Seasoned (35 experience points)

Attributes: Agility d6, Smarts d10, Spirit d8, Strength d4, Vigor d4.

Skills: Boating d10, Fighting d6, Healing d6, Investigation d10, Knowledge (Scientific illustration) d10+2, Knowledge (New World exploration) d10, Notice d6, Survival d8+2, Taunt d6.

• Charisma: 0
• Pace: 5
• Parry: 0
• Toughness: 4

Hindrances: Elderly, Death Wish (Minor; find his granddaughter, Virginia)

Edges: Explorer (+2 to resist hot or cold), Scholar (Scientific illustration)

Gear: Sketchbook, Surveying equipment, compass, knife (Range: 3/6/12; Str+d4).

The rise of English naturalists and explorers prompted an explosive demand for scientific illustration. Books on foreign travel became popular for their scenes of faraway lands. The new scientists, like John Dee , Richard Hakluyt , and Thomas Hariot , became the pioneers of a new field. John White joined them. He studied with Jacques LeMoyne and counted Hakluyt and Hariot among his friends. His first journey to the New World came in 1584, with Amadas and Barlowe, where he first met Manteo. The lives of the Indians impressed him deeply. His studies of the local Indians drew distinct, deliberate parallels to the studies of ancient Britons and Gauls he had worked on wiht LeMoyne, making a stark, visual statement about the humanity of the New World’s savages. Already a Puritan, the example of life in the New World moved White to become an ardent Separatist, intent on creating a new society in the New World.

White returned to the New World the next year, with Sir Richard Grenville’s fleet, where he and Manteo met Solomon Kane. White made his illustrations of Pomeiooc on the same voyage upriver when Ralph Lane wiped out Aquascogok. Horrified by the events that unfolded, he returned to England with Manteo and began to plan for a new colony with Sir Walter Raleigh. News continued to filter in from Spain of the building Armada. Between England’s persecution and the threat of the Inquisition coming to English shores, White’s Separatist congregation began to panic. White convinced them to go to the New World, and there to found a new colony along the Chesapeake Bay. Raleigh didn’t count himself a Puritan, but he admired the idealism of the Separatists, and had dealt with White long enough to trust him to carry out his vision for the New World. But the plans for the colony became wrapped up in the intrigues between Sir Walter Raleigh and Sir Francis Walsingham. White and his whole colony fell to the betrayal of their pirate cum pilot, Simon Fernandez, who left them at Roanoke, rather than their intended destination at the Chesapeake, so that Ralph Lane’s legacy of violence could destroy them. White returned to England for help, where the Spanish Armada and Walsingham’s machinations delayed him for two years. By the time he returned, the colony had disappeared.

The tale of the lost colony captured the English imagination, but for John White, it carried a far more personal note. His daughter Eleanor belonged to his congregation, and had joined the colony while pregnant. She delivered her child in the New World, the first English child born on American soil. John named her “Virginia,” in honor of Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen. The disappearance of the colony meant the disappearance of his daughter and granddaughter as well.

For years, working on Raleigh’s estates in Ireland as a cartographer, John White led a solitary and melancholy life, with the tragedy of Roanoke and his lost family forever hanging over him. History’s last record of him comes in 1606, with his letter to his friend Richard Hakluyt, describing what had happened at Roanoke, accusing Fernandez of treachery, and wisely omitting the name of the chief conspirator. In 1609, rumors circulated around Europe of Europeans living among the Indians, survivors from the lost colony. When those rumors reached John White, he felt a sudden surge of hope that he might find his family. Though nearing the end of his life, he contacted his old friend Solomon Kane, and prepared himself for one final voyage across the Atlantic.

Finally reunited with his granddaughter, John has prepared himself for death. He knows he will not live much longer, and will certainly not survive a return trip to England. Though easily too old for such adventures, John has resolved to stay with his granddaughter until the end. The death of his friend, Solomon Kane, has made him even more keenly aware that his own end must soon follow.

• Wikipedia