Notes on another Fiasco story I was working on, "Fall of the House of Heather"
Michael Heather: Patriarch. 73 years old. Michael was born in Heather Falls and raised there. He was educated by private tutors flown in from around the world. He is highly intelligent and very charismatic. Has been wheelchair bound since the accident that killed his wife. Supposedly has never left Heather Falls.
Helena Heather née Shipman: Deceased wife of Michael Heather. Died in an automobile accident that also left her husband crippled.
Jeanétte Boucher: 32. Personal nurse of Michael Heather.
Thomas Heather: 38. Grandson of Michael Heather. Served as an Army officer in the Great War. Suffers from shell shock. Abusive and an alcoholic.
Rebecca Heather née Lowell: 33. Wife of Thomas Heather. Meloncholic.
Timothy Shipman: 27. Cousin to the Heathers. Episcopalian clergyman and family confessor. Daniel Heather: 18. Twin son of Thomas and Rebecca Heather.
Florance Heather: 18. Twin daughter of Thomas and Rebecca Heather.
Henrietta Waller: 53. House manager.
Paul Santiago: 66. Butler.
Julian Waller: 31. Son of Henrietta. Stablehand and hound master.
Clarissa Reasor: 25. Serving girl/house maid.
Heather Falls: A large estate and the surrounding land. The main house consists of 3 stories, plus an attic and a basement/cellar, comprised of 43 rooms. There is also a stable, a small "boarding" house that the staff live in, a chapel, a repurposed bath/outhouse, and a repurposed smithy. Beside the chapel there is a family cemetary. There are two hunting cabins a few miles from the house.
In 1941, the great manor house of Heather Falls burnt to the ground, finally ending the legacy of the Heather Family. Though it had sat empty for nearly four years, it had loomed over the neighbouring town of Sparrow Bridge, haunting it with the memory of the town's founding family. No one knows what happened to the Heathers, at least those that survived, after the spring of 1937. Perhaps they strove on under different names, with different families, in the hopes of outliving the curse that swept over them.
September, 1936
Michael Heather sat in his study, a small room with dark wood panelling, though for the manor house of Heather Falls, small was quite unlike what most would consider it. The room sat at the corner of the house, and two of the walls consisted of large windows, around which were hung dark and heavy drapes. Near one of these windows, currently open to let in the late afternoon breeze and the dying sunlight, stood a gilded chess table with a single chair beside it, though it stood empty. Michael Heather was crippled, his longs legs twisted now beneath a throw blanket, and as such spent all his time in a wheeled-chair. Michael sat in his chair straight-backed, his long fingers folded in thought before his strong chin, head bowed slightly so that his gaze swept over the top of the eloquently carved ivory and ebony chess pieces, to a point just beyond the chair opposite him. His dark eyebrows were knit in thought over his piercing blue eyes, which slowly went from unfocused to bright recognition of the faint knocking at the study door.