The Resurrection Men in the Mirrorlands

by

J. Edward Tremlett


 

"The way we tell it, hoodoo started way back before everything. Six days of magic and mighty words and the world with its elements above and below was made. And now, God is leaning back and taking a seventh day rest.

"When the eighth day comes around, He'll start to making new again..."

 "Mules and Men" - Zora Neale Hurston



Following the capture and torture of Henri LeRoux in July of 1794, Paris' Hierarchy apprehended most of the Resurrection Men almost immediately thereafter. The Renegade group's Cells were caught one by one, sentenced and then sent to the Forges.

While this occurred in the Shadowlands, the Reign of Terror came to a halt. The French Revolution's old order devoured itself in the Thermidor Reaction, and things collapsed from there. So many of the Renegades went to the forges smiling, or laughing at their captors; It may have been a Pyhrric victory for them, but it was a victory nonetheless...

Once it was all done, and the Forges were beating the last such criminals into useful goods, the Hierarchy allowed itself a smile. It was declared that the Resurrection Men were finished. One of the most widespread threats to the Code of Charon ever encountered had been bested by the might of the Parisian Hierarchy! Their woeful fate was long-upheld as a warning to others, and no few Hierarchs were promoted, feted and showered with accolades for their hand in the matter.

Of course, the Legionnaires were all quite wrong.

Though he controlled the group, Henri LeRoux didn't know every last one of his people, and so no few of their number escaped the Purge. These went on to form Cells of their own, and so the movement lives on. The Cells are disconnected from one another, and nowhere near the size they once enjoyed, but those who hid - or their students, at least - are still out there to this day.

And then there were those who did not hide, but fled...