[DL] For What It's Worth, Adventure Seed

[Seanchai <Seanchai@compuserve.com>]

   Here's the basic plot of the Deadlands game we finished up last night.
If folks are interested, I'll send out the specifics.



Spoiler Space














Spoiler Space





   Okay, here goes:

   A while back, Grenville Dodge is in the army. He fathers a child with a
camp follower (a prostitute). He refuses to acknowledge the boy and leaves
the service to run the Denver office of the Denver Pacific Railroad. 
   While in Denver, Dodge meets Mr. and Mrs. Meyers. Robert Meyers is also
an employee of the railroad and it isn't long before Dodge is asked to the
Meyer's house for dinner. He meets Sarah Meyers. They fall for each other
and have a brief but passionate affair. Dodge writes letters to Sarah,
which she keeps hidden away from her husband. 
   Sarah gets pregnant by Dodge. Everyone else thinks that Robert the
father. The baby is born and all goes well for a time. The Meyers continue
to have children. First the twins, Tobias and Samuel, then little Abigail. 

   As the first child Jeremiah Meyers begins to grow up, it becomes clear
that something is wrong with him. He is sadistic and cruel. He torments his
siblings. He hurts local pets. Sarah is quite upset over this because she's
convinced the disposition of her son is the result of her sin. 
   As Jeremiah gets older, he begins to coerce his brothers into helping
him torment Abigail even more. Their deeds take a new mature and darker
course. Of course, they're still combing the neighborhood at night for pets
they can mutilate and strangle, steal from the local stores, and play
malicious pranks on the other folks in town. 
   Abigail flees, fearing for her life. She becomes a soiled dove out east.
Grenville and Sarah put their heads together and decided that Jeremiah
should be sent to military school. Sarah approaches Mr. Meyers about it -
leaving out the part about consulting Jeremiah's biological father - and
off the boy goes. 
   While at military school, Jeremiah meets Sassy Black, a voodoo
practitioner who cooks and cleans at the school. Sassy senses something
special about Jeremiah and takes him under her wing. Jeremiah spends the
next few years learning all about voodoo. 
   Robert dies in the interim. Sarah's guilt about her son and her sin
build. 
   Eventually it's time for Jeremiah to return home. The Meyers family has
moved to Leadville while he's been away - partly to get a fresh start. So
Jeremiah comes to Leadville. He and his brothers get together again and
begin their mischief making all over again - but this time Jeremiah has
some magic to throw into the mix. 
   Jeremiah senses a dark power or influence radiating from the rail line
that heads from Leadville west. In addition, he hears about the legend of
"Bloody Juan." He's not able to learn too much about the figure, but
decides to test his powers - and the power of the rail line - but raising
this local boogeyman. 
   Jeremiah and his brothers kidnap a local child, kill her, dump her body
in the lake, and conduct a ritual to raise Bloody Juan. They're
unsuccessful. They don't know they're unsuccessful, however, because dark
powers step in and raise Bloody Juan for the Meyers. 
   Bloody Juan turns out to be a very hungry vampire type creature.
Jeremiah, very pleased and full of himself, feeds his brothers to it - or
allows Bloody Juan to feed on them while he watches nearby. 
   Bloody Juan is based off a historical figure, Juan de Uilbarri. Uilbarri
claimed Colorado for the Spanish in the 1800's. He did fight with the Utes.
Accounts as to why he fought the Utes differ: He was either sent by the
Spanish government to do so or, while traveling through southern Colorado
with a unit of men, he was asked by other local tribes to help retrieve
tribes people who had been taken prisioner by the Utes. 
   In the Deadlands universe, Ulibarri has been sent by the Spanish
government to secure the lands for the Spanish, which means dealing with
local tribes. He deals with them very harshly and comes to the attention of
dark powers with his barbaric acts. The Utes catch up with him and hang him
on a tree to die. He slowly bleeds to death, thus becomes a vampire - who
has a hatred of Native Americans and is vulnerable to them. 
   Bloody Juan free, Jeremiah decides to leave. He is ignorant of the
vampire's taste in victims and believes Bloody Juan will strike terror into
the hearts of the people of Leadville. Jeremiah decides to follow the
railroad tracks to see what is imbuing them with their dark essence. He has
known all along that his mother has been keeping a big secret from him, so
he pays her a visit before he goes. He busts in her front door, terrorizes
her, and finds her stash of love letters. He flees town with them.
   A day passes. The Meyers twins are found dead by the tracks and
immediately buried without ceremony. Sarah does not object. 
   The player characters enter the story the day after the Meyers brothers
are buried. One of them has had a relationship with Abigail out east. She
died of tuberculosis years ago, but asked that character to visit her
mother if he was ever near Leadville (Abigail realizes that he beau is
going to be fleeing out west sooner or later). Abigail wants her mother to
know what happened to her and that she managed to survive. 
   The Meyers brothers rises from the grave and just happen to attack the
first saloon the player characters wander in to. 
   Meanwhile, Jeremiah has reached the City o' Gloom. The dark powers
intervene and cause Jeremiah to meet with his half-brother, Pugnacious
Dodge. Pug has also been touched by the dark powers. He used to be
scientist, but after coming to the City o' Gloom years ago, was corrupted
and is now the insane servant of the powers. 
   Pug tells Jeremiah all about the dark powers. Both Jeremiah and Pug
realize there is a shadow over the city, but they're not sure just what is
causing it. Jeremiah hears about Darius Hellstromme and mets with him. But
Hellstromme is a scientist and when Jeremiah approaches him with talk about
dark spirits and magic - and asks to become his apprentice in those ways -
Hellstromme tells him to get the hell out of his town. 
   Pug gets a vague sign from the dark powers that Jeremiah ought to travel
to Lost Angels. Pug sees Jeremiah off at the railroad station and then
thinks up a plan of action - because Pug has also been granted a vision of
the people pursuing his brother. 
   Jeremiah makes his way to Lost Angels. All the while he is receiving
subsconscious hints and instruction from the dark powers. His own foul
magics begin to grow more powerful. He realizes he can tap into abilities
he never knew he possessed. Of course, he doesn't possess them - they're
just on loan from the dark powers. 
   Jeremiah makes it to Lost Angels and marvels at its delicious dark aura.
He loves it. He spents time in the city. When Jeremiah hears about Grimme,
he decides that Grimme must be responsible for what's happened to Lost
Angels and decides to approach Grimme for teaching. 
   Grimme's response to Jeremiah's request for instruction about the dark
powers is to attack him and drive him from Lost Angels. Jeremiah is forced
to flee rather quickly, but he has developed some powerful magical
abilities of his own and manages to escape unharmed. 
   While in Lost Angels, Jeremiah heard about a group of evil shaman. The
dark powers whisper to him in his sleep, directing him, and off he goes to
find the Rattlesnake Clan. After a few days, he does find them and is taken
to see Papa Rattlesnake.
   When Jeremiah asks Papa Rattlesnake to teach him about the dark powers,
Papa Rattlesnake hangs him by his chest for day to prove that he does have
spiritual powers, then agrees quite readily to accept him as a protegee.
Jeremiah becomes a de facto member of the Rattlesnake Clan. 
   The characters eventually track him down to the Isle of Ghost Tears and
kill him. They scatter his remains to the wind and return to Leadville to
deal with Bloody Juan. But the dark powers aren't ready to release one of
their most promising new servants just yet. Jeremiah's body reforms over
the course of two days and he rises from the grave.
   Jeremiah returns to the Rattlesnake Clan and uses the materials he has
there to replace the voodoo charms he has lost. He then asks Papa
Rattlesnake to use his magic to send him to Leadville. Papa Rattlesnake
opens a door to the Hunting Grounds and send Jeremiah on through.
   Five days have passed since he was killed and Jeremiah is back in
Leadville. He returns to his residence and retrieves the voodoo materials
he has hidden there. He then seeks out Bloody Juan, whose vampiric
offspring have been terrorizing the town. Next Jeremiah returns to his
mother's house with Bloody Juan and captures his mother. He torturers her,
then kills her and carves "whore" into her forehead.
   Enter the player characters for the final battle. 

                  Seanchai

"The moon is nothing
 But a circumambulating aphrodisiac
 Divinely subsidized to provoke the world
 Into a rising birth-rate."
              - Christopher Fry