It is Christmas time yet again in Fallen London. The urchins sing carols, the clergy rail against drunkenness, the Bohemians consume enough honey and wine to blot out the long-lost sun- and that’s before they begin celebrating. Everything is as it should be. Well, almost everything.
The New London League of National Populists, the great refuse pile of London politics have dragged themselves together once again. This time, they mean business, intending to cause a proper racket and raise Cain over some issue or another.
The great march begins from the party stronghold in the old East End. The huge swaying column of oversized clay men, dock workers, plain clothes police officers and even, shockingly, women, drive through London like a second river. Clad in their unusual black uniforms and carrying red and black banners proclaiming unusual demands- the abdication of the Empress, extension of voting rights to Clay men, the demand for tougher actions against anarchists and the death of the masters- they cause a tremendous fuss. At several points, the overzealous youth clash with Neddy Men and even at one stage attempt to string up a passing devil from a lamp-post. The entire enterprise serves to put a good section of London off its day. It also provides a jolly spectacle for the common folk, to hear the blaring of old, flea bitten bagpipes, the torches lighting the endless dark, the massed chanting and roars of sycophantic crowd members.
However, their unusual leader, the Black-Shirted Radical, is unaccounted for. Party bosses refused comment, his ultra violent bodyguards equally unseen. It was only on the eleventh of December that the truth came out. For a few brief minutes, a huge, banned Union flag flew over the house of parliament, a long banned relic of Empire past. How this was accomplished was unknown, however, NLLNP offices were ransacked by Special Constables in the hours following and several arrests were made. The party’s official pamphlet Anabasis, Greek for ‘Ascent’, was officially banned and its presses smashed up by mobs of Neddy Men. The riots and counter actions left at least nine people permanently dead and a greater many wounded and temporarily slain. Even so, the Party hold certain plans for the New Year and the Radical’s dangerous ambition knows no bounds.