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Post by Dante on Nov 14, 2014 17:01:29 GMT -5
Poisoned bullets seemed like overkill, but apparently it was just enough kill. At this point I can confidently say that I have no idea where your story is going to go next, and pretty much never have. Keep it unpredictable, Jacques. It's more fun that way.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 17, 2014 17:27:31 GMT -5
Snippet Ten
Severus Snape stood stiffly in front of 667 Dark Avenue. Gold, a devious stationery and menu shop proprietor connected in some way to the legendary Hangfire, had told him to go there and wait for a letter to be delivered to the addressee with the utmost haste. The doorman had handed him the envelope a minute before. Darkness was still rather in so he had brought along a lantern to help his vision, to the consternation of the doorman. Not that Snape cared, of course. He thought it was ridiculous to bathe the whole block in an absence of light. With a derisive snort Snape walked away from the building, lantern in tow. He then flagged a taxi, directed the driver to take him to the Rue d'Ourglasse, and stepped into the back seat and closed the door.
Jacques Snicket was momentarily confused as to the place where Élise de la Serre had taken him, as the road there had been bathed in darkness and could not tell where they had been going by natural landmarks. "Madame De La Serre?" he tentatively queried. "Call me Élise, Jacques Snicket. It will roll better and quicker off the tongue." "All right then, Élise," Jacques fumbled, "where are we?" She began to pace, "We are in a dead town named Stain'd-by-the-Sea." Jacques started at the name. "My brother was here a very long time ago in order to procure a statue of the B—" "Not here, Jacques!" Élise was firm. They were currently in a rackety inn named The Even Loster Legs, the sign of which had read, through time and petty vandalism from a certain miscreant, as "The Lobster Eggs Inn". Puffs of gunshot seemed to be outside, "Are we under attack?" Jacques said. "No. It's the cars." "The cars?" "Yes. The cars are finally dying." "You mean, the cars are --" BANG!! They ducked for cover, as that had been a rather loud carburettor self-explosion had been nearby. "After a set time these old cars littered around the town have been designed to explode by their manufacturers," Élise said. "But if this town is dead, how come there are lights on?" BANG!! "This town is not an ordinary town." Jacques had known that as soon as Lemony had informed him, though his brother had not been very detailed as to Stain'd-by-the-Sea except for the Bombinating Beast and Hangfire and the Inhumane Society. There had been rumours in the City of the continued existence of the Inhumane Society long after Lemony's stay in Stain'd, but more provincial in scope: straggling remnants, like the V.F.D. after the fire of the Hotel Denouement. Élise continued. "This town was the greatest exporter of ink and ink-related services, but now the ink wells are dried up and Ink, Inc. has no place for headquarters. It's employees are traveling inkers and octopus catchers working around the remains of Anwhistle Aquatics, though that is far from this place, and far from the seaweed forest bordering the inkwells and octopus dens." Jacques was of course familiar with Anwhistle Aquatics and the blaze which had destroyed it: he had been the one to write an article revealing the defection of the stepson of Captain Widdershins, Fernald, from V.F.D. on the front page of The Daily Punctilio. He still did not know what or why Élise had brought him there, to a faded town by a misnomered sea. He did not know whether Hangfire had had a hand in designing the explosive ancient cars, like the ancient green roadster conveniently spotted and taken by Reuel Faraday to the remains of the Hotel Denouement and spontaneously combusted on arrival there (Jacques Snicket would have no knowledge of that as this took place long before the flight of Reuel Faraday). "I do not know if you have heard, Jacques," Élise began, "but the people who murdered your associate just announced their affiliation with the Inhumane Society. Ever since your schism the I.S. has partnered with your arsonist enemies. That partnership may even have began here right in this very town." What she said had made sense. Lemony had spoken of a library fire and how the town's sub-librarian, Dashiell Qwerty, had been the prime suspect. Lemony never got around to telling him of Qwerty's ultimate innocence or guilt in the matter, as his brother wished to protect Qwerty seeing as the young librarian had been Lemony's only volunteer sympathetic in town (he had known and was amenable to the significance of "the world is quiet here", if not the phrase itself), so Jacques had little to go on from that standpoint. "There is a war brewing, Jacques Snicket. From the earliest tumults here in Stain'd-by-the-Sea to the Anwhistle Aquatics fire and the night of that fateful opera, there has been a drawing of the lines, a choosing of the sides. This coming war will render V.F.D. practically inert and its members scattered hopelessly across the globe with communications and safe places in disarray. You know how it starts, Jacques, the fires: how they'll burn down the homes of volunteers, try to get their hands on any surviving children. By the time you have figured out how to put the current schismatics away, a whole new inferno will blaze up in place of the old. It. Will. Never. End." Jacques was taken aback. His sister Kit was fond of saying that everything kept getting worse as they grew older. If it had never been any worse was highly debatable amidst volunteers, villains and incidental bystanders. This schism had grown wild in recent years and would likely never end in his lifetime, even if V.F.D. were strong enough to rise up to the challenge. He had known the story of Dewey Denouement: mansion burned to the ground, Dewey being taken and being presumed dead by everybody else except his two identical siblings. The sub-sub-librarian himself had told him of it. "There is a scientist named Alighiero Mallansohn working in the Kierkegaard Mountains. Have you heard of him?" Élise queried. "Yes. Barely. I think he has something to do with time travel." "Then you will know that time travel is indeed a fact, Jacques. A fact unsettling for many of the authorities of V.F.D. They fear he will deal with villainous people and thus wish to shut him down."
Jacques snorted. His "superiors" were hardly worth the time or respect. He and his siblings and a slew of other like-minded volunteers had broken with them long ago. They had derailed Lemony and Kit's plans in the City, landed Kit in prison, sent him and Lemony "out of the way" and out of their hair and much more calumnies than there is time to list. You could volunteer, but not volunteer to be noble. Some of Olaf's criticisms rang true about the organization's hypocrisy, but Jacques remained true to the Creed of maintaining a quiet world by educating, informing, and fire-proofing it. His V.F.D. was not the old guards' V.F.D. Monty was with him, as were Beatrice and Bertrand, Lemony, Kit, Ike, Josephine, Widdershins, Olivia, and other brave and noble people he had the honour of breathing the same air with. He had never believed Lemony to be a criminal when the papers started their smearing tactics against him, led by Olaf no doubt. "Things have been set in motion for the final convergence." Élise seemed animated as she spoke, "In two weeks, Alighiero Mallansohn will set up a public demonstration of time travel." "How do you know this?" Jacques was interested and apprehensive. Élise merely gave him a look that said, "I'm from the future." "Are you sure you're from the future?" He said, understanding her pointed look. She nodded in exasperation as if he was a child who needed to learn their ABCs by three years earlier. Jacques was not ignorant of temporal theories, but he did not immediately believe just anyone who said they had just came back from another time. No volunteer he knew had worked on time travel, however "eccentric" they already were. Perhaps his brother had met Mallansohn, or maybe Kit. The most likely candidate to have met with Mallansohn was Dewey Denouement. He was brought out of his thoughts by Élise. "We need to go, Jacques!" "Why? Are we still in danger?" "Sacre bleu, Snicket! Count Olaf's found us." "That's my shadow, Élise." "Désolé, Jacques, désolé..."
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Post by Dante on Nov 18, 2014 16:38:39 GMT -5
Snippet Ten is longer than I was expecting, but important. It's always nice to get some more development and plot for Jacques, who was rather cut off in his prime, and how you're tying together the backstories of ASoUE and ATWQ makes a great deal of sense; might even end up being partly canon... As for those exploding cars, I don't know if I'd attribute a sinister plot to their conception; they seem like something an insane company would naturally create in this universe.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 22, 2014 16:05:11 GMT -5
Snippet Eleven
Death, to Reuel Faraday, was an odd matter. He did indeed die after a fashion. Yet, as the truly dead are not wont to do, he awoke in a vision or some neutral place in spacetime. He felt at once heavy and weightless, everywhere and nowhere, high and low, solid and gauzy, a series of phrases which here mean "surprised at not being dead." Faraday gazed around at his surroundings, a haze of memories and histories, places and lives not his own. He felt for what he assumed to be his bullet-stricken scalp, but there was no wound there, not even a trickle of blood. Strangely, it was as if he had never been born but remained this way forever in a living paradox. Take - the - police box - YOU WILL COME WITH ME REUEL FARADAY IF IT IS THE LAST THING YOU EVER DO! - tell Kit - damned bookworm - Dante himself - You will give him to me, Count Olaf - V.F.D. is foolish - a quiet world is too quiet for me - Don't know where, Don't know when - BANG! Faraday blinked and gasped. He had lived. Somehow, he had survived a poisonous bullet to the head, a bullet that had never even pierced him. He wondered a great wonder. His uncle might have known his state, if he were there to guide him. Thinking on his physicist relative bade a portion of his mind to reflect on fate and destiny and the question of free will. If he was supposed to be dead, he had broken one of the rules of existence, or perhaps the rules of existence made an exception for him, or perhaps all time travelers were this way, surviving destined deaths. Then he wondered if the universe would course-correct his miraculous survival like the paradox shifting its originator from existence. Then he thought on what he knew of his uncle's work in the field of theoretical physics. Anyone who could change set events which otherwise remain unchanged is called a variable. Those persons and things roughly in fate are constants. Temporal physics is a very difficult field of study, so you might be better off reading about Lemony Snicket's apprenticed adolescence in Stain'd-by-the-Sea rather than making your mind cave in on itself like a spicy baked potato rind. Faraday gave it some thought. He gave it even more thought. He wondered again how he was not dead, as he should have been after being shot point-blank range, and with a poisonous bullet to the back of the head, no doubt. Something large passed through his developing understanding. Something he should have seen before but had brushed aside until now: an electrifying revelation: he was special. That was why he had not truly died at the gun barrel of Alexandra Radzinsky. It was why he was where he was now. He was a variable! He had to die in order to become a variable, no sooner than having been whisked by Count Olaf into the time traveling police box and transporting from the catalog back to the surface of the earth, someplace else, followed by Radzinsky and Hardrada. But how had he become so, in this series of extremely unlikely events? He slowly began to realize where he was: the recently-charred remains of the Baudelaire mansion.
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Post by Dante on Nov 22, 2014 17:25:46 GMT -5
I'm always up for weird temporal mechanics, though I'd be curious to know why they are how they are. Still, seems like Reuel FAraday has an even stranger journey in front of him than I ever imagined. Most inventive of you, Jacques.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 22, 2014 22:19:02 GMT -5
Snippet Twelve
Jacques Snicket and Élise de la Serre were standing in the middle of a darkened room she had dragged him into after their stay at The Even Loster Legs inn in Stain'd-by-the-Sea. The room was draped in red. Their shadows loomed in the candlelight. Red crosses on respective black and white fields hung around the sides. There were others with them, faces hidden in the shadows, for these men and women were members of another secret organization with codes, secrets, books, and schisms on par with Jacques' own. "May the Mother of Understanding guide us!" This phrase was variously murmured and shouted around the table in response. "Élise de la Serre of the Winnipeg Rite, what is your news and who is this?" She began to regale them of her warning of Jacques, and how he had been in great danger. But what Jacques did not know was that a Snicket had been among Élise's organization a very long time ago. That organization had relied on the guidance of the Father of Understanding, but seeing as that was seen to unduly affirm maleness over and superior to femaleness, some of the order stopped honoring the Father of Understanding and instead honored the Mother of Understanding. That particular Snicket had been the first to suggest a Mother in the place of a Father, but was then thrown out of the original conservative order only for his distant descendant to follow in his footsteps in honoring the Mother.
"You have brought before us one of the three heirs of Dorian Snicket, first of our Order. This is a very great boon." Jacques was perplexed. He hadn't known he'd had a secret ancestor. This changed everything! Absolutely everything! "I beg your pardon, madams and sirs," he fumbled. The other woman who had bidden Élise to speak was smiling warmly at him. "There is no need, Mr. Snicket, as you are practically family. I am Céline Denouement, Grand Mistress of the Winnipeg Rite of the Templar Order. We have much to discuss." Jacques glanced at Élise, who nodded, and he glanced back at the Grand Mistress who had welcomed him so nobly that she might have been a volunteer if he had not met her in their current environs. He wondered if the Templars had insignia tattoos as well, or if they bore their membership some other way, apart from the drapes of the meetinghouse. And as he wondered these things, Count Olaf stood outside at the window, peering inside with his shining eyes, and it was not Jacques Snicket's shadow this time, which was currently standing in the meetinghouse appended to the soles of his shoes like all shadows are. None of the Templars or Jacques noticed this, I am sad to recount.
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Post by Dante on Nov 23, 2014 3:41:03 GMT -5
I was hoping we'd see Olaf again, whether in the past or any other time period. You can't keep a good villain down. It's an interesting new more mystical secret organisation you've introduced here, Jacques.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 24, 2014 18:31:06 GMT -5
Snippet Thirteen
Severus Snape waited at the Rue d'Ourglasse looking grim in his black garb, sneering all the while. The sun was setting yet again, another of an endless tirade of days and nights which would draw his patience out and extinguish it. He regretted ever enlisting Gold's help, with all the deals and the contracts and the damned prices. Pyratinus Gold had a habit of exacting prices from those who agreed to deal with him. "Magic always comes with a price." He'd referred to his ends of his bargains as "magic" countless times before. It made him something of a character within their shared organization. That, and the insane demand that others call him Rumplestiltskin. Severus would never catch himself doing that, for sure. Snape saw a black automobile pull up with tinted windows. From a passenger window, a hooked hand gestured to him. "Severus Snape. You would do well to get in the car." The voice was threatening. Severus refused and flapped his way out of there. "Do not escape from us, Severus Snape!" He did not care. He still ran. The car followed behind at a medium pace. "If you value your life you will come with us, Snape!" He turned another street. "You won't dare run from the Female Finnish Pirates, Snape, once we get our hands on you!" "You won't." BOOM! Snape shot an air dart at the back tires. The black automobile swerved and went off in another direction, crashing into a florist shop. Someone shoved into him. Snape turned to look for the miscreant, but they were gone. What was even more odd, he had a slip of paper in his hand where just a second ago he had only blow darts in his hands. It was a telegram. TO SS STOP. HE IS STILL ALIVE STOP. COME TO THE OLD RUINS OF THE BAUDELAIRE MANSION IMMEDIATELY STOP.
Reuel Daniel Faraday was scouring the area for the police box which had brought him and the late Count Olaf back into the past. He could still smell the remains of the fire that had recently been extinguished. The fire department was still around, though as to how they were oblivious to four time travelers arriving by police box and as of yet undisclosed method, boggled the mind, a phrase which here means "the O.F.D. was not known for being very very sensible." As chance would have it, the O.P.D. were also around, but had arrived after he had "died". The birds were overhead, which was odd for the smoke still rose from the ashes even after the fire itself was extinguished. He was still until someone approached him. Through the waning smoke Faraday could perceive someone familiar. Well, he was shorter than he'd last met him, of course. The man had one eyebrow, yet his hair was not salt-and-pepper, and his clothes were not as matted as Count Olaf's, yet the man before him resembled Olaf significantly. "Are you —?" The man came out of the smoke to speak. "My name is Jacques Snicket. Are you Reuel Faraday?" What? "Yes. But how do you know my name if you're not Olaf?" "I bring a message to you from those who are very concerned, and on behalf of the safety of the Baudelaire children." A bell clicked in Faraday's head. "The Baudelaire children? Are they alright? Does Olaf already have them?" "Not at the moment, but he will soon gain custody over them, acquire their parents' fortune, and kill them." I've gone back to the very beginning, haven't I? "I was told you came here by means of a police box," Jacques Snicket went on. "It has disappeared from this site. Was anyone else with you?" Faraday struggled to think. Would he let slip about the future and change that future, or would he let whatever happened, happen? A pause. "No. Just me." Jacques sighed, "A device like that in the hands of our enemies, I shudder to think about. And one of them has just stolen it." He was right. Alexandra Radzinsky and Ivo Hardrada had followed Faraday and Olaf to the past. After Alexandra had left him for dead, she must have stolen the police box and disposed of Hardrada's body. The birds were crowing madly. "Something's coming." "What?" "In my youth we were trained to understand the ravens criss-crossing the skies. For them to be so ruffled like this, it's not something you want to be there for. A storm is coming, Mr. Faraday." "What must I do, Snicket?" "Flee! It is the only hope available to you in these troubled times. That is what I was sent to tell you: you will be in danger if you remain here in the City." "Where would I go? The South is a barren wasteland far beyond the fringes of the Finite Forest. The North is frozen. Only snow gnats would ever think of going there, and then there's the Snow Scouts," he shuddered as he spoke the name of the youth mountain camping organization. "I went up Mount Fraught with several associates once. There is more to the Mortmain Mountains than just the scouts. It is a beautiful place. Here," he handed Faraday a slip of paper and a map. "To enter the Valley of Four Drafts..." Once Jacques had told Faraday about getting to the Valley of Four Drafts and entering the V.F.D. headquarters, there were sirens. "Run, Mr. Faraday!" And so he did, heedless of the blaring sirens behind him, ducking under a flower pot three blocks later to evade the O.P.D.
When the sirens died down far away, Faraday unhid himself, and set out on his journey to the Mortmain Mountains. Whether descending down to an abandoned underwater catalog, or escaping from the clutches of one's vengeful enemies, Reuel Daniel Faraday had just begun to scratch the surface of the mysteries of the world. Headed towards a place of safety, Faraday allowed his mind to relax, for there would be enough theorizing for him to do once he reached the V.F.D. headquarters. As much as I would like to tell you that Reuel Faraday would be welcomed with open arms and comfortable armchairs and mugs of Black Cat Coffee on arrival, that would be a grave disservice both to me and to you, dear reader. As much as I would like to tell you that Count Olaf troubled Jacques Snicket and the Templars no more, it is impossible to change away unpleasant facts about history, including this history. As much as I would like to tell you that Severus Snape got even with Pyratinus Gold and exposed his connection to Hangfire to their own secret organization, I have a sworn duty to expound upon the tragedy along with the triumph, and I burn with great loss when I think on how great the tragedy and how small the triumphs have been. I am pledged to recount the truth of Reuel Faraday's complete and exhaustive tale, and what I write might be comparable to the concept of the Baudelaires, a clay-footed facilitator, and Lemony Snicket. I end the last chapter of the first book of the Tale of Reuel Faraday with these five words: The world is quiet here.
SALVE BOADICEA, SALVE BRITANNIA
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Post by Dante on Nov 25, 2014 4:35:31 GMT -5
And so it begins, for real this time. It sounds as if this timeline bodes poorly for the Baudelaires, but then again, they only slipped out of Olaf's deadly grasp by a cheap trick originally, so this is probably just the regular timeline and doesn't demand Reuel's assistance. Or does it?
There certainly are a large number of players in this particular sequence, all kinds of villains and volunteers clashing in the chaotic conflict. With time travel involved, I've no idea what will happen, but I'm rather looking forward to learning.
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Post by Jacques Snicket on Nov 25, 2014 17:23:51 GMT -5
To My Kind Editor,
I am currently embarking on a train in order to retrieve the lost archives of Arno Baudelaire, a significant figure in the history of our organization. I require two pieces of knotted string, a sheet of paper with fourteen rows of nine squares each, a pencil, and an eighteenth-century manuscript. When you acquire them, travel to the Bogs of Smyrmedal, take the marsh ferry and go to the town of St. Peregouille just south of the Kierkegaard Mountains. There you must enter the only hotel in the city and meet its only concierge. Give the above items to her, and she will hand you a package which contains the second installment of the frightful tale of Reuel Faraday, The Mortmain Motet. I am sworn to chronicle the events of the world after the end of my brother's work on the Baudelaire family, and at the behest of Harlan St. Just who as of this writing has been murdered by our enemies.
Salve Boadicea,
Jacques Snicket
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Post by Dante on Nov 26, 2014 4:41:27 GMT -5
So this is the very definite start of Part the Second? Jacques Snicket's status, much though he may metafictionally be you who are not dead, seems to be complicated by the fact that he can't be alive if his brother's work on the Baudelaires has ended. But there are all sorts of possible explanations for that. I wonder if Arno Baudelaire is the famous A. from the Family Tree...?
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