Steam – Second Night

The second performance of Steam was improvised on 1/7/12.

Episode Summary

The place: deep in the jungles of Paraguay. The prime minister, a member of the notorious Black Cloaks, has been assassinated. A passenger train has suspiciously derailed. And the mighty airship Victoriana is right in the center of it all.

Eighteen hours after Wilhemina Wyldeheart fired off Captain Hamwich Leon’s flare, seeking help from the jungle floor, the Victoriana arrives. However they don’t find Wilhemina or her companion, the Lady Electra Spencer, who have disappeared behind the gates of a mysterious hidden factory.

The Victoriana does pull up three other survivors of the train wreck: the ingenue Adelaide McKenna, the orphan Benjamin Cumberbatch, and the ever-dodgy (and ever-drunk) drifter identifying himself as Randy. The refugees all know of the famous Captain Hamwich Leon: Benjamin has read books about him, Randy has some sort of history with him, and Adelaide is quickly subjected to his “charms.”

Meanwhile in the hidden factory below, Wilhemina and Lady Electra begin to smell the scent of wisteria and to hear disembodied voices, all saying the same chilling word: “Closer.” They meet a local girl who tells them that a man named Contigo owns the factory. Before they can proceed further, though, they’re attacked by factory robots! Wilhemina summons an unexpected magical power and casts a forcefield of purple flames around the duo. Just then they are rescued—not by the Victoriana, but by the Stargazer and her co-captains, Yvette Cloud and Patricia.

Back in the air, storm clouds are gathering as the Victoriana receives a sudden distress call from a third ship, the Champion, which has been set on fire nearby. The engineer, Joshua Mew, dons a jetpack and flies over to offer aid, followed by his tardy captain. Hamwich and Joshua are surprised to recognize the captain of the Champion: Roger Rogér, former owner of the Victoriana, who lost it in a fateful poker game nine months before.

Captain Rogér had come to the area in search of Contigo’s factory, only to be attacked when they drew near. It’s clear that a trip to the jungle floor will be necessary to discover the next thread in the mystery.

Aboard the Stargazer, Yvette and Patricia welcome their new guests, Wilhemina and Lady Electra. We discover that Patricia has been acting increasingly suspicious, at one point whispering “You’re almost mine.” Even Yvette, her would-be lover, is deeply suspicious and tells Lady Electra that Patricia’s heart is black.

Wilhemina, meanwhile, denies all knowledge of the power that let her cast a magic spell. The wealthy Lady Electra realizes she has enough money squirreled away to buy control of the Stargazer for whatever purposes she and Wilhemina desire. The crewmember Kit, frustrated with their lack of purpose, professes loyalty to Wilhemina. At that point Wilhemina reveals her true desire: to raid the Victoriana and kill Captain Hamwich Leon, who failed to respond to her distress call.

Hamwich Leon descends to the forest floor along with the overeager Benjamin Cumberbatch and Colonel Solomon Fitzgerald, the veteran who hired the Victoriana to Paraguay in the first place. Benjamin finds Wilhemina’s spent flare along the path to the factory. The Colonel is eager to return to the ship, though he does reveal a mysterious personal connection to the factory.

Against his admonitions, Hamwich determinedly enters the factory alone. He too encounters the ghosts whispering “Closer,” smells wisteria, and even sees an apparition who takes the form of Wilhemina. Before he can respond, though, he is knocked unconscious and dragged off by the Black Cloaks! On the Victoriana, Joshua reveals to the ship that he’s thinking of leaving to work for Roger on the Champion. An intruder alert interrupts his thoughts, and he and the Colonel find Jane, a terrified Paraguayan stowaway. She tells them that the Black Cloaks have attacked her village.

Unbeknownst to them all, the Stargazer prepares to attack the Victoriana with the storm as cover. Joshua climbs to the top rigging of the ship and there finds Leto, the cyborg pixie whom the Colonel brought to Paraguay to battle the Black Cloaks.

Joshua tells her that as long as the Victoriana is in peril, he feels duty-bound to stay. He asks Leto what to do; she happily replies, “Jump!”

With a confidence foreign to him, Joshua agrees, and leaps with Leto from the very top of the ship. They plummet through the stormclouds, and light as feathers, alight safely on the deck of the Stargazer. “Leto,” says Joshua, “I think we might be the stowaways now.”

What has become of Captain Hamwich Leon in the evil factory?

Will Wilhemina succeed at commandeering the Victoriana?

How does the Colonel know so much about the Black Cloaks and their plot?

And where will they all find the factory owner, Contigo?