The Ceremony Of Innocence

Turning and turning in the widening gyre /The falcon cannot hear the falconer; /Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; /Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, /The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere /The ceremony of innocence is drowned; /The best lack all conviction, while the worst /Are full of passionate intensity.

• W.B. Yeats, "The Second Coming" (1919)

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It is January, in the year of Our Lord Ninteen hundred and ten, and the long rays of a golden sun are beginning to set over the British Empire of King Edward VII. For more than 100 years, the United Kingdom of Great Britain, Ireland and Wales has been the axis of upon which the world has spun...and London is the axis upon which the Empire spins. But times are changing, even if the Powers That Be refuse to change with them, and in the fading years of the Victorian age, as the bright lights of science, human industry, and rational and pragmatic politics have failed to usher the world into a new utopia, the Shadows have grown longer.

Though to some, the Edwardian Age is like a long and pleasant summer of aimless afternoons and garden parties, in the dark alleys and stews of the metropolis lurk darkness, both ancient and new. In the minds of the privileged, the world seems to move like a complex watch, each piece ticking away in the advancement of the grand design of humanity. To those caught between the gears of that machine, the Great Mechanism is being wound too tightly and the pins are showing strain, and old resentments and new horrors that have only been papered over by the fashionable are waiting for their moment to strike.

Into this falling dusk, a small group of men and women, Awakened to the horrible and magnificent truths dwelling in the shadowed places of the world, attempt to stand firm against the dying of the light...

Dramatis Personae

Heroes

The Supernatural of London

The Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn

DEDI	{width=125px}	Formerly leader of the Isis-Urania Temple of the Golden Dawn, passionate playwright and poet, and strident advocate for the Irish Free State.	Crowley	{width=125px}	Ego maniacal and charismatic leader of the Golden Dawn cult. Crowley flaunts his occult knowledge in full view of the society of England, and for his arrogance he is at viewed with both bemusement and fear by the mortal world.

The Kingsmen

The Rook	{width=125px}	High ranking member of the Kingsmen fiercely dedicated to defending Albion.	The Jay	{width=125px}	Professor of mathematics at King's College, Cambridge and chief esoteric researcher of the Kingsmen.

The Academia Universalis Arcana

Locke	{width=125px}	Neophyte Warden of London. Intellectual and headstrong, with a stubborn and independent streak.
Tyr	{width=125px}	The grim and dour Archon of England in service to the Academia Universalis Arcana.
Bolt	{width=125px}	Doryphoros and apprentice to Archon Tyr. Aggressive and idealistic in the pursuit of her goals.

The Motley of the Tyburn Lost

Jane	{width=125px}	Also known as the Chelsea Cat, the changeling Jane appears to be on the run from both her own past and from the law.	Jenny	{width=125px}	The creature known as Jenny Greenteeth has either taken her inspiration from the legendary river hag of England or she truly is that dreaded being. Either way, the rivers and streams bring all secrets to her, and she only parts with them for a price.	Fionnuala	{width=125px}	Inquisitive and determined swanmay handmaiden and emissary of the river hag of London.

Knave's Court

Jack	{width=125px}	style="width:25%">The queen of hearts She made some tarts, All on a summer's day The knave of Hearts He stole those tarts And with them ran away: The king of hearts Call'd for those tarts, And beat the knave full sore; The knave of hearts brought back those tarts And said he'll ne'er steal more.	Vail	{width=125px}	style="width:25%">The frostbound knight of the Knave's Court, the cruel being known only as Vail enforces her prince's mad whims with both subtlety and gore soaked ferocity. Preferably the latter.

Themes, Moods, and Setting

Themes

• The Shadow Game - "For what can war, but endless war, still breed?" Much as the the world of the mundane saw a complex series of real politik geopolitical games being played between the Great Powers of the world, so to does the world of darkness. Shadow Britain is divided into a tense patchwork of established and rising supernatural factions. The old guard conservative powers subtlety joust with each other in games both petty and grand, mostly heedless of the dangerous fallout should a true Shadow War erupt. They also work in turn to ruthlessly suppress or absorb any dangerous new "radical" factions that may be struggling for a place at the table, willfully ignorant of the poisonous consequences of radicalizing the voiceless and desperate many against the arrogant and domineering few.

• Existential Alienation - "I have seen the dark universe yawning,/Where the black planets roll without aim;/Where they roll in their horror unheeded/Without knowledge or lustre or name." Evil never dies. Darkness never retreats. In the cracks and the crevices of our society there are monsters undreamed of by the rank and file of humanity. They exist in the spaces between things, in the folds of existence where we can't find them. Sometimes they cross over, sometimes they manifest, and all hell breaks loose. Only this is not Hell, nor Heaven. This is like nothing anyone has ever understood. This is pure evil, pure destruction. This is the Apocalypse, as foretold by the raving sane of the patients and victims of Bedlam.

• A Constellation of Gnosis - "Becoming is the mode of activity of the Uncreate Diety" Perhaps in rejection of the materialism of the world of science and cold industry, perhaps as a way of embracing a world in which change cannot be anticipated but is a truism, the world of the occult has bled into the mundane as never before. In the salons and high places of London, self declared priests, psychics, mediums, and occultists conduct seances, spirit readings, and foretellings. Minor cults and growing new religions reveal a quest to transform the mind of man, to know the mind of God. But what does shedding one's mortal shell expose the vulnerable soul to in the Abyss between worlds, and can those that blunder for heaven open a door that cannot be shut, and whose gate swings both directions?

Mood

• Post-Gothic Mystery - The passionate age of the Romantics have burned away in the fires of the Realist modernism of the cold, pitiless industrial world, and even that has begun to melt into the dreamlike seeking of the surrealists. This is a world where dreams are blending with reality. Of ciphers and conspiracies with the higher and lower planes, and behind it all the ticking clock always and forever bringing the old worlds closer to the strike of midnight.

Setting

• Cosmology - Being a primer on the cosmological truths as understood by the many Awakened beings in 1910.
• Bestiary - Being a primer on the beings both above and below that inhabit the mundus.
• Shadow Britain - Being an overview of the islands of Britain and Ireland in Nineteen Hundred and Ten.
  • London - Being an overview of the County of London, including the City of London in 1910 AD.
• Factions - Being an overview of the major and minor factions and cabals in Shadow Britain.

Episodes