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unable to dedicate the time and energy to the project. Only the inventor himself can seem to make the boat work. The Ray sees limited service until the middle 1830s when it begins to serve as an interdiction vessel for capturing slavers without giving them the opportunity to dump their human cargo overboard. It also serves to aid in the covert landing of Crown agents on coasts from Europe to Africa. The Ray is continuously updated by St. John, who eventually comes to live in the boat as its resident engineer.
The Ray isn’t the last submersible boat used in Her Majesty’s service, but remains one of the most advanced until the late 1800s when conventional shipbuilding catches up to St. John’s inspired efforts.
1834: The Spanish Inquisition Officially Ends.
Unofficially, the Inquisition is finally brought to heel by other, more subtle arms of the Roman Church’s secret workings. Augurers within the Greek Orthodox Church share their visions of the future with Rome, and the forces gathering in Britain become a major concern for the Church, despite the moderate position of the British government on Catholics. The energies previously wasted on Inquisition are redirected at inspiring certain Anglicans to embrace a more
Catholic faith, and on the inspiration of trends such as the Oxford Movement.
While the Greeks can not say for sure in what form the threat to the Church will come, these stratagems seem a sound way to counter any threatening doctrine or blasphemy which might arise. The Greek augurers fail utterly to recognize that what they took to be symbolism in their visions: The Queen upon her throne of stone, lion by Her side, shield and spear ready at hand, do not represent a vague symbol of Britannia but actually show Britain’s next monarch near the end of Her reign.
1835: Expedition to Atlantis. Employing the remarkable submersible HMSS Ray, an expedition of scientists and adventurers follow a fragmentary map purporting to reveal the location of a sunken city built somewhere about the Mid Atlantic Ridge. The map was recovered from the ruined Temple of Ling’Yoh in Tibet two decades previ-ously, and lay ignored in a display case in an elderly collec-tor’s drawing room. But with the advent of the Ray, real investigation proved possible.
The submersible boat descends, following the route outlined by the map, and discovers not a single city but dozens if not hundreds of individual settlements strung
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all along the ridge. Where there appear to be true cities, monolithic structures of cut basalt, they are ruined and abandoned. But more shocking, the smaller settlements are inhabited. While not the correct term, or even a translation of these amphibious people’s own word for themselves, they quickly became known as Atlanteans, though the general consensus is that they are in fact either a debased form of the ancient pre-humans, or some opportunists who later occupied the cyclopean cities.
The Atlanteans are a tribal culture, much concerned with matters of honor and blood. Much of their energy is spent in pursuing ages-old feuds with their neighbors.
The arrival of the humans in a machine is seen by many as an opportunity, and the humans as possible allies against tribal enemies. Into this political chaos the human explorers arrive, and they quickly find themselves negotiating in the name of their nation.
After some missteps, deaths, and the start of war, a tenuous relationship is established with the largest of the Atlantean tribes. So begins an exchange of ideas and trade, kept as secret as possible from the rest of the great powers.
1837: Hegel’s Philosophy of Secret History is published posthumously by Eduard Gans. Hegel’s theory of history is underpinned by his theory of secret history, that all recorded events, while seemingly encompassed by the Geist, are in fact equally encompassed by the Schattengeist, the shadow-spirit of society. These two spiritual worlds combine to form the Weltgeist, the “world spirit.” The struggle between shadow and light is the engine which drives history, the overt and the obvious events push human history in one direction, while the secret motivators pull it in another.
Moderating between these dichotomous forces are the Volkgeist, great individuals such as Napoleon who can shape the Geist in dramatic ways, and other shadowy unnamed individuals who can shape the Shattengeist in equally dramatic ways. Between these two, there are those who would come to be known as Strangers. Hegel names these individuals torn between the two worlds Gaunergeist, spirits with no allegiance to either of history’s driving forces, wild cards, rogue elements in the history of man.
His work is dismissed as rambling and incoherent (as
well as dangerously paranoid) by many in the academic community, and Hegel’s reputation is targeted for destruction by the world’s squabbling secret masters, whose applecart he so nearly upsets. Yet his ideas have their defenders, and his final work is widely read. In the coming decades it becomes essential reading for intellectuals trying to make sense of the chaos of the late 19th century.
1837: Victoria Regina Imperiatrix. Four weeks after Her 18th birthday, Victoria is awakened to the news that Her uncle, William IV has died, and She is now Queen.
In his journal, Lord Conynham writes of bringing the news to young Victoria:
“When I informed Her that Her uncle had passed, something came over Her, almost as if I could see the aura of authority descend upon Her. She nodded Her head, and thanked me for bringing the news so promptly, and I felt uncannily proud of having Her say so. So much so, that I left with a feeling of profound disquiet, and no small fear.
In Her eyes I saw something go out, some spark, and in its place something new take light, and it made me afraid.”
Victoria Herself writes, “Momma woke me at 6 o’clock to tell me Conynham was here with news. He told me that my poor uncle was no more, and that I was now Queen. I told him that I knew it already.”
During Her first three years of rule, Victoria seems to rely on the Whig PM Lord Melbourne for council, but doesn’t seem overly discommoded when Melbourne resigns in 1839 over the rebellions of 1837 in Canada.
1839: The Bedchamber Crisis threatens Queen Victoria’s political alliance with Sir Robert Peel, a Tory She had commissioned to form a new ministry. Sir Robert wishes to appoint new Ladies of the Bedchamber, attendants upon the Queen whose posts are ones of political patronage.
Victoria regards the Ladies who had been appointed by the previous Whig administration as personal friends, and refuses to countenance new attendants. Sir Robert, feeling that he can not govern effectively under the restrictions placed upon him by the Queen, almost resigns
his commission until Victoria invites him to a private council to discuss the
matter.
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When Peel emerges from his meeting with the Queen, he looks like a man who has found religion. He retracts his objec-tions, saying that the Queen had explained Her position with such reason and sense that he felt comfortable proceeding with the new ministry. Sir Robert Peel would be one of the Queen’s strongest supporters and confidants in the years to come.
1840: A Royal Wedding. On February 10, Queen Victoria weds Her first cousin, Prince Albert of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, whom She had met two years previously. Prince Albert isn’t an especially popular choice, too German, too foreign perhaps. But he and Victoria have an immediate and profound rapport. Prince Albert (later granted the official title of Prince Consort) fills his somewhat difficult public role with grace.
Prince Albert is athletic, well educated, erudite, witty, and quite savvy at political matters. His counsel becomes invaluable to the young Queen, who knows She can always rely upon Albert to have Her interests at heart.
1840: An Assassin’s Bullets shatter a happy afternoon riding on Constitution Hill for Queen Victoria and Her husband. Edward Oxford, a young man of 18, fires twice at the Queen, apparently missing both times. He is quickly apprehended and disarmed, though he thrashes and raves.
Victoria, against all Her attendants’ and Her husband’s advice, approaches the young man, and they lock eyes for a moment. Oxford’s ravings about “the last empire” quiet, and he begins to silently weep, and then is unable to meet the Queen’s gaze again.
He is acquitted of High Treason due to insanity, and committed to Bethlem Hospital until 1864, when, while being transported to the newly-opened Broadmore Hospital, he himself is assassinated by an unknown man with a revolver.
This assailant turns the pistol on himself immediately after slaying Oxford. It is supposed by those who study such things that this second assassin was an Empty Man, but no evidence exists to support he was anything more
than another maniac.
1840: The Queen’s Displeasure.
Secure in Her marriage, Victoria
exerts Her royal prerogatives and banishes over a dozen members of the royal household: courtiers and privy councilors, including Sir John Conroy, who had watched over Her since Her first year. In the official edict She says,
“With a new Queen, one must have new Ideas and new Approaches, and not cling so closely to times long past. We foresee great changes and great wonders for Our Kingdom, so let these changes begin with Our own Household.”
Victoria had discerned that Her circles and councils had been well infiltrated by agents of secret powers, and She would not have it any longer. Resentful of Conroy’s familiarity and efforts to impose his will upon Her, She lets it be known to those She banishes that She knows their purposes, and that they and their associates will hereafter be watched. In Conroy’s case, She lets it be known that he is being exiled from the court for his affairs with one of Her Ladies of the Bedchamber. This added note of malice damages Conroy’s reputation further, as the official reason for his banishment is so ignominious.
When Peel’s Special Branch is formed the following year, they are tasked with the duty to catalog, track, and if need be, persecute secret orders and fraternal societies of domestic or foreign origin. Sir John Conroy lives the remainder of his life under constant (and obvious) surveillance, and never again enjoys the privileges of influence over the Queen.
1840: Penny Post. The age of the written word blossoms fully with the introduction of the penny post, which makes sending correspondences affordable to many more people. A great deal more of the weird and the uncanny is committed to paper now; the correspondences of the period contain references to unusual events and happenings, and the improved communication this affords begins to shed light on the world’s hidden matters.
1840: Spark of Brilliance. The electric light is invented, but it will be years before it becomes widespread and easily manufactured.
1841: Secret Police for Secret Crimes. Special Branch is founded under the direction of Sir Robert Peel, who sees the need for a secret branch of the police force to handle
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unconventional crime and attend to matters too sensitive or unpleasant to impose on ordinary officers of the law.
1842: Year of Assassins. Victoria is plagued by a series of assassination attempts, some clearly genuine, some perhaps the efforts of desperate, attention-seeking individuals.
In May, in St. James Park, one John Francis fires a pistol at Her Majesty, but is quickly apprehended and disarmed by police constables. When tried, his death sentence is commuted in favor of transportation.
In July, John William Bean fires his pistol at the Queen though his gun is loaded only with powder and no bullet.
In August, Francis Bell throws a homemade black-powder explosive onto the roof of the royal carriage as it passes, but Victoria’s quick-thinking coachman throws the bomb away before it explodes. Bell is captured at his apartment later in the day, tried, and convicted. In light of the earlier attempts, and the belief that the attempts were encouraged by Oxford’s acquittal, Bell is convicted of High Treason and sentenced to hang. He kills himself in his cell while awaiting the sentence to be carried out.
Finally, an unknown assailant fires a rifle at the Queen from a rooftop while She walks in Hyde Park. She is lightly wounded in Her side by the small-caliber bullet, but Her assailant is never captured. She quickly recovers from the injury, and as terrifying as Albert and Her entourage find the attack She seems to take it entirely in stride. In the years to follow, however, the re-opening of this wound often heralded trouble for Her Empire.
These assassination attempts lead Albert to encourage Parliament to pass the Treason Act of 1842, which grants the royal household powers to investigate possible threats to Her Majesty’s safety, and to preemptively act to prevent such attempts in future. These powers are granted to Peel’s Special Branch by royal decree.
1844: The Great Disappointment. The calculations of the Millerite movement promise the return of Jesus Christ on October 22, and His failure to return is devastating to the Millerites. The fanatical core become the Liberationists, a conspiracy-driven sect who decide the reason Christ failed to appear on the appointed date was that His enemies, the
Enemy, had somehow captured the Returned Lord and were holding him. As the century wears on, the identity of the Enemy’s agents changes from Catholics to the Irish to the Hindus to the Russians to the Americans, finally coming to rest upon Victoria Herself, one more mad voice among so many at century’s end.
1844: Founding of Bábism. The Persian Prophet known as the Báb announces to the world his revelation of the coming of “He whom God shall make manifest,” founding Bábísm.
The Báb is considered the forerunner of Bahá’u’lláh, the founder of the Bahá’í Faith. He also speaks of “God’s Angel, come to cut out the rot of our world with fire and sword, and woe to those upon whose face Her gaze will fall.”
1844: A Hunger for Revolution. Irish nationalist and writer John Mitchell writes that the potato disease which threatens the lives of millions of Irish might be an inducement to true revolution, hunger being one of the great motivators of history. His further writings on the repeal of the Acts of Union eventually see him tried and sentenced to transpor-tation. On the eve of his sentence he mysteriously vanishes from his prison cell and is never seen again in public. He continues to write and organize from the shadows, and it is rumored he made some deal or pact with ungodly things, faerie or something worse, to preserve his freedom so long as he fights for the cause of Irish independence. Rumors of his activities continue into the early 1900s, but all describe him as he appeared in 1844, eternally as he was, eternally fighting for the Republican cause.
1845: Famine in Ireland. The Irish Potato Famine begins to be recognized by the larger world. Potatoes are the staple food crop for millions of Irish farmers and laborers who work to produce valuable grains and other exports. Even as starvation begins to take the people, Ireland remains a net exporter of food. British policy exacerbates the famine, as does trade, land use, and other systems. The famine reaches its peak in 1848. Millions are starving, hundreds of thousands are already dead. In County
Tipperary one William Smith O’Brien,
a member of the Young Ireland
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party, and founding member of the Irish Confederation, leads displaced farmers in an open rebellion against the landowners. The situation only worsens.
1845: London’s Secret Monarch. The Turk begins its reign over the London underworld, organizing the city’s crime and vice with its mechanical prescience. The Turk becomes fully engaged for the first time, the very limits of its mechanical genius challenged by the complexities of this new game. Mr.
Turk becomes something of a legend, and not everyone in official circles wishes him exposed or removed. It is reasoned that a certain amount of crime is unavoidable, and if this Mr.
Turk can so well organize it that it never need blight the lives or sight of proper people and good citizens, then in the end, how could it be an evil? If the Turk were capable of it, he would smirk with satisfaction at how well his human pawns perform the moves he dictates for them.
1846: Potato Blight Nearly Averted. Amateur mycologist the Rev. M. J. Berkeley recognizes the Irish potato blight as a fungal condition. Berkeley experiments with several formu-lations, and concocts a cheap powdered agent which will purge afflicted potatoes of the blight. Before he can publish his results or solicit the charitable contributions needed to purchase the agent in large quantities, he is murdered in the street by an assailant identified as Alvis Monroe, an unemployed laborer and known drunkard. When appre-hended (after attempting to commit suicide with the knife used to slay Rev. Berkeley), Monroe is found to be blank—
emptied off all thought. When the report reaches London, the headlines read “Empty Man Strikes Again!” Without Rev. Berkley’s antifungal agent, over a million Irish die of starvation in the next five years, and millions more abandon their homeland to seek fortune in other lands.
1847: The Strange. Thomas Babington Macaulay (Whig MP for Edinburgh) coins the term “Strange” in a letter written to the Edinburgh Review.
1848: Power to the People. A decade of revolu-tionary politics is distilled and published
in the Communist Manifesto. It
includes the reference to the Strange: “Those possessed of means and abilities beyond the ken of other mortals may seem to stand above their fellow workers, being a natural-born elite (or a natural under-class, to be exploited), but these powers are not a thing for the aggrandizement of the self, but a call to greater service to communal concerns.”
1849: Strife in the Otherworld. The assassination of Lord Seigh Mulligan, the Faerie Regent of Ireland, throws the Otherworld into chaos. The lords and ladies of Faerie lose all cohesion and begin scrabbling for power, fighting small wars in the Otherworld, which imprint upon the real world as rebellions and outbreaks of mad violence. The factional common faerie, with their nationalistic drives inherited from the Republican humans they so admire, begin chafing for all-out rebellion. Only the official visit of Queen Victoria Herself to Ireland brings calm.
With a newly awakened awareness of the Otherworld,
With a newly awakened awareness of the Otherworld,