Today (25 April) is ANZAC day.
That probably doesn’t mean anything much to you unless you happen to be an Aussie or a Kiwi. But if you do hail from one of those countries then you’ll likely know that today marks the 103rd anniversary of one of the first major military engagements that Australia and New Zealand were involved in — the disastrous Gallipoli campaign of early WW1. Somehow I’ve always thought it says a lot about our two countries that the biggest national day of remembrance doesn’t reflect on a military victory, but on a struggle against impossible odds which ultimately led to a terrible defeat.
A few years back when I was putting together a group of writers to create Call of Cthulhu scenarios set in different eras of Australian history, references back to these early defining moments of the nation were proposed by a few different people. In the end, two of the eight proposed scenarios had some relationship to the ANZACs (or other similar forces). These both made it into the final manuscript for Australian Aeons, a book that is in Chaosium’s forthcoming products queue (release date TBA). Because today is ANZAC day I thought it would be cool to share a few illustrations commissioned for those scenarios, all drawn by the uber-talented Reuben Dodd (of Sorrowking Studios).
The first scenario with a WW1 connection is Chad Bowser’s creepy story about the true fate of the AE-1, the very earliest Australia submarines which formed a part of the Australian Naval and Military Expeditionary Force (ANMEF). This group saw action in the seas north of Australia even before the ANZACs sailed for Turkey. At the time Chad was writing this scenario, the fate of this lost vessel remained a mystery — since then, its wreckage has been located. Here’s a couple of the illustrations created for the scenario:
The second Australian Aeons scenario with a WW1 connection is a modern day scenario written by myself and Vian Lawson which imagines a modern-day Cthulhu Mythos-related terror incident Sydney which has its origins on the fields of Gallipoli. This scenario actually received its first playtest on ANZAC day 2016 … here are a couple of its illustrations:
