Death Comes Hunting for Rodney Crawbaby

English weather has a cold steely spine that runs up the middle of each gust of wind. An invisible bamboo shoot of icy strength that snaps sharply and breaks off on your face and your hands. Blowing off the moor, the sooty peaty air covered a man like ice on a lake. Ice that was frozen. Frozen solid. Solid as a rock. 

Rodney Crawbaby had seen it all. He had seen Afghanistan, charging the hills with her majesty's service; India, where he had survived the adventure of the ruby ring; China, where he had solved the mystery of the emperor's facade... Most recently, he had returned from Japan, and the case of the lotus blossom shogunate. 

It was a good life, that of an imperial detective. He lived hard and he learned much and he answered to no one, save of course his dear Queen Victoria. And most recently her son Edward of course. King Edward. That would take some getting used to...

Rodney Crawbaby looked out the window of the third floor room he had rented off the high street. The large figure of Downton Abbey loomed in the distance. Ominous and omnipresent. Squatting over the village. Monstrous. Like its master. 

Rodney had first heard the whispers of prophecy in Tibet, and then again in the islands that speckle the sea, far to the south. 

Someone or something was building a gate. The elder would be drawn to it, the circle broken, the world thrown into a state of calamity. Rodney Crawbaby had read the ancient texts on the islands of the Azores; Had seen the glyphs on the walls of the brocade pyramids of the new world. He knew that a past existed, an age now shrouded in darkness, where mankind was subservient to much larger forces, and lived in the shadow of giants. 

Rodney looked up at the grey featureless sky, imagining the miasma swirl that must have oppressed the men of the earth so many years ago. 

Now, he had learned that someone was working to relight the ancient fire of obscene knowledge and call the leviathan back from the stars. He had also heard there were opposing forces at work. A counter movement dedicated to the primacy of man. 

Rodney Crawbaby came to Downton Abbey for answers, and to kick a little ass. And to solve mysteries. 

But he didn't have any more questions. And he was cool with a little mystery...