Blackwater Creek

## Introduction

Blackwater Creek took our players into the backwaters of Arkham country, near the famed village of Dunwhich. They took on a far less academic role than typical games, taking charge of several bootleggers working for a local mobster. He charged them with finding the source of a new type of illegal whisky and procuring a steady supply of it - by force if necessary - from the producers.

Little did they know, that every sip of whisky, every mouthful of tainted water and every contact with sap-dripping plantlife, was gradually corrupting them to become acolytes of a bizarre mass of twisted flesh, growing ever stronger in the confines of a nearby cave.

This marked the first team kill of any of our scenarios.

### Meeting at the docks

Louise "Lu Lu" Winney was called to the docks by her boss, Declan McBride. She'd waited tables, danced and acted as a general dogsbody for the McBride moonshine business, but this meeting seemed more serious than most. The docks were chilly and she wrapped her coat tight around her as she approached the warehouse for the meeting. Two men could be seen putting a body wrapped in a rug into the boot of a car.

Inside the small office, she found McBride, with his younger brother JImmy. The former appeared to have just finished working someone over for information. Shortly, female cross-dresser and enforcer, Wendy "No Nonsense" Kelly, showed up and Declan informed them what he wanted them to do.

A new whisky was becoming popular and he wanted the supply for himself. It came from nearby Blackwater Creek and he was sending the three of them to go and find out who made it and to convince them by any means, to join the McBride organization.

### Fellowship of the boondocks

The journey to Blackwater Creek wasn't easy. The roads were pitted and little more than mud tracks in places. While stuck and clearing the car from one ditch, the players came across local vet from Dunwhich, John Merriott, who informed them there was a strange outbreak in livestock in Blackwater and that he may not be back lest he spread the disease further afield.

The bootleggers learned in Blackwater itself, that the town was little more than a few rough-hewn shacks with simple folk living there. Some children appeared to be playing with some strange water they had gathered from the local creek. White flecks in it seemed to consume any living tissue they put in there, or else mutated it into something else entirely.

Locally appointed lawman and ex-Arkham police officer, Dick Sprousten informed the bootleggers of the various farms in the area and where they might be able to stay the night should the need arise. The rest of the town was mostly deserted, with one building appearing to have been forcibly emptied in a struggle. In the local church, they discovered Lu Lu's father praying. While the booze he had always consumed heavily had degraded him further, the money he begged for was - he claimed - to leave the town rather than procure more liquor, especially not from local sources.

### The two farmhouses

Deciding to sleep on their forboding feelings of Blackwater Creek and to see if their mind was just imagining the strange rotten fruit smell that permeated the town's surroundings, the bootleggers headed for the Jarvey farm. The Jarvey family were a friendly lot and gave them room and board, as well as fresh baked bread and other refreshment. Jimmy McBride continued to liberally enjoy the local whisky, though was feeling a little under the weather.

That night, strange dreams befell the bootleggers and amidst a storm the animals of the farm grew frantic. The prize boar, Brutus, rampaged through the farm, almost goring Malcolm Jarvey in the process. Farm worker, Old Pete, seemed particularly affected by the strange happenings, coughing up huge clots of black, tarry gloop.

Taking their leave of the Jarveys, the booze runners made their way to the Carmody residence, where the local whisky was produced. Amidst giant barley stalks dripping with black sap, they approached the farm and found themselves watched by thousands of rodents, spiders, snakes and other animals from within the faintly swaying fronds. Although a fight almost broke out between them and farm hands, Lu Lu was able to broker a deal with Damien Carmody to secure the whisky production.

Not seeming to hear the cries of captured (and ultimately undiscovered) scholar Henry Roades in the basement, our bootleggers left the farm, under the watchful eyes of hugely mutated Brendan Carmody, but found themselves keen to explore a little more before leaving.

### Return to the source

On the edge of the woods near the Carmody farm, they discovered the remains of a deer imprisoned within the twisting, sharpened branches of a tree. Embryonic dark young infested the forest and attacked Jimmy, almost cutting him in two in the process. After a narrow escape, they made their way around the edge of the woods and found a strange, white, floating mass near the local creek's dammed water source.

White flecks could be seen in the water, and when the white mass began to investigate the bootleggers they beat a hasty retreat. However, they continued to follow the course to its source, eventually coming upon a cave some 20ft in the air, from which poured the stream. After finding some water damaged dynamite at the base of the small waterfall, they attempted to climb through the stream to the cave beyond. Lu Lu made it easily, but Jimmy did not. Losing his grip on the mossy stonework, he fell backwards into the babbling brook, soaking himself in the strange liquid. The white flecks swiftly attached themselves to him, covering him in tiny bite marks and pocks and indeed his skin itself began to slough away from the muscle and sinew underneath.

Wendy was able to recover him from the water, but Lu Lu was petrified and ran screaming deep into the cave. There she discovered fleshy mounds on the walls that appeared to be from living human tissue. Lungs pulsated, mouths breathed and eyes followed her every move. Eventually joined by the swiftly dilapidating Wendy and Jimmy, they delved further into the cave, calls of their own mothers echoing and pleading with them in their minds.

Deep within the cavern they discovered the source of the stream. Not a watercourse, but a pulsating mound of face-covered flesh, from which amniotic fluid flowed, filled with white flecks and corrupting influence. Struck with the sheer terror of this sight, Jimmy broke down into a fit of hysterical laughter and was gradually swallowed by the mound, giggling madly until his mouth was eventually covered.

Lu Lu and Wendy put up more of a fight, unloading shotguns shells into the great mound and doing their best to ignore its frightened pleas from myriads of faces. But it wasn't enough. Knocked senseless by flailing tentacles, Wendy blasted a hole in a writhing egg sack, from which spawned a Dark Young. Looming over them it smashed their frail bodies into bone splintered flesh sacks and they swiftly bled out, their own life force blending with the fluid and leaving little trace that they ever came to Blackwater Creek.