Canticle of the End

Story

Characters

World

Reference

Chapter 0.1 Wrap Up Draft

[!info] Reconstruction Note This wrap-up was reconstructed in April 2026 from archived ChatGPT transcripts and source documents. It covers the earliest period of the campaign — Marina Garrick’s solo adventures and the formation of the core party — which predates the vault’s original documentation. Details are approximate where the source material is fragmentary.

Narrative Recap

In the Spring of 1813, before the Order_of_St_Aelfric had a name in her vocabulary and before the word cult had entered her nightmares, Marina_Garrick was simply a Surrey gentlewoman with a curiosity that outpaced her caution. She went to Brighton with Georgiana_Dillwyn — Ant’s daughter Elizabeth at the table, playing her only session — and there, amid the fashionable seaside society of Marine Parade and Captain King’s drawing rooms, she had her first encounter with something that could not be explained away. The Loom & Lucidity investigation left her changed, though the full shape of the change had not yet declared itself.

It declared itself at Osney_Grange.

Sent to investigate disturbances in a rural parish, Marina uncovered desecrated graves beneath St. Swithney’s Church and a ghoul that had been feeding in the crypt. The investigation ended in catastrophe: Eleanor Mortimer dead, Reverend Henry Mortimer and Dr. Beamish consumed by the creature, and Marina fleeing wounded in the curate’s stolen coach — a gunshot to the shoulder, her mind fracturing under the weight of what she had witnessed. She arrived at The Fox & Hound in Portsmouth half-dead, and it was there that Mrs_Margaret_Fairchild took her in and Dr_Ambrose_Hargreaves stitched her shoulder back together.

It was also there that Lady_Honoria_Lyndhurst found her.

Honoria arrived at the inn with the certainty of someone who had been waiting for this exact moment. She offered Marina a choice — come to London and learn the truth, or walk away — and Marina chose London. The coach journey along the Great Portsmouth Road carried her from one life to another. At Ravenwood_House, Lord_Percival_Harcourt waited in his secret chamber beneath the antiquarian society, surrounded by forbidden texts and candle smoke. He tested her, assessed her, and offered her the Order. At Hartwell_House, she was given rooms, a maid (Miss_Eleanor_Finch), and the first stability she had known since Brighton.

Then Harcourt sent her to Tarryford.

The Northlake Ball at Northlake_Hall, Autumn 1813, was meant to be Marina’s first mission — observe the village, report on irregularities. Instead, it became the moment the campaign cracked open. Emma_Wentworth and Georgiana_Wentworth, local sisters from Tarryford. James_Bennet, a gentleman poet. Jane_Radcliffe, a con artist masquerading as a lady. The Long Corridor was a portal to a dark realm inhabited by Horrors — squat, headless, fur-covered things with fanged mouths on their torsos. The portal took days to open. On the first expedition in, the investigators got out before the creatures reached them, but one Horror escaped overnight and killed sheep. On the second expedition, after Georgiana performed a blood ritual at the altar to close the portal, the Horrors descended. The armed NPC men stopped to shoot and cover the retreat — they died. James Bennet, running for the portal, was overtaken, dismembered, and consumed — the first PC death of the campaign. His death bought the others time. The surviving women walked out together, and the campaign was no longer a solo game.

PC Carry-Forward

Marina Garrick (Anna)

Emma Wentworth (Missy)

Georgiana Wentworth (Beth)

Jane Radcliffe (Juel)

James Bennet (Jay)

Georgiana Dillwyn (Elizabeth)

World State (End of Chapter 0.1)