Man endeavors not a voyage to the ends of this Earth without anticipating, or even yearning for, adventure. Yet for all their preparations and in spite of the strange and mystifying reports from the Miskatonic University Expedition only a scant two and a half years prior, none of the men whose story are here relayed to you could have expected what they ultimately endured on that remote, desolate continent of ice.
Amazing and terrifying though it will seem, as it passed through journals, telegrams, newspapers, wireless broadcasts, rare recordings, hastily written notes and reluctant tales from survivors, as it unfolds you will nevertheless come to sense that there is more at work here than fiction would ever hope to portray.
As with so many stories, this one too has its roots in the greatest city on Earth.
New York – September 1st, 1933
It had been a warm summer that year, with temperatures peaking at 102˚F, hardly the kind of weather in which one's mind turned easily towards the South Pole and its frozen wasteland. Preparations were underway for the Starkweather-Moore Antarctic Expedition. Docked at pier 74-B on the Hudson River was 20-year-old Gabrielle, a 7,500 ton steamer, which would serve as home to the expedition members and the ship's crew, all eighty of them, for the next several months as they made their way south to their ultimate goal, Ross Island.
The purpose of this journal then, is to present, without judgement, the surviving material and the narrative it presents, whatever the consequences.