Where & When
The story takes place in and around the city of Inverness in northern Scotland. As with some of the other pure historicals, it includes a real-world event, allowing us to date it precisely: the TARDIS arrives around 2 pm on 16th April 1746, and leaves late at night on the following day.
Setting
The historical event that opens the story is the Battle of Culloden. I’ve gone into the background of this before in another context, but here it is again. The Glorious Revolution of 1688 saw King James II expelled from the country, and was followed by a law banning his descendants from taking the throne. Over the following decades, he and, later, his son, strove to do so anyway. Their supporters were referred to as ‘Jacobites’.
The closest they ever got was the Rising of 1745, in which James II’s grandson, Charles Stuart (or “Bonnie Prince Charlie”), led an army of his supporters from Scotland to as far as the English Midlands before being forced to turn back. They retreated further and further north, making their final stand at Culloden, where they were decisively defeated. Jacobitism was effectively over, leaving the way clear for the family from which our current monarch is descended.
The story depicts the Jacobite army as consisting entirely of Highland warriors, but, in reality, these only made up around half the force. The others were mostly Lowland Scots, Irish rebels, or English deserters, plus a few French soldiers. Many were inspired by Charles’ promises of greater autonomy for Scotland, restoring the Scottish Parliament that had been abolished in 1707. Others may have had religious motivations or more general complaints about taxation. Many more were simply told to fight by their local lords.
This may influence which side the PCs sympathise with, although since Grey is a villain either way, that might not make a significant difference. What will almost certainly impact the PCs, if some of them are captured as the time travellers in the story are, is their real or apparent nationality. For which we need to take our usual look at the status of the rest of the world at the time.
The King against whom the Jacobites are rebelling is George II, with Henry Pelham as his Prime Minister. (The country is, incidentally, still Great Britain, using the older version of the flag without the red ‘X’, and is not yet the United Kingdom). France, under Louis XV, is an ally of the Jacobites largely because they are enemies of the English. Italy has yet to be unified, and the Holy Roman Empire is still going strong, stretching between what are now Belgium and the Czech Republic. Characters appearing to be Scottish, French, Spanish, or Italian will be assumed to be on the rebel side, but Germans may have an easier time of it, as the Doctor tries to in the story. Depending on how they act, those appearing to be English may be identified as deserters, as happens to Ben.
We don’t see the battle itself, which, in any event, is finishing just around the time the TARDIS arrives. What is more relevant is what happened to captured Jacobite soldiers afterwards. Although we are well before the Geneva Conventions, there were still agreed-upon rules on what could be done with prisoners of war. These did not include summary execution, so the sergeant in the story is overstepping his authority – which isn’t to say that such things never happened.
Instead, prisoners would be taken before a court to be tried and, in almost all cases, sentenced to death. In practice, with the exception of senior officers and English deserters, this sentence was usually commuted to penal servitude before it could be carried out. The prisoners would be shipped out to the American and Caribbean colonies to work on plantations alongside African slaves and would experience a similar life.
Unlike the slaves, their period of indenture was time-limited (although, as indicated in the serial, this didn’t guarantee you’d live that long) and their legal status was not passed on to any children they may have had. Having said which, they were barred for life from returning to Britain and, when this proscription was eventually lifted, passage may well have been too expensive anyway.
In 1746, there were fifteen British colonies in continental North America, although the northern two would later refuse to rebel and ended up in Canada. However, just as the more southerly North American colonies relied on slaves, so did the British colonies in the Caribbean, focusing more on sugar cane plantations than cotton at the time. Barbados is mentioned in the story and was, indeed, a major centre for the sale of slaves, with the Atlantic slave trade being at its height.
For what it’s worth, the Australian colonies didn’t exist yet, which is why transported convicts and rebels were sent to the Americas.
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| The battlefield and moor |
The TARDIS arrives on Culloden Moor just as the battle is concluding. The moor is quite extensive, but the battlefield proper stands about 7 km (4½ miles) east of the centre of Inverness. Today, it’s a mixture of agricultural fields and woodland just outside the modern suburbs, but in 1746, it was more open, having been used to graze sheep. Heather and gorse would have been the dominant vegetation other than grass, with trees restricted to some walled-off orchards.
PCs staying on the moor for any length of time should note that it would be cold in April, but not freezing. Temperatures typically range from 12° C in the day to 4° C at night (54 to 39 °F), and it rains about one day in three. The exposed nature of the moorland means that it can often be windy, and it’s cloudy more often than not.
The time travellers seek shelter in a cottage in a part of the moorland away from the main battlefield. This is plausible, although the real equivalents might be cruder than what we see in the reconstruction, a simple shepherd’s hut that might only have a single room. Larger cottages did exist on the north side, but these were being used as field hospitals by the English, so they were probably not the best place for Jacobites to hide.
At another point, Kirstie and Polly hide in a cave. There aren’t really any significant caves in the area, but the River Nairn forms a steep-sided valley along the southern edge of the moor. This was lightly wooded at the time and largely undeveloped, so hiding there would be possible. Beyond that, the land rises into a range of barren and rugged hills that might provide another alternative.
The action soon moves to Inverness. This is Britain’s most northerly city, which had a population of just under 8,000 when the first census was conducted in 1791. It had been under Jacobite control for some time prior to the battle, with both the old castle and Fort George guarding the mouth of the river having been destroyed to prevent them from serving as a base for the English. (A new ‘Fort George’ was subsequently built further along the coast, and is the one you’ll see on modern maps, while the castle was rebuilt in the 19th century). After the battle, of course, it was under military occupation.
The serial visits four locations in the city. One of these is a barn on the outskirts, which can be placed just about anywhere. The jail is more significant. The Jacobites had removed all the regular prisoners to make way for English prisoners of war, and now, naturally enough, that situation was reversed. We can fairly assume that it was at least as crowded as shown in the serial.
As described, the bottom of the cell has about six inches (15 cm) of water on the floor, and a tide mark higher up the wall, indicating that it’s below the water table and affected by the tides in the Moray Firth. The tidal range at Inverness varies from around 120 to 200 cm (4 to 6 feet), so we had better hope that the six inches doesn’t represent low tide or else that we’re far enough inland that it isn’t quite so extreme.
The characters spend rather more time at an inn taken over by the English. This is never named in the serial, but is called ‘The Sea Eagle’ in the novelisation. In addition to the common room, this includes the room that Grey has set up for his office and a back room with a trapdoor leading to an underground channel to the sea. (One imagines this may originally have been built by smugglers since there’s little reason for it otherwise.) It is evidently a large inn, although its rooms must currently all be taken by the occupiers.
The final location is the docks. 18th-century Inverness was not a significant port, with just a couple of small harbours for fishing and rowing boats, and for the ferry to the north side of the Beauly Firth. Full-sized ships had to anchor elsewhere along the coast and send boats out to pick up supplies, load and unload passengers and crew and so forth. The supply ships for the English army, for example, were anchored about nine miles (15 km) away near the northern end of what was then called the Firth of Inverness and is now the Inner Moray Firth. The Annabelle is likely closer than that, but it still has to be in the Firth, not the Ness River, and can’t be too close to the shore or it would ground on sandbanks.
The Annabelle is described as a brig, which is a moderately sized two-masted ship with square sails. These were often used for taking convicts across the Atlantic, so it makes sense – it’s where we get the term ‘brig’ for a shipboard prison cell from. Later brigs could be much larger, but a length of around 120 feet (36 metres) is quite plausible for the Annabelle.The story includes no real historical figures, but the closest equivalent is probably the laird, Colin McLaren (sic). Clan MacLaren was present at the battle, although Colin and the other clan members we see are fictional. Their slogan and battle-cry was, as mentioned here and in later Doctor Who stories, “Creag an Tuirc!”
For what it’s worth, however, the MacCrimmons served the MacLeods, not the MacLarens. Clan MacLeod had backed the government, and their main force was not present at Culloden, although a breakaway group did fight on the Jacobite side under a different banner. But, unless we’re directly re-running the original serial as a scenario, we probably want to replace Jamie with somebody else anyway.
Algernon Ffinch is said to serve in Colonel Attwood’s regiment, which is fictional. Plenty of government regiments were present at the battle, of course, and we could pick any of them, should we wish to be historically accurate.
Scenario
Regardless of its merits as a TV serial, as written, The Highlanders presents some issues when adapting it to an RPG scenario - at least, if the PCs aren’t stumbling randomly into the middle of the situation as they do in the story. One of the reasons for this is that it begins with a large-scale defeat for the characters we’re supposed to be sympathising with. In most typical settings, whether we’re doing this as a straight historical, or perhaps adapting it for a fantasy world, the PCs are going to be aware of the conflict, and they’ll have to either join in and be railroaded into losing or turn up just a little too late to take part, which is likely to feel disappointing.
The second problem is that the plot, as written, requires at least half the party to be captured. While that can be achieved by railroading and/or the sudden arrival of overwhelming force, in general, it may not be something you want to rely on.
Some genres, however, can get around this issue. For one thing, it’s less of a problem in a one-off game, where the players can be presented with the starting situation and will know that they’re not “missing out” on a dramatic combat scene, or the chance to turn things around for the rebels. An example here might be an 18th-century Call of Cthulhu (or similar) scenario where a desperate start to the game is potentially in-genre. In this instance, we’d want to add something supernatural to the plot, most likely that Grey is a cultist planning to sacrifice his captives rather than enslave them. Trask could then be a Deep One hybrid able to call on more of his batrachian allies at the climax of the story.
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| Inverness, 1746 |
Another way of using the original setting is in a game based around a Time Patrol keeping history on track or seeking to change it in some specific way. Here, the characters are not seeking to alter the outcome of the Battle of Culloden, so they expect to arrive in its immediate aftermath. Instead, their goal is to protect one of the NPCs, preventing them from being shipped to Barbados and dying on a sugar plantation. They might not even know that that’s the NPC's fate, just that they mysteriously disappear from history.
The laird is the obvious candidate here, since he’s the one everyone in the story is focused on, but he may not be the most interesting choice. The story would work just as well if the person to be saved is someone who won’t abandon the laird, thus compelling the PCs to come up with a scheme for rescuing everyone. If their information on their target is limited, having some of their own be captured to get in among the people they are trying to rescue might even be a viable plan, albeit not the only one. Suitable targets here are Kirsty and the stand-in for Jamie.
Assuming we can get around the issue of starting with a predetermined defeat for the ‘good guys’, fitting the general idea of the battle and its aftermath into other genres can work. In fantasy, we could even keep the basic reason for the rebellion intact, since fighting to restore the rightful king to his throne is very much in genre. But we could change it to some other battle, so long as the losing side is potentially sympathetic to the PCs. Given the highland theme, replacing the Jacobites with dwarves might work… or then again, it might be a bit too obvious.
On the other hand, we might not want to make the stand-ins for the English too villainous. That’s not just because we might want some counterpart to Ffinch, but also because it changes the theme of the story. If we replace the Duke of Cumberland with a mighty necromancer, for instance, then defeating him after we’ve rescued the convicts could become more of a focus than we’d want. Although, if we’re planning that sort of war for a campaign anyway, inserting this as a side-quest could be effective.
When we’re talking about rebels against an oppressive Empire, Star Wars is another setting that’s likely to spring to mind. Here, the PCs might be called in on a sudden mission of mercy to lift some rebels from a planet where things have recently gone badly for them and end up facing the risk of being captured themselves. Ffinch becomes a decent, if clueless, Imperial officer, Perkins is a droid press-ganged into working for the Empire, and Trask is an alien slaver.
Here, a key point to bear in mind, if we’re sticking to the themes of the original, is that since sending captured rebels to slave camps is exactly the sort of thing we’d expect the Empire to do anyway, we need Grey (or whomever) to be subverting that somehow. Most likely, he’s snatching them away to make a profit for himself, not declaring his income to his superiors and fiddling the books to cover it up. The Empire may expect some degree of corruption from its agents, but it’s probably not going to like it…
Rules
As with most previous straight historicals, we don’t require many rules decisions for this scenario, assuming our system covers pre-industrial technology – as most generic or sci-fi systems do. The serial as broadcast includes the use of a range of skills, including Disguise and Escapology, not to mention Persuasion, Swimming, Stealth, and good old combat. But these are all easy enough for any system to handle, even if we follow things precisely, which we probably don’t want to. The animal trap that Polly falls into, for instance, is pretty much a default concept in many games.
The tech level is 4 in GURPS, 3 in Doctors & Daleks, and 2 in Traveller, although, with the Industrial Revolution around the corner, only just in each case. Soldiers are no longer wearing armour by this point, with those on the government side wearing highly visible red coats to distinguish themselves, making stealth difficult during the daytime. Typical English soldiers would be armed with a .75 calibre flintlock musket with a bayonet (which essentially turns a musket into a spear) and a shortsword.
The weaponry of the highland clans was less standardised. In theory, most clansmen should also have been armed with flintlock and sword, but swords were in short supply. Reports of looted bodies and captured prisoners after the Battle of Culloden indicate that only around one in five carried a sword. Although muskets were essential, they were not mass-produced to a single standard, so the calibre could vary. This means that bullets can’t be swapped from one batch to another, although it’s unlikely that the difference is large enough to affect the weapon’s statistics in most game systems.
Apart from the musket, and any sword he might have had, most clansmen would also be carrying a dirk (dagger) and a targe. The latter is a kind of shield, something the English (and foreign troops employed by the Jacobites) no longer bothered with. It is comprised of two layers of thin wooden boards pegged together and covered on the outer edge with a sheet of leather bolted on with brass or silver studs. At about 50 cm (20”) in diameter, it likely qualifies as a medium shield in systems that make a distinction between types.
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