The Crown's zombie slayers: Former members – During the Civil War Titus Defoe fought as a Roundhead for the Parliamentary forces, seeing action at the battle of Naseby, where his friend Jack received horrific face wounds.
Disillusioned by Cromwell's actions, Defoe retired from military life and worked a sedan chair around the streets of London with Jack until he had saved enough money to buy a cottage in Colchester with his young wife, where they soon had several children.
Defoe joined the employ of the lately restored King as a zombie hunter, dedicated to ending the undead scourge and bringing order back to the streets of London.
The machine was manned by Isaac Newton and Robert Hooke who, along with Boyle and other Natural Philosophers of the Invisible College, were spearheading the fight against the zombies with new weapons and new technologies – part of the ongoing angelically inspired Renaissance.
A gloating Jack O' Bite revealed to Titus that it was he who was responsible for the death of his wife and child, but the swirl of battle forced the two apart before an enraged Defoe could slay his former friend.
Embarking on a frantic ride back to London, a mortally wounded Fear staggered to Whitehall to find his brother If-Christ-Had-Not-Died-For-Thee-Thou-Wouldst-Be-Damned Jones, an agent in the British Secret Service.
Managing to narrow down Mister Quick's last known attack to a particular coffee house, Defoe realised that one of the patrons who were there that night had to be Mene Tekel himself – the six members of the King's own Cabal, Damned, and his spymaster Provost.
Later, in the process of closing down an illegal zombie pit fight, he encountered an enigmatic foreign diplomat, Countess Madalena von Konigsberg, or 'Prussian Blue', who seemed to have some measure of control over the undead.
Defoe and the Brethren of the Night tracked La Vosion to Ipswich and encountered the Diabolonians in their coffins, slaying all ten super-zombies – but not without the loss of one of their own number, the Spiriter, whose heart was torn from his chest.
La Voison fled unharmed, but the Brethren were able to track her back to London and thus learn her true identity, Defoe realising that she was indeed the same woman he had met some months earlier.
[2] Unbeknownst to any of them, however, the Spiriter – lately risen from the dead – had also returned to London in the meantime, and proceeded to release the hordes of undead kept caged at Wapping, awaiting exportation to the colonies and plantations as cheap manual labour.
While Robert Hooke demonstrated to the guests at the party his 'clockpunks', clockwork automatons with zombie brain matter, Damned and Defoe made their move against La Voisin.
When Damned and Aphra Benn managed to escape the burning building, they revealed to Titus the shocking truth – not only was Colonel Blood Mene Tekel, but this was only one of several faces that he had worn in his time – his true identity was Johann Faust.
Led by the zombie Spiriter, the undead from Wapping besieged the Tower and Isaac Newton's Mint, their intent surely to disrupt the alchemical production of gold that kept Britannia the world's principal power, forcing the Brethren to the defence.
With the hordes temporarily rebuffed, Defoe was free to attend to the matter of the imminent public execution of the Tower's most dangerous prisoner – Terra Moto, a misshapen monstrosity believed to be an angel trapped halfway when trying to shape shift into a human.
The battle for the Tower begins to go against the zombie hunters, but it has all been a ruse – Defoe attacks Faust, who flees Nonsuch House, taking Tomazine and her son with him as hostages.
With the help of Jack Ketch, Defoe dumped the body in St James' Park while the Brethren were fighting reeks in the fog, hoping to make the death look like an attack by the undead.