Being a True and Concise Account of the Voyages of His Majesty's Galley, the HMS Sunchaser

My name is Orlando Guiles, or Orn to those I count among my friends. After the unfortunate death of Mac, the duty of maintaining this chronicle has fallen to me. I cannot help but rue the day that we were assigned to this mission. It has been nothing but a string of disasters. The blame cannot fall on Captain Jacoby's shoulders, however. Indeed, he has been an isle of calm for the men to look to for reassurance. Rather, it is this thricecursed island that we have been sent to secure in His Majesty's name. It is a den of horrors unlike any we have ever seen.

On the day we landed, Salty had just finished overseeing the construction of a base camp, and we had settled down to our evening meal, when a number of strange men emerged from the close-set pines nearby. Their skin was the most extraordinary shade of grey, and they never spoke. Their clothing was made from the hide of an animal we did not recognize.

Through hand gestures, their leader made us to feel welcome, and indicated that we should follow him and he would hold a feast in our honor. Feeling strangely at ease with these odd natives, we did follow them, much to our eternal regret.

They led us west through the pines, following a twisted path until we were all but hopelessly lost. Just as the sun was starting to disappear beneath the waves, we emerged into a clearing filled with more of the natives. Something about them struck me as odd, but I only realized much later that they had no women or children among their number, and by then, the information could no longer be of use.

They set us down around a great feast, and we marveled that they had prepared it in the few short hours we had been on the island. Other than eating a bit from each dish, to show us the food was not poisoned, our hosts did not touch the food, which seemed most peculiar to me at the time. I caught one of the natives smiling, and saw that his teeth were filed to points! I resolved to keep my wits about me and I whispered my observation to Captain Jacoby.

He laughed good-naturedly at my fears, but I note that he did no, drink any of the exotic beverage the natives placed before us. I tasted strongly of alcohol, and I believe that he shared my feeling of being fattened up for the kill.

It was only after some time we noticed that "Big" Jim Sullivan had embarked on an unusually long trip to the bushes. The men began to grow fearful, but Captain Jacoby, God bless him, merely smiled and loosened his pistol. The men calmed down and followed his example, or I fear we might have lost many more men than we did in that first rush.

As though sensing our distrust, they came upon us then. They made no sounds except for the thud of their strange grey axes and daggers. Many men were killed before they had a chance to react. Captain Jacoby stood and shot the natives' leader through the head, and we gathered around him and forced our way out among the pines where we wandered in the darkness, the natives sniping at us with arrows until Cookie recognized a mark that he had slashed into a tree and we followed the trail our suspicious cook had blazed through the forest back to our camp. Cookie was hailed as a hero, and the Captain himself praised his ingenuity.

We found that we had lost 32 members of the crew that evening, nearly half our number! The Captain vowed a bloody revenge on the natives, but it was not to be. Ely, our cartographer, went out into the pines by himself that day to see what land mar he could find. He came back in later that evening with an arro in his side. The Captain was furious, but decided that we shou move the camp in order to better protect ourselves while we scouted out this island.

Heading southeast around the coast, we were most surprised find a stately log cabin built almost on the beach itself. Pulling in for a look, we found that it housed the sole survivor of a shipwreck. He was an old man, amazingly clean shaven and neat in appearance if you overlooked the holes in his clothing. After the initial surprise of our appearance wore off, he wept like a little boy to see civilized men again. He introduced himself as Gabriel, shook our hands with a fearfully strong grip. When we asked how he had avoided the natives for so long, he pointed at the Bible kept above the doorway and said it frightened them off. I noticed that it had a most unusual symbol inscribed on its cover, almost like an eye within a star. I wish now that I had the foresight to copy that symbol down.

As we sat talking with him, Ely, who was getting over his wound by now, started to enter the cabin to speak with the Captain, but shied away from the doorway as if in pain. Gabriel seemed to go mad and lunged for poor Ely with a knife, and Captain Jacoby was forced to shoot him dead. By this time the men had grown fearful and asked the Captain to abandon the mission. He merely smiled and said that the job was not yet finished. He told the men that we would stay but a little longer, and if the taking of the island appeared impossible, then we would go.

That night, we began hearing drums from the island. I woke from my slumber upon hearing Ely cry out in his sleep, as if he were being murdered. When I went to check on him, I found the most curious thing. He was sitting up in bed with his mapmaking tools out, drawing. However, when I tried to speak with him, he seemed to be in a trance. As I watched, mystified, he drew a detailed map of the island, including things and places he could never have seen. He even wrote in commentary of events that I knew had never happened, such as Diggs and Mac falling from a crag, and myself getting cut (an oddly trivial event to list, I thought at the time). When he finished the map, he awoke, looking pale and drawn. He had no memory of drawing the map, and when I insisted on inspecting his wound, there was a strange grey tone to the flesh around it. Ely fearfully made me promise not to mention it to any of the rest of the crew.

The next morning, he was gone, and the drums had stopped. His room was untouched, and the map was still where I had last seen it. Pocketing the map, I reported his disappearance to the Captain. The men found footprints on the beach, and the Captain insisted that we follow and try to recover Ely, as he was no doubt in the grips of a fever-spawned delirium. We followed the prints to the west, towards a series of crags that I felt a growing dread of. When I saw that the prints lead up the crags, I begged the Captain to turn back, but he would not hear of leaving a sick man to die on this island.

As we neared the top of the crags, a rope snapped, and Diggs and Mac fell to their deaths. The Captain reluctantly agreed to turn back after that. I was dizzy and had to be helped back down.

We moved our camp to the southern shore of the island, just as Ely's accursed map said we would. I was beginning to feel a strange inevitability to the progress of events, and I must admit that I sank into a dull malaise of despair. The second day in camp, as I was gathering driftwood for the fire, I cut my foot on a small sliver of stone. When I bent to inspect it, I learned why Ely had taken care to list this event on his map. The stone was the same greyish color as the natives' weapons.

Since then, I have monitored the slow advance of grey up my foot, taking care to conceal this fact from my shipmates. When Cookie died while scouting to the west, I had already dug his grave when they returned with the body, earning me an odd look from the Captain.

I fear that I know what we will find on the western shores of this isle, but I know that I will never see those strange ruins, and for that, I am thankful. I do not think my mind could bear up to the strain. I wait nightly to hear the drums that will call me into the jungles. I only pray that I have the strength to put an end to myself before I end up like Ely, dancing around the flames of a heathen camp, and dreaming of the future.

using ely's map

lights

The PCs are assigned to a follow-up expedition to discover the fate of the HMS Sunchaser. They discover the ship intact, but abandoned, and find Orn's chronicle in one of the cabins.

While vacationing in the tropics, the PCs take a small chartered plane into territory they've been warned away from. The engine dies, and they find themselves near an ancient rotted ship, containing a dusty old journal.

A recent storm has forced a landing (sea, air) on the island. While searching for shelter, one of the party finds the journal in a small cave, or perhaps on a body.

camera

If the characters can find Gabriel's cabin, they should find a copy of the Bible with an Eldar sign inscribed in chalk on the cover. While the Bible itself holds no power over the inhabitants of the island, the sign will keep the natives, and possibly other Cthuloid monstrosities, at bay.

The ruins on the west of the island could contain any number of Things from Beyond the Stars, perhaps even a sealed well containing an entrance into the realm of the flying polyps, or something even worse.

The area marked "The Bay of Dagon" certainly suggests that Deep Ones can be found near the island. The caves, on the other hand, would be an excellent site for nightgaunts to nest.

action

The cannibals have grey stone axes and arrowheads that not only inflict damage as normal, they have a chance of causing an investigator wounded by them to contract the "grey plague". Whenever an investigator is wounded by one of these grey weapons, he must make an opposed resistance roll using his CON as the passive characteristic, and the disease's virulence as the active characteristic. The disease's virulence starts at 5, and increases by 1 for each subsequent time the investigator is exposed to it.

Once contracted, the "grey plague" causes a steady loss of SAN (ID4 per day). When the victim reaches 0 SAN, the drums of the island call to them and they transform completely into a grey-skinned cannibal concerned only with pleasing the dark gods of the island. The cannibals, while appearing masculine, are actually asexual, and both sexes end up in a similar state in advanced stages of the disease. Children afflicted with the plague (mercifully) die. While no cure is mentioned in the journal, something should be made available to the PCs.

Once transformed or captured the PCs can be taken to a giant underground cavern or lair where past victims have been mummified, tortured, skinned, etc., Their remains (read: bones) line the walls, and an artificial light bathes the home of these natives. Whether or not the PCs escape should be based on the GMs style of play and whether this is an authentic Call of Cthulhu game or another role-playing game layered with dark Mythos flavor.

The world ends, just kidding.

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