YOUR MISSION, SHOULD YOU CHOOSE TO ACCEPT IT...
Returning to 1969, injured and insane, with pockets full of Liao and pursued by Hounds, the team arrive to find all of the CHRONOS team dead or dying, having suffered an identical Hound attack. Dying from terrible wounds, like bone deep paper cuts, the Head Gardener gives the team
her IMF security clearance code and gasps that she she should have warned them, and mentions files in the safe.
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The files in the safe lay out the truth about what happens to those who repeatedly travel in time, with mission report transcripts, distressing recorded interviews, sketches made by Chrononauts before they died and copies of the patterns found when trying to transmit the sketches.
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Now the colour testing makes sense, and the changes they are all suffering every time they use the Viewmaster. There are creatures who come for you from the angles and corners, who hunt you and consume you, relentless and ravenous, if you step out of time.
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The team put in a call to IMF HQ to be told ‘keep going -
we’re having some problems here but we’ll support you any way we can’.
The only thing anyone can remember about the figure who held back the dogs was her yellow t-shirt with the word King on it. Mr Brock is sure he's heard the phrase and a research requests produces a redacted file from Agent 17 about The King in Yellow.
Realising Erika Gul, Lady Saffron, Captain DeRoy and KING clubber are all the same person, the team decide to recalibrate CHRONOS to look for The King rather than the diamond, assuming this was her meaning that they 'call her'.
CHRONOS finds what could be the signature in 1973. With even Mr Jacob's dead, they will need to operate it entirely themselves. Exhausted, hungry and with no clear idea of what they are going to find, they tell CHRONOS to take them to 1973 and the King in Yellow...
THE KING IN YELLOW
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SEE ALSO “MASKED ONE”, “YELLOW PILGRIM”, “UNSPEAKABLE ONE”
AND THE “TATTERED KING
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Sir, I would like to add this note to indicate I still feel there is valuable research to be carried out in this area. I understand that no more funding is available but I should like to stress I think this is a mistake. I have not yet been able to prove the existence of the research subject, but it seems evident to me that some creature/person unknown can be found in the literature and linked to the sightings reported by the Temporal Team before the 1936 incident. We need to research this ‘King’ (cf. Señor Amarillo) before encountering them again.
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Their words are heard directly in the mind, causing an indescribable sense of insignificance before a cosmic presence. Some people feel a uncontrollable ecstasy or a
sense of utter doom, when they hear the King [...] The King’s voice is described as the whisper of thousands of people speaking at the same time [...] The legendary stare of the King causes a wave of uncontrollable panic and primitive terror. The bargain of the King is absolute and not be
entered into lightly and the price unclear.
A wave of sensations and emotions, many of them absolutely inhuman, affects those who are close, struck by a confluence of sweeping stimuli. Many do not support the experience and simply detach themselves from reality, sometimes forever. Others find themselves disturbed, gifted by visions and prone to outbreaks. There are those who crave to repeat the experience, plunging into eternal servitude [...] Others claim that to contemplate the true face of the Yellow King is to come face to face with the principle of cosmic decay, the deathly march of time that will one day devastate all reality.
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I believe the being we call the ‘King in Yellow’ can manifest in our reality, albeit for short periods of time. These occasions are marked by creative outbursts by artists, social instability
and insanity that seems to contaminate people living in the
vicinity. Whether the King is truly present, or simply appears to selected persons is unclear.