London 1912

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London 1912

Hello all. First off – this isn’t ASB or a game. I’ve toyed with having a choose-your-own-adventure style timeline format for months, not because of the game-element but because of how it might allow for a slow reveal of the PODs and changes in a timeline.


So this timeline isn’t as much a choose-your-own-adventure as series of set pieces. Think about it like visiting an art gallery – you can choose which paintings to look at and in which order but as a visitor your choices don’t substantially change the paintings themselves. Rather they change how you perceive them individually and as a whole. At the end of each section I’ll give a couple of choices for moving through the landscape of Edwardian London ITTL and people can post in the comments what they think the protagonist should do next.

I hope people enjoy this; it’s a bit of an experiment but it has a solid and plausible POD underlying it.
 
Scene One - London Bridge

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As the LBSCR commuter train pulls into London Bridge Station you could be afforded a small sigh of relief. You have spent around ten days in Lewisham, weathering the political storm that has engulfed the capital, but the cabin-fever of that small suburban home and the sense of anticipatory dread that has filled you since the events of Bloody Monday have gotten the better of you. Your curiosity has screwed up to a fever-pitch leading to this excursion into central London.

Disembarking the second class carriage you see National Union of Railwaymen checking tickets. A crudely written sign at your point of departure had informed you that fares were now a flat penny-rate, the companies banished from the capital and the network in union hands, and there was no attempt to enforce the class distinctions in travel that dominated even a fortnight before. The NUR men look wirey and on-edge and you begin to worry that there might be trouble, until their attention fixes on the driver descending from the engine cab. He and his fireman, both wearing their ASLEF Trade Union badges, are engaged in an argument with an NUR porter and as you watch his mates checking the tickets move to add their voices to his. You vaguely remember reading somewhere that the older union was more conservative and hierarchical than the new national one. Does that even matter anymore, you wonder as you join the crowd spilling out of the station.

You pass, on the ornate frontage, the smashed and charred remnants of the first-class refreshment room. The woodwork is black and burned out, the interior a days old mess of fire debris and looting, and the glass smashed. The “LADIES” sign on the doorframe has been defaced, daubed across with the letters WSPU in dark purple paint.

As you join the throng crossing London Bridge into the centre of the city a group of young working-class women pass you going the other way. They are dolled up in their Sunday-best, jaunty hats and petticoats fluttering in the May breeze. ‘Auroite ‘andsome?!” shouts one petite red-head, a huge grin across her young face. She can’t be more than nineteen, none of the group are, but they seem possessed of a rakish sensibility born from triumph. ‘You look a piece of auroite’ she teases, eyeing you up for dramatic effect, her cockney accent thick. Her friends scream with laughter at her daring impropriety and you can still hear them laughing as they drift off away from you.

Reaching the northern side of the bridge you are struck by a choice. Your investigation could take you further into the City proper or east into Whitechapel and Smithfield; the working-class heart of London. A group of bored soldiers, half-guarding half-lounging, are outside a nearby building but do not look particularly approachable. Nearby an elderly man in dusty clothing and a flat cap is pasting up a poster, a bundle of red and white papers in his arm as he brushes the glue onto the brick wall.

Head East

Head into the City

Talk to the old man with the posters
 
Turn around and find the friendly women who engaged you in conversation. She might be a useful source of information and she seems very nice to be complimenting people like that.
 
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