Ok so i wrote some notes for another hc thingy for how Dr Jackall’s side of the Barkingham Palace dungeon happened, just a bit like on how he pulled it off (until he didnt). Its all pure headcanon and written in about 40 minutes without spell check so uh voila

- Ok lil more context 4 da jackall man. I’ve mentioned before that I hc him as the mechanical engineer of barkingham palace; he was hired to set up defenses for the palace because he is very skilled with mechanics n stuff so he got brought on board to basically be their repair guy along with creating some mechanical defense systems. And to his credit he was really good at his job! He put some fancy new stuff on the mechanical shizz of the palace and even made some automatons that stood sentry around the entrance of Barkingham. Eventually tho they were just replaced with normal dog guards and Jackall didn’t have all that much to do around the palace except do mindless little fixins like unclogging the toilets. You know, fun stuff

I’ll write another post about how I think his motives to make the mr hound potion came to be down the line bc I don’t wanna clutter this post up but anyway hc time for how he orchestrated the heist

Again this is purely headcanon and aint canon at all; I just wanted to write my interpretation of the dungeon all down somewhere  

- Barkingham palace classifies its inhabitants as either essential or inessential. Essential people there are like (of course) the queen and chief whip, along with the guards, so basically the queen and everyone directly around her. Inessential are all the people who do the other jobs, cooks, janitors, anyone else, and that means Jackall. Both kinds of staff live in Barkingam, since the inessential people still are needed daily (barkingham is tightly knit and theres not all that many people there compared to other places with royalty. Come on, its Marleybone, no one wants to work directly with royalty when they could just steal from them). If you aint essential staff, you get cleared out of the main hall every night and just go hang out in the far reaches of the state wing til your job starts again at the crack of dawn the next morning. SO that means that Jackall and all his nonessential coworkers have no access to the heart of Barkingham. That’s where Catrin Cheshire comes in.

- Dr jackall chose the night that everyone would be distracted with the opera singer Catrin Cheshire to finess the jewels away from the queen. Palace staff are informed of when the queen is being entertained by a certain person a few days in advance so Jackall had ample time to find Cheshire days before and bribe her into letting him sneak into the Main Hall of the palace while she was getting set up. Cheshire isn’t a criminal, but hey, 100 pound is 100 pound.  While she and her (real) opera squad were getting set up and distracted the guards, Jackall snuck in behind her with his hypnotizing automaton and got into the main hall.

- Jackall let lose with the noxious gas on everyone in the main hall and made sure to hit chief whip with a second dosage; don’t want anyone to throw a fuss when they notice the queens missing, after all. Speaking of the queen, she wasn’t hit with the gas very much, if it all. She was in the corner of the main room when jackall entered, so he just grabbed her out and kicked the automaton in, letting it roam around the hall while he hustled the queen to the elevator lift to the roof. The queen just goes with him since she thinks he’s just someone who works for her and who’s totally not plotting stuff.

- Around this time, he goes back into the state wing to cover his hide if anyone should try to stop him, which is why the player sees him in the state wing before he leaves to “inform sherlock about the opera sneak theif” where he really just goes to the rooftop again.

- By this point, the guards definitely know somethings wrong, and those that aren’t hypnotized are crowded around Sherlock and Watson in front of the palace. (Again, this is Marylebone. Crime runs rampant everywhere in this world. The guards are not the brightest and will easily leave a very vulnerable palace under attack if it means they can listen to the guy with the pipe talk about how he sent a twelve year old to stop the evil do-er.) 

- THIS allows the other people Jackall hired to sneak around them and make their way to the rooftops. (mr poole and mr utterson were hired by jackall with fat stacks of cash in exchange for them hanging out in the airship incase anyone tried to stop the queen-kidnapping) Mr Poole and Mr Utterson used the escape ladder seen in canon to get up to the roof and then airship while Margherita Vizzini just used her swords as ice picks and scaled the wall to get up. Utterson and Poole hoisted the queen into the airship, and Jackall was juusttt about to get into it himself when that pesky Young Wizard showed up again. 

- It was all going so well until they kept meddling, huh? Jackall fled to the airship after Margherita’s defeat, and tried his best to whoop the literal tween standing between him and the Queen’s jewels, but it didnt work out.

And that’s it for that. Sorry I know this isn’t super interesting but Ive been racking my brain all day long about how I thought the dungeon would play out from Jackalls side. Thanks if you read all the way through!