Aaron Burke is a failed historian specialised in Medieval Ireland. His daughter Eleanor, neglected since her mother\u2019s death, elopes with Nathan Edwards, a wealthy British businessman with an interest in antiquities and archaeology. He was funding Aaron\u2019s work but cuts their ties.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
11 Feb: Wedding of Eleanor and Nathan.
3 Sept: UK declares war on Germany. Nathan is involved with the government about shipping and supply. He works with the Royal Army Supply Corps and the Ministries of Shipping and Production.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During the blitz Nathan is involved in shipping supply route adjustments, docks rebuilding.
Nathan, interested by circles of power, in particular in London\u2019s most exclusive gentlemen\u2019s clubs, stumbles upon a conversation between a wealthy aristocrat and a powerful, out of the spotlight man called Adrian Moore. Nathan investigates and slowly guesses the existence of a secret society with a hidden agenda in London \u2014 surprisingly unlinked to current political or ideological turmoil, and with connections in many other countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan investigates further on the Society, slowly finding out some of its members, meeting places, etc. He learns they are international.
Rents an office in Fulham dedicated to his research. Moore emerges as the main figure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan flies to Egypt for a visit in Suez, shipping related. Finds hints about the Society in Cairo \u2014 but no headquarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan travels to Iraq and Iran to oversee shipping for the Persian Corridor, supplying the USSR with resources vital in their fight against the Axis.
He travels back to Cairo. He is involved in supply for the Allied invasions of Italy and Southern France.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
As the war ends, Nathan very carefully investigates on the Society and notices an interest on a book called the Vazelon Manuscript. Follows Moore. Learns about the enquiries about the book, learns its name, origin, but can\u2019t access it.
Nathan understands that the Society has a hidden headquarters but struggles to find it (unaware that it\u2019s outside of London). He infiltrates a Society\u2019s safe house and sees a recovered fragment of Corrosion \u2014 dropping it, he sees its effects. He flees, but the Society knows someone was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Nathan contacts Aaron. He communicates his finds with him, the only expert he trusts now.
Correspondence with Aaron about the Macedonian Empire, an ancient historian named Callisthenes, and translations of his work in Latin \u2014 the Vazelon Manuscript.
Aaron does research on the Vazelon Manuscript and writes his progress to Nathan. He discovers that copies of that book have disappeared from libraries (Marsh\u2019s Library in Dublin, the Bodleian in Oxford, amongst others).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
April 2: In an abandoned caravansary in Afghanistan, the remains of Giovanni are discovered. Among his remains are some riches and a few books, including his notes on A\u00e9d and his final resting place in the Altai mountains. The books are brought back to London and sold to an antiquarian.
April 16: Nathan intercepts a letter about the discovery of Giovanni\u2019s remains and travels to Afghanistan, pretending it\u2019s for work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
May 12: Nathan visits the caravansary and sees it has been destroyed. The initial discoverer has disappeared, and he fears him dead. It means this book has something special.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
June 20: Nathan reads about the Antiquarian\u2019s death (Barton Fry, dated 12th of May). Missing item in his shop, a medieval book recently discovered in a hidden room in a Greek church (the Vazelon Manuscript). He understands it\u2019s the Society.
June 25: Nathan finds a weak spot in Afghanistan and get information by getting him drunk. He finds out where the documents are shipped, discovers it\u2019s Egypt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
July 10: Nathan travels to Cairo.
July 11: Aaron finds partial fragments of a copy of the Vazelon Manuscript in an abandoned monastery in Scotland.
July 15: In Cairo, Nathan manages to intercept a communication about the documents in Giovanni\u2019s remains. He understands they are passing through Egypt.
July 22: Last visit of Nathan to London, last time Eleanor sees him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aug 15: Nathan steals the annotated Manuscript. He infiltrates a meeting. He learns about the Settlement, and about the reality of the Otherworld and the Corrosion, witnesses an initiation\/mutation, is discovered (the Elevated Mother sees him?) and struggles to escape. He holds a Society\u2019s high up at gunpoint, Mar\u00eda, but spares her \u2014 and manages to get away.
Aug 16: He books a flight, Cairo to London. But the society is after him. He rents a truck and flees from Cairo to Tripoli, avoiding more obvious routes (Alexandria, etc.). He hides the documents. He follows the coast road until Sirte, where he drives into the desert.
Aug 17: The Society catches up with Nathan and ambushes him. His truck is damaged, and he officially disappears.
Aug 18: Eleanor has word that Nathan is missing. She tries to get information about his disappearance\/death from London.
Aug 18: Nathan is brought to the Settlement by the Society. Giovanni\u2019s version of the Vazelon Manuscript \u2014 and his notes \u2014 are also brought in the Settlement.
Louise, daughter of the Settlement\u2019s council leader Dupardon, meets Nathan. Miserable in the Settlement and hateful of her father who immersed her in Shimmer since she was a baby to develop her seeing abilities, she sees in Nathan a way out.
August 19: Eleanor arrives in Egypt and starts looking for Nathan.
August 19: Nathan is interrogated and tells the little he knows about the Manuscript.
August 20: Eleanor investigates in Cairo, finds info about his truck hire and drive towards Tripoli.
August 23: Eleanor travels to Tripoli, hires Basim and starts searching the desert.
August 24: Threatened by Eleanor\u2019s investigation, Moore fabricates false evidence of Nathan\u2019s death.
August 26: Eleanor finds the false evidence (crashed car, burned body). She figures out this is not Nathan because of missing metal plates on his tibia (broken in a horse accident when he was younger). She wants to continue the search.
August 27: Basim stops working for Eleanor.
August 28: Moore travels to London. He pushes Nathan\u2019s family to declare him dead, do a burial ceremony, and get the estate back from Eleanor. This way she cannot investigate in areas she shouldn\u2019t. He casually tries to get information about Nathan\u2019s research but doesn\u2019t get anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
September 3: Eleanor is declared unfit, and the estate is \u2018temporarily\u2019 transferred to Nathan\u2019s family.
September 6: Eleanor travels back to London and is helped by Betty to live on her own.
September 12: Nathan helps Louise escape, in exchange for sending the annotated pages of the Vazelon Manuscript to Aaron. The society\u2019s research team only knew enough to locate roughly A\u00e9d\u2019s destination in the Altai Mountains, which is a wide area. They believe it is in the Kazakh S.S. Republic.
September 13: Nathan is interrogated again. He lies about the Manuscript and pretends he had Louise destroy it. He reveals his motives, and the Elevated confirm that he tells the truth. But he manages to hide Aaron\u2019s name and points at a Welsh man, Duncan Evans \u2014 an antiquarian based in Cardiff he worked with before. He hopes the Society will investigate and realise the lie when it\u2019s too late.
Mar\u00eda pushes to not have Nathan executed. Dupardon makes him addicted to the Corrosion and keeps him locked. [He marks him for Corrosion research \u2014 he will slowly die.]
September 17: Aaron receives the documents from Louise.
September 18: Moore travels to Libya, searches for Louise\u2019s trail.
September 25: Aaron sets off on a secret expedition to Mongolia with Gan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
October 2: Aaron & Gan\u2019s reach Mongolia. Their search begins.
October: The Society tries to get information on Aaron\u2019s whereabouts, still not knowing who he is. They finally find a trail from Aaron\u2019s name and his movements to Mongolia.
October 16: Aaron & Gan discover the Artefact with the Society on their heels.
October 17: Gan goes on a diversion route towards Ulaanbaatar and Beijing. The Society follows him.
October 18: Moore visits Nathan\u2019s house. The Society interrogate Evans and understands Nathan\u2019s lie. They kill Evans.
October 19: The Society looks for information in Nathan\u2019s house. Moore travels to Mongolia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
October 20: Eleanor is contacted by her old butler who\u2019s suspicious after Adrian Moore is seen looking for Nathan\u2019s research on the Society. He gives Eleanor the key to Nathan\u2019s secret office.
Eleanor investigates Nathan\u2019s secret office and research on the Society and the strange murder of the bookkeeper. She is chased by the Society and tries contacting her father.
Aaron comes back to Dublin. Opening the Artefact, he is struck by leftover power of Corrosion and falls into a coma.
Moore is in Mongolia.
October 21: Eleanor goes to Dublin. She finds the Core and travels to the OW.
Balor manages to get to Eleanor, kill the creatures, and try merging with the Core.
It breaks partially and now Balor is alive, and he wants his power back.
Eleanor, empowered by a fragment of the Core, flees.
October 22: Eleanor appears in Connemara and travels back to the Dublin townhouse, and heals her father \u2014 but is attacked by thugs. She unconsciously uses her new power and kills them.
Gan, an old friend of Aaron\u2019s, shows up. He helps Eleanor to bury the bodies.
E understands that Aaron\u2019s wounds are Otherworldly. She uses her new power to cure her father. But the cure is imperfect, it just stops spreading.
A coin left by Louise when she brought documents to Aaron is a clue to a close friend of Nathan the Eleanor remembers, living in the Marais.
Eleanor, Aaron, and Gan agree to go to Paris.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
October 23: The group travels to Paris. They locate Nathan\u2019s friend\u2019s apartment, but it has been abandoned \u2014 most of the street was populated by Jews who have been deported! Friends of Louise surprise the group, but finally trust them and bring them to Louise, hiding in a slum outside of the city, called la Zone.
They locate Louise and prevent the Society from grabbing her.
Louise doesn\u2019t know how to go back to the Settlement on her own. But she remembers hearing about the only person to have escaped from the Settlement before her: Pierre Merault. She knows his account is kept in a hotel particulier that belongs to the Society, the Hotel Destors. The Society is careful to not have any mentions or precise directions to the Settlement\u2026 Except for Merault\u2019s story.
The group manage to sneak in the Hotel Destors and steal the account.
October 24: They fly towards the Settlement, via Marseille.
Balor travels to his first neighbour: sees Corrosion, thinks he has been attacked too.
Landing in Tripoli, Eleanor contacts Basim as a last resort: he dropped her on her previous trip (under pressure from the Society). He agrees to help her because he feels indebted and because the Society has not helped him at all.
Balor travels to a second god: finds two Gods who died midfight. He understands that it was not an attack but just the gods bickering. He wants to know what happened to the rest of his kin.
October 25-27: Eleanor, the group, and Basim travel through the desert.
The Society is not far behind them and chases them, led by Moore.
They cross a storm, an abandoned battlefield from the desert war, and finally escape the Society.
October 27: They try to reach the Settlement \u2014 and are captured!
In a cell Eleanor finally is reunited with Nathan. He is a strange man to her now.
Eleanor meets Dupardon, Louise\u2019s father, the leader of the Settlement. She manages to hide her power.
Balor crosses to the world of Men and sees a ruined city ravaged by war. He is assailed by doubts about his nature.
Crossing back to the Otherworld he encounters a Gerethim shaman. He shows him how to refine Corrosion, using fire and special tools, to power up.
After getting marginally more power Balor finally decides to go to the settlement.
Dupardon acts against Mar\u00eda, dissolves the council and takes power in the Settlement.
Moore, guided by the Elevated Mother, leaves for the jungle.
Eleanor uses her power to free themselves. Mar\u00eda, hoping to stop Dupardon\u2019s plans, helps them.
In the Settlement Balor finds Amakh dead, and crosses to the Mortal World where he gets his revenge on the humans that caused his demise \u2014 or at least their descendants.
Eleanor and the group try to escape the Settlement while Balor wreaks havoc.
Balor leaves for the Forge.
Louise kills her father.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Eleanor, Aaron, Nathan, Gan & Louise leave to a hidden airfield and steal a former bomber used as transport by the Society.
They fly to the Forge, in a remote area of the Congolese jungle.
They cross a storm.
They parachute from the plane, regroup with some difficulty, and travel through the jungle.
They find the Forge on the human side \u2014 but the Society is there!
The group fights the Society and manage to find a portal that brings them to the Otherworld.
There they find the Portal and the city-sized Shimmer collection apparatus used by the Elder Gods.
They are surrounded by creatures of the Otherworld, Elkars, serving Tuanat.
The Society attacks! In a temporary alliance, the Elkars and the group fight them.
Louise sacrifices herself to get the Elevated Mother and most of the Society\u2019s men \u2014 Moore dies too.
Finally, the group meets Tuanat.
But Balor arrives.
Tuanat explains to him what happened and what they do not remember \u2014 that they were just servants, tools.
Tuanat reveals that Balor should not gain more power as it will eventually destroy him \u2014 and too much of it would do it straight away.
Balor doesn\u2019t listen, gets more power, and turns into a building-sized Corroded Behemoth, unable to think, just attracted to power like a moth to flame.
Eleanor powers up using refined Corrosion, a trick Tuanat explains to her before dying.
Eleanor desperately tries to reopen the Portal to push Balor in it.
She eventually succeeds with help from Nathan, Aaron & Gan.
She is almost sucked in the portal, but they get out of it just in time. E is hurt quite badly from the ordeal.
They travel back to Dublin.
Eleanor has what she wished for: her husband and life back\u2026 But the power is still inside of her. And the world to her is a different place now.
She knows unfathomable creatures are lurking at the edge of our world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
1938 Aaron Burke is a failed historian specialised in Medieval Ireland. His daughter Eleanor, neglected since her mother\u2019s death, elopes with Nathan Edwards, a wealthy British businessman with an interest in antiquities and archaeology. He was funding Aaron\u2019s work but cuts their ties. 1939 11 Feb: Wedding of Eleanor and Nathan.3 Sept: UK declares war […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":352,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"_themeisle_gutenberg_block_has_review":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":404,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/404"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/352"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/errances.net\/librarium\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}