EPISODE 9: THE MONKEY ARMY

The mighty airship Victoriana, fugitive from the law, hovers over the jungles of the Congo. Its identical sister ship, the Victor, launches a surprise attack, commanded by rogue crewmember Adelaide McKenna and her nefarious Black Cloaks.

Hamwich Leon is captaining the Victoriana, but is himself possessed by the Black Cloaks. When ship’s engineer Joshua Mew and Colonel Solomon Fitzgerald ask for help, Hamwich orders them down to the jungle floor to recruit a monkey army. Joshua and Solomon reluctantly do so.

On the Victor, Adelaide still wears Hamwich’s ring, which enhances her evil powers; the ring has begun to grow like a tumor and infect her entire arm. As her strength approaches invincibility, Adelaide projects an image of herself over to the Victoriana and taunts the crew. She has a captive: Kit, Wilhemina’s loyal friend, whom she has also made a Black Cloak.

Down in the jungle, Colonel Fitzgerald leads Joshua Mew and young Benjamin Cumberbatch to the monkey-queen’s temple. Like most other cities on earth, it’s built atop a “seat of power,” where Steam and strange energy flow from beneath the ground. The Colonel is quick to trade poor Benjamin to the monkey-queen in exchange for a few warriors to help defend the Victoriana, though Hamwich’s strategy is sketchy to say the least.

Joshua Mew has had enough of the madness. He agrees with Colonel Fitzgerald to leave Hamwich, the rightful captain, behind. But their planned mutiny proves needless: Hamwich has fled the Victoriana on his own. With the monkey army on the airship above, Hamwich sneaks into the jungle city and steals a precious jewel which is known to focus and extract dark energy. On a whim, he swallows the jewel whole, and just like the Victoriana itself, Hamwich divides into two. He defeats and murders his evil doppelgänger in single combat, restoring his true, good self.

Wilhemina Wyldeheart, meanwhile, has been driven to near-madness after being overtaken by the Black Cloaks, killed, and then restored to life. To Hamwich’s dismay, Wilhemina’s mind has reverted to that of a child, confusing imagination and reality. Hamwich knows he must find a way to bring his lover back.

EPISODE 10: STEAM, ROSE-COLORED GOGGLES, AND THE FLIGHT OF THE VICTORIANA

The streets of Richmond, Virginia, Wilhemina’s hometown, lay strewn with the dead. Upon finding the city overtaken by the Black Cloaks, Wilhemina has summoned a mighty energy and killed them all. Though her mind is gradually returning, she and Hamwich know she remains possessed of a power that must be expunged. And the Black Cloaks continue to spread like a plague across the world…

Over the jungles of Africa, ship’s engineer Joshua Mew confronts their leader, Adelaide McKenna. Why has she bombarded the Victoriana with cannonballs, but declined to board? Why has she rejected the love that her former crew offered her? Adelaide scoffs cruelly as her arm glows even brighter, and promises that Joshua will see his attack.

Back in Richmond, Wilhemina seeks out a wisteria tree she knows from her childhood; but she finds it, too, to be dead. Suddenly, unexpectedly, she is sucked into the tree! She sees a vision of her crewmates surrounding her, beckoning her closer… but Hamwich slaps her back to reality before the darkness can overtake them both. Wilhemina knows the only way to cleanse herself for good is to find an untapped “seat of power,” a source of energy on which no human or monkey city has yet been built. Hamwich thinks he knows just the place, far off in the Wild West.

Preparing to defend the ship, Joshua demands help from Benjamin Cumberbatch, whose All-Seeing Orb has helped him see the future so many times before. When Benjamin is unable to, Joshua throws it out the window in disgust. Unbeknownst to Joshua, the Victoriana has a new person onboard: Sarah, his dead wife, whose soul lived within the ship, and whom the surges of energy have summoned back to life.

Before long, Adelaide and her Black Cloak cohorts board the Victoriana, only to find it protected by strong magical spells summoned by the cyborg, Leto. Adelaide reveals an unexpected weapon, though: Benjamin’s All-Seeing Orb! Joshua realizes his mistake, and Adelaide murders the Orb’s former owner, Benjamin Cumberbatch. But the Lady Electra Spencer—a cyborg herself, recently exorcised from the ship—seizes Adelaide before she can use it to commandeer the ship, and tears off her infected arm, which shatters like crystal. She then rebukes Adelaide for letting selfishness dictate her desires, and breathes new life into her, clearing the power of the Black Cloaks from her mind.

Colonel Fitzgerald realizes an important side-effect: the evil energy must find a new home. As it leaves Adelaide, it enters the All-Seeing Orb, which begins to levitate, and then rockets off the ship to the west. Intuitively, the crew decide to follow the Orb, fearful of where it might come to rest.

In the deep desert, Hamwich and Wilhemina arrive at a silver mine near one of the untapped seats of power. They secure jobs there and explore deep inside the earth, into which the All-Seeing Orb has just plunged. There in a dark cavern, find a glowing pool of pure energy. Wilhemina has a dramatic realization: the energy flowing from the ground all over the world, which the Black Cloaks have exploited to their ends, is the very same Steam that powers the industrialized world and makes their airships possible. The energy isn’t good or evil; it becomes what human beings will it to be. Wilhemina knows that it’s here that she will release her energy back to the world, but she knows too that it will mean the death of her.

The Victoriana arrives at the spot in the desert where the Orb disappeared, and Yvette Cloud teleports the crew downward. There in the cavern they find Hamwich and Wilhemina standing in the pool, with Wilhemina about to sacrifice herself. Kit, newly freed from the Black Cloaks, chooses this moment to make her own sacrifice; she flings herself into the pool before Wilhemina, and the energy passes through her, freeing Wilhemina once and for all even as it draws out Kit’s life.

The crew of the Victoriana, less two crewmembers and one arm, are at long-last free of the energy—the pure Steam—that has lurked among them ever since their adventure began in Paraguay. They return to the ship over the desert, with Hamwich Leon again commanding his ship, Wilhemina by his side. The Victoriana turns east again, as always in search of adventure.

Content: Kevin Miller
Photos: Steve Rogers

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