Deadlands - Felheimer's Folly

Continuing the write-up of our Deadlands game. It begins on the morning of Tuesday 26th September 1879, the morning after Hellstromme's bombs.

~~~

We awoke, minds and bodies still full of the horrors of the day before, yet what we'd seen and how we'd reacted had brought us closer. We prepared and left Hellstromme's camp as quickly as possible, heading down to the port in Lost Angels with Steve's horse and Tesla's mule in the hope of finding a boat to Shan Fan, hearts in our mouths as we passed the guards but they didn't react. 

We found a dockside cafe run by a young Chinaman named Wen, who told us there were no passenger ferries, but we might find passage on a cargo ferry, or we could charter a ship - people did so to hunt 'maze dragons'. As in, actual dragons from legend, only snake-like and living in the water. He gave us a few leads and suggested coming back later if they led nowhere: captains would be in.

As we wondered round town, picking up supplies and more leads, we realised we couldn't stop eating: we were going through our rations as if they were nothing, and they proved expensive to replace. And we were being followed... Tesla sold his mule early on in the day, but there were hungry eyes on Steve's horse.

A frustrating day in all - hot and hungry, we discovered we couldn't afford any of the fares being charged by the captains, but finally one - Captain Harrison of the Arms of Angels - took pity on us and suggested waiting until the morning and signing on with Captain Kim of the Grace of the Maze - she would probably let us work our passage. He even let us sleep on his ship to be sure of catching her in the morning. Carson and Steve both muttered concern that we'd wake up conscripted, but the crew enjoyed my singing and waved us off the following morning, as they left with us still ashore.

We found The Grace of the Maze easily enough, and signed on with Captain Kim: she was happy enough to take Steve and Carson as guards, and was delighted with Tesla's knowledge and experience in engineering. I think she only took me along because she realised the others wouldn't come without me, so over the next few days I made a point of working as hard as I could, and of teaching songs and shanties to keep crew morale up. To reduce the impact of my nightmares on the crew, the others took to gagging me at night. I didn't sleep any worse as a result.

We spent the first couple of days helping ferry supplies to mesas and return ghost rock to the ship - Tesla was keen to get his hands on some, but fortunately Carson kept him in check. We obviously made an impression on Captain Kim: on Friday, she prepped one of the small boats and took us sightseeing.

She took us deeper into the maze, to a spike of a mesa. It's known as "Felheimer's Folly", and the man himself could be seen pinned to the rock in the crucifix position. He'd been there around 3 years and was still alive. As I muttered a quick prayer, a rowboat appeared with a single occupant. Kim hailed him and introduced him as Agent Coule. He told us a bit more about Felheimer, that he was a German immigrant who tried to mine the Spike, which had a reputation that it could not be mined. And on 31st October 1877, they'd found him pinned up there. He's pinned up high, with no access for anyone to reach him. Steve took careful aim and tried to put him out of his misery - even I could see this as a merciful death. His shot went wide, and Agent Coule said that happened every time.

Tesla reminded us he's a tourist really, a Brit here on holiday, by setting up his camera. It turned out to be a blessing: the plate revealed an area of rock a different shade to the rest. This was something Coule knew nothing about, so he took the four of us over in his little boat - Kim choosing to watch from hers.

The discoloured area turned out to be an entrance, leading down into the dark. We hadn't gone far in when Tesla screamed. We swung the lanterns back to see spears retracting back into the wall, wrenching themselves out of his body. He zapped himself with that cattle prod of his and the wound closed. We continued, more wary. A glittering symbol spooked Carson; he made us clamber above to get past it. I made a mental note initially in case I saw it again, but as we found more, I took to quickly sketching them instead. Carson made me promise to show no one.

We had to scramble and squirm our way past a few more of those glittering symbols before we reached the bottom of the winding stairway. It ended at a large steel doorway, which we opened...

I...

I don't know if I can describe the scene within. Not, not in the detail you need. It was ok for the song, but for this...

I'll try.

Start with the simple. It was hard to see: pitch black in the stairway, we only had waving lanterns to give any light. The room, a small study, was lit by a single candle on the floor, at the centre of a circle inscribed with a five-pointed star, and...

The study had a few bookshelves and a desk. Behind the desk, a skinny man cackled.

And in the circle was a Demon, summoned from the deepest pits of Hell to God's own Earth.

I froze and wept as the others started to fight it, but when I realised their attacks were doing nothing (how could they?), I recovered myself enough to work my way into the room, past that Horror intending to trash some of the potions and books in the study to distract the wizard. It didn't work well, but Carson noticed the Demon never left the circle and it was only the wizard fighting back, so he shot out the candle.

Blackness.

Screams.

Silence.

The scritch of a match as Steve relit his lantern. The Demon was gone; the wizard a bloody, stinking smear. 

Carson found a large book on the desk, in German giving the name 'Gerhardt Stroessner'. We couldn't read it, but it seemed to be a diary starting 5 years ago; Felheimer's name started appearing about 2 years ago. It seems Stroessner was somehow using his lifeforce. That's when we realised Agent Coule wasn't with us, so Carson tucked the large book away and we went to leave.

The traps had all vanished with the death of Stroessner, except that first mechanical one, and we found Coule cowering on the stairs. As we stepped into the blessed sunlight, we saw Felheimer's body disintegrate and fall. Coule set dynamite to blow the cavern as we left the island and returned to Captain Kim. With relief, I picked up my guitar and started to write the Ballad of Felheimer's Folly. You may have heard it. It became very popular with the crew of the Grace of the Maze, and things felt calmer back on the boat. 

Mermaid (short fiction)

She started as the rain fell, twitched and gasped as the first drops hit her sand-coated skin. Caught herself and breathed out slowly. Found her fingertips and ran them up her sides, along the slight sliminess of her swimming costume. Dabberlocks and sugar kelp, her first conscious thought, a nice touch. 

Sitting up, she brushed the dried sand from her arms to reveal skin the colour of damp sand, dimpled like measle scars from the rain that had landed before she woke. Ran her fingers through her thongweed hair and turned her attention to her tail.

The child who'd made her had taken great care, collecting the prettiest shells to give that tail beautiful colour, but - and for this the mermaid felt most grateful - the child had also realised that a tail was impractical on land, which meant the mermaid could wriggle it off.

The lap of every wave upon the shore was a tug against her soul, but tonight would be her only night on shore so she resisted the sea's call. All the same, as soon as her toes were free she plunged them deep into the sand, seeking the damp. She grinned, wrinkling her mother-of-pearl eyes, and threw herself to her feet, stretched one leg out and pointed her toes to dance and pirouette in the rain, past castles and mountains made from the sand. Reaching down, she grabbed handfuls of sand to toss in the air before running through the surf, jumping over and kicking the waves.

When she paused to catch her breath, standing knee-deep in the sea's susurration, she saw the other beach creations nearly all gone, collected by their new homes in the wind or sea, and she felt a pang of melancholy as she realised her own time was short. Her walk back to her tail was slower than her dash away from it, and she breathed out slowly as she scooped it up.

It was beautiful, iridescent with pinks and greys and greens and purples from the shells and seaweeds used, but she noticed the limpet and barnacle shells had, rather than being absorbed into her tail, instead returned to life and attached themselves to it. She smashed them off, irritation fading as she swallowed their flesh. Coming to life had made her hungry. By the time she'd cleared them all, the clouds and cleared. She held her tail up in the moonlight to make sure she'd missed none, and the sheen and colours captivated her again.

She walked back to the sea and sat down when it reached her waist to wriggle her tail back over her legs, and with no backward look she swam out to sea, out to the castles and where her kind waiting for her, leaving nothing but the smashed shells and her footprints.

Deadlands - the Battle of Lost Angels

This is a continuation of a write-up of our Deadlands game, started here and then left by the wayside as life got busier. 

A quick recap of that previous write-up: player characters are Carson, a gunslinger, Steve, a wannabe lawman, Tesla, a mad scientist, and Solomon, a drifter and folk singer. I play Solomon, so she's the narrator here. 

We started on a train heading west that crashed into a sinkhole, that turned out to be an underground railroad being built by Hellstromme in an effort to surreptitiously win the rail wars (ie, be the first to connect the east and west of the USA by rail). As this was a secret undertaken, we had to stay with him until he'd broken ground: having done so, we were accompanying him on his rail-less train 'The Good Intentions' toward Lost Angels when we were attacked by a small band from Warlord Kang's Iron Dragon railway. Having successfully fought them off, we rested and that's where this section of the tale begins.

 ~~~

The Good Intentions had been damaged in the fight with Warlord Kang's troop, but we were able to repair it well enough to get moving and see a view of Lost Angels by sunset of the 15th September, 1879. Hellstromme's men deployed a fort around the engine, and Hellstromme advised us and O'Malley to stay out of the way, so we observed Lost Angels from behind the fort. The city was surrounded by a barricade, and campfires with red-robed figures stalking between - Grimme's enforcers, the 'Guardian Angels', O'Malley said. Even thought we got a glimpse of the ruler of Lost Angels himself. Carson took a few potshots at the city defenders to help Hellstromme's efforts, but saw something like lightning and thought better of it. Kang and Hellstromme weren't the only railway barons in the area: the guy from New Orleans had also made it.

O'Malley asked us to help him out: he had a friend in town, name of Sam Helman, who was in trouble with Grimme. The small armies encamping around Lost Angels would have Grimme distracted, so now was likely the safest time to try to try and help. We agreed, of course.

The townsfolk seemed fearful, peering from behind blackout blinds. The few we saw were skinny as strays, ribs clearly visible, and it only got more disturbing. A group of wounded soldiers met a wagon of Guardian Angels - they were pleased to see the angels initially, greeting 'Sister Andrea', before the 'Angels' turned on them and clubbed them to death. We froze, partly in fear and confusion and partly feeling if we tried to help we'd be added to the cart. The cries, though, will haunt me for a long time. "Oh God, no, not there. Please don't take me there'. O'Malley had no better idea than us on that. We kept going, but it didn't sit comfy. 'Lost Angels' indeed.

Sam's room at the boarding house seemed unused. O'Malley said they must have got to him already and we had to leave, fast. Found a back route through the kitchen (filled with rotten carcasses: I remember wondering why they'd let the food go off when it was so scarce. Course, now I know food just doesn't keep in this forsaken State).

We were less careful leaving the town as entering it, and ran into a patrol. They called us 'curfew breakers' and demanded our surrender. What we'd seen with the cart, that wasn't something we were minded to give. The leader threw a bone into the ground and a dead guy clambered out. I tried to run to the roofs, but he caught me as I struggled to climb, squeezed me so hard thought I'd be dead too. The others fought: a lucky shot from O'Malley made the dead guy really dead, and most of the others - including the leader - fled as he fell.

We made it outside the city limits just in time to see an airship arrive to bomb the battlefield and the sprawl we'd just left.. Some of the buildings survived and we could see people inside so we tried to help. I don't remember much, just there were so many bodies.

O'Malley called us heroes.

He told us there's real evil in Lost Angels - he didn't know exactly what, but was trying to find out and that's part of why he was looking for Sam, who would know more. Told us about the Explorer's Society - a society of people trying to do good in the World. Told us to go to the Shan Fan club house and tell Roderick Pennington-Smythe O'Malley had sent us and what we'd seen. He also said page 13 of the Tombstone Epitaph is where he leaves notes for members of the Explorer's Society, and he'll use the tag 'Good Intentions' to indicate a message is intended for us. I'd like to have spent more time with him, found out mroe about how he became a journalist and how I could, but he had to go south.

The bombing had shaken all of us. It was Hellstromme who'd ordered it, and the devastation seemed at odds with all he'd said about wanting to end the war and suffering it caused. Still, we slept in their camp that night before heading north to Shan Fan. It was nice to say bye to Hegerty, at least.