In UK as of today…

It will happen tomorrow, Saturday 28th September, at 9pm Rome Italy time (3pm EST; 2pm CT) on my livestream.

This post will introduce the setting and situation and the player characters too. Because we plan to play for only about an hour tops, I am placing the situation here. it is assumed the characters already know each other and are familiar with the situation, so that (rural internet permitting) we should be able to just start off and get with it. Some players were a little scant on their character’s description, but these will be added when they send them in.

Each player should have his character in front of them, a pencil and eraser to keep track of things like health points, ammunition, or make general notes, and two six-sided dice to roll for various situations or task resolutions they will need to perform.

If you want a copy of the rules, it’s only £5 as a PDF and you can get your copy here and print it (31 pages).

Below, the map showing the area and below that, the situation as our heros find themselves in.

Area Map

The Player Characters

Jack O’Trady (aka Jack O’Trades)

Equipment: Shotgun +10 rounds, .45 Colt +12 rounds, knife, bedroll, satchel, $10

Height: 6’1″ Age: 28

Appearance: sandy blonde hair with a scraggly reddish beard. Twill pants with suspenders and a waist long coat with belt on the outside it that carries his sixgun, ammunition for it, knife and flint and steel kit. He is broad-shouldered and thick at the waist, sure footed.

Bio: A Catholic Irishman, not in search of gold, but freedom. He fled his motherland to escape the ravages of the English – “famine, me arse!” – after politely expressing his disagreement with a couple of the red-coated twats (in Old Testament fashion, anyway). He landed in New York, immediately headed West in search of purpose and modest work and hasn’t stopped for 6 months. Each town showing more disdain for his kind than the last. He’s a simple man, though not as dumb as most. He has a strong will for survival and a moral compass with a needle that could use tightening. 

Leroy Gray (aka The Gray Gunner)

Equipment: Winchester rifle +15 rounds, .45 Colt +30 rounds, knife, bedroll, satchel, $10, Horse (named Whiskey)

Height: 6’4″ Age: 27

Apperance: brown hair, moustache, grey overcoat (confederate style)

Bio: Leroy fancies himself a bit of a gunslinger, having survived one duel that was deemed legal but the local sheriff a couple of months earlier and he is partial to wearing the same grey coat he had on during the civil war.

James (aka Just James)

Equipment: Rifle (Winchester) +15 rounds, .45 Colt +24 rounds, knife, bedroll, saddle bags, Horse (named Strider), $10

Height: 5′ 8″ Age: 22

Appearance: beard, the build of someone who is used to riding a horse. 
Bio: born in the Shenandoah Valley and Civil War veteran (Confederate). James joined the army around the age of 16 and mustered out sometime before the official surrender at Appomattox. He had grown up around cattle but after the War, decided that rather than continue being a cowboy at home, he would try his luck out west on a ranch. 
Habits: Smokes a pipe and appreciates whiskey.  He always remembers to say his morning and evening prayers that his mother taught him. He’s an Anglican, but maybe he’ll start to think differently out west. He keeps a clean room but is forgetful on food, which is curious for a man who is in the saddle herding cattle. He can read.

Philo Jurament (NPC)

Equipment: Shotgun +50 rounds, Whinchester +50 rounds, pair of ivory handled converted Colt Dragoons to take ammunition in gun holster (right and Belt (left) +24 rounds in the belt and another 56 in his saddle bags, Tomahawk, Matches, Cigarillos, Saddle bags (with other basic equipment), Horse (named Horse) Bowie knife, bedroll, Small metal container with strong tequila in it, $10

Height: 6′ 2″ Age: 26

Appearance: Sandy-Brown hair, blue eyes, about 6’2″ he wears a sort of trapper jacket. One of his large .44 calibre six-guns on his right hip in its holster, and the other Mexican style in a front/left holster that is cut down so the gun basically looks as if it’s just held by the belt. He also has a bowie knife on the gun belt, on his left side.

Ex-Indian Scout for the Confederate army. He was raised by Apaches after being sold to them as a boy by his own alcoholic father. Generally ornery and laconic. He smokes cigarillos but only a couple a day.

The Situation

It is 1867, two years after the end of the Civil War. The small town of Silver Hole is a mining town with some small silver deposits, on the edge of the frontier. The mine is not large enough to make the town prosperous, but it nevertheless provides enough to make the place tolerable, with all the basic amenities, two hotel/saloons, a local bar, various shops, a regular stage coach that goes to snowdrift falls twice a week, passing by Fort Bellamy and Lookout point, both army outposts that keep the occasional Indian raids at bay in the general area.

Snowdrift Falls is about 400 miles by stage coach and the nearest actual town served by railway. To the North is a mountain range, the south being gradually drier and more despotic and canyon-like. The Takumseh bridge being a case in point, straddles a canyon of over a dozen metres in height and about twice that in length, in order to allow the stage coaches to cross the river on the way to Lookout point, a small army outpost that is basically an extension of Fort Bellamy, a larger and better equipped Army location.

Last night, a very strange situation took place. Emily Lightfoot, the local hat-maker, went to deliver her latest order to the farmhouse of John and Mary McMasters, but when she arrived there, a large rabid bear had broken into the farmhouse and killed some animal in it. Mary managed to run out of the house just in time for Emily to see her and get her aboard her one horse carriage. The two women rushed back to Silver Hole, abandoning John McMasters to his fate, because he had been ill with a fever upstairs.

In the morning, fearing the worst, the ladies had returned with two deputies (Jim and Bob), but when they arrived at the farmhouse, they found John still with a heavy fever upstairs, alive and otherwise unhurt. The main room of the home was half-destroyed and had a large pool of blood and blood spatter in it, where the ladies assumed the mad bear had eaten the buck they had seen it drag in. However, no part of the dead animal, or the bear, could be found. They took John back to Silver Hole in a carriage as he was delirious.

The local doctor, explained worriedly he did not have the skills to cure the man and they should immediately make for Snowdrift falls.

James, being an adept coach driver volunteered to run John to Snowdrift falls, a trip of at least three days even if one rode hard all the way. Leroy Gray also volunteered to ride shotgun in case of bandits or marauding Indians, and as Mary McMasters offered pay, so did Jack O’Trady, a recent arrival, and an irishman to boot, however he had been in town long enough for people to know aside occasionally needing a bit of “hair o’ th’ dog” in the morning, he was a good worker. As far as irishmen go anyway.

When everything was set and the men were about to set off, a young private came thundering into town to say that the Takumseh bridge had been burnt down by a band of Indians and possibly Mexican. There had been a fight with a patrol from Lookout point, and he had barely got away to this side of the bridge, before it collapsed. The route was impassable.

The local old drunk at the saloon where all this was being discussed mumbled something about the old Indian trail of Frozen Tears, that was a more direct route to snowdrift falls but had not been used by anyone in living memory as far as anyone knew. There was a number of legends that no one who tried survived it and that giants lived in the snow-capped mountains in that area. As the conversation as to what to do carried on, a man known as Philo Jurament, an Ex-Scout in the Confederate Army stood up, walked over, and said he had come to Silver Hole via that path and it was passable for a carriage. The saloon went silent as people wondered if he was just lying or if he had actually done it. The man tended to be a loner and kept to himself, he had not long been in town, and other than playing the occasional hand of poker in the saloon he didn’t mix much with the locals. Even so, Mary McMasters was desperate and offered to pay half the man’s salary on the spot, and a more generous half on the delivery of her husband to the doctors in Snowdrift falls. The man accepted and also said the trip could be done in only two days if they pushed hard, as it was only 200 miles or so by going this route. As afternoon was already fast-approaching, the men all decided to leave forthwith.

They left on a covered carriage where John was bundled into a bed in back of it, Jack rode in the back with him to ensure John was as comfortable as could be, and tending to his need for water, food and so on. James and Leroy rode up front, James driving the carriage and Leroy with his rifle across his lap. Philo out front on his grey mottled horse (which he called horse) leading the way to the path no other man had used in living memory.

They had basic equipment, bedrolls, food and water for four days journey, although they expected to be able to make it in two by keeping up a blistering pace throughout.