Knives and Hellfire
(Explaination)
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Timeline
| Map Point 1 New England, Probably New York (~1885 through Mid-June 1902) |
Riker lived here with his parents untill he was 17. At that time, his parents got divorced and his mother moved to California to live with relatives. |
|---|---|
| Map Point 2 Southampton and London, England (June 26, 1902 and a few days following) |
Riker arrived in England through Cowes, the entrance to Southampton's port, and took a train to London to see the coronation of a British King, only to find that the coronation has been postponed. He decides not to return to the ship he was working for, and finds a "channel tramp" headed for Havre, France. |
| Map Point 3 Havre and Paris, France (A few weeks, late-June/early July 1902) |
Riker is in Havre very briefly, but tours Paris for a few weeks with the help of a private tour guide he makes friends with. Riker accidentally befriends a well known (knife wielding) killer. Later, he meets a girl and falls instantly in love with her, only to lose her over a simple mix-up. Brokenhearted, he returns to Havre and signs on with a ship bound for Lisbon. |
| Map Point 4 Lisbon, Portugal (less than a week, July 1902) |
Riker only stays in Lisbon a short while, but he does have time to trade some cigarettes to a guard for a private tour of "The Fortress" (prison). Inside the prison, he sees a life-sentence prisoner who has trained a pack of rats. He then heads to Funchal aboard a square-rigger. |
| Map Point 5 Funchal, Madiera Islands (a few days, July 1902) |
Riker spends a short while in Funchal. He visits the vineyards but soon decides to ship out. He goes aboard a small passenger steamer of Brittish registry that's headed for Algiers. |
| Map Point 6 Algiers, Algeria (A few days? Late July/Early August 1902) |
Riker gets into more trouble in Algeria, when he buys a slave girl to keep a large, rough looking man from buying her. However, he soon discovers that he cannot set the girl free, and in fact he his indebted to provide for her for two years under local law. So Riker has to find someone to take care of the girl, all the while avoiding the mean customer he out-bid, who is now trying to kill him (with a knife, of course). Riker narrowly manages to put the girl into safe hands before getting away on a ship bound for England. |
| Map Point 7 London, England (around August 9, 1902) |
Riker returns to England just in time for the coronation he missed earlier. He signs on with an Irish fishing boat at Liverpool. |
| Map Point 8 Various places in the United States, California (between 1902 and 1912) |
After a brief visit to Ireland, Riker decides that it's time to visit home. He returns to the U.S. for several years, trying to make a living on land. He spends most of his time working for railroads. Sometime around 1912, Riker gets word that his mother is seriously ill, and he travels to California to see her. During the journey, he has a vision of her, and later finds out that the vision came at the exact time of her death. He decides that it's time he went back to the ocean and signs on as a purser for a steam ship in Los Angeles. |
| Map Point 9 Longitude 175 East, Latitude 49 North (July 14, 1912) |
Riker witnesses a very dramatic underwater volcanic upheaval, most likely related to the eruption of Novarupta a few weeks earlier. |