Worlds of Freedom Design Journal #4
Freedom by Gaslight
Decades before the first “super” heroes, extraordinary ladies and gentlemen walked the gaslit streets of Freedom City in the late 19th century. From Europe and the Far East to the rough and tumble frontier of the Wild West, this generation of Freedom’s heroes remains largely obscured and forgotten... until now.
October the 22nd, 1890:
After so many months toiling about the globe, it is indeed good to be back on American soil.
I arrived at the port of Freedom City this morning by steamer, ahead of my compatriots, who stayed on the Continent to sew up a few remaining loose threads pertaining to the events of my previous letters to our good Mr. Warren. Miss Swift, Garret, and the others should arrive in the next day or so aboard her airship, and then this investigation of ours shall begin in earnest. I have procured for us spacious quarters at a local establishment of some repute and shall shortly make my way to the offices of the commissioner of police for this quite lovely city, which I dare say has already made a comforting impression on me.
I can only pray my friends and I will be able to bring a rapid and satisfying conclusion to this heinous string of murders that troubles an otherwise orderly environ. As Mr. Warren intimated in his cable, these crimes do bear the brutal mark we’ve come to associate with the elusive Doktor Raub, and perhaps this time, finally and after so many frustrations, we will beard the monster in its lair and bring the beast much-deserved justice.
October the 24th, 1890:
I confess to no small amount of comfort at seeing Miss Swift again. Emily’s presence settles my nerves in ways that I do not yet feel appropriate to share with my other associates. Though Garret would do little more than chide me, and Peake would practice his acerbic wit at my expense, I doubt either would think any the less of me for my affections, as both seem quite fond of Miss Swift themselves. As to Rostov, it would be difficult to judge his reaction, as the taciturn Cossack keeps his own counsel, letting none of us see any more of his thoughts today than when I first met him, testing his marksman’s skills against mine in that sweltering summer in the Punjab.
And comfort was needed, as I have seen the handiwork of a fiend from hell this day. At his most monstrous, Raub has never been this wanton in his crimes. The closest I have seen in my blood-soaked travels is the imagery I carry from that day two years ago when I walked Whitechapel with the illustrious man from Baker Street. While similar enough to see the conclusions drawn by the local journalists, I find these scenes even baser and more savage. I also find that I carry too many such horrors in my memories, and I will ask Miss Swift to refrain from visiting future sites when Rostov and Peake apply their considerable talents to whatever can still be garnered from these impromptu abattoirs.
October the 26th, 1890:
Though he is a monster, the butchery I’ve seen these last few days is not the handiwork of our long-time quarry, Doktor Raub. This, at least, I now know with certainty instead of mere suspicion.
Peake and our taciturn Cossack, as always, more than earned their berths aboard Miss Swift’s Silver Cloud, and Mr. Warren’s connections once again proved most efficacious, granting the group of us access this morning to the scene of last night’s murder, despite the obvious and aggressive reluctance of the local constabulary to acquiesce in the matter. Rostov needed only a few moments of looking over the poor woman’s body to determine that it was very different from the animalistic rending at which Raub excels. No, though the result was similarly grotesque and frenzied, this act was done with a knife, something akin to that used in a stockyards.
Once we were well clear of our unwelcoming authoritarian “escorts,” Oberon added that the signature he was looking for was wrong as well. Here there was no trace of the mental energies Peake has found lingering around the bodies of every one of Raub’s victims. Oberon once attempted to explain the matter to me as something similar to the “Vril” energies described in the unfortunate Arthur Pym’s writings we recovered from that mad ship’s captain in Patagonia. I confess that I remain as mystified now as I was when Oberon explained it then – though I still have the occasional nightmare of that captain’s face as he cried “Tekeli-Li!” over and over – and so I simply accept our boisterous Mr. Peake and his expertise in the matter.
Returning to the airship, we were greeted with one of Garret’s determined looks. One of his haunted looks would be equally accurate an appraisal. His “friends” were pointing him toward the smallish island seen from the shores of Lonely Point, and we now leave to see what has them so disturbed as to inveigle from him an interruption in the midst of such trying work.
November the 4th, 1890:
We leave tonight for the Continent. The killings have stopped, no thanks to our frustrated efforts, and Mr. Warren has communicated that the spree of terror is at an end here. As he has never proven wrong on such things in our acquaintance, I trust this to be true.
At the very least, we destroyed a nest of foul snake-worshipping cultists on Star Island. A small contribution to the safety of this city, but it will have to satisfy our consciences. We were aided in this endeavor by a small group of mysterious men Gaunt identified as the Sons of Merlin. Strangely tight-lipped, Gaunt refused to say anything else about them, except to thank them for their assistance.
The newspapers are strongly implying that the relative quiet and seeming end of the killings is due to the arrival in town of Peake’s former mentor last week, which understandably has him incensed. His mood is hardly improved by our returning to Paris, that city being one of his three least favorite things on Earth, in his own words. Perhaps this time around we can spare him the other two: Sewers and Opera. However, someone is kidnapping the greatest minds in Europe, and that is where our trail begins, so he will have to suffer through as best, though loudly, as he can.
