<!-- UNVERIFIED: whether the Middleman was itself destroyed when the Air Loom’s mirrored centre was destroyed, or persisted independently, is not stated in any vault source. Left unresolved rather than assumed. -->

The Middleman

Description

An entity that emerged from — or was given form by — the Air Loom, the mind-manipulating machine at the centre of Captain King’s Air Loom Gang operation. After the Air Loom killed Mr Gideon Crow in the basement of Captain King’s house, the Middleman assumed Crow’s physical body, wearing the dead man’s face for whatever purpose the Loom’s makers intended.

Abilities

• Assumed Gideon Crow’s physical form after his death.
• Drove the guests at King’s soirée to sudden, uncharacteristic violence — the Glossop twins attacked one another, Lady Bagtonbury snapped her own dog’s neck — through the Air Loom’s psychic broadcast.
• Maintained a mirrored psychic interior within the machine, populated with corridors of trapped victims, which Marina and Georgiana Dillwyn were pulled into when they descended to try to control it.

Weaknesses

Tied to the Air Loom apparatus itself. When Marina and Georgiana Dillwyn fought through the machine’s psychic interior and reached its mirrored centre, they destroyed it — whether this destroyed the Middleman outright, merely severed it from Crow’s body, or left it intact elsewhere is not recorded.

Encounters

Chapter 0.1 — Loom & Lucidity (Brighton/London). At Captain King’s soirée, the Air Loom’s influence turned the party violent. Marina and Georgiana Dillwyn descended to the basement, found Crow’s body, and helped King and Mlle Dumain attempt to regain control of the machine. Both were pulled bodily into the Loom’s psychic interior, fought through corridors of trapped victims, reached the mirrored centre, and destroyed it — ending the immediate crisis.

Connections

• Mr Gideon Crow — the body the Middleman wore after the Air Loom killed him.
• Captain King — co-creator of the Air Loom, from which the Middleman emerged.
• Mlle Marie Lucile Dumain — co-creator of the Air Loom.
• Marina Garrick — one of the two investigators who destroyed the machine’s mirrored centre.

Appearances

Relationships

• Possesses Mr Gideon Crow — Assumed Crow's physical form after the Air Loom killed him in Captain King's basement
• Created by Captain King — Given rise to by the Air Loom, the mind-manipulating machine built by King and Mlle Dumain
• Enemy of Marina Garrick — Destroyed at the mirrored centre of the Air Loom by Marina and Georgiana Dillwyn during Loom & Lucidity