French Revolution Mafia [Concluded]

**GeneralHankerchief** · 03-20-2017, 23:20

"Death is not an eternal sleep. Death is the commencement of immortality."
~ Maximilien Robespierre

Night 4

With the passage of the Law of 22 Prarial, the members of the National Convention had voted themselves an enormous amount of power and oversight to deal with the Royalist threat. Would they act properly with this power? That remained to be seen, but the prognosis did not look good - after all, each faction had meticulously tallied up their grievances and causes for redress not only since the start of the current emergency, but since the creation of the Republic and the start of the Convention itself. Now, with the balance sheets growing ever-more lopsided, the time had come to settle accounts.

The first victim of the night's violence was autolycus. Even in this tense environment, auto had never ceased his practice of visiting his favorite salon and hobnobbing with his fellow intellectuals about whichever topic struck their fancy - whether it be political, philosophical, whimsical, or otherwise. Tonight, seeking to take his mind off things, auto had insisted that the topic be lighter.

"All right, fashion-wise, what do we think about the sans-culottes? I mean, I recognize that their style of dress has come to identify a political movement so it might be hard to separate that from the fashion, but could they look better? Is there any way we could parlay their style into a sort of high fashion?"

"I'm not sure," auto said. "I mean, how far do we want to take it? I understand that they don't wear the knee breeches which were obviously the height of style in years past, but what if we could work their trousers into it somehow? Perhaps color them purple? Anything - as long as it's not white, for obvious reasons - to get them off that awful earthy color. These are Parisians, not farmers for goodness sake."

"You have no idea what you're talking about," a third replied. "The entire point of the sans-culotte movement was a political statement. If that gets repurposed for material reasons-"

He never get to finish his statement, as at that very moment the doors to the salon burst open. An armed mob indiscriminately fired into the crowd, killing or wounding all of the patrons there, including autolycus.

Al Sipsclar was working late in his office, trying to keep up with all of the various political pamphlets that had been issued over the past few days in order to keep his finger on the pulse of French opinion. After all, with the Republic also came the fickle whims of popular thought, and all of the politicians in the nation would be unwise to treat popular opinion like they would have in the Ancien Régime.

These pamphlets represented all sides of the nascent political spectrum: Montagnard, Girondin, Populist, Militarist, even some hybrid pamplets, in addition to ultra-radical ones as well as those which almost might be considered quasi-Royalist, calling for a return to a constitutional monarchy as a possible solution to the emergency. One trend that Al Sipsclar had noticed over time was that, with more and more people finding a voice, they started to get shriller and louder, calling for more outlandish and dramatic measures, in an attempt to rise above the din and be heard.

I wonder if this trend will continue as revolution spreads across the Continent and the globe, Al wondered, but kept reading, making notes, searching for a solution, in the meantime. He was fully engrossed in his work, dead to the outside world.

Unfortunately, the outside world was not dead to him, a fact that Al learned the hard way as a brick crashed through his window, startling him from his near-hypnosis by the pamphlets.

"What is the meaning of-" he began, but quickly jumped back as a torch came through the hole in the window had just appeared. Oh no, his office was primarily made of wood!

He desperately searched for some water or other material with which to put the nascent fire out, but as he did, more bricks came through different windows, and more torches followed those bricks. After a while, a full conflagration had erupted, and Al knew that his office was a lost cause. He tried to evacuate through the front door, running out...

...and being sent sprawling back to his floor with an injured shoulder, courtesy of an unbudging object. Somebody had barricaded the front door from the outside! Al attempted to get up, nursing his injured shoulder, but by that time the flames were well on their way to completing their wicked work. They would not stop until everything - and everyone - in the building had burned to a crisp.

Elsewhere in the city, Snerk was trying to forget about the tense atmosphere, at least for one night, by going to his favorite tavern. There, at least, you were not judged. There, as long as you were there to eat, drink, and not start something, you would not be unfairly looked upon. Sometimes Snerk thought the world would run a lot more smoothly if everyone treated it like they did their favorite tavern, but alas, that was not the way of things.

And so Snerk sat at his favorite stool, nursing his favorite glass, ready to drink his favorite wine, preparing to order from his favorite bartend-

"Wait a minute," he said, looking up in surprise. "I've been coming here ever since I got elected to the Legislative Assembly and not once has anyone besides Éloise been here to serve drinks! Where is she and who are you?"

"Apologies citoyen," the new bartender replied. "Éloise is due before the Revolutionary Tribunal next week after being found in violation of the Law of Suspects. My name is Delphine, and I hope to continue the high level of service that my predecessor established. You are Snerk, right? Yes, the owner mentioned you. What's your usual again?"

Snerk, reeling from the shock and the realization that the Convention's laws impacted more than just those privy to its inner machinations, mumbled his usual order, which Delphine quickly prepared. Snerk took it gratefully and gulped it down a lot faster than he normally would have, but the poison was fast-acting. Within 30 seconds he was on the floor, dead to the world.

And so the murders continued, all for various purposes, but most committed under the auspices of the Law of 22 Prarial. Some were made in the name of hunting Royalists, targeting suspected traitors to the new republic. Some were made in the name of naked factionalism, trying to take control of the Convention for good or otherwise trying to right perceived wrongs. And it was possible that some - though most dared to think otherwise - were made by the dreaded Royalists themselves, ready to make good on their threat and take back the country.

Like the rationale for these deaths, the manner in which the murders were committed also varied widely. There had been deaths by gunshot, arson, and poison, but that night no means of killing another human being was off-limits. Some people were clubbed to death, others attacked by vicious dogs, others still stabbed, unsuspectingly, by acquaintances and strangers alike. Winston Hughes, never a strong swimmer, was pushed off one of Paris's many bridges and fell into the Seine, where he was carried along helplessly by the current and eventually drowned.

Smoke started to rise from various sources in the city. Not the pleasant white or light grey of people cooking delicious meals, nor even the darker shade that represented industry and progress. No, this smoke was the ugly black kind, always emanating from a red glow in the distance, that came from violence and chaos. At first it rose from one source - Al Sipsclar's office - but that number soon grew to two, then three, then five, then a dozen, then more. Nobody within the city limits got much sleep that night, not with first the city's fire brigades and later its National Guard hauling tail back and forth across the city to try to deal with the problems and restore some semblance of order. They were less than successful at this.

seireikhaan, like everyone else in the city, had gotten little sleep during this. He decided to go to the Temple of Reason - formerly known as Notre Dame - first to pray, but secondly to take it all in. So, climbing one of the legendary church's towers, he had done so, getting a lovely panoramic view of Paris as it burned.

He resolved to remember his thoughts and record them for posterity upon his return home, but he never got the chance. A forceful push caused him to lose his balance and tumble off the tower, meeting his end on the hard ground of the Île de la Cité below. And thus the night had claimed another victim. So it went.

Finally, there was Montmorency. He had had a good idea of what was going to happen, and at first holed himself up in his home, where, if he was going to die, at least he would do so in comfort. But as the night wore on, and the violence only grew, and the terrible reports kept pouring in, he realized this would not do. The motivation came from very deep inside, but it came on quickly and forcefully, and soon Monty was walking the streets of Paris, with no destination or goal in mind.

On his walk to nowhere, Monty started pondering. Pondering his life in the Ancien Régime, and then how it had dramatically changed since the Estates-General were called and beyond. How he had been elected as a young deputy, and taken the lead there, and joined the Jacobin Club, and signed the Tennis Court Oath, and proclaimed an end to the absolute rule of the monarchy, and gained more and more influence, and had been the leading advocate for Louis's death, and then kick-started the Terror, with a thousand other notable events in between.

The one constant through all of that, though, was Paris. Paris had always flourished despite - or because of - the upheaval around and within her. The salons were still busy and productive. The taverns, the markets, the places of business, they remained crowded and profitable. The people, Supreme Being bless them, were constantly pushing the people in charge, reminding them that the Revolution was something that was never finished. Paris was an ugly, demanding thing, but it had also kept its head. In that way, it was beautiful and perfect in its imperfections.

And now, on this night, it was losing all of that. The city was tearing itself apart. Not due to threat from a foreign invader at its doorstep, but doing so within. Because of Royalist infiltrators, or perhaps just factional politics. Was this his doing? Had he pushed things too far? What if he had taken a different course? He himself, and many in his faction, had talked a big game about the necessity of the Terror, and how harsh measures were required if France was to come out of the emergency in one piece, but now that... this... was staring at him in the face, he started to wonder if this was the right way of going about things.

He drew himself out of his own thoughts for a second to see where he was. He didn't immediately recognize it. There were no landmarks nearby, nothing that made the city famous. None of his friends or colleagues (to his knowledge) lived here. Just an anonymous street, then, one of thousands, where the true beating heart of the city had always lied.

He was not alone. Standing opposite from him, about twenty yards away, was a lone figure, holding up a musket, clearly aiming for him.

It was a straight shot. All of the buildings were closed, the windows boarded up. There were no alleyways to duck into. He had nowhere to run.

Sighing, Monty decided to at least get some satisfaction out of this before he met his end. "And who is ultimately to be responsible for my demise?" he called out to his soon-to-be assailant.

"You are, citoyen." There was a loud crack, followed shortly by a muted "thud" as the shot hit its target.

Montmorency bled out on that anonymous street, his last moments occupied by precisely what his attacker had meant by those last words.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

autolycus has been killed! He was: