Dropping In
From the Journals of Tom Olan…
It was dark and stormy, but if I’m going to be honest it was closer to mid afternoon than the middle of the night when it happened. The weather is a bit weird around Castle Falkenstein: according to Morrolan it’s because of the wild Magick used in its construction messing about with the air currents. But it’s weird in a Camelot sort of way - it only rains after six o’clock and so forth. Storms, especially big lightning storms, are an incredibly rare occurrence around the castle. The clouds started gathering not long before lunch, and the darkening sky put everybody on edge. The castle guard went on high alert - even without the Colonel ordering it, it was just sort of assumed that something was about to happen.
With the guards busy, that left Morrolan, Marianne, Rhyme and myself effectively at loose ends. So, being reasonable, practical people we decided to play cards until the storm broke and normalcy returned to the castle, or something happened in which case our talents would be required. “You know,” I said conversationally, “this is the first time I’ve seen a really big storm in these mountains since I came here.”
“They used to be more common,” Morrolan noted, “before the Castle was built, I remember there were some impressive thunderstorms around the old keep. I gather that neither Auberon nor his majesty the King are too fond of thunder, hence the spellwork.”
“I wonder why this storm now,” I said. “Maybe the Magick keeping the weather out is breaking down?”
Rhyme scoffed. “Ah, lad, it’s the Castle,” he said. “Maybe it prefers the dramatics and is taking advantage of Auberon and the King being away. I’ve given up trying to read the bloody thing’s mind.” Lightning bounced off one of the further towers, punctuating his statement. “You see? I’m just glad the lightning rods are holding up, otherwise there’ll be a Hell of a mess to clean up in the morning.”
Apparently whatever God or gods look over New Europa are fond of dramatic irony, because just after Rhyme said it there was a great crashing of light and noise all around us. The blast of lightning, the sound of masonry cracking, glass shattering and people screaming. We sat there stunned for a moment, then Marianne cried “The ballroom!” and we rose as one and ran for the door.
The guards managed to outrun us and by the time we reached the ballroom door a platoon had entered and were surrounding two strangers, a man and a woman, who were pulling themselves to their feet and holding each other like drowning men amidst the rubble of the ballroom roof. Their clothes weren’t the usual Bayerenese garb, nor anything recognizably New Europan. Instead, they had on pants and shirts that reminded me of the contents of my old backpack!
Who were they, and why had they come here? And more importantly, who brought them here?
Many miles away at the King’s Residence in Munich, Lord Auberon of Faerie abruptly stood in the middle of a meeting with King Ludwig and his advisors. “My pardon, Your Majesty,” he said. “Something has happened at Castle Falkenstein that needs my immediate attention.” The advisors started to harrumph in outrage, but the king waved them off.
“What has happened, Lord Auberon?” the king asked. “An attack?”
Auberon looked troubled. “I’m… not sure, Your Majesty,” he said carefully. “I do not believe it to be an attack, but it may be serious regardless. By your leave?”
Normally, stories like this begin with “when I woke up” but in this case it’s a bit more complex than that. Most of our last few seconds in Sunnydale remain blurry: I remember the ground shifting beneath us, the intangible demon yelling something Sam yelling something back, the inversion circle I’d inscribed on the seal flaring to life, an explosion of black light as the nexus spasmed and then we were tumbling through possibility space for I don’t know how long. Then reality reasserted itself in a loud cracking noise and we were ejected, clinging to each other and screaming, into a new cosm. The moment I saw the floor below us - far too below us for comfort and coming close too fast for a decent featherfall - the first thing I thought was This is going to hurt. And I was right.
The next thing I know I’m on my side on a cold marble floor and I can’t see a damned thing. My vision was flooded with light, bright white and colored, including a few colors I’m pretty sure don’t exist in normal light. For a brief second I wondered. Was this Elysium? Did we finally hit the end of our story, by falling into a big room? That’d be one for the poets.
“Julie? Julie.” Sam’s voice hissed in my ear and my senses reset. The light dimmed to a more tolerable level, I could hear the distant sound of running boots on stone and my right side ached like one of Father’s horses had kicked me.
“Ngh,” I managed to grunt. “‘M okay.” Sam put his arm around me and the ache in my side spiked. “Agh, not so okay,” I gasped. “I think that’s a rib or two. How’re you?”
“Twisted my ankle, and I think I cracked my shoulder on the landing,” he said quietly. “We’re about to have company, you okay for standing?”
“I can manage,” I said, putting a charge into a quick numbing spell. Nowhere near as good as a proper heal, but if Sam was right we didn’t have the time. The pain in my ribs faded - I’d have to get those bound before healing, then a shower, a bottle of wine and a nice comfortable bed sounded really good at that point - and we hauled each other to our feet just as the door burst open and a platoon of men in blue uniforms charged in sabers at the ready.
While they took their time arranging themselves in a defensive formation I took the moment to examine my surroundings more closely. We had arrived in the middle of a great ballroom, white marble and gilt in a style I didn’t recognize. The light that flooded my senses on arrival seemed to cling to the walls and floor, tendrils creeping along the ceiling. My godsense reached out and touched the light.
We’d landed in a nexus, but not the nexus that we’d left from. The Sunnydale nexus was old and strong and evil, a vampire latched onto a cosm draining it of every drop of Inspiration it could. This nexus wasn’t aspected, but it was older and stronger than Sunnydale and instead of pulling power into itself it was pumping power outwards, a great flow of telluric force flooding into the world. No wonder my godsense blanked out when we arrived!
This little revelation took no more than a second, by which time the soldiers had their weapons at the ready. “Nicht bewegen! Wer sind Sie und wo kommen Sie her?” the commander barked.
“That’s a very interesting question with a lot of philosophical tangents,” Sam replied. I let him play; he was in his element. In the meantime, I could feel something pricking against my godsense. Somewhere in the array of colorful guards, I could feel the magic in the nexus vibrate against something. Sorcerer, I signalled with the hand on Sam’s back. Strong, attuned. Sam tensed a little, his hand on my waist squeezing back.
Stop him? A good question. I’m a strong war-witch but whoever the nexus was resonating against was potentially stronger. In a straight up fight it’d be close. But if there’s one thing my time as an adventurer alone and with Samuel had taught me, it’s that only idiots fight fair. I concentrated, grabbing a tiny fraction of the nexus and using that power to charge our barriers.
Barrier up. I could feel Sam relax a little as he shifted from completely combat-focused to the mask of affability he used in sticky situations. I looked over the force standing around us, searching for the magic-user, and settled on a neatly bearded man standing near the vanguard. My eyes met his, and he stepped back, momentarily stunned. I wondered what he saw there.
“Okay,” Sam said clearly, “we don’t want any trouble here, so if somebody could tell us where we are and what today’s date is we’ll happily get out of your way.”
![[Image: Fu9gfEZ.png]](http://i.imgur.com/Fu9gfEZ.png)
The latest residents of Castle Falkenstein arrived in incredibly dramatic fashion… (Art by Tom Olan Fictograph.)
From the Journals of Tom Olan…
The newcomer spoke English. No, that’s not quite right, he spoke American, a language and a dialect that harmonized with my 20th Century soul and one I never expected to hear again.
“I will answer your questions if you answer mine first,” Colonel Tarlenhelm said evenly in English. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m Sam, this is Flavia,” the interloper said. “We’re travellers, a long way from home.” He eyed the Colonel. “Quite a longer way from home than I think we hoped, in fact. As for what we were doing, ah, at first we were falling and then we were crashing.” The man looked up at the hole in the ceiling and whistled appreciatively. “That is a very big hole. Wow. Er, sorry about that incidentally. Circumstances.”
“You fell from an airship?” The Colonel sounded skeptical, and I didn’t blame him.
The interloper’s eyes lit up with manic glee. “An airship!” he cried. “That would make a great deal more sense, wouldn’t it? Sadly, no. We didn’t fall off an airship. If I were to say we arrived out of a hole in the fabric of space and time, would that make any sense to you?”
Morrolan choked. “The Veil,” he said, staring at the pair. “You fell through the Veil?”
“Not a phrase I recognize, but I’ll take it. Also, not so much ‘fell through’ as ‘were launched through.’ Anyway, now that I’ve answered your questions, could somebody tell me where in Hell we are and what the date is?”
“You’re in Castle Falkenstein,” I supplied. “And it’s the 30th of April, 1871.” The intruders looked at each other.
“Walpurgisnacht,” the woman said. Her voice was low, like Marianne’s, and she had an accent that sounded oddly familiar but I couldn’t place. “Day and month match, at least.”
“D’you think we landed on the other side of Sunnydale?”
“I doubt it, this is a nexus, but it doesn’t have the right aspect to be connected to Sunnydale…” The two drifted off into quiet conversation of a technical nature that I didn’t understand then and only barely understand now. Rhyme had an ear cocked towards the jargon, but his attention was fixed more on the man’s - Sam’s - gun holster, which contained a very pretty piece of weaponry that reminded me of Buck Rogers. Marianne kept her guard up but had plainly filed the two under “eccentric but not immediately threatening,” and I followed her lead. As for Morrolan, his eyes were locked on the woman.
“Pretty sure she’s taken,” I murmured.
He broke contact just long enough to give me a look before murmuring “That’s… Never mind. Later.” and returning to his observations.
“So!” I said. The intruders jumped. “You’re in Castle Falkenstein, the personal residence of His Majesty King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and since it seems you came here by honest accident, you’re welcome to stay the night until we figure out what to do with you.”
The woman - Flavia - smiled. “That’s very generous of you, mister…?”
“Olam. Captain Tom Olam, of His Majesty’s Hussars.”
“Olam,” Sam said in a I-know-that-name tone. I froze. “You wouldn’t happen to have a buddy named Pondsmith, would you?”
I had no idea how to process that. But before I could reply, Auberon showed up and everything got more complicated.
For the record, the idea came first, the picture came second and the story came third. --M.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
From the Journals of Tom Olan…
It was dark and stormy, but if I’m going to be honest it was closer to mid afternoon than the middle of the night when it happened. The weather is a bit weird around Castle Falkenstein: according to Morrolan it’s because of the wild Magick used in its construction messing about with the air currents. But it’s weird in a Camelot sort of way - it only rains after six o’clock and so forth. Storms, especially big lightning storms, are an incredibly rare occurrence around the castle. The clouds started gathering not long before lunch, and the darkening sky put everybody on edge. The castle guard went on high alert - even without the Colonel ordering it, it was just sort of assumed that something was about to happen.
With the guards busy, that left Morrolan, Marianne, Rhyme and myself effectively at loose ends. So, being reasonable, practical people we decided to play cards until the storm broke and normalcy returned to the castle, or something happened in which case our talents would be required. “You know,” I said conversationally, “this is the first time I’ve seen a really big storm in these mountains since I came here.”
“They used to be more common,” Morrolan noted, “before the Castle was built, I remember there were some impressive thunderstorms around the old keep. I gather that neither Auberon nor his majesty the King are too fond of thunder, hence the spellwork.”
“I wonder why this storm now,” I said. “Maybe the Magick keeping the weather out is breaking down?”
Rhyme scoffed. “Ah, lad, it’s the Castle,” he said. “Maybe it prefers the dramatics and is taking advantage of Auberon and the King being away. I’ve given up trying to read the bloody thing’s mind.” Lightning bounced off one of the further towers, punctuating his statement. “You see? I’m just glad the lightning rods are holding up, otherwise there’ll be a Hell of a mess to clean up in the morning.”
Apparently whatever God or gods look over New Europa are fond of dramatic irony, because just after Rhyme said it there was a great crashing of light and noise all around us. The blast of lightning, the sound of masonry cracking, glass shattering and people screaming. We sat there stunned for a moment, then Marianne cried “The ballroom!” and we rose as one and ran for the door.
The guards managed to outrun us and by the time we reached the ballroom door a platoon had entered and were surrounding two strangers, a man and a woman, who were pulling themselves to their feet and holding each other like drowning men amidst the rubble of the ballroom roof. Their clothes weren’t the usual Bayerenese garb, nor anything recognizably New Europan. Instead, they had on pants and shirts that reminded me of the contents of my old backpack!
Who were they, and why had they come here? And more importantly, who brought them here?
~***~
Many miles away at the King’s Residence in Munich, Lord Auberon of Faerie abruptly stood in the middle of a meeting with King Ludwig and his advisors. “My pardon, Your Majesty,” he said. “Something has happened at Castle Falkenstein that needs my immediate attention.” The advisors started to harrumph in outrage, but the king waved them off.
“What has happened, Lord Auberon?” the king asked. “An attack?”
Auberon looked troubled. “I’m… not sure, Your Majesty,” he said carefully. “I do not believe it to be an attack, but it may be serious regardless. By your leave?”
~***~
Normally, stories like this begin with “when I woke up” but in this case it’s a bit more complex than that. Most of our last few seconds in Sunnydale remain blurry: I remember the ground shifting beneath us, the intangible demon yelling something Sam yelling something back, the inversion circle I’d inscribed on the seal flaring to life, an explosion of black light as the nexus spasmed and then we were tumbling through possibility space for I don’t know how long. Then reality reasserted itself in a loud cracking noise and we were ejected, clinging to each other and screaming, into a new cosm. The moment I saw the floor below us - far too below us for comfort and coming close too fast for a decent featherfall - the first thing I thought was This is going to hurt. And I was right.
The next thing I know I’m on my side on a cold marble floor and I can’t see a damned thing. My vision was flooded with light, bright white and colored, including a few colors I’m pretty sure don’t exist in normal light. For a brief second I wondered. Was this Elysium? Did we finally hit the end of our story, by falling into a big room? That’d be one for the poets.
“Julie? Julie.” Sam’s voice hissed in my ear and my senses reset. The light dimmed to a more tolerable level, I could hear the distant sound of running boots on stone and my right side ached like one of Father’s horses had kicked me.
“Ngh,” I managed to grunt. “‘M okay.” Sam put his arm around me and the ache in my side spiked. “Agh, not so okay,” I gasped. “I think that’s a rib or two. How’re you?”
“Twisted my ankle, and I think I cracked my shoulder on the landing,” he said quietly. “We’re about to have company, you okay for standing?”
“I can manage,” I said, putting a charge into a quick numbing spell. Nowhere near as good as a proper heal, but if Sam was right we didn’t have the time. The pain in my ribs faded - I’d have to get those bound before healing, then a shower, a bottle of wine and a nice comfortable bed sounded really good at that point - and we hauled each other to our feet just as the door burst open and a platoon of men in blue uniforms charged in sabers at the ready.
While they took their time arranging themselves in a defensive formation I took the moment to examine my surroundings more closely. We had arrived in the middle of a great ballroom, white marble and gilt in a style I didn’t recognize. The light that flooded my senses on arrival seemed to cling to the walls and floor, tendrils creeping along the ceiling. My godsense reached out and touched the light.
We’d landed in a nexus, but not the nexus that we’d left from. The Sunnydale nexus was old and strong and evil, a vampire latched onto a cosm draining it of every drop of Inspiration it could. This nexus wasn’t aspected, but it was older and stronger than Sunnydale and instead of pulling power into itself it was pumping power outwards, a great flow of telluric force flooding into the world. No wonder my godsense blanked out when we arrived!
This little revelation took no more than a second, by which time the soldiers had their weapons at the ready. “Nicht bewegen! Wer sind Sie und wo kommen Sie her?” the commander barked.
“That’s a very interesting question with a lot of philosophical tangents,” Sam replied. I let him play; he was in his element. In the meantime, I could feel something pricking against my godsense. Somewhere in the array of colorful guards, I could feel the magic in the nexus vibrate against something. Sorcerer, I signalled with the hand on Sam’s back. Strong, attuned. Sam tensed a little, his hand on my waist squeezing back.
Stop him? A good question. I’m a strong war-witch but whoever the nexus was resonating against was potentially stronger. In a straight up fight it’d be close. But if there’s one thing my time as an adventurer alone and with Samuel had taught me, it’s that only idiots fight fair. I concentrated, grabbing a tiny fraction of the nexus and using that power to charge our barriers.
Barrier up. I could feel Sam relax a little as he shifted from completely combat-focused to the mask of affability he used in sticky situations. I looked over the force standing around us, searching for the magic-user, and settled on a neatly bearded man standing near the vanguard. My eyes met his, and he stepped back, momentarily stunned. I wondered what he saw there.
“Okay,” Sam said clearly, “we don’t want any trouble here, so if somebody could tell us where we are and what today’s date is we’ll happily get out of your way.”
~***~
The latest residents of Castle Falkenstein arrived in incredibly dramatic fashion… (Art by Tom Olan Fictograph.)From the Journals of Tom Olan…
The newcomer spoke English. No, that’s not quite right, he spoke American, a language and a dialect that harmonized with my 20th Century soul and one I never expected to hear again.
“I will answer your questions if you answer mine first,” Colonel Tarlenhelm said evenly in English. “Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Well, I’m Sam, this is Flavia,” the interloper said. “We’re travellers, a long way from home.” He eyed the Colonel. “Quite a longer way from home than I think we hoped, in fact. As for what we were doing, ah, at first we were falling and then we were crashing.” The man looked up at the hole in the ceiling and whistled appreciatively. “That is a very big hole. Wow. Er, sorry about that incidentally. Circumstances.”
“You fell from an airship?” The Colonel sounded skeptical, and I didn’t blame him.
The interloper’s eyes lit up with manic glee. “An airship!” he cried. “That would make a great deal more sense, wouldn’t it? Sadly, no. We didn’t fall off an airship. If I were to say we arrived out of a hole in the fabric of space and time, would that make any sense to you?”
Morrolan choked. “The Veil,” he said, staring at the pair. “You fell through the Veil?”
“Not a phrase I recognize, but I’ll take it. Also, not so much ‘fell through’ as ‘were launched through.’ Anyway, now that I’ve answered your questions, could somebody tell me where in Hell we are and what the date is?”
“You’re in Castle Falkenstein,” I supplied. “And it’s the 30th of April, 1871.” The intruders looked at each other.
“Walpurgisnacht,” the woman said. Her voice was low, like Marianne’s, and she had an accent that sounded oddly familiar but I couldn’t place. “Day and month match, at least.”
“D’you think we landed on the other side of Sunnydale?”
“I doubt it, this is a nexus, but it doesn’t have the right aspect to be connected to Sunnydale…” The two drifted off into quiet conversation of a technical nature that I didn’t understand then and only barely understand now. Rhyme had an ear cocked towards the jargon, but his attention was fixed more on the man’s - Sam’s - gun holster, which contained a very pretty piece of weaponry that reminded me of Buck Rogers. Marianne kept her guard up but had plainly filed the two under “eccentric but not immediately threatening,” and I followed her lead. As for Morrolan, his eyes were locked on the woman.
“Pretty sure she’s taken,” I murmured.
He broke contact just long enough to give me a look before murmuring “That’s… Never mind. Later.” and returning to his observations.
“So!” I said. The intruders jumped. “You’re in Castle Falkenstein, the personal residence of His Majesty King Ludwig II of Bavaria, and since it seems you came here by honest accident, you’re welcome to stay the night until we figure out what to do with you.”
The woman - Flavia - smiled. “That’s very generous of you, mister…?”
“Olam. Captain Tom Olam, of His Majesty’s Hussars.”
“Olam,” Sam said in a I-know-that-name tone. I froze. “You wouldn’t happen to have a buddy named Pondsmith, would you?”
I had no idea how to process that. But before I could reply, Auberon showed up and everything got more complicated.
~TBC~
For the record, the idea came first, the picture came second and the story came third. --M.
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"