Alternia Comics

The massive hall was a silent testament of power. The wine-red carpet run with little twisting vines of green and gold and sectioned out in large, ornate golden squares gave one the sense of needing to stand where told to. Great, smooth, white marble pillars along the stained oak walls framed enormous paintings and tapestries set between them.

The crowd was smaller than he had expected - a little less than twenty other people stood in the room with him. He recognized a few and had heard of most of the others: a motley bunch of inventors, researchers, and visionaries.

There was Count Drossenfore, with his magnificent mechanical arm - fully articulated, plated with polished brass over oiled black leather. Templeton had always admired the Count's work, and had indeed used his notes when making inventions that required articulated limbs - such as his Fluegeltasche wing-set and the leg he made for Elson. Standing nearby was Herr Rigel, a sharp man with a dry wit and a talent for mixing chemicals. The rumor of the day was that he had developed a fluid that alternated between liquid and gaseous states as you increased its temperature. Templton resolved to ask Herr Rigel about it, tonight.

While he was on good terms with those two, Templeton was purposefully avoiding Sir Linden, a thin, pale man with a long face and wide, piercing eyes who, despite the well-heated room, was wearing his trademark blue wool overcoat and brown leather driving gloves. Templeton had never quite trusted Sir Linden. He was a historian and
explorer, known for designing ever more elaborate vehicles to reach and survive in his difficult destinations. However, his interest never seemed very ... benign to Templton. More predatory - as if he were seeking something to exploit. He also had a few patents on inventions having to do with compulsion - truth serums, a hypnotizing tool, that sort of thing. It made Templeton wonder what a historian would need with such things.

Elson would be upset that he had missed the bold Commander Korsner, sporting a long brown trenchcoat and his signature white woolen scarf about his neck. The thrill seeking pilot was laughing with Sir Linden about the dangerous stunts they had attempted, his bright, reckless smile emphasizing the curl of his broad mustache and his eyes twinkling with mirth under his spectacles. Templeton always thought it a bit funny picturing the most famous daredevil in all of Germany trying to keep his glasses from falling off in the middle of all those aerial acrobatics.

Of the several ladies in attendance, most were the equally brilliant mates of husbands who had either brought them along or sent the woman in their place. Sir Linden's quiet, dangerously beautiful wife, for example, known for her independent research into optics, was present in a downright scandalous outfit of a black silk shirt and matching knee-length bloomers. Though she stood near to Sir Linden, the striking hazel eyes behind her wire-frame glasses were firmly fixed elsewhere, clearly showing that her interest was NOT on her husband's conversation.

It was, as far as Templeton could tell, on the only woman to be here of her own accord, the Baroness VanBruggen - the lovely and wealthy widow of a Dutch nobleman who had returned to Germany upon her husband's death. Her work was a highly controversial blend of zoology and human physiology, funded in large part by the fortune her husband had left behind. Even so, one of her recent developments - using animal parts in patients needing transplants - had caught the eye of the international medical community. Despite the modest pinstripe dress she was wearing, she had a small cloud of younger inventors all trying to make her laugh. To her credit, she was paying far greater attention to the older ones who were genuinely interested in her theories.

Templeton checked his pocketwatch. It had been some time, already - well past the appointed hour, and plenty of time for the fashionably late to arrive. He had just resolved to go and speak with the Baroness when, finally, the doors opened to the sound of an attendant proclaiming, "His Excellency, Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto Von Bismarck."