The story so far

Ages ago two brother fought over a woman. The younger brother was angered that the woman preferred his brother and slew the woman in his anger, then fled to escape his brothers anger. The older brother and all the men of the tribe chased the younger brother for many days, but could not find him. The younger brother hid in a deep hole and called out to the dark spirits for revenge against his brother and all of the tribe. A dark spirit of bat answered his call and gave him dark powers. The younger brother called himself Heart of darkness and began to bring death to his tribe, the lands withered and the dead rose up in the shape of man bats and joined their master.

The older brother called out to the great spirits for help, the great spirits gave him the power to turn to a eagle and a axe made of the flames of the sun. The older brother called himself Soaring eagle and set out to fight his brother.

The brothers fought in the sky and where their blood fell the land lived again. Both brothers died in the fight, the tribe took Soaring eagle's body to a high aerial so that if Heart of Darkness rose again so could Soaring eagle.

The bat demons took Heart of Darkness' body into the Hunting grounds, then slumbered until their time came again.

30 years ago a group of miners led by one Maxwell Lord struck gold in the Sierra Nevada's, Lord used his newfound wealth to make a series of remarkable investments that gave him vast wealth.

Lord established the city of El Dorado over the now mined out strike in California and began to invite hand-picked families to set up homesteads in the surrounding valleys.

Among the other inhabitants of the valley was the order of St. Germain, a monastic brotherhood dedicated to research in all areas, they gain a reputation for advanced science even before the discovery of ghost rock. Over the following years, Lord became one of the founders of the Greater Rock miners association and quietly continued to gather wealth and power.

5 years ago Lord began to collect railroads, his agents often using threat tactics and outright violence to get the land needed for expansion. With the constant sabotage and competition between the railroads, Lord decided to have his Eastbound rail built in a secret underground tunnels so that he could have the first trans continental railroad.

3 years ago, Faust, a white haired gunfighter in a black suit, who wore a set of smoked glass spectacles at all times, was set by Lord to dig the underground railroad though Nevada. Faust choose to keep things quiet by using kidnapped farmers, and prisoners from the local jail as laborers.

A gunfighter called Derango were digging the rail tunnel when they broke into a cave open to the sky, Derango and a few others ran away thought the new caves trying to escape. Derango and the other whitemen got lost in the caves until they stumbled across a sacred cave consecrated to the spirit of Heart of Darkness, some how Derango woke the dark sprit and became possessed by the same force that had once driven Heart of Darkness.

The game started a week before Derango escaped the mine.

The first session involved John "One eyed Jack" Banes, a Huckster, Cordell, a gunslinger wanna be, and "Hootch" a bounty hunter, traveling by train to the West. Cordell was seeking adventure, Banes was unknowingly working for the Pinkertons as a courier, and Hootch was takeing a prisoner to the town of Ft Courage, Nevada for a $500 reward. The prisoner was a gunfighter by the name of Greg Brady, he belonged to a family of outlaws called the Brady Bunch, consisting of Pa, Peter and Bobby Brady. The Bradys managed to rescue Greg and the Posse formed into a posse to chase him down. The Posse tracked down the Brady’s to their hideout and met the rest of the family. After much shooting and sneaking around, The surviving men folk, Pa and Greg were taken captive for the reward while the surviving women folk were allowed to flee ( no reward for the women ). Cordell also earned the nick name "Deadeye" for shooting a pistol out of Pa’s hand, while Banes apply demonstrated the his hind rance "mean as a rattler" by shooting 6 year old Suzy in the head, when asked why, Banes replied, "She came at me with a knife".

2ND Session. As the Bradies had blown up the track, the Posse decided to continue to Ft Courage on horseback. A unnatural storm started to blow up and the posse headed for a ghost town for shelter. A few other PC joined the Posse in the town, including Dakota, an outlaw, and Little Eagle, a young Indian. The Posse discover that some years ago a group of bandits had tried to rob the town, the bandits were repelled and the town captured and hung the younger brother of the bandits leader. The bandit, Jose Montero returned on the following Sunday. A few of Montero’s men snuck into town and took up sniper positions in town, including one Weasel Swill who had a gattling gun. After most of the town was in the church, Montero and his men rode into town shooting anyone on the street and setting fire to building. When the Sheriff and his men ran out into the street from the church, they were gunned down by the gattling. Montero then burned the church down with over 60 people inside. Some of remaining townfolk rus hed Montero and his men, the proprietor of the General store sunk a axe into Monterro’s face killing him. The fear and terror of the burning people attracted a manitou to the area who took up possession of the dying Monterro. Monterro was now harrowed but instead of rising up he began replaying the day of his death over and over again, from within his grave. Anyone who was in the town during his replays were trapped forever if they died there. The posse jumped the Bandits in the town, learning that only weapons from the town, hexes, or their own bare flesh could harm the ‘Ghosts’. The posse defeated the bandits and ended the replay. Now relaxed they dropped their guard just in time for the now risen Monterro to start a fight with them.

The Posse arrives in Ft Courage and begin to investigate the strange lights and rumbling noise coming from cairns of stone north of town, keeping in mind that many folk were disappearing in the same area.

The Posse discoveries that the cairns are covering air shafts and that a group of thugs were grabbing anyone who poked around the cairns. The posse sneaked down the rail tunnel to were the kidnapped farmers are digging just in time for Derango to come looking for payback on Faust. Both the posse and Faust escaped by speeding down the tunnel on a train while devil bats flied along attacking the Posse.

Many evils were woken up by Heart of Darkness and other evils were attracted to the area, only to be defeated by the posse. The posse also learned that Faust was using horrors to scare people out the area.

Some of these terrors included:

  • A queen Prairie tick hatching more ticks at the bottom of a mine ( gotten from web, thanks whoever)
  • A mad scientist, Adam West, who steal the necromonican and raises walking dead in a attempt to bring the dead to life, one of the dead bodies he buys is a young woman suffering from sleeping sickness, the posse manages to rescue her just before the Mad scientist runs a lightning bolt though the electrodes on her head. The MS was convinced that his experiments had finally succeeded when the young lady was awakened by the posse. ( two scenarios gotten from web thanks to both whoevers.)
  • A clear jello like creature that possessed people by getting into their lungs, then reproduced by growing a twin in their victims other lung. They could only really be harmed by alcohol whiched burned them. The possessed could only be spotted because they sounded like they were talking from under water when both their lungs were filled. The Jello demons had taken over the local house of ill repute in order to pass on the demons. The Posse caught on, tracked the demons back to their lair, and destroyed them all, using up all the alcohol they had been able to get from town. The Posse returned to town only to discover that the demons had used a traveling miracle cure salesman to take over the town, and they were in the process of building two other travailing miracle cure wagons. The posse was able to beat the demons by having the Blessed call for divine intervention to turn the local spring to wine. (Heavily modified from web source, thanks whoever)

The Posse also had to deal with the Swill gang, Gill, Phill, Bill and Will. The brother Gill had stolen a steam tank from the union and was journeying to meet his brothers in the same ghost town as above, since the posse had last been in town a group of women had taken over the town and settled it as a "Nomans land" The posse ambushed the Swills and blew up the tank. The Swills were later freed from jail by their sister Sue. ( right out of Brisco county JR )

One of the posse was Soaring eagle reborn, the posse ended up finding the Axe of Soaring eagle and putting down Derango.

With Derango out of the way, Faust returned to the area and began to try to scare people away again, but the posse defeated his efforts. Faust had learned how to raise the dead by using the Necromonican, to do so he needed the bones of the dead. After Experimenting with some dinosaur fossil bones, Faust set on a journey to the hunting ground to fetch the bones of the first Heart of Darkness. The posse followed Faust to the Hunting ground and fought him upon a branch of the great tree, Faust ended up falling into the mists at the base of the great tree after his hand was cut off by the posse.

The Posse finished off the last few horrors in the local area, this included:

  • A tribe of albino, inbred, midget Indians living below the earth. The mole people worship a creature that was growing tunnels with it coral like body and seeding the tunnels with precious metals in order to lure miners deeper into its self. Once the miners had gone too far in the creature would close off the tunnels and begin secreting acid in order to digest its food. In order to kill the creature the Posse had to journey to the center of the beast and poison its main stomach. During the Adventure Dakota falls into a pool of acid, he get healed but all of his hair grows back in white in white, much like Fausts.
  • A scarecrow who preyed on children ( got this from somewhere, thanks whoever)
  • A quickdraw competition during which a gunfighter begins to win with a relic called the Dead man’s gun, then the dead man shows up looking for his gun (excellent adventure called wormwood I think)

Finally 4 assassins sent by Faust showed up one at a time to hinder or kill the Posse, they were.

  • A werewolf who concealed himself as a traveling preacher and preached ( plague)
  • A group mind of cockroaches who skinned people and assume their identities (pestilence)
  • "Red" Drummond, a gunslinger who used and often carried many weapons, he ran for sheriff of the town against a PC ( war )
  • Thantanos, a harrowed gunslinger ( death )

Thantanos called Dakota out the day after the Posse poisoned the Tunnel Horror, Dakota won the fight with a shot to the head with a Dead man’s bullet, just in time for the now dead Tunnel Horror’s body to crumble to dust. The now unsupported tunnels began to collapse including all the tunnel below the town that the mole people had been using. Most of the town collapsed and fell with along with Thanatos, leaving Dakota in the middle of town yelling that he dint do it.

At this point the Marshall had been running once a week for about a year and needed some time off to develop new ideals, the Marshall decided to change settings and allow the players the options of trying new characters.

The New posse ended up going to California trying to track down Maxwell Lord.

They ran into the adventure from the back of the blessed book.

A remake of Tremors featuring Mojave rattlers, during which Dakota gets swallowed whole and gains claustrophobia. During the adventure the posse runs into a group of men who work for Faust, one of whom uses a automatic pistol with maker marks saying Smith & Wesson C 1984.

They also encounted a town under control of a terror who stole organs from people and replaced them with shadowy duplicates, the duplicates faded if the victims tried to get away from town, and the organs were placed in an abandoned mine. The organs were linked by shadowy veins and fed life into the black shadowy heart which belonged to the terror. ( gurps big book of monsters) Dakota had his heart stolen by one of the saloon girls ( literally ) who had become a lesser horror. The horror used shadow man and shadow walk a lot, and when shot in guts, one of the towns folk took the damage.

While looking for Maxwell Lord the Posse once again runs into Faust. Faust now claimed to be working for the Reconers as well as Lord. During the Annual meeting of the GRM association board, it was discovered that Faust had been kidnapping the heads of the GRMA and replacing them with lifelike automatons, the posse rescued the heads and discovered that the Maxwell Lord that was at the meeting was himself a automaton. Shirleen Lord, Maxwell's sister is now claiming that Lord died in a airship crash and denied any knowledge of his activities.

The GRMA has set up the special investigations regulators to take care of any problems occurring in and around the state of California. Most of the current posse are members of the SIR.

Since then the Posse has ran into a few other things, like:

  • A giant turkey grown by a mad scientist.
  • A Tempest firestarter being hunted down by a bounty hunter.
  • A harrowed boy who died trying to get help for a Donner party copy, when the harrowed rises he continues his mission to seek help, leading the rescue party into the hands of his now weidigoed family.
  • A group of animal headed freaks who were slaughtered by fearful town were dumped in a deep shaft in the local mine, the last surviving freak has the head of a bull and begins to attack any who enter the mine. When the townsfolk who join the posse to hunt him down kill the Bull head near the shaft a Hugh Glom of the dead freaks arises and headed for the town, the posse defeats it with a landslide and dynamite.
  • The abracadabra and a Arab cadaver adventure, after which the Harrowed member of the posse is convinced that the gem will help him keep dominion. Shortly after the Harrowed is called out and killed by a blessed gunslinger. The headshot harrowed and his manitou save themselves by bonding to the gem. The next night both the harrowed and the manitou raise and animate two different dead bodies, who ever holds the gem at down now has dominion. Now instead of dominion checks for control the dominion check is to see if the manitou gets out that night and animates a body to try to get the gem. The harrowed’s body charges to look like his original based on a 5 step process identical to healing from wounds. However the harrowed’s eyes glow at night and the manitou has all the same powers as he.
  • A encounter with a group of children infected with a curse that causes them to feed off pain who worship a scarecrow animated by the spirit of a mad dentist. Dakota catches the curse and is later cured. After the cure Dakota is left with solid black non reflective eyes, this combined with his white hair, he recent acquiring of the Huckster ability, and pale skin from a week spent indoors allow the other members of the to suddenly realize that Dakota looks like a younger version of Faust.