Pride of Yirrimburra pt. 1

 Session Notes (2/11/22)

Game: Call of Cthulhu

Scenario: Pride of Yirrimburra // Terror Australis

Players: 4 (1 missing)

In our session zero, everyone made characters.  We have Abby, the boundary rider for Copperhead Ranch, just north of Adelaide, and her co-woker: a Jillaroo named Polly.  Abby emigrated to Australia when she was younger, but Polly was born here.  Visiting the ranch is a Yank geologist named Millie.  She was brought here by a research grant, but also by strange dreams of blood in the soil.  On their train ride into Yirrimburra, they meet Vena, an indiginous Tasmanian man looking for Jack Ramsey.

Most of these details were established in session 0, but Vena’s connection was established during this evenings’ session.  I asked the players to decide how to attach themselves to the scenario’s hook: Jack Ramsey needed to be someone’s uncle and they all needed a reason to visit him in Yirrimburra.  Abby’s player volunteered as the niece, and her companions from the Copperhead ranch were easy to sort into this trip.  Vena’s player came up with a solid lead to be looking for Jack, and we began with the train ride into Yirrimburra.  They roleplayed Vena overhearing the trio talking about Jack, which gave them all a quick way to join them all together as a group.

The scenario is large and sandboxy, full of interesting NPCs with various degrees of secrecy.  There are multiple, interwoven mysteries, and the town is full of Australian myth and ghost stories.  The opening does move them quickly from the train station, to the Yirrimburra Arms (a bar) and then to Jack’s farm, where things are a little weird and they discover he has died and left the farm to his niece.  Lots of cryptic and spooky things happen along the way: they hear about ghosts in the mine, the farm animals give them a little scare, the front door of the farm is booby trapped, and Jack is in a position or terror and agony, although he died of a heart attack.  It sets up the town and the mystery really well and simply.

It took the whole session to roleplay through each scene, and I was focused on painting each scene descriptively, and introducing the characters they met in a way to help them remember.  They met Fred MacKenzie, town patriarch, Constable Wise, the town’s only cop, Florrie, the talkative barmaid, the disgruntled mill worker Ken, and two characters I invented for the scenario: old timer and lover of ghost stories Noah, and Carter, a living Great War veteran.  I added Noah so there’d always be someone in the bar with a name who could tell yarns, and I added Carter to give them a lift, and to be able to talk about some of the other young men who had died in the war.  His missing leg can also be a hook for the future scenario “Long way from home” when we wrap up Pride of Yirrimburra.

It went well, and the session ended with MacKenzie hiring them to find out who was stealing from his mine.  The players enjoyed the introduction of mystery, and spent a fair bit of time during the game speculating as to what might be going on with Jack’s death.  I’m not sure how the next session or two will go: from here on out, it is all wide open action, all up to them.  I’m excited to see how the scenario develops.  It is just a matter of being prepared: all the NPCs sorted, and all the locations ready to go.