Wednesday 3rd May 1854 - Mythical London shared universe.
So the players have arrived at the Black City after an uneventful voyage from Liverpool on the SS Great Western which has been purchased by the Royal Society (at fire sale prices) to transport expedition members to the site. The site is on the Greenland mainland near Upernavik. As they approached the inlet they spied a man shaped Inuksuk guarding the location. During the approach one of the organisers gave the party a look through an enchanted telescope so that they could see what attracted attention to the area. Through the telescope a bright beacon reaching into the sky was visible. Waiting in the inlet there were two Royal Navy frigates waiting at anchor. On shore there is a small cluster of tents and industrious construction and archaeology work.
The expedition leaders, Dr. Cyril Jackson of the Royal Society and Commodore George Crozier of the Royal Navy came aboard to welcome the main party and brief the special party of our protagonists.
Kerryn - [Leece] - Adventurer who has lived among the Inuit.
Augustus Abelgoff - [Rob] - Surveyor and amateur mountaineer with experience in Scandinavia.
Sam (Samantha) Drydale - [Elaine] - Hunter and explorer with arctic experience.
Aesir - [Gary] - A young noble of the Winged Folk (a GURPS Fantasy race) with temperature tolerance.
Christopher? - [Richard] - Hunter and prospector with arctic experience.
The site was discovered last year during searches for the lost Franklin expedition. Franklin also had one of the limited supply of enchanted telescopes (Which the navy uses to gauge the intensity of distant storms) and appears to have diverted here and his expedition was lost here. The burnt wrecks of his two ships are occasionally visible at low tides. At this location there is the remains of a Viking encampment of at least 4 longhouses surrounded by a rough wall of stones. A number of finds from last summer were displayed, the prize one being a Viking pattern spear head made of an unknown black metal (it is worth noting we are talking antiquarians rather than archaeologists in the modern sense doing these excavations). Attention was also drawn to the unusually large proportion of 13th Century Persian coins. Such coins do turn up in viking hoards but here they make up over half of the found coinage. A rough map of the black city was produced based on observations from kites and ground surveys. The one party that penetrated the city disappeared without trace. Several places were marked where large statues had fired on surveyors approaching the walls various magical effects. Warnings were made about polar bears and other hostile wildlife including a story of a caribou corpse in the hills that looked like it had been hacked apart by "a party of madmen with axes".
The party gathered their gear and went ashore to sort themselves out and start acclimatising. One of the party immediately decided to take a solo walk about 7 miles along the shingle beach past the city to a small glacier marked on the map. It was only with difficulty that he was dissuaded ( I consider it bad form to kill PCs on the first session ). Aesir did some reconnaissance flights and discovered some previously unsuspected trail cairns leading to a circular structure about 4 miles south of the camp. It was decided to visit there the next day ( I had to hastily extended the map to cover the new area).
