STATUS Unclear – doppelganger troupe, contracted performers turned reluctant accomplices
RANK Lead performer & spokesperson, Jouvaine Jongleurs
ACCESS LEVEL None – civilian, backstage & house passes only
AGE Unrecorded – doppelganger, true age unknown
YEARS OF SERVICE Unrecorded – troupe’s history in Chuza undocumented
SECTION No Section 18 affiliation; resident act, Regent Playhouse Theatre
FIRST ON RECORD Session 41 – performing “An Absence of Light” at the Regent Theatre

The Jouvaine Jongleurs billed themselves as a touring theatrical troupe, resident that season at the Regent Playhouse Theatre with a limited run of “An Absence of Light” – 8gp a ticket, and advertised on the strength of how unnervingly realistic the performance was.

A printed notice at the door warned patrons of elven blood to attend the “Natural” edition rather than the “Art” version, which turned out to be some of the most honest advertising in Chuza that season.

Nine identically cloaked performers opened the show in a slow hypnotic rhythm under a satyr-costumed drummer, one voice rising into a reedy, fluctuating song – and the whole hall went quiet and stayed that way, entranced rather than merely entertained.

At the centre of it stood TeeCruise: monotone, exacting, and unnervingly calm even once the show stopped being a show.

None of the nine were actors.

All nine, TeeCruise included, were dopplegangers – contracted, by their own later account, to hold the Regent’s audience enthralled for one night while Dr Griffiths moved a set of rune-trapped “appreciation” notes through the crowd.

It came out only once the notes started detonating, when TeeCruise took Agent Raven’s exact face and form to explain itself directly:

“Griffiths has lied about his intentions. Our contract is complete. We did not know of his violent nature or true intentions. It is not our way. We cannot be a part of this.”
Whether that was the truth, or simply well-timed, is still argued over at Section 18.

FILE NOTES

Once the killing started, the troupe split its attention rather than its loyalties.

Some kept the performance running to hold the crowd; others shifted shape mid-riot, mimicking the audience members closest to a live note and physically pulling it from their hands before it could go off – TeeCruise itself took Raven’s face a second time to do exactly that.

When the theatre began to fill with smoke, the survivors didn’t stay to fight anyone.

They scattered into the basement through the scenery rigging and the counterweight ropes and were gone before the building came down.

Boosay arrived with Dranathess soldiers not long after, rounded up three of the jongleurs at kemercannon-point, and came within a hair of executing Krusha on the spot before something stopped him – he lowered the weapon, said nothing more about it, and left with his three captives.

Their fate has never been confirmed.

The jongleurs left free, TeeCruise among them, gave statements to Section 18 afterward that were, by every account, generous to the Agents – praise for their conduct, sympathy for what was filed as an act of terrorism.

Krusha has never fully believed a word of it, on the theory that the whole troupe was always meant to double as Griffiths’ escape route, whatever anyone told Section 18 afterward.

“Griffiths has lied about his intentions. Our contract is complete. We did not know of his violent nature or true intentions. It is not our way. We cannot be a part of this.”

TeeCruise, wearing Agent Raven’s face, at the Regent Theatre

STATUS: Filed under The Unknown. Nine dopplegangers who signed on for a night’s performance and either ended up horrified by what it turned into, or played every side of the Regent Theatre disaster exactly as intended. Filed as-is, with a standing note that sympathetic testimony from a shapeshifter is not a phrase that inspires much confidence at Section 18.