Emma Wentworth

Personal Description: A slight, pretty young woman of seventeen with an air of curiosity that outpaces her caution. Her bearing is that of a country gentlewoman — well-mannered and direct — but her eyes carry something older, the particular watchfulness of someone who has seen things that the polite world cannot account for.

Source likeness (official Regency Cthulhu Investigator Pack pregen, Chaosium 2022, on which the character is based; see Portrait above): fair-skinned and pretty, brown hair worn up in curls, a high-waisted white Regency gown with a coloured sash, a fan and “fashionable dress in a bright colour” among her things. The official line reads: “A young and pretty white girl. Emma spends most of her attention on her appearance, although her enthusiasm often spoils the demure look she is going for.”

Traits: Brave to the point of recklessness. Theatre-obsessed — a mania, drawing her toward performance, never away from it. Curious. Warm and direct in social encounters. Capable of remarkable composure under pressure and of extraordinary violence when cornered.

Ideology & Beliefs: Emma acts from instinct and compassion rather than ideology. She protects the people in front of her, confronts the things that frighten her, and has not yet learned to look away. Her courage is not philosophical — it is the practical courage of someone who has simply refused, each time, to stop.

Significant People: Georgiana Wentworth (sister, constant companion since Tarryford), Thomas Wyndham (British officer in love with her, maintained armed vigil after the Nightgaunt attack), Bridie Clarke (housemaid at Hawthorne Grange), Mr. Horatio Fairborn (distant cousin, provided London household at Gough Square).

Meaningful Locations: Tarryford, Wiltshire (home), Northlake Hall (the Long Corridor — first encounter with the supernatural), Drury Lane (theatre mania origin — the Drury Lane phobia is Georgiana’s), Palais Kinsky (Vienna residence), Thaliastraße 12 (current location, wounded).

Treasured Possessions: Aelfric Brooch (symbol of Order initiation).

• Major Wound — Knife under the arm (Session 9, August 8-9, 1814; HEALED by Session 4): Adler drove his knife up under Emma’s right arm during the struggle for the command fork at the Palais Lobkowitz. The wound is deep and serious — possibly nicking a lung. Stitched and bandaged by Dr Heinrich Voss on the morning of August 9. It reopened during the chaotic morning after the assault and was restitched, then stayed unhealed through the crossing to Egypt. By Cairo (Session 4, five-plus weeks on), it has healed naturally with time and rest rather than through further surgical treatment. Emma is no longer carrying a Major Wound — confirmed by the Keeper 2026-07-16; the tick still on the paper sheet is stale.

Manias

• Mania: Theatre. Emma is drawn toward theatrical settings and performance rather than away from them. Pulls her toward the stage, the playhouse, and the spectacle.
• Mania: Music. A compulsive draw toward music and musical performance. Given that the Aeternum Choir works through music, and that the Engine and the ritual sites are all musical in nature, this mania points her directly at the campaign’s central danger.

Phobias

• Phobia: Children (Chapter 2 — Silkweavers’ Guild, Lyon, July 1814). Acquired after the second ciimba encounter in the tunnels beneath Lyon. The first ambush on the road to the Puyrault estate planted the seed; the Silkweavers’ Guild assault crystallised it into a permanent phobia. Triggers whenever children appear in threatening contexts.

Indefinite Insanity — RECOVERED

Emma was indefinitely insane from 2026-07-16 (table time) through the middle voyage. The Keeper ruled (2026-08-23) that whatever of the condition had survived the crossing was fully wiped away by the visit to the pyramids with Thomas — Giza, 18 September 1814 — the shaded chair, the silver anklet, and two evenings earlier the Eid music arriving as nothing but joy for the first time since the Long Corridor (see the Session 5 wrap-up). Sanity stands at 35 of a starting 60. The theatre and music manias and the phobia of children remain on the sheet as lasting conditions and can still surface on future Sanity losses.

• Horrors (Chapter 0.1 — The Long Corridor, Autumn 1813). Squat, headless, fur-covered creatures with fanged mouths on their torsos, encountered during the expedition through the portal at Northlake Hall. James Bennet was consumed. Emma survived the retreat.
• Nightgaunt (Session 6 — Palais Kinsky, August 7-8, 1814). A faceless, oily-skinned, bat-winged creature drawn by the Engine’s harmonic resonance. It shattered Charlotte’s window, slashed her, then grappled Emma and began dragging her toward the window. Emma bit through the creature’s neck, tearing away flesh. Adrien killed it with a sword thrust. The creature dissolved into black goo. Thomas maintained an armed vigil outside Emma’s room for the remainder of the night.
• Harmonische Wachter (Sessions 8-9 — Palais Lobkowitz, August 8, 1814). Bronze-scaled, almost-human creatures deployed by Adler via his command tuning fork. The first dropped through the stained-glass window and killed Mikhail. A second tore a guest in half in the withdrawing room. Emma took a Major Wound from Adler’s knife during the scramble for the fork.

• Georgiana Wentworth — Sister, fellow investigator since Chapter 0.1
• Adrien de Montferrand — Viscount, party host, Order member
• Freddy Cavendish — The Honourable Frederick Cavendish, social connector
• Katherine Ward — Order operative, spy, joined Session 7
• Varrio Harrowmont — Order member, medical expert

Location: At table, Garden Reach, Calcutta, evening of 9 October 1814 (Chapter 4, Session 9) — the dinner is unfinished Condition: Physically uninjured; Sanity 35/60, recovered from indefinite insanity (at Giza with Thomas, 18 September). Manias: theatre and music. Phobia: children. All three live and none fired this session — and she is billeted in a household containing a two-year-old Carrying: The silver anklet with bells and charms (Thomas, at Giza); blue faience scarab; Kashmiri shawl; travelling kit Open threads:

• She invented her sister’s cover story in front of the whole table. Georgiana’s gloves are now publicly a fashion, on Emma’s authority, and the story holds only until a second incident
• Alastair Glennie, eighteen and a Company writer in the shipping office, is smitten and could not say a word of it. He is a live social asset nobody has costed
• Harriet Courtney controls the pairings and put Thomas in with Arabella Fitch rather than with her
• Named aloud from the chancel at St John’s on her first Sunday in Bengal. Calcutta knows her name and nothing else about her
• Little Freddy lives in the house. Her phobia of children has not yet been put in front of the hosts
• The Wentworth account. The family’s Indian remittance has stopped twice running and the factor will not say why. Her own future solvency, and her thread has still not begun. See Chapter 4 Wentworth Account
• Merchant meetings are her domain and she has not yet sat in one
• The unnamed courtship with Thomas continues; he travels on with the party
• Holt left the party at Chandpal Ghat without the apology he owed her and her sister. He is somewhere in Calcutta Knows (exclusive): —

Narrative detail below is current to Chapter 4, Session 6 and earlier.

Emma is with the party on the Suez caravan road east of the Wadi al Tih caravanserai, riding on toward Suez as of ~24 September 1814, having left Cairo before dawn on 20 September after four days at the Auberge du Muski over Eid al-Fitr. The Vienna chapter is closed: the Harmonic Engine is destroyed, the Brotherhood cell scattered, Caroline Hartley safe, and Thomas’s duel with Graf von Sternberg resolved in Thomas’s favour at dawn on 10 August. The Major Wound from Adler’s knife — reopened and restitched the morning after the assault, unhealed through the crossing to Egypt — has healed naturally over the five-plus weeks since, with time and rest rather than further treatment.

Music mania remains a live, tiered condition. It first surfaced in the Palais Kinsky dining room the morning after the Vienna assault (waltzing to phantom music, calmed only by Thomas’s singing), recurred under Stavros’s galley humming aboard La Speranza, and took her fully during the ship’s becalming south of Crete: Emma sang the funeral rite alongside Georgiana and Katherine but was lost in the music itself, singing without intent while the dead climbed the hull. Georgiana alone carried the rite to completion and laid the dead to rest. The becalming is resolved; La Speranza delivered the party to Alexandria on 9 September.

Her relationship with Thomas — sealed with a kiss on the Linienwallgasse duelling ground after his duel with Sternberg — has continued through the voyage: he gave her a Kashmiri wool shawl at Trieste, bought her a veil in the Alexandria souk, and received her gift of a silver St. George medallion at Rosetta, which he now wears under his shirt as a standing habit when things turn bad. At Giza (Session 5) he traded a cufflink to a guide for a chair and parasol in the shade, then gave her the silver anklet with bells and small charms he had been holding since Alexandria; she wears it now, and it rings softly when she moves. It joins her own blue faience scarab, bought to match a peacock-silk gown made for her in Alexandria, as the matched tokens of a courtship neither of them will name aloud. Her manias (theatre, music) and her phobia (children) remain unresolved but untriggered since Vienna.

A quiet turning came on the festival evening in the inn courtyard: listening to the joyful Eid music, Emma felt no terror in it for the first time since the Long Corridor — no occult overtone, no dread, only pure and uncomplicated joy. Her music mania is what let the joy in so completely; the moment is a genuine recovery beat, not a cure, and the manias remain live.

On the Suez crossing (Chapter 4, Session 6) the courtship with Thomas deepened another wordless notch. He dug her alcove door out of the sandstorm’s drift before she was awake and shared a blanket with her at the cold night fire, and neither of them named any of it. The murder at Wadi al Tih was pure human horror with no Mythos in it, and the storm’s high pitched wind — music-adjacent, the kind of sound that has taken her before — did not turn on her this session. Her recovery beat from Cairo held through the desert. Both manias (theatre, music) and her phobia (children) remain live but untriggered.

The party’s attention has shifted fully to Calcutta: the Calcutta cult cell and the Kali Puja ritual due 25 October. Giza and the wadi are behind them; the road now runs the last stretch to Suez and the Red Sea passage to India, and it carries one new passenger — Elizabeth Ashby, the confessed murderer the party chose to let travel on.

Emma in the veil Thomas gave her in Alexandria. Original art — the campaign’s public-facing likeness for Emma.

• Sister Bond: Georgiana is her sister; they have travelled together since Tarryford
• Thomas Wyndham: Devoted, protective British officer in love with her; caught Anna mid-jump on the port-cochere; refused to leave Emma’s bedside after the knife wound
• Graf Sternberg: Austrian officer who pursued her formally; his drunken insult at the Masquerade led to a duel challenge — dawn, 10 August, pistols, Linienwallgasse. Resolved in Thomas’s favour; the thread is closed as of Vienna’s end.
• The Party: Full member since Chapter 0.1, no character changes throughout the campaign
• Aelfric Brooch: Symbol of Order initiation