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You know when you have all the elements of a story, and yet despite that you can't actually write it? A premise without a plot, maybe. It's effing annoying. Especially when you haven't written anything for over a month as well.
I was meant to write something for a steampunk challenge. I didn't manage it. I had an idea, it just repeatedly wouldn't go anywhere for me.
Steampunk ghost story. Sort of. Alternately, Doctor Who episode. The idea was Langel's Memorial Automata:
I was meant to write something for a steampunk challenge. I didn't manage it. I had an idea, it just repeatedly wouldn't go anywhere for me.
Steampunk ghost story. Sort of. Alternately, Doctor Who episode. The idea was Langel's Memorial Automata:
I wanted to start with a Victorian-era husband-and-wife ghost hunting team. I love Victorian ghost stories. One of the most fascinating things about the period is the whole 'cult of mourning' thing they had going, the rise of spiritualism, mediums and seances. It goes interestingly with the movement towards science and industry, steam and power. Hard logic and rampant emotionality. It's always been one of the things that fascinated me.
So. London. Alfred and Lucinda Meers. Consulting spiritualists, working out of the upstairs rooms of the apothecary she inherited from her father. I'm not sure why I wanted an apothecary, but an interesting little tidbit is that the motto of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London is Opiferque Per Orbem Dicor, "and throughout the world I am called the bringer of help", from I think an Ovid quote on the god Apollo. I thought that would be a nice motto for people who help others with unearthly problems?
They are approached one day by a young widow, Mrs Emily Brenton, who has information for them on a horror story that is fascinating the capital, along the lines of the Hammersmith Ghost, Spring-heeled Jack, or the London Monster. This particular ghoulish apparition is called the Seven Dials Goblin, a strange creature which has been attacking people in the area of Seven Dials. Not killing them, not yet, but terrorising the district. Descriptions of the creature are a bit mixed, no-one even seems to be sure if it's male or female, but the one consistent thing is that it has neither hair nor face, only a blank, whitish, featureless head.
Emily recognised that head. She thinks she knows exactly what the Seven Dials Goblin is. And it is a what, rather than a who. The goblin is no person, human, fairy or otherwise. The goblin is a machine, or rather a pair of machines, built for a rather unusual purpose. She encountered it when a friend, seeing the depths of her grief even a year after her husband was taken from her, brought her to the theatres of Covent Garden to experience a unique performance.
Langel's Memorial Automata. The combined brainchild of Madame Berthoud, spiritualist and medium, and Liesel Langel, clockmaker. The Victorians nursed something of a fascination for automata as well, and there's something of a shared history. Legacy of Hero of Alexandria, the aeolipile and the programmable cart. Steam and clockwork. And death.
The Memorial Automata are a matched pair, one male and one female, of life-sized clockwork figures, built by Langel for use in Madame Berthoud's spiritualist shows. The bodies themselves are largely featureless, though capable of limited motion, and given gender largely by dress alone. They are given 'life', of a sort, by Madame Berthoud. That's what the shows consist of. She uses them as vessels into which to channel the spirits of the departed. And that is why Widow Brenton recognises them.
The Automata are sheathed in ectoplasm. Beneath their clothes they are covered in the whitish, translucent substance, which functions more or less as their 'skin'. In their supposedly inert state, while nothing is channelled through them, the ectoplasm is featureless, creating the sole distinct feature of the Seven Dials Goblin. When they are active, however, when involved in the seance, the ectoplasm allows the possessing spirit to manifest a copy of their own living features. In voice and feature, the automaton becomes a copy of the deceased.
Emily saw her husband that way. She saw him come back into the world that night, manifest himself and move as much as clockwork allowed, in order to speak with her and give her some measure of comfort and closure. The sight is rather engraved into her memory. So when she heard of the Goblin, when she read the description in the newspapers, she knew precisely what the creature must be.
She tried to go to the police. Even if they didn't believe her about the spirits, she thought they would at least impound the machines, since they did match the description. However, either the police didn't believe her, or they were unwilling to act for some other reason, which left her here. With the Meers, consulting spiritualists, who given their profession might at least entertain the notion that she is not a hysterical woman mired in grief, and may in fact know what she is talking about, especially when it is so easily verified if one is prepared to make a little effort.
The result of which, of course, is the widow Brenton attending a showing of the Automata a few nights later, in the curious and ready company of Alfred and Lucinda Meers.
A premise, as I said. I have about six drafts attempting to actually get it on paper in the last month or so, but it's not working out so well. Partly, I think, because I'm not entirely sure what the Meers are going to do. They are going to confront Berthoud and Langel on the subject of the Goblin, yes, thinking that of all people those two must know what's happening.
Madame Berthoud doesn't, though. Or rather, she is rather strong denial, because the Automata taking on life of their own simply cannot happen. And it must be of their own. They don't have features when they walk as the Goblin. There's no riding spirit. She takes care to banish them properly at the end of every session. There cannot be a riding spirit. But neither can they move on their own. Madame Berthoud has no idea what is happening, and very much does not want to think of any of the possible options. Because it would be her fault either way. Whether she failed to banish a spirit properly, or allowed something else, something with no features of its own, to possess the vessels, or whether it is something else, some result of building a thing to mimic the dead and then channelling power into it, constantly, for months. Whatever has happened, it would be her fault, and she doesn't want to think about it.
Langel does, but Langel has become convinced that the Automata have come to life on their own. They are his creations, and they have come to life, the Pinocchios to his Geppetto, and he won't see them harmed. He believes that the ectoplasm and the experience of having repeatedly channelled humanity inside of them has woken the machines themselves, given them souls and desires that they are clumsily trying to act out. He wants to protect them, and doesn't take kindly to either the Meers for interfering or Madame Berthoud for thinking of his creations as unnatural monstrosities, as she is becoming increasingly plain about.
I'm not sure if I want to decide which it actually is, either. I think perhaps the confrontation goes wrong rather rapidly, that the Meers go backstage after the show and end up in confrontation with Madame Berthoud and her denial, and Langel skulks and listens and then tries to spirit his Automata away from them. It doesn't work, obviously, and in the ensuing confrontation the Automata themselves wake up and take matters into their own hands, fleeing into the night after a short and rather violent confrontation, leaving very few answers behind them.
I think they take Langel with them. Whether because they are machines with souls and he is their father, because they are fragments of lingering spiritual energy manifested inside a vessel and responding to the only person who regards them positively, or because they are 'something else' riding the vessels and have uses for a human who believes in them and doesn't know what they really are. I think in the aftermath the Meers, Madame Berthoud and Emily Brenton wonder and worry about which might be the case, and what happens now, with creatures like that out in the world. They haven't killed anyone. In all their misadventures in Seven Dials as the Goblin, they've never actually killed anyone. Yet. I think I'd like to finish on that lovely note of ambiguity.
I really hate it when I have all the elements of a story, and for some reason it just won't work whenever I try to write it. Though, to be fair, I'm not actually sure if this would have fit the bill anyway. It's not quite steampunk, is it? Clockwork and ghosts. Close, but possibly no cigar.
Oh, hell with it. Have a concept sketch anyway, and I'm going to bed? Heh.
So. London. Alfred and Lucinda Meers. Consulting spiritualists, working out of the upstairs rooms of the apothecary she inherited from her father. I'm not sure why I wanted an apothecary, but an interesting little tidbit is that the motto of the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries of London is Opiferque Per Orbem Dicor, "and throughout the world I am called the bringer of help", from I think an Ovid quote on the god Apollo. I thought that would be a nice motto for people who help others with unearthly problems?
They are approached one day by a young widow, Mrs Emily Brenton, who has information for them on a horror story that is fascinating the capital, along the lines of the Hammersmith Ghost, Spring-heeled Jack, or the London Monster. This particular ghoulish apparition is called the Seven Dials Goblin, a strange creature which has been attacking people in the area of Seven Dials. Not killing them, not yet, but terrorising the district. Descriptions of the creature are a bit mixed, no-one even seems to be sure if it's male or female, but the one consistent thing is that it has neither hair nor face, only a blank, whitish, featureless head.
Emily recognised that head. She thinks she knows exactly what the Seven Dials Goblin is. And it is a what, rather than a who. The goblin is no person, human, fairy or otherwise. The goblin is a machine, or rather a pair of machines, built for a rather unusual purpose. She encountered it when a friend, seeing the depths of her grief even a year after her husband was taken from her, brought her to the theatres of Covent Garden to experience a unique performance.
Langel's Memorial Automata. The combined brainchild of Madame Berthoud, spiritualist and medium, and Liesel Langel, clockmaker. The Victorians nursed something of a fascination for automata as well, and there's something of a shared history. Legacy of Hero of Alexandria, the aeolipile and the programmable cart. Steam and clockwork. And death.
The Memorial Automata are a matched pair, one male and one female, of life-sized clockwork figures, built by Langel for use in Madame Berthoud's spiritualist shows. The bodies themselves are largely featureless, though capable of limited motion, and given gender largely by dress alone. They are given 'life', of a sort, by Madame Berthoud. That's what the shows consist of. She uses them as vessels into which to channel the spirits of the departed. And that is why Widow Brenton recognises them.
The Automata are sheathed in ectoplasm. Beneath their clothes they are covered in the whitish, translucent substance, which functions more or less as their 'skin'. In their supposedly inert state, while nothing is channelled through them, the ectoplasm is featureless, creating the sole distinct feature of the Seven Dials Goblin. When they are active, however, when involved in the seance, the ectoplasm allows the possessing spirit to manifest a copy of their own living features. In voice and feature, the automaton becomes a copy of the deceased.
Emily saw her husband that way. She saw him come back into the world that night, manifest himself and move as much as clockwork allowed, in order to speak with her and give her some measure of comfort and closure. The sight is rather engraved into her memory. So when she heard of the Goblin, when she read the description in the newspapers, she knew precisely what the creature must be.
She tried to go to the police. Even if they didn't believe her about the spirits, she thought they would at least impound the machines, since they did match the description. However, either the police didn't believe her, or they were unwilling to act for some other reason, which left her here. With the Meers, consulting spiritualists, who given their profession might at least entertain the notion that she is not a hysterical woman mired in grief, and may in fact know what she is talking about, especially when it is so easily verified if one is prepared to make a little effort.
The result of which, of course, is the widow Brenton attending a showing of the Automata a few nights later, in the curious and ready company of Alfred and Lucinda Meers.
A premise, as I said. I have about six drafts attempting to actually get it on paper in the last month or so, but it's not working out so well. Partly, I think, because I'm not entirely sure what the Meers are going to do. They are going to confront Berthoud and Langel on the subject of the Goblin, yes, thinking that of all people those two must know what's happening.
Madame Berthoud doesn't, though. Or rather, she is rather strong denial, because the Automata taking on life of their own simply cannot happen. And it must be of their own. They don't have features when they walk as the Goblin. There's no riding spirit. She takes care to banish them properly at the end of every session. There cannot be a riding spirit. But neither can they move on their own. Madame Berthoud has no idea what is happening, and very much does not want to think of any of the possible options. Because it would be her fault either way. Whether she failed to banish a spirit properly, or allowed something else, something with no features of its own, to possess the vessels, or whether it is something else, some result of building a thing to mimic the dead and then channelling power into it, constantly, for months. Whatever has happened, it would be her fault, and she doesn't want to think about it.
Langel does, but Langel has become convinced that the Automata have come to life on their own. They are his creations, and they have come to life, the Pinocchios to his Geppetto, and he won't see them harmed. He believes that the ectoplasm and the experience of having repeatedly channelled humanity inside of them has woken the machines themselves, given them souls and desires that they are clumsily trying to act out. He wants to protect them, and doesn't take kindly to either the Meers for interfering or Madame Berthoud for thinking of his creations as unnatural monstrosities, as she is becoming increasingly plain about.
I'm not sure if I want to decide which it actually is, either. I think perhaps the confrontation goes wrong rather rapidly, that the Meers go backstage after the show and end up in confrontation with Madame Berthoud and her denial, and Langel skulks and listens and then tries to spirit his Automata away from them. It doesn't work, obviously, and in the ensuing confrontation the Automata themselves wake up and take matters into their own hands, fleeing into the night after a short and rather violent confrontation, leaving very few answers behind them.
I think they take Langel with them. Whether because they are machines with souls and he is their father, because they are fragments of lingering spiritual energy manifested inside a vessel and responding to the only person who regards them positively, or because they are 'something else' riding the vessels and have uses for a human who believes in them and doesn't know what they really are. I think in the aftermath the Meers, Madame Berthoud and Emily Brenton wonder and worry about which might be the case, and what happens now, with creatures like that out in the world. They haven't killed anyone. In all their misadventures in Seven Dials as the Goblin, they've never actually killed anyone. Yet. I think I'd like to finish on that lovely note of ambiguity.
I really hate it when I have all the elements of a story, and for some reason it just won't work whenever I try to write it. Though, to be fair, I'm not actually sure if this would have fit the bill anyway. It's not quite steampunk, is it? Clockwork and ghosts. Close, but possibly no cigar.
Oh, hell with it. Have a concept sketch anyway, and I'm going to bed? Heh.
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