Thu, May 12, 2005
The musketeers run from Siroc's metal detector demonstration when the royal palace is attacked by a single man cutting down the guards and heading for young King Louis. The man, claiming to be Siegfried (wielding the Norse mythical sword Notung), would have have made mince meat of Leponte if the mates hadn't intervened. Ramon is wounded dangerously; the Royal surgeon does a lousy backward job, but Siroc nurses him to health. The grateful King hands her the blade, which is authenticated as Ancient. Next she seems to have a sixth sense and manages to prevent more attempts on Louis's life, regardless of the weapon; he accepts her claim and offer. She will protect Louis full-time with the powers the sword grants. She even uncharacteristically orders a caught attacker tortured to death, yet finally kisses D'Artagnan passionately, but he senses she's no longer herself. Ramon warns the sword can take the bearer's soul. Laponte has all people of Spanish decent in Paris thrown into the Bastile, even wounded Ramon, whom D'Artagnan and Siroc free by smuggling a bomb in cross-dressing. When Mazarin hears she suggested Italians aren't much better, so the cardinal should be removed from court, he decides to take the sword away while she bathes, and thus learns her secret, so all three are sentenced to death for deceiving the king.
Tue, Apr 12, 2005
A dashing, cavalier highwayman worked his way from the French provinces to the roads around Paris, preferentially robbing jewelry from aristocratic ladies,who treasure the yellow scarf he leaves as as souvenir. D'Artagnan nearly catches him, but lets him go to 'save' a victim dangling from a carriage. A baby boy is anonymously delivered in a basket with a note begging D'Atagnan to take good care of it. Although he assures it can't be his, he quickly turns paternal. When the captain outsmarts the mates' attempts to hide the kid, he orders it brought to a nuns orphanage, but D'Artagnan decides to resign his musketeer commission instead, knowing how he missed his absentee father. However the queen insists to have D'Artagnan in the lead of a trap she sets for the highwayman in the palace and the boy is kidnapped while the captain babysits him, with surprising consequences.
Thu, Apr 28, 2005
The order of the black tabernacle has stolen the body of its First Crusade co-founder Amir Dyalamon, but didn't capture the main prize, a jewel known as the Eye of Gilgamesh, which that 'dark knight' stole as a renegade. Cardinal Mazarin is convinced that must be the doing of a traitor. His obelisk magic resurrects the crusader, who kills the thief (old knight Ivan Tavarsky), with his broadsword, before Ivan can honor his rendezvous with captain Duvall. Siroc experiments with (electric) energy as the biological essence of life, and is given the 'ordinary' body of wagon driver Latrobe, whom the thief fatally stabbed before the masked knights arrived to examine, as part of the musketeers' investigation. Meanwhile D'Artagnan generously accepts to bow away when Zak's latest flame, Mlle. Dubois, naturally falls for Junior, but they come across the knights and Zak is now viciously jealous. A book in the monastery explains about Amir, the powers of the obelisk, the order, and the Eye, which Zak accidentally finds in the stables where Ivan was hidden, but the dark knight is on its trace.
Thu, May 19, 2005
Innocent country brothers Marcel Le Rue and surviving firstborn Georges Le Rue, mistaken for the target (waitress Celeste's husband and the actual target), are left for dead by men in musketeer uniforms. The cardinal's men search in vain for a letter, as Siroc's spying invention (the rope-telephone) helps the friends hear their captain Bernard discuss in a café. Captain Duvall somehow knew the late mother Pauline Le Rue but won't give details, except to the queen, who despised the 'royal plaything'. George and Céleste attempt to exact their own revenge but bump into the real musketeers, and team up for the cause of justice both seek. The cardinal wants the letter and George alive, at all cost. The musketeers work out the De la Rue family was tax exempt and received a royal allowance till the mothers death. George may be Louis XIII's illegitimate son and potential heir to the throne if Luis XIV dies childless. With such high(born) stakes, the hardball starts.
Sun, Feb 20, 2005
Woried, captain Duvall tells the men puritan regicide Oliver Cromwell is visiting, the first British ruler who effectively subdued the Irish threat in England's back, to conclude a peace treaty with Mazarin, while boy-king Louis fears both. On the way back from a visit home, Jacqueline -not disguised- sees a man nearly hanged innocently, and gets him free fighting, fleeing and exchanging secrets. Arrived in the palace, Cromwell demands Mazarin in private to deliver him the royal exile. Back in musketeer uniform, Jacques is part of Cromwell's guest quarter guard, which successfully stops an attempt on his life, catches the perpetrator and lets him go. D'Artagnan takes the blame, hoping in vain the captain will protect him but is chained on Mazarin's orders for questioning, by the torturer as he won't talk, indeed doesn't even know. Jacques, posing as Jaqueline's brother, returns to the fugitive, who is no lesser then the English pretender Charles II Stuart, heir of Charles I (who Cromwell decapitated), who wants to marry her, but both must thus choose between that personal alliance or incompatible loyalties to their countries and crowns...
Sun, Jan 23, 2005
Jaqueline always beat her brother Gerard Rochey at fencing. When their dad is killed on the sword of the men of cardinal Mazarin, who rules during the minority of Louis XIV as his regent the queen-mother cares little for politics, and Gerard thrown in the royal Paris dungeons where his evil eminence presides over a satanic order of knights which honors king nor God, she tries to join the musketeers who guard it, cross-dressing as recruit Jaques Leponte, and succeeds by cheating at a sword-duel against D'Artagnan, cocky son of, who with is friends Siroc and Ramon just pissed off limping Captain Duvall who already put them on punitive prison cleaning duty for brawling with Mazarin's men. Thus they find her brother is unjustly imprisoned there, and one of the live guinea-pigs of the order's vile experiments, so they use one of Siroc's inventions, an unfinished flying machine, to free him so he can escape to colonial America. D'Artagnan learns she's a girl but accepts to keep quit, and one of the order's men they had to shoot is musketeer sergeant Moret...
Sun, Jan 30, 2005
For openers, D'Artagnan saves a baby from a riding cart. Next he teaches suspicious Jacqueline to enjoy a hot spring, taking only a fairly modest peek. Siroc has developed a submarine prototype, but captain Duvall declines joining the test-ride on account of the blue cheese-reek, while in fact he suffers from aquafobia. Duvall also allows D'Artagnan and 'Jacques' to go undercover to catch the Darwood gang of racketeers, whose ugly leaders Snout and Fishface just extorted a fashionable Paris shop. Alas they are quickly betrayed by an anonymous informer and cleverly captured. Cardinal Mazarin plans to have the musketeers regiment disbanded by setting them up with the gang's help as smugglers, to be exposed before minor king Louis's eyes during a lazy staged 'hunt' from an armchair (...)