Devious Journal Entry

Greetings, travelers!
These are the wondrous adventures, both delighting and dreadful, of Lady Alexine Pankhurst, not just another run-of-the-hill late-Victorian-age-of-an-alternate-universe, steampunkish, gaslight fantasy romance archaeologist superheroine.
She is a daughter of the reclusive Scottish scholars Lord and Lady Pankhurst, who not only translated the "Book of the Somewhat Undead" and the travel journeys of Abdul Alhazred from Ancient Arab into the Black Speech of Mordor - without ever leaving their stately manor around Fionn Loch/ Northern Scotland - but they also wrote lengthy treatises on the Underdark creatures and Quartary plesiosaurs that their peasants fished out of Loch Fionn – none of which ever got published by the Royal Geographical Society in faraway London.

Bored by the life in her stately manor, young Lady Alexine Pankhurst decided to become an Archaeologist and shortly afterwards received her PhD at the "Arkham Academy of Ancient and Arcane Arts" in "Archaeology and professional gravediggerism". She graduated "summa cum laude", mostly because she saved the Academy at graduation day from an attack of reanimated mummies (who were trying to resurrect the Egyptian Demon God Apophis) by throwing the Rosetta stone at them. However, since that day Alexine Pankhurst and mummies never were on good terms again!

In her first years, her adventures were not highly successful, although she managed to dig out the tiny pyramid of "Amun-her-khepsef-Pareherwenemef-Khaemweset", the fifth most famous dog of Ramses II's third wife Maathorneferure. Also, she tried to organize a daring expedition to the mythical city of R'lyeh at the Pacific pole of inaccessibility, but never made it further than the harbor of Inverness.

This all changed in 1889, when the "George Edward Challenger Aether Oscillation Wormhole" unexpectedly opened over the tepuis of Venezuela, unleashing all kinds of Mesozoic monstrosities over this poor Victorian Age. While mad scientists all over the world struggled to understand this phenomenon, people all over the world struggled not getting eaten alive by these antediluvian abominations. Whole empires fell, when dinosaurs ravaged the land. U.S. president Grover Cleveland was trampled down by a devilish Diabloceratops when visiting the newly founded state of Montana, the Empire of Brazil fell under the feet of titanosaurides, and Louise, Princess Royal of the United Kingdom, died from laughter during her wedding with Alexander Duff, 1st Duke of Fife, when she realized that the mighty Velociraptor had in real life fluffy and somewhat pinkish feathers!

All this meant little to Alexine Pankhurst, who already knew very well how to deal with mummies and sprites, vampires and wights, golems and wraiths, with discarded Egyptian gods and other nuisances.   So, she continues to perform her profession in these troubled times of the Aether Flux vortex, thanks to her Parasol of Pain and her Lasso of Loathsomeness, using dinosaurs occasionally even for cleaning up her files and folders.