The year is 1879 but in the world of Deadlands it is a very different 1879. In both of our worlds the year of 1863 saw the United States at war with itself but in this world things went very differently. For one thing, the war did not end two years later. For another rumors persist...persistently...enough that many have good reason, though oddly little evidence, to believe something else quite important happened that day. The dead of Gettysburg rose and beset the living, Blue or Grey making no difference whatsoever.
That's ancient history now though. Well 16 years, but much has changed in those years. Slavery has been abolished. A new natural resource, known as Ghost Rock, has been found that burns Five Times Hotter and One Hundred Times Longer than Coal. California has, in large part, been reclaimed by the Pacific leaving a broken land known as The Great Maze. Utah has been taken over and renamed The Republic of Deseret. What's more Manifest Destiny has been considerably delayed with the founding of two separate large Indian nations, The Coyote Confederacy and the Sioux Nations. Amid all this chaos, Ghost Rock has dropped the nations into an Industrial Age.
What Is This?
This RP is an attempt to combine the freedom of collaborative non-linear roleplay with some linear storytelling, incorporating as much as possible actual Pen and Paper rules to ensure a dangerous engaging experience. Hopefully it works.
It's a fairly short story with a start and a finish, though leaving things open to play or encounter our characters again.
For this story we will all be either living in or making our way toward a small town in Kansas called Selina. Selina is a small town North East of Dodge. Kansas is known as Bloody Kansas in this setting. Selina is rather basic, consisting of a respectable if quite bare bones Bed and Breakfast run by one Father O’Flanagan, the monastery where O’Flanagan works, a General Store run by a ex-miner who once hit it big, a taxidermist by the name of Zeke, and a small three man operation Sheriff's Department. Selina is more friendly than most toward the various Indian tribes as there has been in large part an unofficial policy of live and let live. Most inhabitants of Selina get by by being as self sufficient as possible and selling any food or goods beyond what very little they truly need in Dodge.
Our Party
2sky11 - Rick Matthews, Union Cavalryman
Dragonbud - Aveline, Blessed
ElGappa - Constantin LeBlanc, French Soldier of Fortune
Lewis - John Blackburn, Investigator
Wampower - Franz Kaufman, Austrian Gunsmith and Ex-Soldier
2sky11 - Rick Matthews, Union Cavalryman
Dragonbud - Aveline, Blessed
ElGappa - Constantin LeBlanc, French Soldier of Fortune
Lewis - John Blackburn, Investigator
Wampower - Franz Kaufman, Austrian Gunsmith and Ex-Soldier
About The Setting
While this adventure won't explore most of the world or many of the themes here is a bit, fresh from the Player's Guide, to explain the setting and where it differs from the world we all live in.
Bloody Kansas and Dodge
An Ugly Past