P: Pressure phantoms

Part of what seems to have driven quite a lot of the industrial capacities in the free City of Jubylon was hydraulics. Pressure pure and simple, driven by steam and later electricity. It helped operate the locks of the canals, both above and below ground, factories, theatres, lifts, elevators and countless other things. The City had plans for such a project for quite a long time, which fell by the wayside during the Doctors’ coup”. As this project was not directed related to health issues, few in the new government had an interest for it and so it was shelved until Marcus Noir showed up one day and asked if the project could be privatized. That way, his company could run it and the city and various other companies could pay for it. Marcus Noir was described as a short and imposing man, even though he was a fairly quiet and private person. He had long hair and a trimmed beard and usually only dressed in shades of green. One particular thing that he was willing to talk about was that both his father, aunt, three uncles and a older female cousin had been members of the High Circle, the deposed aristocratic government and that he did not blame the new government for their actions of taking power or sending his relatives and ancestors into exile.
He had worked for the Fischer-Marinkår companies as a mechanical engineer before setting up his own company. They seems to have parted on admirable terms though, since the Fischer-Marinkår company loaned him money at quite a generous rate. Their investment certainly paid of, as the “Jubylonian Hydraulic Power Company” became a massive success, making Marcus Noir a millionaire over the course of a decade.

One rumour that seems to have stuck to Noir was that he had summoned unknown entities to help him with his project, “the pressure phantoms”. He owned at least two hermetic books by doctor Victoria v. F. West and none of her medical writings. Perhaps due to Noir’s characters, the rumours seems to have only grown in size. It did not help that when one of Noir’s old friends, David Sascha, died after he tried to destroy Noir’s reputation by claiming that the engineer had killed a former lover. Noir’s former lover reappeared (fully healthy) shortly thereafter, having escaped from being Sascha’s kidnapping. Shortly afterwards, David Sascha died from a factory machine exploding. Noir had a waterproof alibi as he was not in Jybylon at the time and was clearly shocked by Sascha’s death. Two assassins were found dead in a ruined warehouse at the Lampadephore Airship Port, which seems to have imploded due to a pipe malfunction. Many people were sceptical about that claim, because no errors was found with the pipes. The strange sounds the pipes sometimes made and the fact that Noir survived two attempts at assassinations and one burglary of his house due to odd hydraulic incidents did wonders for the spread of the urban myth of the pressure phantoms.