Seams of Peril (2017)

From the introduction:

It is a fairly well-known fact that the early colonial history of Australia was greatly influenced by several significant “gold rushes” which brought great numbers of people to the new colonies, and ultimately led to the end of convict transportation. In the era of Convicts & Cthulhu, all those great discoveries are still four or five decades in the future. However, that is not to say that the penal colonies were entirely immune to a little “gold fever” – real or imagined.

In fact, the first “discovery” of gold in New South Wales dates to the very earliest period after white settlement. A convict named James Daley boldly claimed to have discovered a rich vein of gold at a location known only to him. Daley – a professional forger by trade – actively shopped his story around, creating more than a little buzz. Everyone, it seemed was excited by the idea that the newly settled land of New South Wales might yield valuable treasures. The only problem was that the story was a complete fabrication, apparently aimed at swindling the authorities long enough to earn Daley (and his favourite mistress) a ticket home to England.

This curious piece of scurrilous real-world convict history could, with minor tweaking, serve as an intriguing jumping-off point for a dark tale of Lovecraftian horror. After all, who’s to say that the strange ore that Daley produced as evidence of his find wasn’t really something far stranger than plain gold? And who’s to say that his motivations for such brazen hoaxing weren’t something far more sinister and occult; or that his ‘confession’ that the whole affair had been a hoax wasn’t itself a deception to cover a deeper mystery?

Included below are notes describing the strange case of James Daley’s gold, including a period account of the matter reproduced in replica. Also included is a scenario sketch “Seams of Peril” which takes inspiration from Daley’s audacious swindling, providing Convicts & Cthulhu investigators with a weird mystery with several possible Mythos connections. It can be set in any period covered in the Convicts & Cthulhu timeline with only minor adjustments; its account of an inland exploratory expedition is based on French NSW Corps Officer Francis Barralier’s initial journeys into the hinterland west of Sydney around 1802.