Click to enlarge. Art by Ron Miller: http://www.black-cat-studios.com/

Watch our brand new CALL OF CTHULHU game LIVE tonight at 9:00pm Eastern time (8pm Central, 6pm Pacific). Watch LIVE here.  Interact with us during the game, on the Lovecraft eZine Public Message Board.  Lots of fun to watch, whether you’re a Call of Cthulhu player or not!

Do you like AT THE MOUNTAINS OF MADNESS? Well, read on…

In May of 1845, the Royal Navy vessels H.M.S. Erebus and H.M.S. Terror quietly departed their harbor in the Shetland Islands. Commanded by Sir John Franklin, they sailed on a quest to discover and chart the long-sought Northwest Passage. They were big, strong vessels with provisions for seven years. They were seen in July of 1845 off Greenland—and were never seen or heard from again.

Search parties set out starting in 1848, but they have never found the Erebus and the Terror—only bones and artifacts that the sailors left behind as they tried to escape, and tales passed down in Inuit tribes of the great ships held fast in the ice.

At first, the searchers eventually learned, the Franklin expedition made excellent progress. But this ended when the Erebus and Terror were beset by ice north of King William Island on September 12, 1846. On April 5, 1848, the doomed vessels were abandoned and the remaining crew members made a futile attempt to march south to safety at trading posts in Canada. Unfortunately, their trek failed and all succumbed to starvation, disease, and the elements.

Your investigators are part of a long-term expedition to the northern reaches of Canada. Sponsored by the University of Toronto and the Canadian government, the plan is for a select group of experts and scientists to live and work in a permanent base camp on the Adelaide Peninsula, near the location of the remains of some of the Franklin Expedition members. Your aim is to study life in the arctic and search for the final resting places of Erebus and Terror.

The expedition left Toronto on June 10, 1927 and will return on June 14, 1929. It is now November 10, 1928. For a year and a half, the team has lived in the Arctic. In the summer it’s dead rock and water. For the rest of the year, the world from horizon to horizon is ice.

LIVE tonight at 9:00pm Eastern time (8pm Central, 6pm Pacific). Watch LIVE here.  Interact with us during the game, on the Lovecraft eZine Public Message Board.