[UA] Mundanity

[Brian Nisbet]

On Wed, Sep 13, 2000 at 05:14:36PM +0100, John Scott wrote:
> 
> >    There's a great old story about a lost colony that vanished from Roanoke
> >Island back in the colonial days. Odds are it's not really very
> >mysterious, but
> >much was made of it when I was in school. Big historical ghost story. I think
> >that strange little Kenny Hite did a column on it, for gameability. One of his
> >Suppressed Transmissions.
> 
> The 'spooky' thing is that the word "Croaton" was found carved into one of
> the trees near the colony ....

Not to be picky, but wasn't it "Croatan?"  The name of a local Native
tribe.  The story is either very cool or very mundane, depending on what
evidence you believe.  The village of Roanoke was found deserted, very
Marie Celeste like, with the word "Croatan" carved into a tree.

The winter, iirc, had been very, very bad and what probably happened was
the settlers were saved from starvation by the natives and taken to live
with them.  The word Croatan was supposed to tell other europeans where
their brethern had gone.  Evidence was later found of European ancestry in
some Native American tribes.

Of course, that's the boring version... An entire village dissappearing
could be turned into any number of bizarre stories, as could the Croatan
themselves.  The most famous rpg version of this is White Wolf's Werewolf.

B.

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