Gentleman Convicts (2017)

From the introduction:

When most people think of the term ‘convict’ in the context of the early penal settlements of Australia, they automatically picture lower-class rabble from English, Scottish or Irish society transported to the colonies for some kind of petty offense. And the vast majority of convicts sent to New South Wales and later Australian colonies were exactly that type of person, drawn from Britain’s criminal or labouring classes. But those weren’t the only type of convicts that arrived on Antipodean shores: some convicts were actually gentlemen (or, occasionally, ladies) from more socially ‘respectable’ backgrounds who had ended up on the wrong side of a magistrate’s sentence.…

While the plight of such so-called ‘Gentleman Convicts’ was theoretically no better than any other prisoner, in practice their personal wealth meant they expected – and usually received — treatment considerably better and more advantageous than most. This Ticket of Leave supplement looks at the Gentlemen Convicts of the early convict era, providing some historical examples as well as a lengthy scenario sketch. The latter sees the investigators drawn into the strange supernatural mystery surrounding a society of Gentlemen Convicts whose members have inadvertently run afoul of a particularly disgusting and relentless Cthulhu Mythos threat.