Trying to flesh out my Big Bads, so I'm going to dump some thoughts that have been moving around in my head.
I'm going to take the Victorian idea of the aether and use it for my world - it helps some of the tech work and no one's really sure how it works, but it does. It's also the same energy source (? for lack of a better description) that Nymphaea taps into to work her magic.
Related to that, these rocks that people collect (and that Jon has on his pocket watch chain) might be either concentrated aether or they've been infused with the stuff. And these rocks just might have latent properties - like giving off light or intense heat/cold - if I run with this I'm gonna have to keep it away from high fantasy territory, though.
The Brotherhood of the Jackal is going to be a group of cultists. They worship Nymphaea and are working to help her realize her goals. Nymphaea I see as a sorceress/priestess and an incredibly shrewd/patient woman. She has her eyes on the prize and she'll do whatever needs to be done to get it.
The prize being, I'm thinking, the return of her god/lover. Still working on this
The Brotherhood is going to be an intricate network of spies/criminals/wealthy patrons - they have people everywhere.
This unnamed British gentleman is the one who woke Nymphaea up (rather unintentionally. OR WAS IT?) and now he's working with her, helping her get acclimated to the modern world and sexing her up
And that's what I have. Thoughts?