Closed Deadlands: Showdown At Sundown

[Moonside]

"They say that absolute power corrupts absolutely. In the Weird West, things can get even worse. Corruption can lead to damnation as agents of the Four Horsemen seek out those willing to do just about anything for supernatural power. The west is a harsh place and once folks get a sample of what power tastes like, they sink to very murky depths to get another mouthful.

The town of Sundown is a lot like many others on the frontier. It's a boomtown struggling with growing into an actual port of civilization. Moneyed interests have come into power and want to maintain their hold on Sundown. The richest man in town is spoken of in whispers because the townsfolk are terrified an unkind word might force them out of town or, worse, prompt their disappearance. Places like this exist all over the west; places full of good people living under the rule of the powerful and corrupt. But take a closer look at Sundown and you'll see something deeper and... darker.

Silas Wanamaker, huckster and gambler of minimal skill, gained power through the occult. He's on the cusp of opening a portal to Hell in the town of Sundown, an act that will spawn all manner of terrible creatures. The only thing stopping him? You."​

What This Is: Showdown at Sundown is an a short adventure module for the tabletop role playing game Deadlands. I've run this module three times with people as a tabletop module, so I thought I would give it a try here. We'll forgo the dice and you don't need to know how to play Deadlands to join this. This is a narrative driven adventure where you and the rest of the posse wind up in the town of Sundown and, well, one thing leads to another and you might all just end up being big damn heroes (tm) at the end of the day! Expect to explore the town of Sundown, interacting with the NPC's and each other as you carouse, gamble, brawl, drink, and maybe even get a little frisky. Expect gunfights, the supernatural, and maybe even a little bit of magic. So what DO you need to join this, amigo? Just a desire for adventure and an idea for a western adventurer of your own!

Setting: The Weird West is much like our own old west - but spiced up with the supernatural, magic, and steam punk. The Civil War ended earlier than in our normal timeline thanks to the discovery of a new mineral dubbed 'ghost rock' because of how it emits an eerie wail when burned. It burns hotter and longer than anything else discovered, allowing for rapid advancement in technology. Steampunk automobiles, gyrocopters, automata, and the like are rare and expensive but not unheard of. The West is also inhabited by monsters, cryptids, undead and all sorts of big nasties praying on folks. Sundown is a small mining town out in Wyoming, a little place just starting to boom thanks to the new ghost rock mine. It's a place with one street and more bars and brothels than general stores. Your character can be any old west archetype you can think of; a wandering bounty hunter, a fugitive, law enforcement, a scientist, gambler, martial artist and even more!

Looking For:
1. People able to post at least twice a week, to keep the game flowing!
2. A posse size of about four - that's four of you and one of me, your friendly GM!
3. People that want a pulpy, action-adventure story with a dash of the supernatural!
4. People that can work as a team, so everyone gets a chance to shine!

So, if this sounds intriguing to you, let me know! If this gets some interest, I'll put up a character template and we can get a posse started. See you at Sundown!

​

CHARACTER TEMPLATE

Name: The cowpoke's name or nickname, whichever they're known by.
Age: How old is this trail buster? Legal age only, please!
Gender: How do they identify?
Sexuality: What do they like in a partner?
Occupation: What's this character do to scrape by?

Appearance: What does your character look like? At least a paragraph, but you're welcome to be as verbose as you like. Attach art if you want, too!

Skills/Abilities: What can they do well?

Background: How'd they grow up? What made them into who they are today?

Personality: What's this character like? Are they sociable? Tell us about them!

Why Are They Going To Sundown?: A little boom town in Wyoming. Why are they headed that way? This gives you a reason to be headed in the same direction as the rest of the posse.

 

[dispatch99]

I've been thinking about the Wild West lately: I got a character best described as the Machine Gun Kid. I know zero about Deadlands except what you've told me, but I do have some experience with the "weird" Wild West genre. This looks like fun-count me in!

 

[Moonside]

No experience necessary! Here's a trailer though, if you'd like. Glad to have you aboard!

 

[mistressvalac]

I'm very interested in this concept

 

[Moonside]

Great! I added a character template to the first post, so if inspiration strikes you, feel free to fill it out!

 

[Baxter Peters]

Oooo, Deadlands…

Hmm. Mighty familiar with Deadlands. I could create a character that highlights a bit of the Weird.

 

[Moonside]

Be happy to have you! I think it's a really fun setting and I'm eager to share it with others. I hope I can bring some of that here, minus the dice rolling.

 

[dispatch99]

Name: Tecumseh "Tommy" Maddox
Age: 23
Gender: Male, he/they.
Sexuality: Bisexual, although he doesn't know it yet
Occupation: To be decided - previously was an enforcer/firefighter.

Appearance: Maddox's most noteworthy feature is his hair, a premature snow-white thanks to exposure to the stress involved with firefighting as well as ghost rock fumes. Aside from this, he also has glowing turquoise eyes (also a result of long-term and terminal ghost rock exposure). Has Native American features: thin eyes, broad nose, dark skin. His body, short and stocky and packed thick with muscles from work, is pockmarked and scarred from fires and fights from years past. His voice is unique: clearly youthful, but gravelly, from years of encountering smoke close up, as well as his habit of frequent smoking. Prefers not to wear hats for some reason, he instead wears thick leather armor against the heat and tribulations of the world around him.

Skills/Abilities: Physical strength, pain tolerance, skill with automatic weapons, high skills with mechanics. Has a deep and intimate knowledge of construction and firefighting.

Background:

Spoiler: Sweet Jesus I wrote 1175 words for this

Tecumseh "Tommy" Maddox was born in 184X to Methoataske, a Shawnee-Cherokee American Indian woman, and Jeremiah Maddox, an escaped slave turned homesteader, mechanic, and ultimately a volunteer firefighter. Little is known about his parents or their story: in the chaos of the Reckoning and the subsequent fires that ripped across their part of the prairie, records and memories went up in smoke more often than not. Maddox himself has little more than a small beaded silver chain to remind him of his mother, and nothing but his skin color (darker than usual for an American Indian) to remind him of his father. As far as he remembers, he had a good childhood—tough sometimes to be sure, but happy, and with loving parents in a caring community. Certainly better than most kids born into his position—poor, biracial, wedged uncomfortably between cultures—could have said at the time.

It was not to last. Tecumseh had the misfortune to be growing up at the moment ghost rock became the fuel of choice for home heating, factory engines, new automobiles and country-crossing railroads. While at first it proved a boon for the family, as Jeremiah's business flourished with new demand for engines that could make use of the heat, the ability to control ghost rock fires had yet to be fully comprehended. In the already fire-prone prairie, scattered pieces of hissing ghost rock from a passing engine could turn hundreds of miles of grasslands and woods into towering infernos in a matter of hours. This was the era of what you might call "physical" firefighting: the primary methods were not chemicals or water pumps, but were instead ditches, mounds, and firebreaks. Fire engines were largely restricted to the cities out east. Desperate to keep their lands from burning up, local communities and state governments put together firefighting squadrons to try and contain the constant blazes. Spurred by civic duty, Tommy's father Jeremiah joined one of these work squads.

In another case of ill timing, Jeremiah had joined right before the 185X Great Central Fire, better known as "Satan's Soiree," broke out: a train carrying loads of ghost rock east, ran into a train heading west full of explosives, producing the 1850s equivalent of a megaton nuclear blast and scattering bits of burning ghost rock across a vast area, including the Maddox family's hometown. In the chaos, while his wife and the young Tommy ran to the nearest train station for evacuation, Jeremiah rushed to the front lines with his teammates, and despite a valiant effort against the blaze, he ultimately sacrificed his life in the line of duty. Methoataske perished not long after. While there was room for little Tommy on the last outgoing train, it was already over capacity and could not take on any more adults—Tecumseh's last memory of his mother is a tearful, screaming goodbye, as she desperately lifted him into the arms of passengers already onboard who mercifully took him in. When the train conductor's crew came by to expel the stowaway, every single gun in the train car he was hiding in came out and was leveled at the officer, dissuading him from further action—Tommy's first and most memorable experience of extralegal justice. When the train arrived in the next town over, the town it had just left, along with everyone who had been left behind, was nothing more than embers. Fortunately, one of Jeremiah's colleagues in the fire squadrons, a German immigrant by the name of Arnold Buchner who had been lucky enough to escape the explosion, recognized the young orphan and took him in.

Tecumseh went to work in the firefighting teams as they tried to put the damper on Satan's Soiree, at first as simply a trainee, then as a mechanic (using what he had learned from his dad, which turned out to be quite a bit), and then when he reached adulthood as a digger himself. While at first the firefighting squadrons had been proud, well-funded civic associations, attrition and eventual community disinterest had reduced them to little more than chain gangs. Indeed, groups of convicts forced to work now far outnumbered volunteers, and Tecumseh himself was treated little better than one of them. The work of a firefighting gang also involved brutality, as civilians needed to be "convinced" to leave their homes and towns if they were in the way of a new firebreak. As the crew's best mechanic, he had the dubious honor of being the one to man their machinegun, which they used for crowd control and fighting supernatural unknowns (although for humans, Tecumseh always made sure the threat of his automatic weapon won out over the reality: warning rattles were enough for most people). One day, a screaming, burned woman began to hit and claw at his comrades as she tried to get back into her burning childhood home to rescue a hopelessly trapped relative, and Tecumseh—who had been working on an engine mere moments earlier—hit her on the side of the head with a wrench to get her to stop. The woman crumpled to the blackened earth instantly, and hours later died. Buchner provided comforting lies, insisting to the inconsolable Tommy that she died of burns and smoke inhalation and that his "tap on the head" had nothing to do with it, but Tecumseh knew what he had done. He'd killed an innocent woman, who had been no different than his mother had been years ago, for no good reason. He was as bad as the fire—no, he was worse, because unlike the dumb, hungry flames which followed simple rules of chemistry and physics, Tommy knew what he was doing.

Maddox decided then it was high time to quit. Besides, the great fires of the earlier years were subsiding, now that the people handling ghost rock knew more or less what they were doing—no longer treating it like coal, they kept it in multi-layered, sealed containers. There was still a need for fire crews, to be sure, but it was no longer the life-and-death national scale emergency that had turned his loved ones into smoke and, indirectly, ended his innocence. He didn't feel the personal urgency to continue his father's work anymore. Unsure of where to go next, Tecumseh did the natural thing: followed the money. At least wherever the money was, it would be easy living, and he could work out the next chapter of his life with the comfort that some means provided. That's when he found Sundown, Wyoming—Tecumseh hated the name, as it reminded him of some of the things his father told him about how he was treated before leaving Dixie, but he very much loved the wealth and opportunity to make an honorable name for himself that he saw on display. He took himself and his steam-powered machinegun (stolen from Buchner's gang) and made his way to the town, seeking work either as a fireman, an enforcer, a mechanic, or maybe, just maybe, something that would let him escape his past.

Personality: The "Strong Silent Type," Maddox is someone who expresses himself largely through actions, and not words. Has an inordinate interest in mechanical things, as well as in construction, mining, and in fire: the legacy of his upbringing. Has strong personal loyalty to those he considers his friends, and is vicious and uncompromising regarding those he considers his enemies. Is not afraid of violence and bloodshed. Tecumseh is a bit of a "flat-earth atheist": he does not believe in God, nor does he accept supernatural explanations for the phenomena surrounding him. In his mind, there has to be a Newtonian, rational explanation for everything, even if the true nature of it all is obscure. He is a desperately hard worker, going at his chosen tasks to the point of injury and exhaustion. Is not frightened easily. Appreciates music and drink.

Why Are They Going To Sundown?: Work, money, distraction, maybe a new home.