Hellfire Club

Hellfire Club
Also called:	The Order of Saint Francis of Medmenham
Affiliation:	Faction Paradox
Bases:	Wycombe Caves, 1806 London, mid-1890s Malebolgia, USA, 2003
Leader:	Sir Francis Dashwood Sebastian Grayle Brigham Elisha Dashwood III
Size:	a few dozen
First appearance:	Minuet in Hell
Appearances:	AUDIO: Seasons of Fear, Jago & Son PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street

The Hellfire Club was a semi-secret organisation of politicians, businessmen and other powerful people for drinking and debauchery. A number of people used the organisation over the centuries as a cover for attempts to conjure demons and aliens in the guise of Lucifer.

History

The club was created to mock the prevalent religion of the time. Sir Francis Dashwood continued the tradition in the 1750s. (AUDIO: Minuet in Hell) Mary Culver was a member of the original Hellfire Club. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street) The Eighth Doctor described their activities thusly:

[Francis Dashwood's] so-called Club was simply a group of chums who spent weekends with him at Medmenham from time to time. No doubt they drank more than was good for them, but the nearest thing they had to a manifestation of the Devil was one of their inebriated number sticking horns on his head, and jumping out of a bush yelling "Boo!" Certainly Sir Francis was interested in reinventing the Greek Eleusinian Mysteries, but that's a far cry from human sacrifices and pacts with anyone called Lucifer. The Eighth Doctor

The Club fell into disrepute in the 1760s and faded into obscurity. In the following decades it was sporadically reformed by various people making serious attempts at summoning arcane beings. (AUDIO: Minuet in Hell)

In July of 1778, Shardlow lost a game of backgammon to the Celestial Toymaker at the Hellfire Club and was forced to become his slave. (PROSE: The Nightmare Fair/AUDIO: The Nightmare Fair)

Scarlette, the proprietess of a brothel on Henrietta Street in London, claimed she was the last Madam of the Hellfire Club. She used her arcane knowledge and the Eighth Doctor's help to defend Earth from an invasion of Babewyns in 1782. (PROSE: The Adventuress of Henrietta Street)

19th century

In the early nineteenth century, Lord Aldbourne set up his own version of the Hellfire Club in Devil's End. (PROSE: The Eight Doctors)

There was a version of the club in London at the end of the 19th Century. Henry Gordon Jago and Henry Gordon Jago Jr found the dead body of Ruby Valentine there. After Jago Jr was kidnapped, Jago went there to find him. Jago and Litefoot found a menagerie in the building. It contained a coffin of an alien being. (AUDIO: Jago & Son)

21st century

By 2003 a new Hellfire Club had been set up in Malebolgia (the 51st state in the United States of America) to assist in electing Brigham Elisha Dashwood III as their first Governor, and to continue the drinking and debauchery of their predecessors. Dashwood summoned the demon Marchosias, but the subsequent invasion of Psionovores was prevented by the Eighth Doctor. This chapter of the Club was presumably shut down soon after. (AUDIO: Minuet in Hell)

Alternate timeline

In an alternate history where Sebastian Grayle achieved immortality, the Eighth Doctor and Charlotte Pollard arrived in Wycombe Caves in 1806. Grayle had set up the Hellfire Club as a psychic conduit for summoning the Nimon to Earth. The Doctor and Charley interfered with Grayle's plans and stopped the invasion, but not before the Nimon had consumed most of the current membership. (AUDIO: Seasons of Fear)