[Scenario Seed] The Disappearance of Colonel Fawcett.
May 15, 2015 10:33:12 GMT
Marnal and Hedgewick like this
Post by Catsmate on May 15, 2015 10:33:12 GMT
The Disappearance of Colonel Fawcett.
Well here it is, the promised account of the mysterious disappearance of Lieutenant Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett in the Amazon jungle in 1925, with stats and some ideas on how to use him in a Doctor Who game.
Percy Fawcett has been described as ‘the last of the great Victorian and Edwardian explorers’; he represented the end of that era, when amateur gentleman explorers would probe the furthest corners of the Earth in order to make new scientific discoveries and expand the empire. And frequently die in the process.
I obliquely referenced him in the Gandalf write-up. His disappearance in the Brazilian jungle around Mato Grosso in 1925 could easily be added to a Call of Cthulhu or Pulp game as well as Doctor Who.
Due to the length of this seed (it's over 18 pages long in Word) I'm splitting it into multiple posts.
Early Life.
Percival Harrison Fawcett was born on 18 August 1867 in Devon, the son of Edward Boyd Fawcett. His father who mixed the traits of a Regency rake (he was a friend of the Prince of Wales) and geographer (he’d been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society). Exploration ran in the family, Percy’s older brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett, was a mountain climber and an author of adventure novels (including some science fiction) with mystical leanings of his own.
After attending school in Britain, Percy entered the British Army at 19, not entirely willingly, and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery, serving in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). During his military service he became interested in geography, surveying and treasure hunting, though unsuccessful in the latter pursuit.
Fawcett became somewhat bored with Army life; it failed to satisfy his thirst for adventure. In 1901 he decided to learn surveying and cartography properly, by joining the Royal Geographic Society. He also worked with the nascent British Secret Service on occasion in Asia and North Africa (mainly Morocco), often while engaged for the RGS.
In the spring of 1906, at 39, Fawcett received his first exploratory assignment from Sir George Taubman Goldie, President of the Royal Geographic Society at the time. The Society wanted to survey the jungle area near the claimed borders of Bolivia, Peru and Brazil and determine where exactly the borders of the countries were, acting as a neutral party in the hope of reducing tension in the disputed areas.
It wasn’t an easy area to explore; disease was rife, along with wildlife both large and small, the indigenous population was known to be hostile in some areas. Not to mention illegal miners and rubber collectors, slave traders (and entire plantations using slave labour or debt bondage), political considerations and other purely human menaces.
Early explorations.
The 1906 expedition was Fawcett’s first, but he led several more expeditions into the jungle and rainforest over the next nine years; tracing the source of the Rio Verde (in 1909) and attempting to find the source of the Heath River, the border between Bolivia and Peru in 1910. Along the way he claimed to have had some encounters with wildlife never seen before, including an Anaconda described as ‘62 feet’ long.
Fawcett also claimed to have seen a small animal (the size of a foxhound) with canine and feline characteristics, now called the Mitla. It’s not known of this is a real animal or a misidentification of some other creature such as the elusive (but real) short-eared Zorro. In the Madidi swamps of the Beni river in Bolivia Fawcett wrote of finding the tracks of ‘some mysterious and enormous beast’ which he might be those of a living Diplodocus. This was one of the inspirations for Doyle’s The Lost World.
His first expedition, the border question, lasted from July 1906 to May 1907. His second, a long trek through the Brazilian jungle, lasted from March to November 1908.
The third expedition into Bolivia and was much shorter, taking up the month of May 1909. His fourth expedition, following the Heath with seven companions, led to encounters with vampire bats and being captured by the indigenous Guarayos. It lasted from June to October 1910.
His fifth expedition, April to December 1911, to Fawcett and a few companions in search of lost ruins that he believed existed near the upper reaches of the Heath River. None were found before they had to turn back.
Fawcett’s final pre-war expedition, running from 1913 to 1915, took him in a wide sweep around the Plains of Mojos, in the region of the Rio Tuiche, Rio Beni and Rio Mamore in Brazil.
However the Great War would delay his plans to search further for the lost city he believed existed in the jungle.
The Great War.
Percy Fawcett was still wandering around the wilder reaches of the Amazon when the Great War broke out in 1914. He returned to Britain in 1915 to rejoin the Royal Artillery, and served with distinction on the Western Front. Initially he commanded a battery of 18-pdr field artillery in Flanders, often placed only a few hundred metres from the front lines, positioned to hit German infantry attacks with airburst shrapnel.
Later he rose in rank to lieutenant colonel and commanded an artillery brigade of mostly heavy artillery in the counter battery role.
End of Part One.
Well here it is, the promised account of the mysterious disappearance of Lieutenant Colonel Percy Harrison Fawcett in the Amazon jungle in 1925, with stats and some ideas on how to use him in a Doctor Who game.
Percy Fawcett has been described as ‘the last of the great Victorian and Edwardian explorers’; he represented the end of that era, when amateur gentleman explorers would probe the furthest corners of the Earth in order to make new scientific discoveries and expand the empire. And frequently die in the process.
I obliquely referenced him in the Gandalf write-up. His disappearance in the Brazilian jungle around Mato Grosso in 1925 could easily be added to a Call of Cthulhu or Pulp game as well as Doctor Who.
Due to the length of this seed (it's over 18 pages long in Word) I'm splitting it into multiple posts.
Early Life.
Percival Harrison Fawcett was born on 18 August 1867 in Devon, the son of Edward Boyd Fawcett. His father who mixed the traits of a Regency rake (he was a friend of the Prince of Wales) and geographer (he’d been a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society). Exploration ran in the family, Percy’s older brother, Edward Douglas Fawcett, was a mountain climber and an author of adventure novels (including some science fiction) with mystical leanings of his own.
- One of those novels, The Secret of the Desert was probably the first work of fiction to describe a tank. Was this inspired by an encounter with someone from elsewhen? A loose-lipped time traveller for example, or a psychic like one his brother consulted? Did the entire Fawcett family prone to making odd acquaintances?
After attending school in Britain, Percy entered the British Army at 19, not entirely willingly, and was commissioned in the Royal Artillery, serving in Ceylon (Sri Lanka). During his military service he became interested in geography, surveying and treasure hunting, though unsuccessful in the latter pursuit.
Fawcett became somewhat bored with Army life; it failed to satisfy his thirst for adventure. In 1901 he decided to learn surveying and cartography properly, by joining the Royal Geographic Society. He also worked with the nascent British Secret Service on occasion in Asia and North Africa (mainly Morocco), often while engaged for the RGS.
- At the time Britain lacked a professional and organised foreign espionage system. It was run on a fairly slapdash and unofficial bases by volunteers and amateurs.
Surveying and Espionage.
The making of maps and collecting of information has always been a popular cover for intelligence gathering. Probably the best known of these was The Survey of India which was responsible for producing accurate maps of the country, but included Ethnological Department which in turn included intelligence gathering. Under cover of survey and census, the British government assembled the subtler kinds of information; the movements of foreigners, secret meetings and conversations and illicit trade amongst the border states.
A variation on the traditional Mala (Buddhist prayer beads) was sometimes used for covert measurements by agents who’d been taught to maintain a constant stride. The string contained 100 beads rather than the usual 108 and was used as a counting aid; 100 paces per bead, 10,000 paces to the string. The subsidiary string (dorje) of ten beads was used for counting multiples of 10,000 paces.
The making of maps and collecting of information has always been a popular cover for intelligence gathering. Probably the best known of these was The Survey of India which was responsible for producing accurate maps of the country, but included Ethnological Department which in turn included intelligence gathering. Under cover of survey and census, the British government assembled the subtler kinds of information; the movements of foreigners, secret meetings and conversations and illicit trade amongst the border states.
A variation on the traditional Mala (Buddhist prayer beads) was sometimes used for covert measurements by agents who’d been taught to maintain a constant stride. The string contained 100 beads rather than the usual 108 and was used as a counting aid; 100 paces per bead, 10,000 paces to the string. The subsidiary string (dorje) of ten beads was used for counting multiples of 10,000 paces.
In the spring of 1906, at 39, Fawcett received his first exploratory assignment from Sir George Taubman Goldie, President of the Royal Geographic Society at the time. The Society wanted to survey the jungle area near the claimed borders of Bolivia, Peru and Brazil and determine where exactly the borders of the countries were, acting as a neutral party in the hope of reducing tension in the disputed areas.
- Maps of Brazil at the time still had huge blank areas, unexplored by Europeans.
- Of course information on natural resources in the area would also be very useful, and possibly very valuable…
Brazil, the RGS and rubber.
It should be noted that it was originally the Bolivian Government, under the Presidency of Ismael Montes Gamboa, that suggested involving the Royal Geographic Society in the border survey. The RGS was not well liked in Brazil due to the actions of Henry Alexander Wickham in the 1870s. Wickham had been commissioned by Joseph Hooker (director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) to acquire viable seeds of Hevea brasiliensis , the most commercially productive of all the Brazilian rubber trees. The expenses of his journey were paid by the India Office.
Wickham acquired some 6,500 seeds and (illegally) shipped them to London. At Kew about 2,800 seeds were successfully germinated and transported carefully to British possessions such as Malaya. There tea planters were persuaded to grow the new crop and, thanks to better cultivation practices and the lack of natural predators, they thrived. It would take decades but by 1910 Brazil’s rubber crop was in freefall; by 1915 it would lose 80% of it’s value and by 1919, 93%
It should be noted that it was originally the Bolivian Government, under the Presidency of Ismael Montes Gamboa, that suggested involving the Royal Geographic Society in the border survey. The RGS was not well liked in Brazil due to the actions of Henry Alexander Wickham in the 1870s. Wickham had been commissioned by Joseph Hooker (director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew) to acquire viable seeds of Hevea brasiliensis , the most commercially productive of all the Brazilian rubber trees. The expenses of his journey were paid by the India Office.
Wickham acquired some 6,500 seeds and (illegally) shipped them to London. At Kew about 2,800 seeds were successfully germinated and transported carefully to British possessions such as Malaya. There tea planters were persuaded to grow the new crop and, thanks to better cultivation practices and the lack of natural predators, they thrived. It would take decades but by 1910 Brazil’s rubber crop was in freefall; by 1915 it would lose 80% of it’s value and by 1919, 93%
It wasn’t an easy area to explore; disease was rife, along with wildlife both large and small, the indigenous population was known to be hostile in some areas. Not to mention illegal miners and rubber collectors, slave traders (and entire plantations using slave labour or debt bondage), political considerations and other purely human menaces.
Occult leanings.
Not unusually for a man of the period Fawcett had an interest in the occult and was influenced by the famous Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical movement. He also believed in the existence of Atlantis and the reality of ghost, as a form of psychic residue.
Fawcett believed his eldest son Jack was a reincarnated spirit destined to become some kind of messiah, an event predicted by Buddhist mystics. Fawcett wrote in Occult Review:
"One morning at breakfast on the verandah a deputation of soothsayers and Buddhists asked for an audience… I was told I was about to become the father of a son whose appearance was minutely described, the reincarnation of an advanced spirit, and my wife and I had been especially selected…..the child would have a mole on the instep of the right foot, and his toes in place of a sliding scale in size would run in pairs. He would be born on Buddha's anniversary, 19th May. This date was a month beyond the time anticipated. A remarkable feature about the boy, not shared by his brother or sister, is a slight obliquity of his eyes."
Again according to Fawcett, the predictions were accurate and when the family returning to Trincomalee from the military hospital at Colombo their route was lined with people venerating the newborn.
Fawcett had been given by the writer (and follow occult enthusiast) Sir Henry Rider Haggard a 22cm black basalt idol which he’d supposedly acquired in Brazil.
Fawcett wrote of it;
"I could think of only one way of learning the secret of the stone image, and that was by means of psychometry -- a method that may evoke scorn by many people but is widely accepted by others who have managed to keep their minds free from prejudice."
The psychotometrist supposedly told Fawcett of "a large irregularly shaped continent stretching from the north coast of Africa across to South America... Then I see volcanoes in violent eruptions, flaming lava pouring down their sides, and the whole land shakes with a mighty rumbling sound... The voice says: 'The judgment of Atlanta will be the fate of all who presume to deific power!' I can get no definite date of the catastrophe, but it was long prior to the rise of Egypt, and has been forgotten -- except, perhaps, in myth."
Fawcett wrote (in his book Lost Trails, Lost Cities) that "the connection of Atlantis with parts of what is now Brazil is not to be dismissed contemptuously, and belief in it -- with or without scientific corroboration -- affords explanations for many problems which otherwise are unsolved mysteries."
Not unusually for a man of the period Fawcett had an interest in the occult and was influenced by the famous Helena Blavatsky, founder of the Theosophical movement. He also believed in the existence of Atlantis and the reality of ghost, as a form of psychic residue.
- Not that unreasonable in the Whoniverse where both are canonically real.
Fawcett believed his eldest son Jack was a reincarnated spirit destined to become some kind of messiah, an event predicted by Buddhist mystics. Fawcett wrote in Occult Review:
"One morning at breakfast on the verandah a deputation of soothsayers and Buddhists asked for an audience… I was told I was about to become the father of a son whose appearance was minutely described, the reincarnation of an advanced spirit, and my wife and I had been especially selected…..the child would have a mole on the instep of the right foot, and his toes in place of a sliding scale in size would run in pairs. He would be born on Buddha's anniversary, 19th May. This date was a month beyond the time anticipated. A remarkable feature about the boy, not shared by his brother or sister, is a slight obliquity of his eyes."
Again according to Fawcett, the predictions were accurate and when the family returning to Trincomalee from the military hospital at Colombo their route was lined with people venerating the newborn.
Fawcett had been given by the writer (and follow occult enthusiast) Sir Henry Rider Haggard a 22cm black basalt idol which he’d supposedly acquired in Brazil.
Fawcett wrote of it;
"I could think of only one way of learning the secret of the stone image, and that was by means of psychometry -- a method that may evoke scorn by many people but is widely accepted by others who have managed to keep their minds free from prejudice."
The psychotometrist supposedly told Fawcett of "a large irregularly shaped continent stretching from the north coast of Africa across to South America... Then I see volcanoes in violent eruptions, flaming lava pouring down their sides, and the whole land shakes with a mighty rumbling sound... The voice says: 'The judgment of Atlanta will be the fate of all who presume to deific power!' I can get no definite date of the catastrophe, but it was long prior to the rise of Egypt, and has been forgotten -- except, perhaps, in myth."
Fawcett wrote (in his book Lost Trails, Lost Cities) that "the connection of Atlantis with parts of what is now Brazil is not to be dismissed contemptuously, and belief in it -- with or without scientific corroboration -- affords explanations for many problems which otherwise are unsolved mysteries."
Early explorations.
The 1906 expedition was Fawcett’s first, but he led several more expeditions into the jungle and rainforest over the next nine years; tracing the source of the Rio Verde (in 1909) and attempting to find the source of the Heath River, the border between Bolivia and Peru in 1910. Along the way he claimed to have had some encounters with wildlife never seen before, including an Anaconda described as ‘62 feet’ long.
- At the time the giant anaconda seemed to be hyperbole, the largest even proven was about 5.2m, a quarter of the length of the snake Fawcett claimed to have killed. However given the numerous claims and the existence of fossils of an anaconda over 12m long such creature might be real.
Fawcett also claimed to have seen a small animal (the size of a foxhound) with canine and feline characteristics, now called the Mitla. It’s not known of this is a real animal or a misidentification of some other creature such as the elusive (but real) short-eared Zorro. In the Madidi swamps of the Beni river in Bolivia Fawcett wrote of finding the tracks of ‘some mysterious and enormous beast’ which he might be those of a living Diplodocus. This was one of the inspirations for Doyle’s The Lost World.
- In the Whoniverse there’s no reason to assume such creatures aren’t entirely real. Perhaps there is a Silurian hibernation base in the jungle with a malfunctioning stasis pod for pets?
His first expedition, the border question, lasted from July 1906 to May 1907. His second, a long trek through the Brazilian jungle, lasted from March to November 1908.
- During this trek the explorers left a cache of money and instruments buried near the source of the river. Exaggeration and rumour turned this into the ‘Verde treasure’, though in fact only about £60 in gold was left.
The third expedition into Bolivia and was much shorter, taking up the month of May 1909. His fourth expedition, following the Heath with seven companions, led to encounters with vampire bats and being captured by the indigenous Guarayos. It lasted from June to October 1910.
His fifth expedition, April to December 1911, to Fawcett and a few companions in search of lost ruins that he believed existed near the upper reaches of the Heath River. None were found before they had to turn back.
Fawcett’s final pre-war expedition, running from 1913 to 1915, took him in a wide sweep around the Plains of Mojos, in the region of the Rio Tuiche, Rio Beni and Rio Mamore in Brazil.
However the Great War would delay his plans to search further for the lost city he believed existed in the jungle.
- While Fawcett’s achievements tend to be overshadowed by the story of his death he was recognised for his work. Fawcett’s article Bolivian Exploration was published in the March 1915 edition of the RGS’s Geographical Journal. 1916 he received the RGS Founders Gold Medal for his work in mapping South America.
The Great War.
Percy Fawcett was still wandering around the wilder reaches of the Amazon when the Great War broke out in 1914. He returned to Britain in 1915 to rejoin the Royal Artillery, and served with distinction on the Western Front. Initially he commanded a battery of 18-pdr field artillery in Flanders, often placed only a few hundred metres from the front lines, positioned to hit German infantry attacks with airburst shrapnel.
Later he rose in rank to lieutenant colonel and commanded an artillery brigade of mostly heavy artillery in the counter battery role.
- While serving in France (near Aras) Fawcett one morning encountered a strange figure, wearing a Russian fur-lined greatcoat and French helmet, wandering near hit battery. Fawcett, wary of German spies, challenged him and the man replied to his demand for identification "Lieutenant Colonel Churchill, Sixth Royal Scots Fusiliers".
End of Part One.
