into some new horrors?  Try to rebuild Carcosa?  Attempt to ally themselves with other dark powers? That remains to be seen…

The episode itself allowed me to indulge in some pretty wild imaginary crossovering, my Porphyrian lore being a mix of three different fictional mythoi: Robert W. Chambers’ King in Yellow / Carcosa tales (for Carcosa, the Phantom of Truth and other fascinating concepts), Thomas de Quincey’s Three Mothers (also present in Dario Argento’s famous trilogy of horror movies – although I didn’t use this source - at least not directly) and, of course, our beloved Whoniverse (with the Vishklar revealed as the original ‘psychic ancestors’ of the Porphyrs).

It was a very satisfying, tension-packed episode, with a lot of weight on Penelope’s shoulders. It started with her decision to drop her current travelling companion Indira back in 2024 London - for she did not want to expose her to the horrors and dangers of what was coming. Penelope's deliberation and the temporary farewell with Indira contributed to build up the dramatic tension - and when the Time Lady finally entered Carcosa, Sylvie really felt like her character was stepping into the mouth of hell / maw of madness / crack of doom...

It was a very important episode, at the scale of the series itself. Penelope's discovery of the nightmarish city felt like the climactic culmination of a long-escalating theme (the Porphyrs have been around since season one!).

As the GM, I unashamedly played the dark baroque horror card, using Christopher Young’s excellent musical score for Hellraiser as the main background soundtrack and some pretty nifty images created with Midjourney and ImgCreator – I’ve just posted them HERE if you wish to risk a glimpse...

The downfall of Carcosa felt like the end of an era - but I also wanted it to be a real game-changer, hence the last-minute escape of some of its inhabitants, which will allow me to re-invent / re-imagine the Porphyrs the next time Penelope encounters them (yes, I did pretty much the same with her other arch-enemies, the Lloigor at the end of our previous season: vanquished, beaten at their own game, deprived of their main source of power... but NOT completely erased from the universe and probably re-inventing themselves as we speak).

At the end of the episode, Penelope came back to Avalon with the psychic remains of her friend Everett Blake stored in her Gallifreyan fob watch – it was all that she could save from the unfortunate Edwardian psychic investigator - but Professor Chronotis (who has himself lived perfectly happily as a disembodied psyche encapsulated in a small hovering sphere since his body’s terminal demise) will help the poor soul recover from his terrible psychic trauma… and the Doctor (who has been working on regenerations for several seasons now) might well be able to build him a new body (just like he once did for Zoe). 

One sure is certain: if Everett Blake ever returns as a guest player-character in Lady Penelope’s Odyssey, it will most probably make a fascinating story!

Season 17, Episode 6

Episode 6: The Rakshasas of Ranjapur

A mysterious psychic distress call brings Penelope and Indira to 1856 India, just one year before the Sepoy Mutiny and the fall of the almighty East India Company. Soon the tide of history will turn. But first, the Time Lady and her allies must liberate the small princely state of Ranjapur from a family of demons in disguise… A tale of colonial greed, hope and destiny.

 

I’d been thinking about doing an episode set in 19^th century British India for quite some time now – something with shades of Fritz Lang's two-part 'Indian epic' and John Huston's The Man Who Would be King and (of course) some suitably Whovian villains… And then, of course, came Beecham House - I only watched one episode but it was enough to unearth and resurrect that old idea.  Yes, I definitely had to cook up a story featuring a Rajah's court as its main setting and the East India Company as a major plot or background element.

But I needed to find a good reason for Penelope to get there: since her TARDIS is far more reliable than the Doctor’s blue box, I try to use the old, time-honored “the-TARDIS-just-brings-you-here” excuse as little as possible.

In this particular instance, the character of Indira Kapoor, Penelope’s current travelling companion, provided me with the ideal story hook, being a psychic and temporal sensitive: the “mysterious psychic distress call” mentioned in the blurb above actually originated from one of her own ancestors (who, much to Indira’s surprise, happened to be a princely concubine and who also had some latent psychic ability), bringing Indira face to face with a chapter of her own family history she knew nothing about… This added a very interesting psychological dimension to our story, allowing me to portray the usually cool and collected character of Indira under a far more personal (and somewhat vulnerable) light.

At first, I considered setting my story in the state of Jhansi, so that I could include its illustrious warrior-queen in the cast – but after giving the matter some serious thought, I decided to use a small fictional princely state (‘Ranjapur’) to free my story (and the ultimate fates of its prominent NPCs!) from the constraints of History.

As for the “demons in disguise”, they were (of course?)… Slitheens – or, more properly, Rackateens! Using a family of creepy, greedy and nasty Raxacoricofallapatorians was also something I had wanted to do for years now – but I hadn’t found the proper setting to do them justice.

The idea to link them with colonial India was actually suggested by two different connections: the superficial resemblance of their names (Raxacoricofallapatorius, Rackateen…) with that of the Rakshasas from Indian legends and (perhaps more importantly) the unmissable echoes between the Slitheens’ mix of blood pride, gluttonous profiteering and callous disregard for other species’ lives (as shown in Aliens of London and World War Three) and the so-called ‘entrepreneur adventurers’ and ‘empire builders’ of the East India Company.

And now for some after-play notes…

Colonial India is a fascinating setting – but one with which French people (yours truly included) are obviously less familiar than British or Indian ones (as opposed to, say, the reign of Louis XIV or the Belle Epoque). Of course, the Doctor Who universe often plays fast and loose with history but I wanted to get things as right as possible in terms of atmosphere and, well, ‘feel’, so I did a fair amount of background reading on the East India Company, the Sepoy Mutiny and related subjects.

My main objective was to balance the unavoidably exotic / romantic feel of such a setting with the grittier aspects of imperialism and colonialism, focusing on the theme of destiny – historical as well as individual. 

In a way (and I only realized that afterwards), my approach was somewhat similar to the treatment of Picts and Romans in The Eaters of Light (albeit with a far more politically complex backdrop), with the Rackateen as the classic monstrous menace against which humans should stand united, regardless of their own differences or conflicts. In the end, though, Penelope and Indira only found a handful of allies (some Indian, some British – as well as one heroic elephant) brave enough to stand against the Rackateen, making the consequences of the climactic battle even more poignant.

As for the Rackateen themselves, their goal was to seize control of Ranjapur, which happened to have extremely rich underground deposits of uranium – the precious commodity on which our trio of ‘adventurous entrepreneurs’ were planning to plunder, before (of course) taking control of the East India Company and, in the long run, of the entire British Empire itself. Just another typical Raxacoricofallapatorian business venture…

As usual, Sylvie gave us a wonderful, very nuanced performance, playing on Penelope’s usual empathy and making her acutely aware of Indira’s unusual uncertainty and insecurity… as well as of her own somewhat hazy knowledge of that particular chapter of British-Indian history. 

And we had a suitably half-epic, half-chaotic final battle, as Penelope and her allies stood against a dozen of enraged Rackateens – complete with a sword-wielding, horse-riding Indian princess, a gallant but somewhat out-of-his-depth British captain, a heroic, self-sacrificing Sepoy sergeant, stalwart Indian guards firing vinegar-coated arrows and, of course, a fearless charging elephant.

The farewell scene acquired a deeper resonance because Penelope and Indira knew what the future had in store for India: the Sepoy Mutiny, aka the First War of Independence, which brought the end of the East India Company’s rule and the birth of its colonial successor, the British Raj per se – an unprecedented of political turmoil, in which the small princely state of Ranjapur and its associated fictional NPCs would eventually disappear, lost in the winds of change and the mists of history.

 Next stop: who knows?

Season 17, Episode 5 (New Year Special!)

Episode 5: Miracle Day

New Earth, in the impossibly distant future. The good people of New New York are ready to celebrate a New Year’s Day unlike any other – for this year, the Face of Boe will return to life, as announced by Mother Hame and Cassandra Unlimited^®. Will this Second Coming herald a new era of faith and hope for the galaxy?  A skeptical Lady Penelope decides to investigate…

 

This was our (slightly delayed) New Year Special. I had planned to run this last week but could not be ready in time because of various health problems which pretty much ruined my Xmas holidays… But I’m on the mend now and I intend to resume Lady Penelope’s Odyssey’s usual weekly play schedule (fingers crossed and all that).

This episode finally brought forth an event which I had planned for quite some time – namely the resurrection of the Face of Boe, whose disembodied consciousness had been hazily perceived by Penelope herself during her previous stay in New New York during season 16 (see Episode 16.11, Lady of the Future). 

Miracle Day reused much of the background information and many NPCs from this previous episode – including the faithful Mother Hame and the coldly egomaniacal Lady Cassie.  

And yes, the Face of Boe truly has returned and will undoubtedly feature in some forthcoming episodes, putting New New York in the list of Penelope’s regular destinations, along with New Camelot, Marlowe’s alternate 17^th century and a few other privileged times and places.

In actual play, the episode proved to be a very moving story, with some nifty philosophical overtones – necessity vs. free will and all that.

Its most memorable moment was, I think, the great ‘psychic communion’ scene between Penelope and the disembodied psyche (Ghost? Soul? Spirit?) of the Face of Boe.

To cut a long story short, the whole Second Coming story was actually a sham engineered by Lady Cassie: having successfully cloned the Face of Boe’s physical body (so to speak) from samples preserved in the archives of the now defunct Order of Plenitude, the corporate über-queen secretly intended to use the resurrected Face as her own puppet god, with her own mind in control of what would have essentially been a living but mindless being.

But since the very spirit (Ghost? Soul? Psyche?) of the true Face of Boe was still hovering around, she first had to imprison it in a psychic cage to prevent any unwanted interference…

Fortunately, Penelope (with the help of her psychic-and-time sensitive companion Indira) managed to establish communication with the true disembodied Face and to free it from its psychic imprisonment, enabling it to incarnate itself in the manufactured clone, thereby beating Lady Cassie at her own game. 

In the end, the Miracle did occur and the carefully constructed deception was turned into a history-defining moment of truth.

Happy new year, everyone!  😀

Season 17: Episodes 3-4 (plus some copious design notes...)

Episode 3: The Dark Interpreter

Edinburgh, 1845. A blood-drinking killer is stalking the streets of the Old Town. The aging Thomas de Quincey, visionary writer and opium addict, has seen him in his dark reveries… Enter Lady Penelope, who wants to ask him everything he knows about the enigmatic Three Mothers. Can she help him stop the Nocturnal Stalker before he (or it?) strikes again?

Episode 4: Black Tulip

Amsterdam, 1669, the end of the Dutch Golden Age. Thirty years after the great Tulip Mania crisis, a unique, impossible flower is threatening to spread a deeper, darker brand of madness on the City of Canals… Will Penelope and her friends manage to uncover the truth behind the mystery of the Black Tulip before it is too late?  A tale of revenge, obsession and desire…

 

Design Notes

Together with Episode 17.02 (Roma Mater), these two episodes formed an informal “opium trilogy”, where the aforementioned drug played a discreet but persistent role, as a substance who could allow certain psychically-gifted dreamers to access a region of the collective mindscape tied to the terrors of the interdimensional city of Carcosa…

While our heroine has never visited it (but who knows?), Carcosa has been a foreboding and elusive presence in Lady Penelope’s Odyssey since its very first season – in fact, it played an important role in her first true time travel adventure using the TARDIS: City of Chimeras, set in 1925 Paris, where she encountered a fearsome member of the cursed Porphyr race, the self-styled Master of Chimeras…

Let’s start with Carcosa. You all know, of course, where the name comes from… but when I recycled it for my campaign, I did pretty much the same thing as I did with the Lloigor and other ‘reappropriations’ from various fictional sources: I kept some elements, removed what didn’t feel very Whovian and add my own ideas to the mix.

In Lady Penelope’s Odyssey, Carcosa became a sinister interdimensional city populated by a race of psychic vampires known as the Porphyrs; the trans-dimensional nature of the place enabled it to invade (or rather “overlap”?) any other big city where decadence, apocalyptic angst or fin de siècle melancholy had become high enough to attune it to the psychic frequencies of Carcosa, opening a gate between the two cities and allowing the Porphyrs to feast upon the terror, sorrow and despair of a whole metropolis…

Along with the Lloigor, the Porphyrs were to become one of Penelope’s recurring arch-enemies – at least until season 11 (see below for more details), in which they seemed to have been utterly defeated. I’ve already written about the Porphyrs elsewhere on this blog – but here is a short summary / reminder of what they are, along with some notes on their connection to Carcosa, their history within Lady Penelope’s Odyssey and a few new facts thrown in for good measure. 

(Incidentally, the Porphyrs look like Pau’ans from the Star Wars universe and whose name actually come from an old White Dwarf article on Runequest Demons, later reincarnated as a Dragon Warriors supplement – yes, I’m a merciless cannibalizer…)

Luckily for everyone, the Time Lords put an end to Carcosa’s interdimensional invasions by banishing the city (and all its inhabitants!) in an impregnable prison dimension known as Sheol – an event which occurred a long time before the start of Lady Penelope’s adventures.

But the Time War changed all this. While Carcosa was still held captive, cracks began to appear in the dimensional barriers that separated it from the rest of the multiverse, allowing some Porphyrs to pass through these interstices into our reality – usually in a great city which would have made a perfect prey for Carcosa before its imprisonment. Once there, those Porphyr escapees usually tried to increase the local level of existential angst, melancholy or fear. The plan always had the same objectives: by raising collective fear or despair, the Porphyrs sought to attune the local population’s mindscape to the frequencies of Carcosa and force its release by gatecrashing its dimensional prison walls…

This pattern formed the basis of most of Lady Penelope’s encounters with the sinister Porphyrs: the aforementioned Parisian story, as well as the following episodes:  

Phantasmagoria (Season 2, Episode 11) – the very memorable episode where Lady Penelope met Lord Byron, who had fallen prey to the psychic vampires of Carcosa…

Or Not to Be (Season 6, Episode 3) – where the Porphyrs had targeted William Shakespeare himself.

Masque of Winter (Season 8, 7) – in which Penelope once again joined forces with Shakespeare against the lords of Carcosa, this time scoring a major victory against them. With the help of the TARDIS’ psychic circuits, the Time Lady and the Bard managed to create an imaginary entity called Ariel (who else?), a positive, protective psychic construct whose mission was to guard our reality from any renewed incursion attempt by Carcosa.

This should have an end to the Porphyrs’ interventions in Lady Penelope’s world – and it did, to some extent. But of course it was only a matter of time before the Porphyrs tried to find ways to circumvent these renewed psychic barriers and its guardian spirit…

They did so in City of Sighs (season 9, episode 1), in The Banquet of Ashes (season 9, episode 10) and in City of Dreams (season 12, episode 11)… before disappearing from Lady Penelope’s Odyssey for FIVE whole seasons!

It was high time I brought them back… but I didn’t want things to work as if Penelope’s past victories had achieved nothing. I had to re-invent the Porphyrs one way or another – to restore some of their mystery and fear factor, to create new possibilities for stories and to explain how they could once again threaten our reality.

I first decided to put more emphasis on Carcosa itself, its dark secrets and weird history (introducing new cryptic names and other creatures associated with the sinister world – as the “Byakhee from Hastur” which appeared in this season’s Roman episode).

I also decided to change the psychic vampires' modus operandi. Previously, the Porphyrs had always tried to manipulate poets, artists or mass culture (Byron, Shakespeare, silent movies, etc.) as a privileged way to create a psychic bridgehead in the collective psyche of humanity, using art as the main interface or conduit to spread Carcosa’s decaying influence (in keeping with the original Robert W. Chambers’ stories about the King in Yellow). Since this strategy had been (more or less) permanently thwarted by the creation of the Ariel entity, they had to find new (and, so far, more mysterious) ways to exercise their influence on their chosen pawns… And from what Penelope has discovered so far, the consumption of opium seems to act as a “psychic gate opener” between the human mind and the imprisoned mindscape of Carcosa.

Lastly, I decided to place this ‘new era’ of Carcosan activity under the sign of the enigmatic figures of the Three Mothers – three female Porphyrs who apparently act as the matriarchs (or goddesses?) of their vampiric race: the Mother of Tears (Mater Lachrymarum), the Mother of Sighs (Mater Suspiriorum) and the Mother of Darkness (Mater Tenebrarum). 

These names will of course be familiar to readers of Thomas de Quincey (hence his pivotal role in The Dark Interpreter) and to connoisseurs of horror movies, as they form the basis of Dario Argento’s Three Mothers trilogy. 

Taking a cue from Argento's approach, I unashamedly re-invented De Quincey’s Three Mothers, keeping some elements and dumping others (the idea being that the version of the Three Mothers mentioned in the author’s Suspiria de Profundis are actually poetic re-imaginations of half-remembered, half-repressed opium-induced nightmares).

So far, Penelope has yet to encounter any of the Mothers – but she has felt their gaze upon her and even had a quick psychic brush with Mater Lachrymarum in Black Tulip… a taste, probably, of more serious confrontations to come. The Time Lady has also discovered the raison d’être of the Three Mothers, each of which is directly connected to one of the three negative emotions the Porphyrs feed on: fear (Mother of Darkness), sorrow (Mother of Tears) and despair (Mother of Sighs).

At this point in our season, I think I’ve managed a nice, slow-build crescendo effect foreshadowing what Penelope herself is now viewing as an unavoidable confrontation with the Three Mothers themselves – and she intends to be ready for it!

Season 17, Episodes 1-2

 Hello fellow space-and-time travellers!  

After the Baroque mini-series The Key to Space, it’s now time for a new regular season of Lady Penelope’s Odyssey!

Episode 1: Blackout

Penelope’s TARDIS receives a psychic distress call from Torchwood’s time sensitive Indira Kapoor – but the signal comes from 1940, half-a-century before Indira’s birth and right in the middle of the London Blitz! As Britain is living its darkest hour, the Time Lady braves the blackout and the bombs to rescue the time-displaced young woman from a web of shadows…

Episode 2: Roma Mater

We all know the story of Romulus and Remus, the she-wolf, the fratricide… but how was the City of Rome really founded? Lady Penelope and her new travelling companions, 17^th century dilettante scholar John Wycliffe and 21^st century time sensitive Indira Kapoor, decide to find out!  But the differences between myth and history can sometimes be quite surprising…

Quite unusually, our Time Lady is now travelling with TWO companions – who were both introduced in earlier scenarios: she met John Wycliffe during the aforementioned mini-series and Indira Kapoor, who first appeared quite a few seasons ago, has long been a regular NPC in her dealings with present-day Torchwood.

Blackout was a very tense season opener, set against the dark backdrop of the London Blitz, with some very moving “darkest hour / finest hour” moments – including a scene built around Vera Lynn’s iconic song We’ll Meet Again to great effect.  I’ve wanted to do a Blitz story for ages but could never find the right way to bring Penelope to this time and place – it’s not the kind of destination a time traveler is likely to choose and, unlike the Doctor’s blue box, Penelope’s TARDIS is a very reliable machine, so I needed a Really Good Reason to bring her there: to rescue the time-displaced Indira. What was she doing in 1940 London?  Well, as you’ve might have guessed it, she had been waylaid by a Weeping Angel! 

When Penelope finally brought her safe and sound in the TARDIS, rescued from the clutches of the 1940s Forge, Indira decided that she wanted to join Penelope for a few adventures in space and time before getting back to her day-to-day work as a 21^st century Torchwood operative. Penelope also discovered that the young woman’s time sensitive powers had been almost drained dry by her chance (?) encounter with the Weeping Angel – a temporary side-effect, from which she should normally recover in time, thanks to the TARDIS’ connection with the vortex.

Roma Mater was what we could call an “imaginary historical” or, perhaps, a “mythical”: in a similar vein to the lost TV Trojan War story, The Myth Makers, it exploring the “real story” behind a well-known half-historical, half-legendary story – in this specific case the founding of Rome and the tale of Romulus and Remus.

The episode started in 84 AD, with Penelope and her friend spending a nice Roman holiday under the reign of Emperor Domitian (a destination the Time Lady had already visited back in season 13) – no alien invasion to prevent, weird mystery to unravel or sinister menace to counter, just three weeks of temporal tourism in the Eternal City. And then, as they were preparing to leave for a new destination, the scholarly (and insatiably curious) John Wycliffe wondered about the possibilities of witnessing the true events behind the mythical birth of Rome back in 753 BC – and the rest, as they say, is (more or less) History.

Of course, they discovered that the truth was quite different from the well-known tale, with the mythical Romulus & Remus twins being in fact a single individual, young prince Romus, fated with the difficult task of uniting the Latin and Sabine peoples against their common enemy, the mighty Etruscans. It was a very psychological, motive-driven story, with a single (but quite surprising) fantastic element thrown in – something on which I will come back in a future post, for it will (most probably) have some repercussions in one of our next episodes.

Back to the story of Romus. The scenario itself took a very interesting turn in actual play, thanks to Sylvie’s inspired interpretation of her character: right from the start, she decided that Penelope would be very reluctant to meddle with these half-mythical events, as a direct lesson from her harrowing adventure in Atlantis, back in season 14. But once she was involved in the grand wheel of historical fate, she played her cards masterfully, setting Romus on the path of his grand destiny, while ensuring that her own role in the story would never be recorded – an impressive demonstration on how her character has grown as a Time Lady and learned from her past experiences.

The climactic scene, a dramatic (but purely dialogue-based) facedown between Penelope and the Etruscan king who was Romus’ main enemy, gave Sylvie the opportunity to give an inspired, impressive performance of the “Hell hath no fury like that of a pissed off Time Lady” variety – and the wrap-up, aftermath scenes were also highlighted by some great roleplaying, including Penelope’s interactions with a young, eccentric Etruscan prince who embodied the possible future of his people as part of Romus’ dream of a great city…

See you soon for episode 3 and beyond!