![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
[Gaming] A coda
Jan. 22nd, 2015 10:11 amMy Call of Cthulhu group has finally finished a game we began nine - count 'em, nine - years ago. It was never intended to go on that long, but the tale grew in the telling, as it were.
Anyway, I wrote a coda to the game as a newspaper report over eighty years later, just to show how the survivors ended up. I know some of you lot enjoy reading this sort of thing, so here you go:
From The Daily Mail, May 13, 2015.
TV Star dead in “horrific” accident.
Television star David Dickinson was pronounced dead at the scene yesterday after an “horrific” accident during the filming of Antiques Roadshow at Chealingham Hall, Cheshire. Dickinson, who was guest starring on the show, died after what was believed to be a piece of avant-garde art was mishandled.
“It was hideous”, said a member of the television crew. “This thing looked like a collection of glass bottles or bubbles all stuck together, so everyone thought it was a sculpture of some kind. Fiona Bruce had picked it up to examine it when it gave off some sort of high-pitched whine and a purple beam came out of the end, hitting David.
“I’m just glad it was all over quickly for him.”
Witnesses described Dickinson as being “reduced to charred and sizzling bones in an instant” before being ushered off by waiting police for counselling.
The object, which was labelled as being a piece by an unknown artist called only “Mi-go”, was part of a collection acquired by the former owner of the Hall, George Chealingham, who died in 1972. His nephew, Arthur, said “When we were small Uncle George used to tell us wild stories about how he’d acquired his collection by wrestling monsters on lonely hilltops and in abandoned tombs. He did have the most wonderful selection of Egyptian and African artefacts, plus old exploring clothes and even an elephant gun which we handed that in to the police after he died. As he got older his stories got wilder, like how he claimed he got the metal plate in his skull after being headbutted by an old woman on a beach in Norfolk rather than on the western front.”
“It never occurred to us that anything apart from the gun he owned might be dangerous.”
Chealingham hall, which is now managed by the National Trust, has been closed to the public until further notice on the instruction of government Technology and Industry Tsar Professor Sir Roderick Glossop, KG. “It’s possible that several old inventions by somebody like Nikolai Tesla might be in the collection which might be dangerous. We need to be sure they’re safe and properly catalogued so they can be studied and possibly displayed in a museum at a later date.
“There’s a library as well?”, added Sir Roderick. “Oh, we’d best take that too. Just to be sure.”
About George Chealingham
Although little-remembered, Chealingham was a member of a “Fast Set” during the 1920s before retiring to obscurity. After serving during the Great War he was linked to several wealthy playboys of the Jazz Age including city trader and cricketer Richard Little, who made and lost several fortunes but is best known for prematurely ending the career of Donald Bradman with aggressive fast-bowling during the ‘Bodyline’ tour of 1931, and Arab prince and revolutionary Sheikh Raschid ibn humayd al-Nuaimi, who after a debauched youth was assassinated in Aden in the 1950s. The group had several notorious escapades, including being deported and banned from France after being linked to a gambling and prostitution ring on the Cote d’Azur, being implicated in the "Unhappy Valley" murders in Kenya in 1930, and a case of false imprisonment in a Glasgow lunatic asylum.
Anyway, I wrote a coda to the game as a newspaper report over eighty years later, just to show how the survivors ended up. I know some of you lot enjoy reading this sort of thing, so here you go:
From The Daily Mail, May 13, 2015.
TV Star dead in “horrific” accident.
Television star David Dickinson was pronounced dead at the scene yesterday after an “horrific” accident during the filming of Antiques Roadshow at Chealingham Hall, Cheshire. Dickinson, who was guest starring on the show, died after what was believed to be a piece of avant-garde art was mishandled.
“It was hideous”, said a member of the television crew. “This thing looked like a collection of glass bottles or bubbles all stuck together, so everyone thought it was a sculpture of some kind. Fiona Bruce had picked it up to examine it when it gave off some sort of high-pitched whine and a purple beam came out of the end, hitting David.
“I’m just glad it was all over quickly for him.”
Witnesses described Dickinson as being “reduced to charred and sizzling bones in an instant” before being ushered off by waiting police for counselling.
The object, which was labelled as being a piece by an unknown artist called only “Mi-go”, was part of a collection acquired by the former owner of the Hall, George Chealingham, who died in 1972. His nephew, Arthur, said “When we were small Uncle George used to tell us wild stories about how he’d acquired his collection by wrestling monsters on lonely hilltops and in abandoned tombs. He did have the most wonderful selection of Egyptian and African artefacts, plus old exploring clothes and even an elephant gun which we handed that in to the police after he died. As he got older his stories got wilder, like how he claimed he got the metal plate in his skull after being headbutted by an old woman on a beach in Norfolk rather than on the western front.”
“It never occurred to us that anything apart from the gun he owned might be dangerous.”
Chealingham hall, which is now managed by the National Trust, has been closed to the public until further notice on the instruction of government Technology and Industry Tsar Professor Sir Roderick Glossop, KG. “It’s possible that several old inventions by somebody like Nikolai Tesla might be in the collection which might be dangerous. We need to be sure they’re safe and properly catalogued so they can be studied and possibly displayed in a museum at a later date.
“There’s a library as well?”, added Sir Roderick. “Oh, we’d best take that too. Just to be sure.”
About George Chealingham
Although little-remembered, Chealingham was a member of a “Fast Set” during the 1920s before retiring to obscurity. After serving during the Great War he was linked to several wealthy playboys of the Jazz Age including city trader and cricketer Richard Little, who made and lost several fortunes but is best known for prematurely ending the career of Donald Bradman with aggressive fast-bowling during the ‘Bodyline’ tour of 1931, and Arab prince and revolutionary Sheikh Raschid ibn humayd al-Nuaimi, who after a debauched youth was assassinated in Aden in the 1950s. The group had several notorious escapades, including being deported and banned from France after being linked to a gambling and prostitution ring on the Cote d’Azur, being implicated in the "Unhappy Valley" murders in Kenya in 1930, and a case of false imprisonment in a Glasgow lunatic asylum.
