Every Dracula’s America posse eventually seems to acquire something that makes the gunfighters standing beside it look reassuringly ordinary. For the Congregation that role belongs to the Temple Snake, a huge serpent associated with their ceremonies and the mysterious powers of the Loa. I have named him Malachie, although among the people of Bayou Noir he is more respectfully known as Grand Serpent Malachie.
Stories concerning Malachie existed long before the Congregation. Older inhabitants of the Louisiana bayou claimed that an enormous pale serpent lived somewhere beyond the deepest channels of Bayou Noir, appearing only rarely and never behaving like an ordinary animal. Fishermen sometimes found enormous tracks through the mud where something had crossed between waterways, while hunters occasionally discovered places where every bird, frog and insect had suddenly fallen silent. Most sensible people saw such signs and went somewhere else.
Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste grew up hearing these stories from their mother, who taught them that Malachie was neither a pet nor a creature to be hunted. The serpent belonged to the places where the mortal and spirit worlds approached one another, and whether he was simply an ancient creature touched by supernatural power or something sent by the Loa was a question nobody had satisfactorily answered. Auguste Delacroix maintains that knowing the answer is considerably less important than showing Malachie the appropriate respect.
The serpent first openly appeared during the troubled days following the Dark Confederacy attack upon Bayou Noir. As the dead were returned to their graves and the community began repairing what had been destroyed, Malachie emerged from the swamp and coiled himself beside the place where the Congregation conducted its ceremonies. He remained there throughout the night, ignoring those gathered around him before disappearing into the water shortly before dawn. Étienne interpreted his appearance as a sign that the spirits had recognised the struggle that was beginning.
Since then Malachie has become the Temple Snake of the Congregation, although the title suggests considerably more ownership than actually exists. He comes and goes according to purposes of his own, sometimes remaining near the Congregation for days before disappearing into the bayou for weeks. Nobody feeds him, nobody attempts to restrain him and even Mathieu Baptiste has enough sense not to discover what happens if someone tries to give him an order.
When Malachie accompanies the Congregation beyond Louisiana, his presence is taken as evidence that the Loa have a particular interest in whatever lies ahead. The enormous serpent moves alongside the posse rather than under its command, appearing from woodland, water or darkness when needed and disappearing just as unpredictably afterwards. Those unfamiliar with the Congregation sometimes ask how its members control such a creature.
After the Church of Dagon, Dark Confederacy, Crimson Coven of Salem and Twilight Order, my next Dracula’s America posse takes me into the Louisiana bayou. The Congregation are Voodoo worshippers sworn to defend the remnants of the Free South, drawing supernatural power from the mysterious Loa and directing much of their fury against the Dark Confederacy. Where Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair and his followers seek to command the dead, the Congregation believes that the relationship between the living, the dead and the spirit world must be respected.
The Congregation began among the isolated settlements of Bayou Noir, where Voodoo traditions had survived war and upheaval and where the presence of the spirit world had long been accepted as part of everyday existence. That isolation ended when followers of the Dark Confederacy entered the bayou searching for an old burial ground believed to contain the remains of powerful Voodoo practitioners. They intended to open the graves, raise the dead and carry whatever secrets they discovered back to Blackthorn Hall.
The people of Bayou Noir resisted, but the Confederates forced their way into the cemetery and opened the first grave. In doing so they attracted the attention of powers they neither understood nor controlled.
At the centre of what followed were the brothers Étienne and Mathieu Baptiste, sons of a local boatman and a respected Voodoo practitioner. Both had experienced the presence of the Loa since childhood, although their relationships with the spirits developed very differently. Étienne was cautious and contemplative, receiving warnings through dreams and strange fragments of knowledge, while Mathieu’s encounters were more immediate and unpredictable. Their mother taught them that being noticed by the Loa was not a privilege to be celebrated, but an obligation that carried responsibilities of its own.
Both brothers eventually became Vessels, capable of allowing the Loa to act through them. Étienne approaches this role with considerable caution, regarding himself as little more than a doorway between worlds, while Mathieu is more willing to surrender himself to whatever spirit answers the call. Neither believes that he commands the Loa. The spirits possess their own personalities and purposes, and whatever assistance they provide inevitably carries expectations in return.
When the Dark Confederacy violated the cemetery, both brothers answered. Witnesses later spoke of voices emerging from the darkness, water moving against the current and figures appearing among the cypress trees where no living person had stood. Most disturbing of all for the Confederates, the corpses they had raised ceased obeying their commands and turned upon them. By sunrise the survivors were fleeing Bayou Noir.
Étienne subsequently disappeared into the swamp for three days before returning with a warning. The attack had not been an isolated incident. The Dark Confederacy would continue disturbing graves, raising the dead and imposing its own twisted vision upon the shattered South. The communities of the bayou could wait for them to return, or somebody could carry the fight beyond Louisiana.
Thus the Congregation was born.
Étienne and Mathieu were soon joined by Voodoo practitioners, hunters, boatmen, former soldiers and gunfighters from across the bayou. Some understood the Loa intimately, while others understood little beyond the wisdom of showing them respect. What united them was the belief that the Free South belonged to the living and that the dead should not become soldiers for men unwilling to accept that their war had ended.
For my posse, the two Baptiste brothers also solve the problem of having two Vessel miniatures. Rather than leave a duplicate figure unused, both now have a place within the developing story. Étienne provides the calmer spiritual centre of the Congregation, while Mathieu offers a more unpredictable connection with the spirit world. Eventually their hunt will take them to Blackthorn Hall. Lucien Saint Clair may command the dead, but the Loa have not forgotten them.
I have always been interested in historical mysteries, particularly those stories that sit somewhere between established history and speculation. I do not have to believe a story to find it fascinating. Quite often the more interesting question is where the story came from in the first place, which parts can be supported by evidence, and how a collection of separate events eventually became accepted by some people as a single historical narrative.
That was what drew me to Station 211.
The story is certainly a remarkable one. Shortly before the outbreak of the Second World War, Nazi Germany sent the Schwabenland to Antarctica. Aircraft carried aboard the ship surveyed and photographed a large area of the continent, German markers were dropped, geographical features were recorded and the region became known as New Swabia. Germany clearly had economic and territorial interests in Antarctica, although the outbreak of war brought its planned continuation of the programme to an end.
At least, that is where the documented story appears to end.
What happened afterwards is where things become much more interesting.
German U boats surrendered in Argentina months after Germany had been defeated. During the war Britain had quietly mounted Operation Tabarin, establishing bases in Antarctica. Then, in 1946 and 1947, the United States sent the enormous Operation Highjump south under Rear Admiral Richard H. Cruzen, with Richard E. Byrd closely associated with the expedition. Ships, aircraft and thousands of men suddenly appeared in the Antarctic.
Meanwhile another story was developing. The Allies were discovering just how far some areas of German wartime technology had progressed. Jet aircraft, rockets, guided weapons and advanced submarines were no longer rumours. They were real. German scientists were taken to the United States after the war, while reports of strange objects in the sky were beginning the modern flying saucer era.
Over time these separate pieces became joined together.
The German Antarctic expedition became the beginning of a secret base. The late U boat surrenders became supply or evacuation missions. Operation Tabarin became a British attempt to investigate the Germans. Highjump became an American assault on the base. German experimental technology became flying discs, and somewhere beneath the Antarctic ice supposedly stood Station 211, an underground installation in which German personnel and perhaps their technology had survived the end of the Third Reich.
It is a wonderful story.
But is it history?
That question became the basis of my new book, Station 211: The Nazi Antarctic Mystery: History, Evidence and the Making of a Legend.
I did not want to write a book simply dismissing the entire subject as nonsense, because that would be almost as unsatisfactory as accepting every claim made about Station 211. There is too much genuine history behind the legend for that. The German expedition really happened. New Swabia was real. The U boats were real. Operation Tabarin and Operation Highjump were real. German technological achievements were real. Even some of the secrecy surrounding these events was real.
The problem is determining whether the connections between them are equally real.
That meant going back to the events themselves and examining them in sequence. What were the Germans actually doing in Antarctica in 1938 and 1939? Could they have established a permanent base with the men and equipment available? Could such a base have been supplied during the war? Where did U 530 and U 977 actually go before surrendering in Argentina? What was Britain doing during Operation Tabarin? Why did the Americans mount Highjump? When did flying saucers and secret German technology become part of the Antarctic story, and when does the name Station 211 actually appear in that developing narrative?
There is another difficulty that I did not want to ignore. Antarctica is enormous, remote and covered by snow and ice. It would be foolish to suggest that because something has not been found it therefore cannot exist. A small German cache, marker, shelter or other physical remnant could conceivably remain undiscovered beneath decades of accumulated snow and ice.
A vast underground military complex is another matter entirely. Such a base would have required ships, men, machinery, fuel, food, communications, construction materials and a continuing wartime supply system. Snow might conceal the remains of a structure, but it cannot so easily conceal the logistical history required to build and maintain it.
That distinction became increasingly important as I worked through the story.
The book therefore became about more than whether there was a secret Nazi base in Antarctica. It became an investigation into how historical legends are created. A genuine expedition, a mysterious submarine surrender, a secret British operation, a huge American naval expedition and genuine German secret weapons can each be documented independently. Put them together, remove some of the chronology and fill the gaps with speculation, however, and something quite different begins to emerge.
That process turned out to be every bit as interesting as Station 211 itself.
I have tried to approach the subject with an open mind while keeping one rule throughout the book: possibility is not the same thing as evidence. Where something is established, I say so. Where something remains possible, I leave that possibility open. Where the evidence does not support a claim, I explain why.
For readers interested in the Second World War, Antarctica, U boats, secret weapons, flying saucers or simply a good historical mystery, I hope there will be plenty here to explore.
Station 211: The Nazi Antarctic Mystery is ultimately my attempt to discover what remains when one of the twentieth century’s more extraordinary legends is taken apart and its pieces returned to their proper historical setting.
And perhaps that is where the real mystery begins.
The book is currently available on Kindle Unlimited and in paperback.on Amazon in the next few days.
After completing the Church of Dagon, the Dark Confederacy, the Crimson Coven of Salem and the Twilight Order, it was time to turn to another of the more distinctive factions in Dracula’s America. This time I wanted something very different from ancient sea gods, resurrected Confederates, Salem witches and secretive holy warriors. The result is the Congregation, a posse born among the swamps and isolated settlements of the Louisiana bayou, rooted in Voodoo tradition and sustained by the mysterious powers of the Loa.
The Congregation emerged from communities scattered through the bayous where waterways were often more important than roads and where families maintained traditions that outsiders neither understood nor particularly wished to understand. Long before the supernatural horrors now stalking America revealed themselves openly, the people of these communities understood that the visible world was only part of existence. Spirits moved beyond the light of the cabin window and along waterways disappearing beneath curtains of moss, while the living maintained relationships with powers whose presence could be felt even when it could not be seen. When the old order of the South collapsed and darker forces began exploiting the resulting chaos, those traditions became weapons of survival.
The Congregation are Voodoo worshippers who have sworn themselves to the defence of what remains of the Free South, particularly those ordinary communities left vulnerable by war, political collapse and supernatural violence. Their struggle is directed above all against the Dark Confederacy, whose necromancers, revenants and resurrected soldiers represent far more than another military enemy. To the Congregation, the Dark Confederacy has violated the proper relationship between the living, the dead and the spirit world. The dead have been dragged back for the ambitions of men who refuse to accept either defeat or mortality, and such interference cannot be allowed to continue unanswered.
Against this corruption stand the Loa, mysterious spirits who exist between humanity and powers beyond the mortal world. They are not obedient servants waiting to provide supernatural assistance whenever called upon, but personalities possessing their own interests, expectations and purposes. Through ceremony, devotion and carefully maintained relationships with the spirit world, members of the Congregation may receive remarkable powers from them. Such gifts are never treated casually. A favour granted by a Loa establishes an obligation, while a promise made before the spirits is considerably more difficult to escape than one made before mortal witnesses.
The bayou therefore remains more than the Congregation’s place of origin. It is the spiritual heart of the posse and the landscape that shaped its members. They know dark water, flooded forest, hidden paths and settlements reached only by boat. They have grown accustomed to outsiders dismissing their beliefs as superstition, right up until those same outsiders encounter something in the darkness that cannot be explained by conventional religion, science or a sufficiently large revolver. The Congregation does not require outsiders to believe in the Loa. The Loa have never required permission to exist.
This makes the Congregation a particularly attractive opponent for my Dark Confederacy posse. Lucien Beauregard Saint Clair and his followers at Blackthorn Hall have raised the dead in pursuit of their own vision of the South, including the remnants of the 27th Virginian Cavalry Regiment. The Congregation represents almost the precise opposite. Where Lucien seeks to command death, the Congregation respects the relationship between the living, the dead and the spirits. Where the Dark Confederacy looks backwards towards a South that has already disappeared, the Congregation fights for the people of the Free South who remain alive and deserve the opportunity to determine what comes next.
There is considerable scope here for something more interesting than a simple struggle between good and evil. The Congregation has secrets of its own, together with rituals and relationships with supernatural powers that outsiders may find deeply unsettling. Its members are prepared to call upon forces that few ordinary people comprehend, while the Loa themselves may pursue purposes extending far beyond the immediate concerns of those requesting their assistance. The Congregation may fight monsters, but that does not mean its methods will always make its allies comfortable.
For the tabletop, I want the posse to reflect this mixture of Louisiana character, spiritual power and determined resistance. These are people who emerged from the bayous carrying revolvers, rifles, charms, inherited traditions and an absolute determination that the horrors consuming the rest of the South will not consume their communities as well. They have seen what happens when ambitious men attempt to make servants of the dead, and they have no intention of allowing Blackthorn Hall and the Dark Confederacy to spread their influence unchallenged.
Lucien Saint Clair may believe that he commands the dead, but deep in the Louisiana bayou, the Loa are watching.
The Salem Sisterhood starter pack I received from North Star Miniatures came with a second Maiden miniature, and at first I had intended to use only one, with Abigail Hawthorne becoming the established Maiden of the Crimson Coven. When North Star didn’t want me to return it, the second figure was too useful to leave unused, and rather than paint her as a simple duplicate I decided to bring her into the story as a separate character with her own relationship to the Coven.
That became Anna Ward, daughter of Elias Ward. Making her part of the story also gave Elias a stronger personal connection to the Sisterhood while allowing the second Maiden miniature to represent something different from Abigail. Anna carries her own doll, Mercy, but her developing Arcane abilities are distinct from Abigail and Patience, giving the two young witches their own identities while still creating a deliberate visual and narrative link between them.
Anna does not yet wear the crimson dress that has become the unofficial uniform of the Crimson Coven, because Prudence insists that such recognition must be earned rather than assumed. Until Anna has proved herself worthy of full acceptance among the Sisters, she wears the cream clothing traditionally associated with a novice, marking her as one who has entered the Coven’s circle but is still learning its disciplines, responsibilities and dangers. The distinction is deliberately visible, reminding both Anna and those around her that she belongs with the Coven without yet standing as the equal of its fully recognised witches.
Anna Ward and Mercy
Anna Ward grew up knowing that her father carried a debt he could never fully repay. Elias Ward rarely spoke about Salem when she was young, but Anna understood that the family name carried a history of persecution and fear. As Elias became Guardian to the Crimson Coven, Anna grew up around Prudence Blackwood, Rebecca Crowe and Abigail Hawthorne, gradually becoming familiar with a world that most people would have regarded with suspicion.
Her own Arcane abilities appeared slowly through small incidents that were easy to dismiss at first. Candles guttered when she became angry, dreams occasionally revealed events before they happened, and she sometimes knew who stood behind a closed door before anyone knocked. Elias hoped these things were imagination, while Prudence recognised the signs of emerging Arcane sensitivity and began teaching Anna the discipline needed to control it.
Anna’s constant companion is a small doll named Mercy, an old family possession given to her by Elias. Unlike Abigail’s Patience, Mercy does not appear to possess an independent spirit, but she acts as a focus for Anna’s abilities. Anna often claims that Mercy has warned her of danger, identified hidden threats or revealed things that should have remained unseen, although Prudence believes that the doll simply gives form to Anna’s own developing instincts.
This immediately created a strong bond between Anna and Abigail. Both young women carry dolls and are frequently underestimated because of their age, yet their abilities are quite different. Abigail reaches outward through Summoning, while Anna senses concealed influence, emotional residue and traces of Arcane activity that others overlook. Abigail can open doors, while Anna is often the first to realise that a door should not exist at all.
For Elias, Anna’s awakening forced him to reconsider what being a Guardian truly meant. He could hardly claim to defend the freedom of the Sisters while denying his own daughter the right to follow the same path because he feared for her safety. When Anna asked to accompany the Coven into the field, Prudence insisted that she first learn discipline, weapons and judgement, and only after proving herself was she allowed to join them.
Elias marked that acceptance by giving Anna the pistol that had once belonged to her grandmother, a well cared for revolver that carried considerably more family history than decoration. Until her Arcane abilities developed far enough for Prudence to recognise her formally as a witch, Anna would travel with the Coven as a gunfighter, learning how to survive alongside the others while contributing in a role that demanded judgement rather than raw supernatural power. For Elias the gift represented more than a weapon, because handing it to his daughter acknowledged that protecting her could no longer mean keeping her from danger, but instead preparing her to face it on her own terms.
Anna now travels with the Crimson Coven as its youngest developing witch, usually with Mercy tucked beneath one arm and a pistol carried beneath the other. Strangers tend to see a quiet young woman with a battered doll standing close to her father, but those who know the Coven have learned to pay attention whenever Mercy appears to be looking at something nobody else can see.
I first read A. J. P. Taylor’s The First World War: An Illustrated History a long time ago, although for some reason I had never actually owned a copy. That small omission was recently corrected when I came across a copy sitting in a thrift shop. Given my inability to leave an interesting military history book sitting forlornly on a second hand shelf, it inevitably came home with me. Having bought it, I decided that after all these years it deserved another read.
Originally published by Hamish Hamilton in 1963, The First World War is now more than sixty years old, which raises an obvious question. Is there any point in reading Taylor when First World War scholarship has advanced enormously since he wrote it? My answer after returning to the book is definitely yes, although perhaps not always for the same reasons that I would have recommended it when I first encountered it. The original edition ran to 224 pages, while the familiar Penguin edition expanded to 296 pages, and the book combines Taylor’s narrative with a very substantial collection of photographs and maps.
Taylor attempts something that is considerably harder than it looks. He compresses the enormous political and military complexity of the First World War into a relatively short and readable narrative without reducing the whole thing to a simple chronology of battles. Sarajevo, the German advance into France, the Marne, Gallipoli, the Eastern Front, the Balkans, the naval war, the Russian Revolution and the great offensives of 1918 all find their place, before the narrative moves into the peace settlement and the altered European order that emerged from the conflict.
The great strength remains Taylor himself. Whatever one thinks about some of his interpretations, the man could write history. He had that increasingly rare ability to explain a complicated event in a few paragraphs and then move on without leaving the reader completely bewildered. His prose is economical, confident and frequently sharp, while his interest lies much more in explaining why events occurred than in providing detailed descriptions of individual actions. This is principally a history of strategy, politics and command rather than a battlefield history.
That approach also produces one of the book’s weaknesses. Taylor is frequently severe in his treatment of political and military leaders, and the generals in particular emerge rather badly. The interpretation reflects an older tradition of First World War historiography in which unsuccessful offensives, enormous casualties and apparent strategic blindness were often attributed heavily to failures of senior command. Contemporary scholarship has complicated that picture considerably by paying much greater attention to technological limitations, communications, logistics, doctrine, institutional learning and the extraordinarily difficult tactical problems created by modern industrial warfare.
Taylor therefore needs to be read today as Taylor, rather than as the final word on the First World War. That is hardly a criticism unique to this book. Any general history written in 1963 is going to reflect the scholarship and historical debates of its period. Indeed, this was one of the things I found particularly interesting on returning to it after so many years. I was not simply rereading a history of the First World War. I was also reading an example of how the war was interpreted by one of Britain’s most influential historians during the middle of the twentieth century.
There is also something else that distinguishes this book from many later general histories: the illustrations really matter. They are not simply photographs dropped into the book to break up large slabs of text. More than 220 photographs were incorporated into the work, together with maps, and the selection was intended to form part of the historical argument rather than merely decorate it. Someone involved in assembling the original edition later recalled that Taylor had a particularly good eye for photographs that were unusual or revealing rather than simply conventional portraits of important men.
That makes the description An Illustrated History important. The photographs repeatedly return the reader from grand strategy to the people caught up in it. Generals, politicians and armies might dominate the written narrative, but the images provide another level to the story. Soldiers, civilians, prisoners, ruined landscapes and the machinery of industrial warfare give the book a human dimension that Taylor’s deliberately economical prose sometimes lacks.
There are inevitably other areas where the book now shows its age. Social and cultural approaches to the war have developed enormously since the early 1960s, as has scholarship concerning ordinary soldiers, colonial troops, gender, memory, medicine, trauma and the experiences of civilian populations. A reader looking for those perspectives will need to go elsewhere. Likewise, anyone wanting detailed operational analysis of the Somme, Verdun, Gallipoli or the campaigns of 1918 will find Taylor moving on long before a modern military historian would have finished discussing them.
Yet criticising the book because it does not contain everything written about the First World War during the subsequent sixty years rather misses the point. Taylor was writing a concise general history, and judged as such it remains remarkably effective. He establishes the strategic problems, identifies the principal personalities, explains the major campaigns and keeps an extraordinarily complicated conflict moving forward. There are very few places where the narrative becomes bogged down, something that cannot be said about every modern general history of the war.
Returning to the book after such a long interval also reminded me why Taylor became such a prominent popular historian. You may disagree with him, occasionally quite strongly, but you are rarely bored by him. There is an argument running through the narrative and a historian prepared to make judgements rather than simply present a collection of facts. Some of those judgements have not survived subsequent scholarship particularly well, but they still force the reader to think about why the war developed as it did.
Would I recommend The First World War today? Certainly, but with qualifications. I would not recommend it as the only book someone should read on the First World War, nor would I treat all of Taylor’s conclusions as representing current historical thinking. As an introduction it remains clear and remarkably readable, while for anyone already familiar with the war it offers the additional pleasure of encountering Taylor’s distinctive interpretation and considering how First World War historiography has changed since the 1960s.
Perhaps that is why finding this particular book in a thrift shop was such a pleasant surprise. I went home with a book I had read many years ago but somehow never added to my shelves, and rereading it turned out to be more interesting than simply revisiting an old favourite. The First World War has not changed since Taylor wrote about it, but the way historians understand it certainly has. Reading Taylor again makes that very clear.
More than sixty years after its original publication, The First World War: An Illustrated History is no longer the book I would reach for to discover the latest thinking about the Great War. It remains, however, a classic, and an intelligent, provocative and immensely readable account written by a historian who knew how to tell a complicated story without requiring three volumes to do it.
And for the price of a thrift shop find, I certainly cannot complain.
Another Dracula’s America posse has finally marched off the painting table, and this time it is the Twilight Order. After the decidedly questionable morality of the Dark Confederacy, the disturbing devotion of the Church of Dagon and the rather more sympathetic cause of the Crimson Coven of Salem, I thought it was time to assemble a posse that could reasonably claim to represent the forces of good. Of course, this is Dracula’s America, so even the good guys tend to carry an alarming quantity of weaponry and associate with people whose employment history would make most respectable citizens nervous.
The Twilight Order appealed to me because it combines two very different worlds. Behind the posse stands an ancient tradition of Crusaders, Templars and supernatural warfare stretching back centuries, yet its members are now fighting that same war on the American frontier. Swords and ancient rites have not disappeared, but they must share the battlefield with revolvers, rifles and shotguns. The result is a force that looks as though part of the Middle Ages has wandered into the Weird West and sensibly decided to arm itself accordingly.
Leading my posse is Brother Matthias Kane, a Crusader born into the Order and descended from generations who fought the supernatural before him. Kane came to America carrying the traditions of the European brotherhood but quickly recognised that leadership required adaptation rather than blind obedience to the past. Armed with two pistols, he leads from the front and has gradually surrounded himself with people whose experience compensates for the things even a veteran Crusader cannot know.
Alongside him is Brother Gabriel Mercer, another Crusader armed with two pistols, but a very different product of the Order. Mercer is an American gunfighter who encountered the supernatural before being recruited and consequently represents the emerging American character of the Twilight Order. Where Kane brings tradition to the frontier, Mercer brings the frontier into the Order.
Providing longer ranged support are Brother Nathaniel Harcourt and Brother Samuel Whitaker, both armed with rifles. Harcourt is the experienced professional monster hunter who believes there is little virtue in fighting a supernatural creature at close range when it can be destroyed from considerably farther away. Whitaker is the frontier hunter and tracker who spent years reading trails through the wilderness before discovering that some of those trails belonged to things no natural history book could explain. Together they provide the eyes and rifles that protect the rest of the posse as it advances.
The spiritual heart of the group is the Scottish priest and Arcanist, Father Alasdair MacLeod. Raised among Highland stories that he once regarded as folklore, Alasdair eventually discovered that some of the old tales contained considerably more truth than an educated clergyman might prefer. His faith brought him into the Twilight Order, while his abilities as an Arcanist eventually brought him to America and Kane’s command. He carries a shotgun because experience has persuaded him that faith and twelve gauge ammunition are not necessarily contradictory approaches to supernatural evil.
Then there is Sir Gideon Vale, the great mystery of the posse. Nobody seems to know precisely how old the Templar actually is, although rumours suggest the answer may be measured in centuries rather than decades. Order records appear to place a man bearing his name in conflicts far too old for Gideon to have witnessed, yet he looks like a man still comfortably within the prime of life. He refuses to explain the discrepancy. More unsettlingly, ancient supernatural enemies occasionally recognise him.
Even Gideon is not the only Vale serving the Order. His son, Edmund Vale, has followed his father into the ancient brotherhood and carries the peculiar burden of being descended from a man who apparently refuses to grow old. Edmund is warmer and more comfortable with the modern world than Gideon, although he has spent his entire life knowing that the monsters dismissed by ordinary people are entirely real. The relationship between father and son gives the Order something beyond another pair of fighters, because Edmund represents the continuation of a family tradition whose beginnings remain almost as mysterious as Gideon himself.
The posse also includes three men who have never pretended to be Crusaders. Johnny the Gringo is the dangerous Southern gunfighter whose intelligence and loyalty are frequently obscured by his temper and formidable reputation. He came to the Order after discovering that the creature murdering his former companions could not be stopped with ordinary bullets, and Kane has wisely decided that reforming Johnny is unnecessary when pointing him towards deserving enemies works perfectly well.
Doc Harriday brings a different collection of useful and questionable qualities. Educated as a dentist with enough medical knowledge to patch up wounded companions, he became a gambler and gunfighter after poor health drove him west. His awareness of his own mortality has left him remarkably difficult to intimidate, while his medical skills make him almost as valuable after a gunfight as during one. His continuing arguments with Father Alasdair over whiskey, gambling and theology have become almost another posse tradition.
The third gunfighter, Bat Maddison, is a former buffalo hunter, scout and lawman whose greatest strength may be knowing when not to use his pistol. Years wearing a badge taught Bat to watch people carefully, and those instincts eventually led him to recognise that some crimes could not have been committed by ordinary men. Kane values his judgement because the Twilight Order must sometimes operate among people who know nothing about the supernatural world and would probably prefer to keep it that way.
Finally there is the Seraphim, although calling her a member of the posse is not entirely accurate. She appears only when Father Alasdair successfully calls upon supernatural assistance, arriving as a winged frontier warrior with a pistol and very little interest in explaining herself. She has never revealed her true name, and nobody is entirely certain where she goes when the summoning ends. What is considerably clearer is what happens to supernatural enemies unfortunate enough to be present when she arrives.
With the final figures painted, the Twilight Order is now complete. What began as another posse project has developed, as these things inevitably do, into a collection of characters with their own histories, relationships and reasons for standing together. Kane commands them, Alasdair provides their spiritual and supernatural strength, Gideon connects them to the Order’s distant past, the Crusaders provide its fighting core, and the gunfighters bring the experience of the American frontier. Somewhere above all of them waits the Seraphim for the next occasion when mortal firepower proves insufficient.
For once, everything required is painted and ready for the table.
Now all I need to do is find something suitably horrible for them to fight.
The Twilight Order had Crusaders, Templars and men capable of calling upon powers that most people would prefer not to know existed, but Matthias Kane quickly learned that America also required a more familiar sort of specialist. The three gunfighters travelling with his posse have taken no vows and claim no place among the Order’s ancient brotherhood. They have nevertheless encountered the darkness for themselves and chosen to fight it. Kane values them because they understand the frontier, its people and its violence in ways that even the most experienced European Crusader cannot easily learn.
Johnny Mozingo
Johnny Mozingo was born into a Southern family that moved west while he was still young, carrying with them the pride, resentments and fierce attachment to family that had survived the war. Johnny grew up in a world where disputes between families could last for generations and where a man’s choice of friends might prove every bit as dangerous as his choice of enemies. Intelligent and surprisingly well read, he might have made something quite different of himself had he not possessed a dark temperament and an almost self destructive determination never to retreat from an insult.
As a young man he became involved with cattlemen, gamblers and gunfighters during a bitter range dispute. What began as loyalty to friends gradually became a feud in which Johnny found himself opposed by lawmen, rival cattle interests and men every bit as willing to settle disagreements with a pistol as he was. His reputation soon travelled considerably faster than he did, with every confrontation adding another story and every story adding another victim. Johnny rarely bothered correcting the exaggerations. A dangerous reputation could sometimes prevent a gunfight, although his temperament ensured that it caused almost as many.
Beneath the reputation was a complicated man who preferred books, cards and good whiskey to killing. He could disappear into himself for days at a time, emerging only when somebody disturbed him or a friend required assistance. His loyalty was absolute once earned, but betrayal was something he neither understood nor forgave. Those characteristics eventually led him towards the Twilight Order when several former companions were murdered and Johnny decided that somebody was settling accounts from the old feud.
What he found was something considerably worse. The killer was not human, and Johnny discovered that ordinary bullets did little more than make it angry. Matthias Kane’s posse was pursuing the same creature and encountered Mozingo after he had already survived two confrontations with it. Kane recognised courage, stubbornness and considerable ability with a pistol and offered him a place among his gunfighters. Father Alasdair MacLeod remains uncertain whether Johnny has joined a righteous crusade or merely discovered enemies sufficiently unpleasant to justify his particular talents.
Kane has never attempted to reform him. He simply gives Johnny Mozingo better enemies.
Doc Harriday
Doc Harriday came from a respectable Southern family and received the sort of education intended to produce a professional gentleman. Intelligent, articulate and possessed of exceptionally steady hands, he studied dentistry and enough medicine to make himself useful when a qualified doctor was unavailable. For a time he appeared destined for a conventional career until persistent coughing developed into an illness that threatened to make that career remarkably short. Advised that a warmer and drier climate might prolong his life, Harriday abandoned his practice and travelled west.
The West did nothing for his respectability. Dentistry provided occasional money, but gambling provided considerably more excitement, and Doc discovered that he possessed both the mathematical mind and cold temperament required to make a living from cards. His education and careful speech made him an unusual figure among frontier gamblers, while his sharp tongue ensured that disagreements were frequent. Harriday therefore became almost as accomplished with a pistol as he was with a deck of cards.
His illness shaped his attitude towards danger. Doc was not fearless, but death held less terror for a man who already woke each morning wondering how much time remained. The result was an unnerving calm whenever weapons appeared. He might cough violently while sitting at a card table and struggle for breath after climbing a flight of stairs, yet when another man reached for a pistol his hands became steady and his manner almost relaxed. Behind the cynicism was an equally fierce loyalty to the small number of people whom Doc regarded as friends.
One of those friendships eventually introduced him to the supernatural. A fellow gambler was discovered dead with injuries Harriday could not reconcile with any weapon or disease he understood. The body had lost an extraordinary quantity of blood, although almost none could be found at the scene. Doc’s investigation brought him into contact with Father Alasdair MacLeod and ultimately with the creature responsible. Seeing a supposedly dead man rise again ended Harriday’s scepticism rather efficiently.
Doc now accompanies Kane’s posse as both gunfighter and unofficial medical man. His friendship with Alasdair consists largely of disagreements about whiskey, gambling, religion and Doc’s insistence that a medicinal drink before surgery is beneficial to everyone involved. Harriday knows that disease may eventually accomplish what bullets and monsters have so far failed to do. Until then there are cards to play, friends worth protecting and supernatural creatures requiring attention.
Bat Maddison
Bat Maddison began his frontier life as a buffalo hunter, spending long periods on the plains where patience, observation and accurate shooting mattered considerably more than bravado. He subsequently worked as a scout and occasional guide before drifting towards settlements where his ability to remain calm during trouble attracted the attention of local authorities. Maddison eventually accepted a badge, first as a deputy and later as a town lawman, discovering that maintaining order suited him rather better than he had expected.
Bat developed a reputation quite different from Johnny Mozingo’s. He dressed carefully whenever circumstances permitted, spoke politely and understood that the reputation of a lawman could sometimes accomplish more than his pistol. Maddison preferred talking an armed drunk into surrendering rather than killing him and learned that remaining quiet while everyone else shouted frequently gave him control of a dangerous situation. None of this represented reluctance to use violence. When conversation failed, Bat was exceptionally capable of ending matters quickly.
Years wearing a badge also made him a careful observer of people. Maddison learned to recognise lies, fear and the subtle change in a man’s posture that indicated he was considering reaching for a weapon. Those instincts eventually told him that some of the crimes occurring in his jurisdiction could not be explained by ordinary human behaviour. Prisoners disappeared from locked cells, corpses vanished from graves and reliable witnesses described attackers capable of things no living man should have survived.
Rather than dismiss these stories, Bat began recording them privately. His notebooks eventually contained accounts of unexplained killings, missing bodies and incidents that his official reports carefully attributed to considerably more conventional causes. Matthias Kane learned of the notebooks and sought him out, expecting to find a useful local contact. Instead he discovered a lawman who had already assembled much of the evidence for a supernatural world without possessing the knowledge necessary to make sense of it.
Kane supplied that missing knowledge. Maddison listened, asked sensible questions and eventually placed his badge in a drawer before joining the Twilight Order’s campaign. Within the posse he remains a lawman at heart and frequently reminds the Crusaders that destroying a monster is only part of their problem when the fight takes place in the middle of a town full of witnesses. Kane has increasingly come to value his judgement as highly as his pistol.
Johnny Mozingo, Doc Harriday and Bat Maddison remain outsiders within an organisation whose traditions stretch back centuries. Johnny brings dangerous loyalty and a willingness to face almost anything once he has chosen his side. Doc brings education, medical knowledge and the fatalistic courage of a man who has already spent years contemplating his own mortality. Bat provides the measured judgement of a frontier lawman who understands that knowing when not to draw a pistol can be just as important as knowing how to use one.
None of them has any ambition to become a Crusader.
Not every servant of the Twilight Order believed that confronting evil required standing close enough to smell its breath. As the Order adapted its ancient methods to the American frontier, some Crusaders discovered that the Winchester and other repeating rifles offered a particularly satisfying solution to supernatural creatures accustomed to relying upon terror, speed and brute strength. Brother Nathaniel Harcourt and Brother Samuel Whitaker became two of the Order’s finest riflemen, although each had arrived at that role by a very different path.
Brother Nathaniel Harcourt
Nathaniel Harcourt came to America as an experienced member of the Twilight Order, having already hunted supernatural creatures through Britain and continental Europe. He was methodical rather than flamboyant, preferring careful preparation and a well chosen position to the dramatic charge favoured by some of his fellow Crusaders. America suited him surprisingly well, particularly once he discovered that its rifles allowed him to engage the Order’s enemies at distances that would once have required considerably more dangerous methods.
Harcourt carries a rifle prepared for use against supernatural opponents, and whenever circumstances permit he chooses his ground before the fighting begins. He watches windows, ridgelines, church towers and patches of darkness that others overlook, waiting patiently for the enemy to reveal itself. There is little romance in his approach to monster hunting, but Harcourt has never understood why there should be. If a vampire can be destroyed from across a field rather than across a coffin, he considers the field the considerably more sensible option.
Brother Samuel Whitaker
Samuel Whitaker was raised on the American frontier and learned to shoot long before he learned that the Twilight Order existed. He had worked as a hunter, scout and occasional guide, becoming accustomed to reading tracks and noticing the small disturbances that betrayed the passage of men or animals. Eventually he began finding tracks that belonged to neither.
His first encounter with the supernatural convinced Whitaker that some of the stories exchanged around frontier fires deserved considerably more attention than he had previously given them. The Twilight Order encountered him while investigating the same series of unexplained disappearances and quickly recognised that the frontiersman possessed skills that could not easily be taught within a monastery or chapter house. Whitaker accepted recruitment with fewer questions than expected. He had seen what was hiding in the wilderness and had no intention of pretending otherwise.
Whitaker carries a rifle as naturally as another man might carry a walking stick, using his experience as a hunter to track supernatural creatures before they can choose the terms of an encounter. He has little patience for elaborate ceremony and even less for arguments about the Order’s ancient traditions, but his companions have learned to listen when he quietly announces that something has been following them.
The Long Watch
Harcourt and Whitaker make an effective partnership precisely because neither feels much need to compete with the other. Harcourt brings the accumulated knowledge and discipline of the old Twilight Order, while Whitaker understands the country in which that Order must now fight. One knows what they are hunting. The other knows where to find it.
When Brothers Matthias Kane and Gabriel Mercer advance with their paired pistols, Harcourt and Whitaker are usually somewhere behind them, rifles ready and watching the ground ahead. The pistol armed Crusaders may receive more attention when the shooting starts, but the two riflemen are perfectly content with that arrangement.
Nobody in Matthias Kane’s posse knows exactly how old Sir Gideon Vale is. Father Alasdair MacLeod once asked him directly and received only the observation that a priest should know better than to concern himself with another man’s age. Kane subsequently discovered references to a Gideon Vale in the Twilight Order’s records dating back far further than seemed possible. The descriptions were frustratingly brief, but each concerned a Templar fighting supernatural enemies and several appeared to describe precisely the same man.
Rumour within the Order places his age in the hundreds of years, with some claiming that Vale fought for the brotherhood when swords were still more common than firearms. There are stories connecting him with campaigns against creatures in eastern Europe, forgotten battles beneath ruined monasteries and hunts conducted long before Dracula established his power in America. None can be proved conclusively, largely because Vale refuses to discuss them. Occasionally, however, somebody mentions an event from centuries past and Vale corrects a small detail with the irritation of a man who remembers it personally.
There is nothing in his appearance to support the stories. Vale looks like a man in the prime of life, strong, composed and untouched by the passing decades. He bears scars, certainly, but none of the frailty that should accompany such impossible age. Whether this longevity is a blessing bestowed upon him, the consequence of some ancient ritual, or even the lingering effect of an encounter with something the Order would rather forget remains unknown. Father Alasdair has his theories. Vale has shown no interest in hearing them.
His manner provides rather more evidence. Modern firearms do not impress him, although he has learned to use them when necessary, and he sometimes refers to events of the distant past as though they occurred last winter. He also possesses an uncomfortable familiarity with vampires and other ancient creatures. Some recognise him. A few have even called him by name.
That worries Kane considerably more than Vale’s age.
Within the posse, Vale accepts Kane’s command without objection, although there are moments when the younger Crusader finds himself wondering who is really the senior man. The Templar rarely offers advice unless asked, but when he does, Kane listens. A warrior who may have spent centuries hunting the supernatural has earned that courtesy.
The others have gradually stopped speculating about how old Gideon Vale might actually be. On the frontier there are mysteries best left alone, particularly when the mystery in question is standing beside you and fighting on your side.
For the moment, that is enough.
Edmund Vale, the son of Sir Gideon Vale, is himself a sworn member of the Twilight Order, although the circumstances of his birth have generated almost as much speculation as his father’s impossible longevity. Edmund appears to be a man in his early thirties, and Gideon has never explained when or where his son was born, nor revealed anything about Edmund’s mother beyond insisting that she was an extraordinary woman who deserved to remain beyond the Order’s curiosity. Raised with full knowledge of the supernatural world, Edmund never experienced the terrible moment of discovery that shaped so many of his companions, for monsters were simply another danger his father taught him to recognise alongside fire, disease and armed men. He inherited Gideon’s composure and sense of duty but not his remoteness, possessing a warmer temperament and considerably greater interest in the changing world around him. Their relationship is affectionate but occasionally strained, particularly when Gideon continues to treat his adult son as though he were an inexperienced novice. For Edmund, the greatest burden of being Sir Gideon Vale’s son is not living beneath the reputation of a legendary Templar, but knowing that while he grows older year by year, his father apparently does not.
Thanks to ChatGPT for assistance with the pic of Sir Gideon Vale.
