Ticket of Leave #14: A Whale of a New Release

Today we are delighted to announce the release of Convicts & Cthulhu Ticket of Leave #14: Hark, Now Hear The Sailor’s Cry, written by Matthew Ruane. The PDF of this whale-sized (32 page) scenario is available for FREE right now from here on Cthulhu Reborn, complete with CoC7e stats.

This marks the 18th release for the Convicts & Cthulhu product line, and the largest supplement we’ve released to date for the setting. It is also our official GenCon 2019 scenario, and will be played out by groups in Indy in just a couple of weeks. [Obviously if you’re booked in to play in one of those groups, maybe don’t read the PDF until afterwards!]

As always with our Ticket of Leave supplements, this one is themed around one particular facet of life in the early Australian penal colonies … this time around it is centred upon the early maritime industries of whaling and sealing. Now, we are no particular fans of the slaughter of whales and seals for their blubber, bones and skins … but we can’t deny that historically this was an important part of life in the 18th and 19th centuries. Thankfully we’ve moved on from such barbarity (well, with a few notable exceptions …)

 

In creating this supplement and detailed scenario, Matthew has done something quite special — created a direct link between the Convicts & Cthulhu setting and the colonial world of New England, much beloved by H.P. Lovecraft. In this scenario, American whalers out of Kingsport, MA, have stumbled upon something quite horrific on their journeys across the Pacific in search of whales. And when their path brings them into the waters south of the Australian continent, an unexpected set of events has the potential to unleash Mythos terrors in a quite unexpected — yet typically destructive — way.

While the Convicts & Cthulhu setting is nominally limited to the era 1795-1810, Matthew has chosen to base this adventure slightly later, in 1812. There are several historical reasons for this choice … but one of the most intriguing from a plot perspective is that in 1812 Britain and America are at war! Half a world a way in the fledgling United States a conflict has erupted that will eventually become known as the “War of 1812.” In the colonies, news of this fighting is greeted with much interest and only serves to heighten the concerns raised when an American whaleship is discovered floating — seemingly derelict — in Bass’s Straits. The Investigators are hastily scrambled to find out what dire plot or deception those sneaky Americans are up to … but of course soon find themselves adrift in their own sea of troubles.

Ticket of Leave #14 is available right now, via the link below. It will soon also be up on DTRPG as a Pay-What-You-Want title (if you’d like to generously flick us some money to help keep the C&C line thriving!).

Ticket of Leave #14: Hark, Now Hear the Sailors Cry (STATTED version) [32 pages; 6.4MB]

As always with material published here on Cthulhu Reborn, this file is released under a Creative Commons License, which means you’re free to do whatever (non-commercial) things you’d like to do. If you do something cool with this scenario, say make an Actual Play recording of your C&C group running through the adventure — let us know and we’ll mention it here on the blog!