Tales of the Lovecraft 1b

The well armed landing party carefully started to explore the structure. The overhanging wall covered a number of openings that seemed to lead into the depths of the structure...

 

There was movement from one of the openings! A giant creature resembling  a scorpion slowly appeared as the crew backed away!

Attempting to fend off the scorpion the crew backed away from the slow moving arthropod.

The crew hastily clambered up onto the top of  the walls.

The scorpion seemed almost confused as it wandered around...

Backing onto the web, A flash of movement as a giant spider rushes out of the cavern and launches itself at the scorpion!

A frantic melee ensued until the scorpion was finally overcome and dragged into the caverns... (second round of combat spider threw a 5, scorpion a 1!)

Silence fell and the arena was empty again.

The landing party could have gone exploring but... discretion won out...

... Time to continue the voyage...

This was one of those scenarios where things didn't go the way I originally planned. The original idea was to go down a passageway under the structure using the Sorceror's Cave set. Getting the temple base out I noticed the spider's web and thought 'have to use it'. Diced to see if anything came out into the open - it did. Diced again - wasn't the spider. So looked through my box and chose the scorpion. Dice rolls basically resulted in the humans being pushed back rather than killed. Originally intended using swarms of little spiders, saw this one in the box and thought I'd use it instead. Finally, decided no one in their right senses would want to go into the caverns/passages after what had happened so everyone went back to the ship and it 'happily' sailed off into the sunset.

Tales of the Lovecraft 1

We entered another region of dead and dying weed. Recent experience told us that a landmass was often at the centre of such regions...

Hopefully an island could supply us with wood for fuel or fresh water.

But.. it wasn't really an island. A structure made up of cyclopean stone blocks rose from the surface of the sea.

Taking soundings we found we could berth the Lovecraft alongside one section of the structure.

We made sure that a watch was kept on the seaward side.

A landing party was dispatched and clambered to the top of the blocks.

To find that the centre of the structure consisted of a dank sunken square...

There was a sense of death and decay. Unhealthy looking toadstools, etc, and a smell of decay...

In one corner what looked looked like a giant spider web...

 Note: The spider web is real. I am assured the spider wasn't all that poisonous and that the swelling should soon go down. If not, chances are it still won't be fatal.

Coming home

 

The brilliant light far out at sea could be seen as far inland as the docks in Newhaven.

Soon after a vessel was seen sailing up the river...crew seen to be frantically trying to clean it up a bit before docking!

People started to gather upon hearing rumours it was the SS Lovecraft, presumed lost at sea over three years before...

As the identity of the Lovecraft was confirmed the crowd starts to get bigger.

The crew were met by a sizeable crowd when it docked... including a lot of excited friends and relatives...

Few notes on Rent-a-Crowd: Bought over 3 years ago, cheap 'painted' architectural models acquired for just this sort of scenarion. I repainted and based them (plus added a few Airfix Civilians from the 60s or 70s!) because the originals were too badly painted even for this use. I painted them all with basic flesh skin tones then thought 'Perhaps I should put a couple of non white people in this'. Then I looked up ethnic compositions....  If Newhaven is considered to be in Maine, Population 93.68% white.  If Scotland, population 96.02% white , if Norfolk (UK!) 97% white, Northumberland  97.6%. So, basically, I'll continue painting my pulp figures as white!

I feel that I needed to tie up this particular thread... but if I get round to it there could be a 'Tales of the Lovecraft' to fill in part of those 3 years!