Dr Watson and Tart with a heart and a gun for In Her Majesty's Name

Here is Dr Watson to go with last week's Holmes.  He is also depicted in country attire but Nick Eyre at North Star has dropped a hint that they may work on a "town" Watson and Holmes, perhaps based on the look of the characters in the Jeremy Brett Sherlock Holmes series.  This is good news as it indicates that there will be more figures in the range.  Watson from the Scotland Yard Company was, like the whole of this new company, sculpted by Mike Owen rather than Steve Saleh who did the first four companies.  There is no discernible difference in style or size however.  Possibly the faces are better on the new figures.

I also wanted to have a go at one of the ladies so here is the "Tart with a heart and a gun" figure which was one of the stretch goal figures for those who signed up for the pre-order.  She does not appear in any of the official companies in the book but rules author Craig Cartmell in a comment on his excellent In Her Majesty's Name blog says he is working on a new list which will include her. 

Actually, I have an idea for my own company in which she will feature as Eva von Tarnhelm, an undercover spy for the Prussian Tarnhelm arms manufacturing company.  Daughter in law of Alberich von Tarnhelm her peculiar appetites have made her a liability even in German society so she was dispatched to London where, under the name of Hattie Eve she runs a superior brothel off Piccadilly.  This is located not too far from the United Service Club at 116 Pall Mall, the senior armed forces members of which are prime targets for the unscrupulous Eva and her talented group of Eastern European and very "professional" young ladies.

An aristocrat in her own right, the six foot tall Eva married the diminutive heir to the Tarnhelm fortune Michael von Tarnhelm (known to his family as Mime).  After just one month, however, after an evening of drinking too much Schanpps with Eva,  Michael fell down  the stone steps of his Bavarian castle; a vegetal folly of recent construction designed by Christian Jank and featuring massive underground laboratories where Michael, uninterested in arms, was trying to build a monumental organ which could replicate all the sounds of the symphony orchestra with just one player. He died instantly according to the second doctor who examined the body.  The first doctor who examined the body seemed to think that he had received several blows to the head as well but, unfortunately, he fell off the rampart of the castle into the gorge below while giving this opinion to Eva.  The question of whether either man fell or was pushed was never asked; not after Eva seduced her father in law Alberich on the evening after her husband's funeral, where he was immolated on a mountain top near the castle.  Eva, dressed in a black tunic, wearing chainmail and a black helmet complete with wings, sang Brünnhilde's "War es so schmählich" from Act III of Die Walküre in her thrilling soprano. She suggested that the laboratories in the castle be used to develop new weapons for the coming conflict, away from the spies which both knew the French and British had placed in their main factory.  Recognising a kindred spirit Alberich made Eva his heir and sent her to London to see if she could discover the extent of the British infiltration into his organisation.

Posing as a high class madam and recruiting as "operatives" a cadre of disaffected women from the minor Baltic regions of Europe her London operation is so successful she plans to open a sister facilty in Paris.

As a widow in Victorian London Eva von Tarnhelm would be expected to be celibate and wear black for the rest of her life.  Her alter ego, Hattie, enables her to satisfy her base desires and act in as scandalous manner as she likes.  She remembers her husband by wearing black underthings (as widows should do) and a cameo likeness of him around her elegant throat.  She is most grateful for everything she has subsequently been able to do without him.

When on less horizontal service she is armed with a Tarnhelm Blitzwerfer arc pistol.

Next up: there's constabulary duty to be done...