A Wallaroo Alternative

I came across a really fantastic alternative to the Wallaroo encounter in the campaign book. It builds it up a lot more, and tells a much more well rounded story.

As suspected, the sound comes from an animal—a sooty albatross has found his way into the tank, and has broken his wing. The pathetic bird grows still upon being illuminated, staring up at the investigator with unblinking eyes. The bird’s feathers are ragged and covered by half-frozen whale oil, and it’s clear the creature has been living on the human remains.

Yikes. And that’s not all.

A Brief Notice

I’m not dead.

Nor am I insane. So far.

I am however a father now, and time is scarce. We haven’t had a session of this campaign in a while, but I do have several sessions recorded that I also haven’t released yet. Unfortunately I don’t have both sides of the latest session, which is quite disheartening (if for no other reason than it will be harder to pick up once we get back into it).

I’ll try and gather the party again in the new year and finish what we began. Hopefully you’ll still be around.

Tekeli-li!

Vredenburgh

I was by struck something that seemingly cannot be a coincidence, but of which no hints of a relationship or any sort of explanation is given in the Beyond the Mountains of Madness book itself. I can only assume that it is an easter egg-like wild goose chase (or seed for any Keepers who, God help them, want more side adventures), but I must admit it confounds me somewhat.

Specifically I'm talking about the Vredenburgh family, and their propensity to appear throughout the BtMoM storyline. Historically, the first one appears in 1838 in the Poe's The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym.

“A sailor, Peter Vredenburgh of New York, is lost overboard on Jan 10th. Keeper’s note: the Grampus was owned by the firm of Lloyd and Vredenburgh, but no connection between the names is revealed. ”
— Page 179

And furthermore, the bark Grampus, is owned by Lloyd and (the second) Vredenburgh, although no connection between the two Vredenburghs are ever made in Pym's tale.

The third one appears some time after 1897, when Stanley Edgar Fuchs wants to sell the Pym manuscript, believing it to be fake.

“The advertisement was seen by Nathaniel Vredenburgh, a wealthy ship owner in London. Vredenburgh wrote at once to Fuchs offering $500 for the work, but by the time the letter arrived Fuchs had already sold the signature to Percival Lexington.”
— Page 326

And the fourth one of course, is Henry Vredenburgh, who comes to captain the Starkweather-Moore Expedition's ship, The Gabrielle, after the unfortunate death of Captain Douglas.

Three or four generations of Vredenburghs, spread out across almost a hundred years, all involved in some way with the Pym story and the Antarctic? Something's fishy.

I asked Chaz Engan, author of Beyond the Mountains of Madness about it, and he confirmed that indeed, there are purposefully plenty of Vredenburgh's, but that there is no actual connection between them; just straws for the investigators to grasp at.