Pacific Ocean I: O Corvo Branco

There’s Maria down in Vallipo,
Sweet as far as putas go.
Whatever I want she doesn’t mind—
Up on top or from behind!
—“The Whores of Sailortown,” Traditional sea song

5) O Corvo Branco
Valparaíso, March 11-16, 1845

A) The Three Hills
South of the harbor lie three hills sailors call the Fore Top, the Main Top, and the Mizzen Top. The location of the most wretched tabernas, burdeles, and lupanares in town, most of these establishments are little more than rickety shacks perched on the cliffside, inhabited by prostitutes sometimes pimped by their husbands and fathers.

B) O Corvo Branco
A small taberna adjacent a quintet of wooden shacks, O Corvo Branco (“The White Raven”) is located amidst a spray of palm trees near the crown of the Main Top. Its adobe walls are painted pale blue with pink trim, and the only sign is a crudely-carved raven, its white paint spattered with droppings from a local colony of Patagonian conures. An attempt was made to build a small fountain in the diminutive plaza out front, centered on a crudely-carved statue of the Virgin Mary crushing a serpent under her feet. The water pipes failed years ago, and Mary is pocked with bullet holes. Someone painted a pair of giant googly-eyes on the serpent, and it seems to be staring with astonishment up the Virgin’s dress. This has not stopped devout locals from leaving tributes, and the flyspecked basin is covered with dead flowers, scribbled prayers, centavo coins, and even a small philtre of human blood.

The interior of the taberna maintains the theme of shabby pretention: dark and smelling of mildew, the walls are decorated with moldering portraits of Ferdinand Magellan, Vasco de Gama, and Pedro Álvares Cabral. A rusty conquistador’s helmet is mounted above the copper bar. It’s authentic, but the claim it belonged to Francisco Pizarro himself is certainly bogus. A few years back a Chilean sailor attempted to paint a mural on the wall above the bar. Taking the Battle of Chacabuco as its subject, the painting was amateurishly done and never completed.

A significantly better mural of the battle; painted by Pedro Subercaseaux (1880–1956)

C) History
Founded by Filipe Vidro in 1812, O Corvo Branco began life as a Portuguese grog shop. A few years later, Senhor Vidro added the wooden shacks and hired local prostitutas to staff them. One of these women was Fatima Soares, and one of her first johns was Obed Hendricks. It was over in barraco número quatro she conceived her only child, Jericho Gomes Hendricks, better known as P.H. Whipple. Although Whipple’s mother moved to Nantucket, her spiritual descendants still populate the barracos, women with Iberian eyes and dark Indian hair.

Ten years ago, O Corvo Branco was purchased by a Chilean owner, Adán Cortes. Even though the clientele had become mostly American and Spanish, Cortes kept the Portuguese name—“It sounds more exotic, no?”

D) Personalities
An absentee landlord, Señor Cortes allows the taberna to be run by a pair of former prostitutes, Maria Diogo and Chicochee. They are assisted by a dissipated strongman named El Semental. The shacks are the domain of five prostitutes unflatteringly called cadelas barracas—the equivalent of “crib whore.” This group includes three mestizas named Magdalena, Trinidad, and La Paloma, a Mapuche Indian named Ipi, and a mulatta called La Zomba.

Maria Diogo
Age 33, Nationality: Portuguese, Birthplace: Setúbal 1811.

Combat

Skills
Accounting 65%, Appraise 80%, Art/Craft (Tarot Cards) 70%, Charm 70%, Climb 40%, Credit Rating 15%, Cthulhu Mythos 5%, Disguise 60%, Fast Talk 20%, First Aid 30%, Listen 85%, Occult 5%, Persuade 50%, Psychology 55%, Read Lips 35%, Religion (Catholic) 40%, Renown 15%, Sea Lore 25%, Sleight of Hand 40%, Spot Hidden 45%, Stealth 35%.

Languages: Portuguese native; Spanish 50%, English 25%.

Possessions: Knife, Letter from Watts to Maria, The Egyptian Fragment

Description
A slender Portuguese woman in her early thirties, Maria Diogo has long black hair just beginning to gray at the temples. Her face is lined with hardship, but her eyes remain surprisingly kind. Maria has been working at O Corvo Branco for over ten years. She began as a cadela barraca, but worked her way to the taberna, where her head for business proved more important to Cortes than her aging body. With El Semental watching her back, Maria virtually runs the place for Cortes, who seems happy to exploit his workers and customers from a more upscale cerro a comfortable distance from the Main Top.

For they’re not much like those Liverpool girls…
Maria does more than run the saloon, she serves as “madam” for her canil de cadelas (“kennel of bitches”), as she unsentimentally refers to her prostitutas. She makes sure they stay clean and reasonably sober, collects their earnings, and deals with their problems. When required, she instructs El Semental (“The Stallion! Ha! Maybe years ago, hombre. More like the Glue Nag, now!”) to deal with physical concerns and hand out the occasional beating. (In fact, Pig Bodine was at the receiving end of one such beating last visit, but no hard feelings on either side.) No longer confined to the barracos, Maria has the luxury of bedding only clients she genuinely likes. (Sadly, like many prostitutes, gonorrhea has made her infertile.) Speaking passable English, Maria has a fondness for “Yankees loucos,” having acquired four or five different namorados who visit when their ships are in port. Among these men, her favorite was Eli Watts.

Chicochee (“Jack o’Clubs”)
Age 44, Nationality: Chilean, Birthplace: Valparaíso 1800.

Combat

Skills

Accounting 45%, Appraise 50%, Art/Craft (Guitar) 60%, Charm 45%, Climb 40%, Credit Rating 5%, Cthulhu Mythos 5%, Fast Talk 45%, First Aid 30%, Listen 65%, Persuade 35%, Psychology 30%, Religion (Catholic) 20%, Renown 20%, Sea Lore 25%, Sleight of Hand 65%, Spot Hidden 65%, Stealth 65%.

Languages: Spanish native; English 20%, Portuguese 10%.

Possessions: Guitar, knife

Description
A mestiza standing a mere 3’-10” tall, Chicochee is a former prostitute who earned local notoriety in 1823 when she pulled a knife on the Indian Queen, the Main Top’s most popular prostitute. Although neither woman was hurt, what makes the altercation noteworthy is the man they fought over—Samuel Comstock, the famous mutineer who’d soon commandeer the Globe. Eventually Chicochee fell in with El Semental, who installed her behind the bar of O Corvo Branco. She still beds the curious sailor who has the reales, but these days she’s better known for her battered guitarra. The gringos call her Jack o’Clubs, a cruel nickname awarded after a card game in which she was the booby prize, won by “low card” of the same name.

Illustration from William Comstock’s The Terrible Whaleman, 1840

El Semental
Age 54, Nationality: Afro-Chilean, Birthplace: Quillota 1790.

Combat

Skills
Accounting 20%, Appraise 25%, Art/Craft (Gambling) 70%, Climb 40%, Credit Rating 20%, Intimidate 70%, Listen 35%, Psychology 15%, Religion (Catholic) 20%, Renown 20%, Sea Lore 15%, Spot Hidden 45%, Stealth 15%.

Languages: Spanish native; Portuguese 25%, English 20%, Mapuche 10%

Possessions: Shotgun, knife, Pizarro the pet snake

Description
An Afro-Chilean once enslaved in Chile’s gold mines, “The Stallion” has graying hair and a drooping left eyelid. Although his muscles have turned to flab, he’s still an imposing presence, and keeps a loaded shotgun within reach at all times. El Semental (nobody knows his real name) favors a low profile, usually playing solitaire in the corner or sleeping off a resaca in an empty barraco. Nevertheless, when trouble is stirring, he shakes off his lethargy and deals with the problem—that’s what he’s paid for, right?

Pizarro
El Semental’s most prized possession is a two-headed snake named Pizarro. Green and brown in color, the non-venomous creature is a culebra de cola corta, a “short-tailed snake” of the species Tychymenis chilensis. It was given to El Semental by a Mapuche farmer as payment for a debt, and has proved quite the local attraction. The creature lives in a wooden crate covered by cheap mesh. For the price of 5 centavos, a customer is allowed to hold Pizarro, whose awkward mutation prevents him from effectively biting.

E) Favorite Haunt
O Corvo Branco is Whipple’s favorite watering hole, and he never tires of pointing to barraco #4 and claiming, “That’s where my bitch mother fucked my prick father, and I became the bastard that I am!” Whenever he’s in port, Whipple lays claim to that shack, and only he among his crew is allowed to use it. Otherwise his crew has the run of the place—Joshi, Mattashunama, Henry Swain, and Pig Bodine rarely leave its premises, imbibing cheap rum, fiery pisco, and bedding the same few whores again and again. Unfortunately, their excitement at revisiting their favorite Vallipo watering hole is tempered by the fact that they’ll have to tell Maria Diogo what happened to Elijah Watts.

Breaking the News
When Maria hears about Eli’s mental collapse, she’ll become surprisingly distraught. If player characters observe her interactions with Whipple’s crew, a Psychology roll reveals she seems uneasy around Whipple and Joshi. This is especially evident when Whipple attempts to “comfort” her, a ham-fisted effort that smacks of sexual opportunism. Rebuffed by her sharp outburst of Portuguese—“Como você ousa? Até um bastardo pode mostrar algum respeito!”—Whipple turns ugly, cheerfully singing a naughty ditty about “Maria down in Vallipo.” Fortunately, Chicochee comes to the rescue, intercepting Whipple’s jeers and allowing Maria to retreat out back and regain her composure. (Characters fluent in Portuguese may translate Maria’s rebuke as, “How dare you, even a bastard can show some respect!”)

If the players wish to speak privately with Maria, they must demonstrate they have Eli’s best interests at heart. Producing the pornographic scrimshaw elicits a burst of sad but fond laughter, and immediately gains her trust.

F) Maria’s Story
The last time Maria saw Eli was November 1843, after the Quiddity had met with disaster. Mocha Dick had attacked the whaleboats, resulting Captain Joab’s mad, dismasted delirium, Nathaniel Warnock’s coma, and Whipple’s disappearance. After finding Whipple, the Quiddity called at Valparaíso for provisions before returning home. Watts—now acting as captain—spend over a week with his beloved Maria.

It was not a peaceful time. The mate was in over his head, and he knew it. He felt he was unable to meet the burden of command, and the ravings of the infirm captain terrified him. He also shared his belief that Whipple and Joshi “weren’t telling the whole truth about what happened in the whaleboats,” but he was too afraid of angering them to demand answers. But worse of all, Watts had discovered a “dark secret” while searching through the Joab’s cabin, a “terrible book” that Maria recalls as Os Papéis do Caixão, or “the Papers found in a Casket.” (Of course, this is really the Coffin Papers, but Maria misunderstood Watts.) Whatever it was that Watts discovered, it was causing him great distress, and he babbled constantly about the “things he’d seen,” and the “places he was taken.” Maria was worried about her namorado, and begged Eli to remain behind and give Whipple the ship, but Watts was hell-bent on returning to Kingsport. He did leave one thing, though—a page torn from the “terrible book.” It was delivered to her the morning after he sailed, along with a brief but frightening letter.

Watts’ Letter and the Egyptian Fragment
It’s clear that Maria needs a friend, and because of Eli’s story, she no longer trusts Whipple and Joshi. If the player characters prove themselves genuinely sympathetic to Eli and his beliefs, she agrees to show them the page and the letter. They may copy their contents, but Maria won’t part with the originals. (Handout: Letter from Watts to Maria and Handout: The Egyptian Fragment.)

Interpreting the Egyptian Fragment
The page itself is difficult to explain without Ezra Coffin’s corresponding notes; but Regular Occult or Hard History rolls disentangle the esoteric elements from traditional Egyptian mythology. Basically, the Western Lands may be interpreted as the land of the dead. Nut is god of the sky, Osiris is the god of rebirth, Khepera is the scarab-like solar disc, Horus is the falcon-headed god of kings, and Tahuti is another name for Thoth, the god of wisdom and magic. Bast is the goddess of cats, and Anubis is the jackal-headed judge of the dead. Nun and Nunet are the god and goddess of the primordial abyss, Nu. The Egyptians generally believed in seven souls, two of which are mentioned here: Ba is the heart, and Ka is the spirit, or double. Everything else, all the translated titles and presumably Egyptian names, remain mysterious.

Unless a player character makes the connections naturally, a Kingsport Cult roll notes the many references to green flames and corrupting worms, two tropes associated with the Kingsport witches. A Cthulhu Mythos roll connects Ny Har Rut Hotep with Nyarlathotep, a name associated with “evil tidings” in esoteric lore. A second Cthulhu Mythos roll or an Extreme Occult roll recognizes “The Demon Without a Mouth” as alu’u lemna sha pa la ishu atta, an ancient Sumerian octopoid deity. No skill rolls can identify KTH KHR or KTH AAT, but they’re clearly reminiscent of “Kithoanessel” from Kleiter’s letter. Another Cthulhu Mythos roll recalls a medieval grimoire named Cthaat Aquadingen, also known as the Black Book. And finally, an Anthropology, Archeology, or Hard Occult roll suggests that Absu might be the same as Apsu, the Assyrian word for “abyss.”

Interpreting Watts’ Letter
It seems that Watts believed his “Atlanteans” influenced Egyptian civilization, which in turn influenced Mesoamerican civilizations such as the Aztecs, the Mayans, and the Incans. For the purpose of Call of Cthulhu, he’s not exactly wrong! However, for a player character to be familiar with such fringe theories requires an Occult roll or a Hard History roll. While “shamming Abram” is sailors’ slang for shirking one’s duties, the phrase “oxen of the cold waste” is meaningless. A Religion roll identifies the Sacred Heart as Catholic iconography, the Sacratissimum Cor Iesu. Symbolic of God’s eternal love, it seems wildly out of context here.

Further Research
Given a half-decent library, a player character may substitute Library Use rolls for any of the above skill rolls, except for those requiring Cthulhu Mythos. But Valparaíso does not have a public library. However, there are certainly private libraries to be found; perhaps there’s some crackpot Egyptologist working for Gibbs, Bright & Co in the English quarter, some Ferdinand Lyle type of fellow? See “Research in Valparaíso” for details. A canny player character may even pilfer Joab’s library, which contains several volumes of Description de l’Égypte, the great encyclopedia of Egypt assembled by Napoleon’s scholars. However, understanding the work requires Language (French) skill of 25% or higher.

Hitting the Pavement
The characters are free to snoop around Valparaíso for evidence of the “evil” men and the Sacred Heart; but they will find nothing, unless they desert ship and strike out for Patagonia—not a very good idea. If the players don’t get the drift, the Keeper may have them encounter some Los Caleuches who make it clear that Chile is a closed book!

White Leviathan, Chapter 3—Pacific Ocean I
[Back to Encounter 4, Valparaíso | White Leviathan TOC | Forward to Encounter 6, The Chilean Grounds]

Author: A. Buell Ruch
Last Modified: 10 October 2022
Email: quail (at) shipwrecklibrary (dot) com
White Leviathan PDF: [TBD]