Since the Hobbs Oil Strike of 1927, Dr. Adam Silverberg, a history professor at the University of New Mexico, had been doing research in the hopes of finding the location of another huge oil field and making some extra money on the side. In the spring of 1928, he stumbled across something that seemed to bear fruit.
The information he’d found was an account of a ghost town in the western part of the state in the Plains of San Augustine. The town was called Harlotville and what he could piece together was that it was settled in 1825 by a group of prostitutes headed west to make a better life for themselves. There was some trouble with a wagon and the harlots made a home where they found a spring in the desert. Over the next 20 years, enough people (mostly men) migrated to the area and stayed that it actually became a town. The town no longer existed. During the Mexican American War, everyone was either killed in the town or fled.
By the early summer of 1928, Silverberg had contacted the Midwest Refining Company, the same company that had made the Hobbs Oil Strike of the year before in eastern New Mexico. That had put him in contact with a vice president of the company, one Roger Stanford. An expedition was set up to investigate the site.
On April 26, 2014, at NerdCon 2014 at Appalachian State University, I ran the original Call of Cthulhu scenario “The Harlotville Horror.” My players were Teri, James, John, Katie, Caitlin, and Logan.
The Role Playing Journals of the game session can be found here:
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/blog/172/entry-2663-the-harlotville-horror-part-1-it-begins/
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/blog/172/entry-2662-the-harlotville-horror-part-2-attack-in-the-night/
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/blog/172/entry-2661-the-harlotville-horror-part-3-further-investigation/
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/blog/172/entry-2660-the-harlotville-horror-part-4-the-thing-in-the-house/
http://www.yog-sothoth.com/blog/172/entry-2659-the-harlotville-horror-part-5-escape/
A playlist of seven videos of the game session can be found here:
“https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLonZ7fuFAFDrZa-s7RuItyGLGspU44VHr”
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