Captain Swing Rides Again - prelude

In the midst of the devastation and mayhem that was Charouse shortly after l'Empereur was ousted and the revolutionary council was put in place, Dandelion and his friends staged a daring rescue of Dandelion's brother Lucerne. Dandelion, whilst understanding the feelings of those that felt a revolution was needed, now saw as many atrocities being performed in the name of the revolution as there was in the previous regime.

Seeing the good work of Adrian Fletchyr and his friends helping to right these injustices, Dandelion came up with an idea. Here follows an excerpt of a letter to his brother Lucerne, detailing his ingenious plan.

Captain Swing

...assist Adrian Fletchyr to save people from the excess of the Revolution.

I left a calling card when we succeeded in helping Adrian's mission. I left a sorte card of the Tower torn in half. I left one half at the site of our hijacking of the wagon and the other half in the wagon.

I was able to get a job lot of these cards printed up in Freiburg. The Tower represents authority and prison. Therefore a torn tower represents escape and release from authoritarian or draconian rule. Trague certainly perceived the tower as much a curse as a blessing.

Obviously this group needs to be less bloodthirsty and more clever than is our usual methode. To aid this I was going to propose a mythical leader for this charitable body called Captain Swing. He would of course be tall, dark and handsome; fashionable and well spoken; stern and fearsome in combat and a true master of disguise. He would be mysterious and his captaincy could be naval, army or social. Obviously being mythical he would be more difficult for his enemies to catch!

I will try to get a regular column in the Freiburg gazette; "A letter from Montaigne" or at worst "The Fashion Report". I will use this to advance the cause of "The Torn Tower" and introduce Captain Swing. My initial thought is to describe my encounter with the black wolf and bend the truth to say I was saved by a man in the dark matching the description of Captain Swing. When his equerry comes up with his horse and refers to him we learn his name. Of course in the dark he could be almost any tall well dressed man.

Dandelion's tales of Captain Swing spread throughout the community like wildfire, and regular reports began to appear in the newspapers telling tall tales of derring-do.

In fact the only ones that seemed to be having any problem with Captain Swing were Dandelion's own companions. For some reason they were unable to handle the concept of Captain Swing being a fictional character, somehow confusing it with another of Dandelion's nom-de-plumes. There were several close calls when the companions almost landed Dandelion in trouble by revealing him to be Captain Swing!

Dandelion even devised a short ditty about the legendary Captain Swing. Suprisingly, the common folk of Montaigne took a liking to it, and it became oft-repeated:

Captain Swing of the Torn Tower

They seek him here, they seek him there
those revolutionaries seek him everywhere
Is he in the sky above
Is he in the earth below
where he is
no-one knows!

He leaves a sorte card behind
To show his power to humankind
Is he a ghost or spirit dread
He is the one who has us led

However, the growing legend was soon to come to a crashing halt. Dandelion and his companions were away from Montaigne for several months, and in that time, without Dandelion's impetus carrying the story of Captain Swing on, his fame began to dwindle, until one day, just before Dandelion and his friends returned, a disturbing new story about Captain Swing hit the headlines...