[DL] The advent of the Mariposa Kid (*very* long, sorry)

["Daphne Brunelle" <dbrune4@po-box.mcgill.ca>]

Howdy all!

The Marshal o' my Deadlands game (aka to y'all as Ross) has expressed a
desire for one of us to do a write-up of our sessions in our new campaign
for the general entertainment of the subscribers to this list. Given that
I'm currently the only posse member on this listserv (and that Ross promised
me a Fate Chip if I do it *g*), here is the write-up of all the misery our
Marshal heaped upon us in the last seven or so hours of play. Apologies in
advance for my tendency to be far too verbose when I write. I promise to
prune and snip as much as possible.

FYI, just so's you know who I'm talking about: there are now three members
of our posse (our Russian anarchist having been taken out of the game
early). There's Victoria Anne James, the harrowed gunslinger currently
beating her legion of manitous seven to one (played by yours truly), Winslow
"Slowpoke" Monroe, the ex-Marshall, ex-bounty-hunter, now-turned escaped
convict (long story), and the resident MiB, Matthew Tiberius Stone (aka
Reverend Stone, him being a man o' the cloth and all). Accompanying our
intrepid heroes is one Elijah Blanton (NPC of course), J.B. Taft lookalike
and aspiring gunfighter.

Shameless plug time: if you want to know more about them, here's the URL of
Ross's website.

http://www.geocities.com/weirdwest_2000/

To resume: (quick summary time) in the past two sessions, Victoria got taken
over by one of the many manitous taking up residence inside her undead self
(one with 1d4 spirit, to add insult to injury...) and proceeded to blow an
innocent gunsmith all to hell. The Agency intervened, and to make a long
story exceedingly short (leaving out the whole attempt by several people to
shorten Victoria's unlife), got her hanged and proceeded to have her shipped
to Denver, accompanied by Stone and Monroe (who was there but for an
entirely different reason). They left Carver's Landing (a nice little town
in the Maze) in a mazerunner which proceeded to be attacked by a Chinese
junk (sp? sorry, it's late and I can't be bothered to check). The posse
jumped ship and managed to make there way to the mainland after a whole heap
of trouble, including sharks and Mexican banditos (who were very nonplussed
at being shot to pieces by a MiB with a gattling pistol), then proceeded to
make their way to Lost Angels, where the Reverend Stone hoped they could
find passage East to Denver.

Okay, now here's the important part (for today at least):

It was on this trek to Lost Angels that Monroe brought up the subject of
Elijah Blanton's chosen moniker: it seems that the young lad (19 years old
with 3d8 in quickdraw and shootin', which is decent but not fabulous)
favoured "the Manhattan Kid," (since he's from New York) which somehow
doesn't reflect the spirit o' the West all that well. Monroe, who speaks
some Spanish, suggested that he go for something a little more Western, and
came up with "the Mariposa Kid." Blanton, not speaking any Spanish at all,
thought this had a great ring to it, and thus a legend was born, and a
player awarded a Fate Chip for deadpan conning the young tinhorn into making
a total idiot of himself.

Lost Angels (with a Fear Level so high, it's amazing any one of us got out
of there alive) was not the posse's destination of choice, but since all
they had in terms of gear was what they took of the banditos, and it's
reasonably the only city of its size anywhere nearby, they realistically had
little choice but to head there.

A gunslinger's top priority is her weapons, as everyone knows, therefore
Victoria's and Slowpoke's first instinct was to head for the nearest
gunsmith, where they proceeded to re-equip themselves properly (and got
properly fleeced at the same time, by Mr. P. J. Loyola, the fattest gunsmith
this side of the Mississippi, complete with Walrus moustache and
leatherworker cousin next door). Blanton got conned out of his fancy pistols
in favour of a (d*mn, I don't remember the name of it. My character may be a
gunslinger, but I know diddly about anything remotely connected with guns.
Someone's going to have to help me on this -Ross. It looks like a
Schofield... anyway, I'll get back to you) -well, a gun that's almost like
the one J.B. Taft carries.

Taking rooms for the night at the Tower of Babel saloon, our heroes hoped
that their stay would be uneventful (yeah, right!). The Reverend Stone met
with his superior, who gave him lots of instructions, then gloomily informed
him that he was to carry out his orders or die trying (muttering to himself
all the while about the quality of people Allan's been recruiting lately).
It appears the posse will be making a stop in Salt Lake City before heading
to Denver in order to find a missing Agent, and more importantly the
photographic plates of some (since destroyed) Indian paintings from inside a
cave -the one through which the posse incidentally made its escape from the
Maze. He never got around to telling this to the rest of the posse -although
I'm sure he intended to, it must have simply slipped his mind :-)

The next morning he went back to headquarters where he met the young Indian
girl -named Bathes in the Rain (don't ask)- who was to be the posse's guide
through the Mojave Desert (you heard me) through to Fortress 51 (I don't
have the map handy, so the name may be a little off) from where they'll be
taking a train North.

As he was doing this, Slowpoke and Victoria went back to the gunsmith's to
get their various weaponry, including a very nifty custom-made revolving
rifle (I think it was a Patterson, again my memory and gun savvy fail me,
sorry -I know it takes .69 caliber *sheepish look*) which basically made
them both drool, being the gun-connoisseurs that they are.

Of course, disaster struck at that particular moment. Seems that Victoria
has a way of attracting problems in gunsmith shops -it's a gift, I guess.
Anyway, as our two gunslinger-types are on the verge of buying said really
cool rifle, P.J. Loyola informs them nervously that someone has since come
in and stated his intention of buying the gun himself. At which point in
steps in said individual, a little red-headed, scrawny, unhealthy-looking
half-pint of an Irishman with red hair, red eyes and yellow-tinted glasses
who proceeded to creep out both Winslow and Victoria and terrify the
bejeezus out of Loyola. Introducing himself as Patrick O'Brian (gosh, I hope
I got that right: we kept getting his name wrong in game), he proceeded to
offer half the gun's price to Loyola, who was on the point of giving in,
when Winslow intervened.

It might be good to point out here that Victoria was attempting to read the
man's soul with Dark Vision, but unfortunately botched the Cognition roll
imposed by everyone's favourite Marshall. Feeling one of the manitous inside
give a joyous cartwheel upon beholding said O'Brian, she decided that
heading toward the door would be a good option at this point.

Unfortunately, she didn't quite get outside before O'Brian decided to
overawe her friend. Now, normally, Slowpoke is a pretty brave fella (nerves
o'steel and brave as edges, and four points o' grit, thank you very much),
and he came out with a twelve on his guts check, which is proof against all
but the worst abominations; but when faced with an overawe attempt at
twenty-three, you have few chances of succeeding, which he didn't. O'Brian
had already taken exception to a joking remark made by Victoria (about his
being perhaps related to Wright and Grey, the ghoulish undertakers who crop
up regularly and unnervingly in Ross's campaign), and now proceeded to try
to overawe her -which didn't work as well. Thoroughly vexed, he decided that
calling her out was the best way to go, so he walked up to her and slapped
her. Luckily for him, Victoria made her smarts roll, so she didn't go and
rampage all over his unfortunate kiester (hey, rage 2, need I say more?).

The gunsmith had a firing range behind his shop, to which the two repaired
in order to shoot each other in a civilised fashion. Victoria fired first,
with two cards to her advantage. She took a called shot to O'Brian's head,
and caused three wounds of damage, which Ross negated with a blue Fate Chip.
Yes, you read right. I'm not entirely sure how that happened, but he spent a
Fate Chip during a duel. (How was I supposed to know that O'Brian was the
result of the second double-joker draw that Ross made a while back?) The end
result was that he shot Victoria through the chest for five levels of
wounds, putting her down with one shot, and ruining her only shirt.

Monroe, who was still inside the shop at this point, took exception to this
(as well as to being overawed massively), and overrode his heroic and
cautious hindrances in an attempt to shoot O'Brian in the back. O'Brian was
quicker, and managed to wound ol' Slowpoke before the latter took a called
shot to the head and put him down like a rabid dog. It turns out that this
guy was suppposed to be a major nemesis during our campaign, who was going
to stalk us with the aforementionned really cool rifle. Unfortunately, we
killed him

Slowpoke was interrupted in his efforts to leave the scene by a troop of
Guardian Angels, the Reverend Grimme's ever-so-charming thugs. They came in
time to see the carnage that had taken place moments before and decided to
apprehend him in order to bring him before the courts (ecclesiastical
justice: nothing good can come of that). Monroe understandably objected to
this, and so their fearless leader ordered his minions to beat the stuffing
out of our hapless bounty hunter.

Victoria, in the meantime, was playing possum out in the yard, having
recently regained consciousness (despite the sucking chest wound). She
allowed the one Guardian Angel who came out to see if she was really dead
believe that she was in fact hurt far worse than she was (okay, so a normal
human *would* have been dead, so sue me) and so he picked her up to carry
her inside. Luckily, he failed his surprise check, and so she was able
easily enough to grab his own gun out of his holster and buffalo him with
it. She then proceeded to shoot as many Guardian Angels as she could,
although the fight was drawing to an end by then. Monroe was not having an
easy time of it: he managed, by fanning his pistol, to kill one thug and put
another one down, but took two wounds to the chest and one to the leg for
his pains. Ducking behind the counter, he was rewarded by being shot in the
head by the fearless leader for another two wounds (many, many Fate Chips
later, with the rest of us helping him out quite a bit so he wouldn't die).
Fearless leader and remaining thug were put down with Victoria's help,
whereupon the two escaped over the back wall, with all their gear (all paid
for, I'd like to point out).

The Reverend Stone, in the meantime, had come across this scene of chaos,
but like a good MiB decided that discretion was the better part of valour.
To his credit, he *did* create a distraction for one of the thugs, leading
him away, and he did spend a lot of Fate Chips to save Monroe's backside. He
also took the opportunity to get the horses saddled up and ready for when
Victoria and Winslow got back, conspicuously limping and/or bleeding,
Victoria muttering invectives under her breath about people's annoying
tendency to shoot her in the chest -it's a sore point with her, given that's
how she died not too long ago.

They rendez-vous'd outside the city with Blanton, Stone and
Bathes-in-the-Rain before heading South again.  Bathes-in-the-Rain was
singularly nonplussed upon learning that Victoria was inhabited by a legion
of manitous, and so Victoria was pleased to learn that yet another member of
her entourage will not hesitate to put a bullet in her brain should the
opportunity arise. In the meantime, the rest of the posse is refusing to let
her carry loaded weapons (I suppose they're worried about being shot in the
back *g*), and she gets shackled when they stop to rest. So it's all good.

And yet, today's saga has not yet drawn to a close. Nearly, but not quite. A
few days into their journey in the Mojave Desert, late one night, the party
was waylaid by a war party of Rattlesnake Indians, worshippers of the owl
and affiliated (if I may coin that term, inappropriate though it may be
under the circumstances) with Raven and the Reckoners.

Ironically enough, Victoria, whose weapons were unloaded, managed to get off
the first shot (after the Indians had fired a volley of arrows at them,
hurting more horses than people), doing four levels of wounds to the guts to
a charging Indian -you gotta love Remingtons: only one shot, but 4d10 damage
is great if you can shoot 'em. He actually made his vigor roll the following
round, and proceeded to inflict more misery on the posse despite the sucking
chest wound (lots of those this session). One Indian botched his shootin':
bow roll and proceeded to injure himself in the arm, making the posse's life
that much easier. Blanton proceeded to fire diligently at the Indians with
his WInchester, unfortunately missing every time. Stone got thrown from his
horse when it took an arrow to the flank, and Victoria came close to being
unseated as well. She blasted two more Indians into oblivion with her
Remington, while Monroe splintered the arm of a fifth (five levels to the
arm: that's gotta hurt!) only to be rewarded with lots of arrows and a
tomahawk to the chest when his horse bolted from in front of him (one of the
tomahawks hit *it*, making it very unhappy with its lot in life). More Fate
Chips later (again to prevent him from dying), he aquired another wound to
the guts. The MiB finally made his surprise check, and dispatched an Indian
with his gattling pistol, and winged another one (although there was not
enough damage even for a wound level). The last Indian standing got annoyed
and threw his tomahawk at Victoria's back, causing -you guessed it- five
levels of wounds, thus putting her out of commission for the second time in
one session with one blow. He was summarily shot for his pains.

Once wounds had been bandaged, the undead brought back to consciousness
(grumbling slightly about the ten-inch slash in her only shirt -which she'd
only just finished mending), and the horses rounded up (along with three
Indian ponies, since two of the posse's horses had gotten wounded in the
fight). Thus we leave our heroes wounded in the Mojave desert (there was a
fifty-fifty chance of it being rattlers instead of Rattlesnake Indians,
apparently), where anything can go wrong, and will go wrong, if'n I know my
Marshall well enough, which I'm fairly certain I do.

Thanks for making it this far, if you have. I hope the read was
entertaining, and if it wasn't, I apologise. Oh, and apologies for the typos
which I know are there somewhere where I can't see them (Gremlins, not me,
you understand *g*). Comments, questions, ideas, literary criticism if'n
you're so inclined, are of course always more than welcome.

Stay tuned,

Daphné "Could I have made this any longer?" Brunelle
--
 "I've really got to learn to just do the damage and get out of town. It's
the 'stay and gloat' that gets me every time."
                                  --Ethan Rayne, in Buffy the Vampire Slayer