FREE LANCES IN DIPLOMACY

The Free Lances of Diplomacy is a private intelligence organization.

Its activities take place shortly after the turn of the 20th Century, the first recorded adventure of its members being in 1910, just a few years before the commencement of the Great War, and its last being a bit over 20 years later in 1933, just a few years before the start of the Second World War.

When we first meet this small group of adventurers they were three men who would decide that there existed a need for action above and beyond what the government of the United Kingdom was doing in the way of intelligence gathering and then logical responses based on that intel. This trio of initial members consisted of determined people, all "members of numerous clubs at home and in the colonies" whose "private incomes enable them to go and come as they please". A fourth individual of considerably different background would soon join their ranks.

The leader of the group and the first person to actually take action which would informally bring the others together, is Lord

George Trevor. We are told when we first meet him that "[his] family had been landed gentry of Devonshire ever since the Yorkshire Trevors and married into Welsh and Devon Houses during the Tudor period." He was "a peer of England, one of the most celebrated in all Europe" and "a trained athlete of unsuspected strength and activity, in the prime of life - who passed for a lazy, good-natured, eccentric clubman of sporting proclivities - but who was secretly the most brilliant diplomatic force of his time".

"Without his inseparable monocle, Sir George's eyes had the controlled yet penetrating expression of a man accustomed to command." While his persona when not earnestly at the business of the Free Lances is decidedly a disinterested cavalier, out for his own amusement only and largely bored to tears at that, that affectation is dropped and he becomes exceptionally serious and to-the-point.

His disguising of his true nature is explained by him to the sitting British Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs as "whatever suggestions or services I might care to give are likely to be much more effective if I am supposed to be merely a country squire whose daily life is too well known to permit any suspicion that I am interested in larger matters". He would go on to reveal that prior to this first action we are allowed to follow, he had already been at work staving out a major scandal involving a powerful rule in India.

It will be some time after our introduction that we learn an astounding new fact about Trevor.

The other two charter members of the Free Lances are Freddy Gilbraith, 'The Honorable' minister of Parliament whose connections and antecedents had been known for a century or more making him a prominent figure in the social life of London, and the Earl of Peveney, a "still youthful" man whose family "possess an equally open record, backed by generations of active and influential ancestors".

The fourth member of the Free Lances of Diplomacy is the beautiful, graceful, and still quite young but impressively intelligent and daring Lady Nan Trevor, once the ward of Lord Trevor and now his recent bride.

These four will use their vast connections and friendships and, as needed, wealth to strive to keep the nations of Europe from entering a foolish war and, when even those tremendous talents proved insufficient, to strive to ensure His Majesty's people would come out on top.

Note: Quite some time after these adventure began to appear in magazine format, a collection of nearly a dozen of them was released which contained an amazing twist to the identity of Lord Trevor. It postulated that the real Lord Trevor had been in the back country of Mysore (Afghanistan and Pakistan region) when he took gravely ill, his servants abandoning him in fright.

It chanced that arriving in that very spot were a handful of adventure-seekers. Chief among this group was the incredibly wealthy and extremely experienced Cyrus Grisscome (of whom more can be learned in page on the Agent of the Government). Also in the party was the famous and noted war correspondent, Culpeper Zandtt (see The International Bureau for more information on him, as well as Abdool Mohammed, a young khan educated at Oxford.

Immediately it was noted that Grisscome bore an uncanny resemblance to the now dying Lord Trevor who took up an incredible idea and who spent his remaining days teaching Grisscome his entire family history as well as a litany of friends and recent activities. It was the hope Lord Trevor that Grisscome could combine his own wealth with that of Lord Trevor as well as the title and position and estate that came with it, all for some greater good.