We return to the Blood Prairie for more adventures back in Derricksland!
We’re picking up at Session #2! If you missed Session #1, click here.
Session #2
The Town of Aberhart
We left off last time with the players seeing the ‘criminal’ they just brought in being burnt alive in front of a cheering crowd. Still in mourning from the loss of Scabby Sarah, the Posse decided not to push the issue. Grateful to be alive, they returned to the home their blood money bought.
Over the next week or so, the party recuperated and explored the town. Most everyone (except Loss) did some sort of business with local surgeon/barber Sweeny Bodkin. Those who got haircuts went on to spend some money on better clothes at the Clothiers owned by legendary fashion icon/exiled murderess Pandemonia Sphinx. The popular opinion back in Old Country is that her husband had it coming.
Investigations
While the others healed and groomed themselves, Loss, the Unemployed Angel, went to the ruined local church in search of his former employer. Finding nothing, he shook his fist, muttered about the debts he was still owed, and then began searching the place. He uncovered a diary containing the tragic story of the ruined church.
After the death of God, the local bishop became increasingly despondent. Searching for ways to resurrect God and pressured by the arrival of Malaster King, he made contact with an (obviously malign) entity claiming to be the dead deity. Decieved by this creature, the bishop led his flock into the local Tarlake.
Meanwhile, Elijah and his imaginary friend Mordechai were posted up at the local billiards hall. While casually bankrupting Honeyfly, a gregarious old man and past-his-prime former pool shark, Elijah noticed the town’s potentates filtering into the Torch Club, a bronze-walled private club across the street. In addition to Malaster King (the town’s leading citizen), Driscol Choate (town judge), and Pozzo Pilate (town sheriff and payer of bounties), Elijah also discovered that Dr. Bodkin and Pandemonia were members as well.
Armed with this information, the group put together that Driscol Choate, town judge, was also the uncle of the bounty they brought in. Additionally, Driscol’s brother died mysteriously in a house fire. Where, you ask? The burned lot right next to the Posse’s newly mortgaged home! Suspicious!
Still, there are heroes, and there are survivors. Malaster King’s white coated guards outnumbered them many times over. Further, a strange muzzled Vampire had begun shadowing the mayor about his business. The Posse was here to get paid, not investigate people with armed guards. Determined to make some more cash and pay off their new luxury, they headed out to catch a crook.
Playing with Fire
Picking their way around the shore of Nephilim’s Bath, the Posse came to the isolated cabin of Fontaine de la Fontaine. Wanted for Assault and Theft, he was worth $60 dead and $180 alive.
Newly cautious after losing Sarah, the Posse took up positions around the house. Elijah waited back with a rifle, and Young Karazar and Renn Feild hid by the small stable nearby. Meanwhile, Loss and Neb knocked on the door, attempting to negotiate a surrender.
A reedy voice within claimed to be coming out, but strange thumping followed. Intending to flush him out, Loss tossed a firebomb through the window, lighting the house on fire.
Lit by this inferno, the Posse was unprepared for Fontaine to erupt from a hidden trapdoor in the stable, engorged with black magic and possessed of unholy strength. The spreading fire isolated Renn and Karazar with the monstrous sorcerer. Karazar very nearly died before Renn managed to kill the Occultist with his trusty croquet mallet.
Back to Aberhart
Low on resources and badly wounded, the Posse made a forced march back to Aberhart, exhausting everyone. Pozzo Pilate gave them grief about the deadness of the bounty, but paid them out the reduced sum. As most of the party rested, Nebuchenezzar contacted Leliel, angel of shadows, to bargain for invisibility. Cloaked in night, he snuck into Malaster King’s house and began searching.
Sure enough, he found an occult grimoire detailing a pact with a demonic fire entity. The dictates of the cult demanded burning someone alive each day; no doubt the source of the town’s rabid interest in retrieving these bounties.
As Neb was uncovering these secrets, the door to Malaster’s study swung open. Mayor King entered, along with his muzzled pet vampire. Although Neb’s invisibility held, the Vampire seemed to sense him by smell. Muzzled, he did not alert his master. The undead beast seemed almost pleased as Neb slipped out the back way.
Session #3
Session #3 began with some personnel shuffling. Young Karazar disappeared, perhaps falling through dimensions again, no doubt towards a greater adventure still. Meanwhile, Jaki was back, playing her new character: Alabaster Snee, Frontier Psychiatrist.
The Road Out
As the Posse licked their wounds in their manor house, they began to share notes about the conspiracy controlling the town. Though they acknowledged that they would quickly have to confront Malaster King and his cult, they thought they’d track down one last bounty. If nothing else, it might lead them to one of Malaster’s enemies, and therefore a potential ally.
The target? Adelaide Ambedekar, wanted for Sedition and Trafficking with Demons. Headed to her manor house, the Posse encountered not one, but two Random Encounters.
The first was an armoured convoy, bearing the livery of the Oil Baron, a potentate who ruled slightly to the north. Identifying this as a delivery of cash, the party decided to spring an ambush. Summoning Leliel, they doused the caravan’s lights. Emboldened, they tried summoning the Mad Horse without any protective magic circle. All horses present became possessed with evil, mutating into carnivorous man-eating beasts. Since our ‘heroes’ were travelling on foot, this was mostly catastrophic for the newly blinded caravan.
Amidst all this chaos, Renn snuck under one of the carriages, broke through the lock, and made off with two cash boxes with no one noticing. Inside: about $2000!
The second encounter didn’t go so well. Just as they approached Adelaide’s estate, a group of Hungry Winds blew in on the Posse. Loss had to overtly reveal their angelic form to repel the monsters. Between Loss’s angelic ability to turn undead and the humans’ silver bullets, they fought well. As things got desperate, some even took to packing their fists with silver dollars and trying to punch the cannibal ghosts. Although they dispatched the spectres, Elijah was bitten.
Big House on the Blood Prairie
They attempted to make camp and tend their wounds, but Elijah’s bite infected him with an exponentially growing hunger. Nebuchenezzar, an experienced Blood Praire hand, knew that the only cure was baptism in kerosene. Forced by circumstances, they entered the house.
Inside, they found things covered in a thick layer of dust, as if the house had been empty for decades. Unsettling, seeing as how it seemed to be built recently and in modern styles.
After some shallow incursions through the front door, they ultimately circled around to the back and found themselves in a library. As Neb located a diary on a nearby writing desk, most of the Posse circled around a small terrarium. Inside, winding amongst tiny silver figurines of knights and wizards and miniature landscapes, were a pair of rattlesnakes, mysteriously alive. With some assistance, Alabaster Snee managed to use their steady surgeon’s hands, a jar, and some drapes to extract the snakes’ venom.
Meanwhile, Neb leafed through the diary, uncovering Adelaide’s story. It seemed she’d once been a member of Malaster’s cult, perhaps even his lover, but all changed. Discarded, she turned to prophecy seeking revenge. Turns out that the drowned bishop and his followers in the tarlake are prophesied to arise in vengance upon Malaster’s death. In contact with the Clock-Eyed Devil, she had a theory that she could invert the temporal causality, causing the dead to rise and kill Malaster.
Neb, reviewing her occult logic, found it lacking.
Contact
Moving deeper into the house, they came across a clock-filled parlour. Thinking to disrupt whatever time magic was affecting the house, they smashed up all the clocks.
PCs. Amirite, fellow GMs?
Anyways, between the time, noise, and general disruption, the Posse caught the attention of Adelaide’s ghost. Her superannuated spectral form burst from the ceiling and instantly aged Neb by about 15 years. Loss blasted the creature back and the Posse fled.
After a quick regroup, Elijah’s demonic possession forced them inside once again. Laser-focused on getting the Kerosene they needed, they located a kitchen with a large sink and headed into the basement. They gathered up the house’s remaining kerosene and turned to leave, only to find a second ghost blocking their way.
This spectre had an icey aspect, and looked like a young woman frozen to death. She lashed out at the PCs, draining their living warmth. Elijah dropped unconcious. The Posse replied with silver bullets, blasting a way up to the kitchen, where they deposited their Wild One in the sink and began the ritual cleansing.
Calamity
Now friends, I want to assure you that what happened next was not Blood Prairie’s fault. It’s true it’s a new ruleset, and we were playtesting it, and we hit plenty of snags along the way that I’ve been fixing up (encounter distances need work). This wasn’t that.
This was just an ill-timed natural 1.
So despite just dispatching two ghosts and having only a 1-in-20 chance of a haunting encounter, the party, beleagued and injured, encountered their third ghost in about five minutes. The icey spectre from downstairs reconstituted itself and rose from the floor, killing Nebuchenezzar almost instantly. The other PCs grabbed the kerosene-soaked form of Elijah and ran.
We left off there, with the Posse desperate and isolated on the great plains of the Blood Prairie. They were injured, but flush with stolen cash and in possession of new information about Malaster King’s Fire Cult.
Watch this blog for the big conclusion, next time we go back to Derricksland!
Like this? Remember, there’s a first part, as well as a recap of another Blood Prairie adventure. We even replayed it! We’ve also got a recap of Jurassic Dread, a dinosaur-themed excursion into Jenga-powered horror TTRPGs.