Summary: Even before the outbreak of the "War in Heaven", Faction Paradox was regarded as the most unpredictable (and opportunistic) of the time-active powers. Aware of the precarious nature of history—but under no obligation to protect it—while the other Great Houses were still attempting to uphold a "universal order", the Faction was following its own, far more ambiguous, protocols. Ruthless, secretive and at times difficult to understand, it's hardly surprising that the Faction should have eventually found itself under siege from its rival powers...

Notes: All dialogue and plot comes from the script for The Eleven-Day Empire, written by Lawrence Miles. Since I am working with a draft version of the script, parts of this have been cut from the final audio play.

I'm just doing this for fun, and for those who are unable to listen to the audios.

The Faction Paradox Protocols

Part One

The Eleven-Day Empire

Prologue

Let's be honest: it's the stupid questions in life that get the best answers. For example, here's some history for you. See what you make of it.

On September the fourteenth, 1752, the English lost eleven days out of their calendar. It had to happen, sooner or later. England's calendar was eleven days out from the rest of Europe, so the great thinkers of the day... that'll be the philosophers and the civil servants, you know the type... they decided to put the date forward by a week and a half. The people went to bed on September the second, and when they woke up it was the fourteenth. Simple. So, the obvious question—the stupid question—is: what happened to the missing eleven days?

Those great thinkers I mentioned probably wouldn't have had an answer to that, which is a shame, because the answer's this. The missing days were taken by Faction Paradox.

Well, that's not really a big surprise, is it? Out of all the Great Houses... the Great Houses being the ones who've made it their business to look after space-time in general, the ones who've insisted on running history behind the scenes since before us poor human sods crawled up out of the oceans... out of all the Great Houses, Faction Paradox was the only one that really knew how to step over the line. I mean, while the others were all busy with their time machines and their nice shiny bits of technology, the Faction was busy calling on the spirits of eternal darkness and sacrificing raw virgins, just for a laugh. So when the Faction's people got themselves thrown out of polite society and kicked off the old homeworld, they needed somewhere else to set up shop. Which is why they took those eleven days out of English history, and locked them in a little bubble of time outside of the rest of the universe, where almost nobody else could get at it.

And of course, that was where we all lived. In the Eleven-Day Empire. In a little ghost-city that—back in the real world—would have been called London. In a timezone all to ourselves, where the buildings were made out of shadows and the sky was the colour of blood twenty-four hours a day. Cut off from the other Houses, and cut off from the rest of history, at least until the elders needed to pop out and recruit some new family members from the universe outside.

So. Think of this story as the answer to a stupid question. The story of Faction Paradox, the story of the Eleven-Day Empire, but most of all the story of a girl who called herself Justine. Just one of a thousand little Cousins who'd been drafted into the family estate.

Justine's the important one here. Try to keep that in mind.