Cotton Mather’s American Ghosts
The Puritan clergyman Cotton Mather (1663-1728) is one of the boogeymen of early American history. Among his many sins, he helped fuel the Salem witch trials that executed 20 people for witchcraft. In the trials he successfully argued that the contents of magical visions should be considered legally admissible evidence. Mather was a prolific writer. […]
Mendenhall Ice Caves
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
Judah P. Benjamin
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Joel Dalenberg. Thanks for helping keep […]
Rudivoravan: Fallen Princess Turned Cold War Broadcaster
Mrs. Rudi Voravan of Washington, D.C. was originally Her Serene Majesty Princess Rudivoravan of Siam (later Thailand). She was the granddaughter of one of Thailand’s most famous kings, was courted by two others, and spent her first twenty-four years living in palaces. Yet she renounced her royal status to marry a commoner. During the Cold […]
PCs on the Battlefield: the Rock Island Keelboats
In 1814, a band of the Sauk Indian nation led an attack on three U.S. Army keelboats on the Mississippi River. The resulting Battle of Rock Island Rapids is an excellent template for a combat encounter at your table. It’s got an interesting geopolitical context (the three-way tug-of-war between America, Britain, and the Sauk), interesting […]
Madame Chouteau’s Clever Frontier Inheritance
Marie-Thérèse Chouteau was one of the founders of the city of St. Louis, Missouri. She was a powerful and unusual woman, existing both inside the Franco-Spanish colonial system and outside it, depending on what suited her needs. The way she obtained her inheritance from her not-husband screams to be turned into an adventure, and she […]
Bandits, Agricultural College, and the Century of Humiliation
In 1924, in Guangzhou, China, six bandits kidnapped thirty-six students and staff at an agricultural college. What might otherwise be a pretty simple story of retrieving some hostages gets incredibly muddy with just a little bit of context – and the whole thing makes a great RPG adventure! This post is brought to you by […]
Hoh Rainforest
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Arthur Brown. Thanks for helping keep […]
Fort Jefferson
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! Fort JeffersonRemote Tropical Fortress The Dry Tortugas are a group of seven small islands 70 miles […]
The Jicarilla Escape and Blog News!
In 1883, the Jicarilla Apache nation was forcibly moved from land they’d been promised as their reservation to the reservation of a sister nation, that of the Mescalero Apaches. Neither group was happy with this state of affairs. Three years later, the Jicarilla Apaches snuck out of the Mescalero reservation in a blinding blizzard to […]
The Puzzling Genesis of the Piasa Bird
Rocky bluffs line the Mississippi River near Alton, Illinois. Painted on one is a terrible dragon with golden scales, red wings, antlers, and the face of a fanged man. It’s just a replica. The original painting wore away centuries ago – if it ever existed it all! This creature, the Piasa Bird, is a contentious piece […]
Feodor Fedorenko
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
Hoskinini’s Fugitives
This story does not begin happily. In 1863, U.S. troops under Kit Carson rounded up the Navajo people by force. The federals burned homes, shot resisters, and marched the 9,000 survivors three hundred miles to an internment camp at Bosque Redondo, New Mexico. There, 2,000 Navajo died of starvation and disease. In 1868, the U.S. […]
The Great Onion Scheme
Once a month here on the Molten Sulfur Blog, I run content taken from our book Archive: Historical People, Places, and Events for RPGs. This post is one of eighty entries in Archive, each more gameable than the last! This post is brought to you by beloved Patreon backer Colin Wixted. Thanks for helping keep […]
The Axeman’s Letter
The Axeman of New Orleans was an attention-grabbing serial killer who operated in and around New Orleans in 1918-1919 and possibly in 1910-1911. He was never caught. In an incident reminiscent of the later Zodiac killer, someone claiming to be the Axeman wrote a letter to the newspaper, which dutifully published it. This letter is […]