Victorian Undead 2 - Part 3 and 4
Jun. 7th, 2014 08:52 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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scans_dailyPrevious part,
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4732174.html#cutid1
Holmes, Watson and the vampire hunters head back to Baker Street, where they decide to fill each other in on what the heck is going on.
It's at this point where, more or less, things follow the progress of the books. Jonathan sees Dracula crawling down the wall of his castle like a bat, he's almost killed by Dracula's three baby-eating vampire brides etc. etc. Eventually he realised that if he were to stay until the legal matters are fully completed, then Dracula would then just kill him when he's no longer of use to him. So when the first opportunity arose, Jonathan escaped the castle by climbing down the wall, and stumbled about in the Romanian countryside until a conent took him in and nursed him back to health.
Upon hearing that her fiance her resurfaced after disappearing for some months after going to the continent, Mina Murray rushed to meet him, where they then got married as soon as Jonathan had significantly recovered. However, while Jonathan and Mina made their trip back to England, Dracula had already arrived on the Demeter, and almost immediately began attacking their circle of friends. Lucy Westernra, the vampire woman from the end of the previous section, was the first to be turned despite the efforts of Dr Seward and Professor Van Helsing.
Van Helsing then proposed that they go to Lucy's crypt, drive a stake into her heart and chop her head off, just to be sure. Unfortunately, it seems that their mutual friend, Lord Godalming, had sneaked Lucy's body away before they could do the deed, his having decided to side with Dracula for reasons unknown to them. Additionally, his betrayal allowed Dracula to attack and infect Mina while Jonathan and his friends were busy, resulting in her deciding to just burn herself to death via sunlight rather than become a slave to Dracula's will.
Jonathan says that they've gotten a list of the properties purchased by Dracula, and that combined with Van Helsing's expertise in untoward beasties of the night, gave the vampire hunters a vague plan of how to defeat Dracula, but the new plague related schemes exposed by Holmes have given them pause. It seems to them now that Dracula is less a monster randomly striking out into new territory, but actually has some kind of grand plan in mind.
Holmes agrees, but seems confused about some details about the story. Why would Dracula, a man who has lived several centuries isolated in a castle in Eastern Europe suddenly contact an obscure Cornish firm of solicitors to handle his land purchases? Additionally, it seems more than a coincidence that Mina was friends with Lucy Westernra, a woman that Godalming was trying to court at the time. What precisely is the role of Godalming in all of this?
It's at this point that Mycroft Holmes rolls in, explaining that Lord Godalming was actually working for him...
Meanwhile, Lucy isn't taking getting shot with a flaregun too well.
Back at Baker Street, Mycroft is explaining that Lord Godalming was working for him, how after the zombie uprising several years ago, the British government thought that it might be wise to start combing the Earth for any other potential "esoteric" weaponry. Chasing every local legend or bit of folklore that might have a vein of truth that might lead to a discovery akin to the zombie virus.
Godalming was one of the agents tasked with that job, and eventually he stumbled across Dracula, who, despite centuries of pause, had decided to once again attempt empire building. Godalming evidently decided to side with Dracula as a means of grabbing power for himself, providing Dracula with the information and means to orchestrate his invasion of the British Isles. Hence why Dracula used Jonathan Harker's lawyer firm rather than a more prominent one based in London, in order to avoid suspicion.
With the destruction of the plague boxes in Carfax, that piece of Dracula's scheme appears to have come to a dead end at least. Additionally, Mycroft has posted a notice for the arrest of Godalming for his treasonous ways, but even he seems baffled that he apparently had the audacity to introduce Dracula to Queen Victoria while they were in London. This alarms Van Helsing, as by inviting Dracula into Buckingham Palace, he can now come and go as he pleases.
With that in mind, the heroes decide that Dracula must be in London somewhere, and they deduce that, being a medieval warlord, he'd probably choose the highest ground as his main place of operations. Heading to the property that he bought that's on the highest point compared to the others while Mycroft bustles off with his own stuff to do, they arrive finding the drained corpse of Godalming on the floor of its basement.
They also find a bunch of empty boxes, coffins this time, but without any sign of who or what might be in them...
Next issue, the Brides attack the heroes who despite being outnumbered still manage to take them be surprise and maul Dr Seward to death. However, the heroes have adapted their weaponry to be more effective (silvered blades on the knifes, Holmes' knowledge of chemistry to make incindiary rounds for his flaregun and the like), killing two of the Brides in the process.
Rather amusingly, considering some people's interpretation of the Brides as Bram Stoker's negative commentary on the New Woman of the late 19th century, Lucy decides to start monologuing about how, actually, she prefers being a vampire to being a regular Victorian housewife, thank you very much.
She flies off, leaving the vampire hunters concerned over what to do net. Holmes finds a scarf on the floor of the basement, and deducing that it belongs to one of Dracula's henchmen, he borrows Toby (the best bloodhound in London) to try and track them. Toby leads them to a builder's yard, where Holmes and Watson recognise some of the people present as the men who tried shooting and burning them to death back in the first issue. They also find a cart full of drained corpses, and figure that they must be the original workers of the yard, that the Szgany replaced.
Unfortunately, the heroes are spotted, and the henchmen start shooting at them again.
To be concluded: Seriously, is "Dracula goes to a masked ball" a trope yet?
http://scans-daily.dreamwidth.org/4732174.html#cutid1
Holmes, Watson and the vampire hunters head back to Baker Street, where they decide to fill each other in on what the heck is going on.
It's at this point where, more or less, things follow the progress of the books. Jonathan sees Dracula crawling down the wall of his castle like a bat, he's almost killed by Dracula's three baby-eating vampire brides etc. etc. Eventually he realised that if he were to stay until the legal matters are fully completed, then Dracula would then just kill him when he's no longer of use to him. So when the first opportunity arose, Jonathan escaped the castle by climbing down the wall, and stumbled about in the Romanian countryside until a conent took him in and nursed him back to health.
Upon hearing that her fiance her resurfaced after disappearing for some months after going to the continent, Mina Murray rushed to meet him, where they then got married as soon as Jonathan had significantly recovered. However, while Jonathan and Mina made their trip back to England, Dracula had already arrived on the Demeter, and almost immediately began attacking their circle of friends. Lucy Westernra, the vampire woman from the end of the previous section, was the first to be turned despite the efforts of Dr Seward and Professor Van Helsing.
Van Helsing then proposed that they go to Lucy's crypt, drive a stake into her heart and chop her head off, just to be sure. Unfortunately, it seems that their mutual friend, Lord Godalming, had sneaked Lucy's body away before they could do the deed, his having decided to side with Dracula for reasons unknown to them. Additionally, his betrayal allowed Dracula to attack and infect Mina while Jonathan and his friends were busy, resulting in her deciding to just burn herself to death via sunlight rather than become a slave to Dracula's will.
Jonathan says that they've gotten a list of the properties purchased by Dracula, and that combined with Van Helsing's expertise in untoward beasties of the night, gave the vampire hunters a vague plan of how to defeat Dracula, but the new plague related schemes exposed by Holmes have given them pause. It seems to them now that Dracula is less a monster randomly striking out into new territory, but actually has some kind of grand plan in mind.
Holmes agrees, but seems confused about some details about the story. Why would Dracula, a man who has lived several centuries isolated in a castle in Eastern Europe suddenly contact an obscure Cornish firm of solicitors to handle his land purchases? Additionally, it seems more than a coincidence that Mina was friends with Lucy Westernra, a woman that Godalming was trying to court at the time. What precisely is the role of Godalming in all of this?
It's at this point that Mycroft Holmes rolls in, explaining that Lord Godalming was actually working for him...
Meanwhile, Lucy isn't taking getting shot with a flaregun too well.
Back at Baker Street, Mycroft is explaining that Lord Godalming was working for him, how after the zombie uprising several years ago, the British government thought that it might be wise to start combing the Earth for any other potential "esoteric" weaponry. Chasing every local legend or bit of folklore that might have a vein of truth that might lead to a discovery akin to the zombie virus.
Godalming was one of the agents tasked with that job, and eventually he stumbled across Dracula, who, despite centuries of pause, had decided to once again attempt empire building. Godalming evidently decided to side with Dracula as a means of grabbing power for himself, providing Dracula with the information and means to orchestrate his invasion of the British Isles. Hence why Dracula used Jonathan Harker's lawyer firm rather than a more prominent one based in London, in order to avoid suspicion.
With the destruction of the plague boxes in Carfax, that piece of Dracula's scheme appears to have come to a dead end at least. Additionally, Mycroft has posted a notice for the arrest of Godalming for his treasonous ways, but even he seems baffled that he apparently had the audacity to introduce Dracula to Queen Victoria while they were in London. This alarms Van Helsing, as by inviting Dracula into Buckingham Palace, he can now come and go as he pleases.
With that in mind, the heroes decide that Dracula must be in London somewhere, and they deduce that, being a medieval warlord, he'd probably choose the highest ground as his main place of operations. Heading to the property that he bought that's on the highest point compared to the others while Mycroft bustles off with his own stuff to do, they arrive finding the drained corpse of Godalming on the floor of its basement.
They also find a bunch of empty boxes, coffins this time, but without any sign of who or what might be in them...
Next issue, the Brides attack the heroes who despite being outnumbered still manage to take them be surprise and maul Dr Seward to death. However, the heroes have adapted their weaponry to be more effective (silvered blades on the knifes, Holmes' knowledge of chemistry to make incindiary rounds for his flaregun and the like), killing two of the Brides in the process.
Rather amusingly, considering some people's interpretation of the Brides as Bram Stoker's negative commentary on the New Woman of the late 19th century, Lucy decides to start monologuing about how, actually, she prefers being a vampire to being a regular Victorian housewife, thank you very much.
She flies off, leaving the vampire hunters concerned over what to do net. Holmes finds a scarf on the floor of the basement, and deducing that it belongs to one of Dracula's henchmen, he borrows Toby (the best bloodhound in London) to try and track them. Toby leads them to a builder's yard, where Holmes and Watson recognise some of the people present as the men who tried shooting and burning them to death back in the first issue. They also find a cart full of drained corpses, and figure that they must be the original workers of the yard, that the Szgany replaced.
Unfortunately, the heroes are spotted, and the henchmen start shooting at them again.
To be concluded: Seriously, is "Dracula goes to a masked ball" a trope yet?
