Deadlands: The Ferner Five: The Fortress O' Fear

Dare you enter the Fortress O' Fear? Well, the Ferner Five sure dared!

Welcome back to the (mis)adventures and (mis)deeds of the Ferner Five, the best posse to travel the trails of the Weird West! Alright, they might not be that good, but they sure did have a hell of a good time.

Before we go any further, I have to give you another huge spoiler warning. Not only are we going to talk about the adventure itself, but also some big things that are going on in the Deadlands setting. If you're familiar with the settings (note the plural there), this shouldn't come as too much of a surprise to you. The rest of you enter at your own risk, you were warned...

Also, this is going to be one of the longest stories I've ever posted, so I apologize in advance for making this one entry. If you need to, wait until you've got the time to really sit down and read it, I promise it'll be worth it. And, yes, a lot of this is already covered in The Tale of Phil Calhoon. So sue me.

Chapter One: The Plot Thickens

Once again, we're going to start with a bit of a recap but, there's going to be some new stuff at the end of this section, so don't skip it! I know it's a long one but it's worth it.

Our story began on a train from Denver to the City O' Gloom, better known as Salt Lake City. Our posse didn't know each other but had all received a letter to come to SLC. On the way, some robbers blew up the bridge and the posse had to fight them off. Then the real trouble started. They got shanghaied into helping a member of the Pinkertons into tracking down a creature known as the Husker. It got away, making her less than pleased.

Next, the posse had a little adventure involving a small town, a celebration and feats of skill, and a lot of booze. And whores. Enough said on that one I think.

When they finally arrived, they got offered a job with Dr. Hellstrom to track down a huge black diamond called the Heart O' Darkness. After some investigation, and some fighting and shooting, they tracked down the thieves, the Marshal Rex Gang, and managed to capture them. Of course, they were too late and they got an offer to continue tracking down the Heart to Lost Angels.

When they gone to LA, they found that their lead, a man named Stone, had been captured by Reverend Grimme (the man who runs the town in all but name) and sent to Rock Island Prison. A man named Old Pete offered to help get them to the island After some sneaking and some bashing of heads, they freed Stone, and then fought some demons in the Church of Lost Angels. Once that was done, they discovered that Stone and Old Pete were one and the same! And they got away with the Heart O' Darkness.

Whew. That was some ride, wasn't it? Well, you best hold on to your hats because we're about to start dealing with time travel, who the Reckoners are, and the fate of all humankind. Why did it have to be up to these men of questionable morals...?

Okay, it wasn't just these men. First off, one of our “guest stars,” Josephine turned up for most of this adventure. So, if you've forgotten who she is, wander on back to the cast of characters part of this series. I'll wait.

I've also been forgetting about Dieter's damn hellbeast. By that, I mean the meanest dog you will ever have the misfortune to meet. It's large, it's intimidating, and it just doesn't like people. Except Dieter. At one point, I mentioned that the that the dog had wandered away and when it came back, Dieter's player said it had a severed hand in its mouth. We didn't ask where it came from and that dog enjoyed the new chew toy. When Penwood tried to get a closer look at the hand, he almost lost his.

Now, there's also a very important woman you're all about to meet. Say hello to Jackie Wells. A woman from 2094 that's come back in time to save the world. Yes, you read those numbers right. Jackie's from the Wasted West (which I wrote a review about, if you're interested). What's she doing here? Well, let's get started.

Jackie tracked down the posse the morning after their “heroic deeds” on what's now known as Bloody Sunday. She explains who she is, where she's from, and that she's after the Heart, too.

You see, what Stone is going to do is take the Heart to the Devil's Tower in Dakota Territory and create a Deadland. A chunk of the Hunting Grounds where Manitous (read: demons) hold sway but, here, on earth. It won't be completely in the Hunting Grounds, but it will mess things up for miles and miles. And that'll cause the Sioux a whole bunch of trouble. Bad for them, but good for the Reckoners. While I was having this conversation with the players, I handed them Jackie's journal to look at. It's written from her perspective and explains the basics of the Deadlands: Hell On Earth setting. The basics are that in the late 2080s, war breaks out between the USA and CSA, as well as all over the world. In addition to regular nukes, they throw around irradiated Ghost Rock bombs. These not only create your normal issues with radiation but they also create Deadlands where they land. This is the apocalypse. It's the end times. And the Reckoners appear on earth. Their names? War, Death, Famine, and Plague. That's right, the Reckoners are the Four Horsemen. How's that for a bad trip?

But, it gets worse. How can it get worse? Jackie fills them in that in the original timeline (gotta love time travel), the Reckoners lost. The war never happened. Fear, the thing that the Reckoners feed on, dropped and people lived happily ever after. Except for one man. Former man, I guess. Stone. One of the first Harrowed and willing servant of the Reckoners. Using the last of their mojo, they sent him back in time. Not only to steal the Heart and mess up the Sioux but, to be their enforcer. Imagine, one of the meanest, toughest, and most powerful servants of evil in the known world, but now there's two of him. One with the knowledge of possible future events. And heroes. So, that's how they won. They plugged everyone who would be a threat to them and made sure mankind invented those Ghost Rock bombs. And the posse just helped them do it.

To kick them while they were down, I mentioned if they remembered the letters they received all those weeks ago. I asked them who they thought sent them? That's right, Old Pete. Or Old Stone, as “Peter” also means “Rock.” He remembered that they had freed him the first time around and got them together to help him. Yeah, I'm a big son of a bitch. But, it worked. It got them riled up, so they were ready to take down Stone and save the world. All over again...

Chapter Two: On The Road Again

We return to our story already in progress. Jackie points out that Stone, which one doesn’t really matter, is going to take the Heart to the Devil’s Tower and preform the ritual to make it the center of a Deadland. With this knowledge, they get the Murder Bus (the laser armed steam wagon) up and running and start chasing down Stone. Oh, and Phil and Dieter were riding Velocipedes, too.

With the murder wagon and other rides, the posse was able to catch up the train that Stone had left town on. Yeah, if you’re familiar with the setting, you might see the hand waving going on, as there’s no rail lines to LA (yet) but they were itching to get started, so we just went with it. And before you ask “Which Stone?” it’s the one with the Heart. The other one doesn’t really matter in this adventure, so when I refer to Stone, it’s the one that left LA with the Heart. Got it? Good.

When the posse rolls up on the train, which is barreling down the tracks, Stone knows that they’re after him, so he tells some of the other folks on the train that the Posse is a bunch of bandits, and everyone starts putting lead in their direction. Penwood and Heinrich starting shooting back, those mad doctors, while Dieter and Phil got as close as they could. Using an ax, Phil was able to make a foothold, so he could climb off his Velocipede and get on board the train, with Dieter not far behind. Using some rope and dumb luck, the rest of the Posse was able to hook onto the train (I honestly don’t remember how we did this) and also got on board. There was tense moment when Stone grabbed a woman and put a gun to her head. Somebody hit him and he let her go but then goes all ghosty on them but Jackie is ready for this. She puts a round through his shoulder and he falls through the train car floor! With Stone now miles behind them, it isn’t hard to find the Heart in his saddle bags and throw some money at people to be able to stay on the train. How’s that for some action.

The Posse stays on the train, and well ahead of Stone, all the way to the City O’ Gloom. Now, they have a bit of a choice: They can turn the Heart in for the reward from Hellstromme or they can help Jackie get the Heart to the Devil’s Tower, through the portal into the Hunting Grounds, and back to the future, where it might do some good. The Posse, bless them, didn’t even blink an eye and said they’d help Jackie get the Heart to the Devil’s Tower, without even asking for bit of money. I have to say, I was proud of them, looking to actually do some good. While the Posse had a certain amount of “moral flexibility” they did the right thing here without even thinking about it. And this was also where I introduced Nona “Cookie” Calhoon, Phil’s “big” sister. I had her walk up behind him and put her LeMat in his back. They’re a weird family. Now, I had a few reasons for this: First, I wanted to expand a bit on Phil, as they had started to like him. Second, I had come up with the idea for Cookie and she was going to fill the gaps the Posse actually had, a lack of investigation and magical whammy, so I thought it might be good to have her in my “back pocket” so to speak. Third, I had spoken with one of the other players and we had agreed that he was going to take over the game when this adventure finished and, as much I liked being Phil, I was kind of bored with him, as well as having the Posse relying on him a bit too much. I did talk some more about this in his Tale, you really should read it when you’re done with this one.

Now, there’s one matter of importance that faced the Posse, how the hell were they going to get to the Devil’s Tower? There was talk of trying to drive the Murder Bus through the Sioux Nations but that was rejected after the cost was figured out. Too rich even for these rich bastards. There was also some talk about doing to Deadwood and going from there but that also didn’t look like a good option. Thankfully, the folks over at Pinnacle included a nice option: A massive Autogyro. Now, they complained about the cost of this (seriously guys?) the adventure got underway. They had to pay extra to make it to make it all the way to the Tower, as the owner didn’t want to cause a problem with the Sioux as he wants to open a line to Deadwood. The pilot, the daredevil he is, is willing to take them all the way. This was the only the beginning of their troubles. Little did they know what would be waiting for them when they got there…

You see, there were a few things they could have run across, but since they came by air, there was only one: Devil Bats. In the book, they say there’s four of them up there but I only unleashed two. And they almost got Ming. The dice were not on the side of the Posse that session, which was rare. Plus, all the modifiers for shooting in what amounts to a helicopter made out of balsa wood and bailing wire. Thankfully, Carter McCormick (the pilot) was as good as he charged and was able to keep them in the air. However, if it wasn’t for Phil’s foresight (and one last lucky roll), Ming was caught before he could become a pancake on the ground below.

After a successful, and mercifully peaceful, landing, the Posse spread out, trying to find a way in. After some searching, they found what is, in simple terms, a flashlight. It’s a rubberized half globe that makes light when you squeeze it. And fucking Penwood and Heinrich were OBSESSED with this damn thing. I think they spent almost half an hour, real time, letting the characters fiddle with it. I had to just say “It’s a fucking flashlight, move on!” It was really slowing us down. Finally, they found a tunnel into the tower. Of course, there were some little beasties in there and they had to fight them as they climbed down the ropes to enter the tower proper...

Chapter Three: A History Forgotten

In the original adventure, this chapter fills in the Marshal on the history of the inhabitants of the Tower, called Crossbreeds. However, since the whole history of them is complicated and our “heroes” didn’t really get into it. Plus, it’s actually a really cool history and I would encourage you to read it for yourself, if you’re a Marshal. Instead, I’ll give you what you need to know so you can understand just how stupid the Posse was…

So, the first thing we need to discuss is who the Crossbreeds are. They’re human/alien crossbreeds that had super advanced technology but have been trapped in the Tower for a very, very long time. They’re also a dying race. And they’ve lost a lot of technology but have enough around to be extremely dangerous. As such, this isn’t an easy adventure as it’s pretty much a dungeon crawl, using a system that doesn’t give you a lot of healing and, because of the location, you can’t really easily introduce new characters. I warned the Posse about that before we started the next part of the adventure, and given how well they’d done in The Rock, I thought they’d be able to handle it. Boy, was I wrong.

Chapter Four: The Fortress

We resumed our tale already in progress. The Posse entered a massive garden, full of plants. Of course, they had announced their arrival by dropping a massive metal grate on the stone ground. This tipped off the Crossbreeds that someone was there and I gave the Posse some time to explore and think things through. It didn’t help. As they explored, they ran across a Crossbreed child, and started calling the Crossbreeds “Goblins,” so I’ll be calling them that from this point on. Josephine, the character who was just tossed into the group at this point, cast a Hex to detect magical energy and found a HUGE source of it below them. Now, they should have known that this was the portal to the Hunting Grounds that Jackie had told them about but I guess they weren’t paying attention to it and it seemed to distract the Posse. And then they made the worst possible choice…

So, they had this Goblin child and they heard the sounds of boots coming up the stairs from below. In their infinite wisdom, the Posse decided to go into the one room, a storage room, and pretend like it was the Alamo. This hurt me. I was trying to give them enough time to figure out a way to hold off the Goblins or maybe ambush them as they arrived but, nope, they were committed to hiding. I just couldn’t believe this. I mean, yeah, I kind of get where they’re coming from, hiding might work but I had tried to explain that they would have to be smarter than the average bears. And hiding was, in my opinion, about the worst thing they could have done. The only good thing was that they didn’t hurt the Goblin child. That did help them in the next part.

Having been caught, Penwood tried to negotiate their way out. Which, given how they were invading this place, was another terrible idea. I just couldn’t deal with it. I wanted to scream at the whole group for trying this course of action. They were outnumbered about 10 to 1 and thought that they could bluff their way out. I had to just break character and flat out tell them that if they continued down the route they were on, they were going to all be killed. I could have easily done it, with the resources at my disposal, but I didn’t want to. I know that some of you might be saying things like “well, it’s their fault” or something along those lines but I would like point out that, until this point, they had be competent and played their characters really well. I didn’t want to do a Total Posse Kill just because of one series of bad choices. So, I had to break it down for them. If they surrendered, I would get them out of the situation, but if they wanted to fight, they had almost no chance to survive. Thankfully, they came to their senses and lay down their weapons.

After they surrendered, they were taken to some cells and were set up to be more experiments. If we had had more time, I would have done a lot of things with them. Maybe I would have had Ming and Dieter be sent down to the train area, to be hunted by the warriors of the Goblins, while Heinrich and Penwood tried to figure out a way to escape or negotiate. But, we didn’t have time. And I was a little thrown off by what had happened. Instead, after a few hours, they were approached by one of the Goblins, who had an offer for them. If they would wreck one of the labs, which happened to be where all of their stuff was, he would free them. They agreed. After a few more hours, the door was unlocked and the guards were gone. They lived up to their end of the bargain, trashing the lab after getting their stuff. Heinrich did some poking around and found a Raygun that was in pieces. I did this for a few reason, those being his high roll and the fact that he was working on lasers. Plus, think of it as blessing from the Reckoners. Or should it be a curse? Oh, and did I mention that Phil rigged the place to blow? Because he totally did.

The Posse then began making their way to the Portal. They did okay with the stealth part, I think they actually learned their lesson from earlier. And I might have suggested that the gloves were off from this point on. They’d used up their one and only Get Out Of Jail Free card (literally) and there would be no more. Carefully, they made their way to the Portal, and saw the guards in place near it. They discussed what to do and came up with an idea of a plan. Phil tossed out one of his “party favors” I mean bundles of dynamite into the center of the room and made things blow up really good. This didn’t kill the guards but it made for a lot of chaos. Dieter and Heinrich were doing a good job of killing, while Penwood and Ming held off the guards that were starting to show up. Just as Jackie was charging up to the Portal, that was when I let the other shoe drop. Or should I say Stone? That’s right, that ornery bastard was back and he had a whole skeleton to pick with the Posse. Things weren’t looking good but everyone was doing their best. And that’s when the miracle happened. Phil Ex Machina.

I’ve already told this story once, so I won’t get into the details, but Phil could have, SHOULD have, killed one of the Big Bads of the setting, a direct servant of the Reckoners. With a lucky roll for Phil, and a very poor one for Stone, he managed to land a stick of dynamite right in the bastard’s mouth! Now, because I had plans for Stone, I let him survive. How? Well, there’s a Harrowed power called Ghost, which Stone can pretty much use for as long as he likes. So, what happened was that when Stone knew he wasn’t going to survive the explosion, he went all Ghost as the blastwave hit him. The force of it carried him through the rock of the Tower and he ended up landing somewhere outside. They would get him out of the fight but still leave him around for some shenanigans later on.

With the way to the Portal now clear, I took a moment to ask the Posse if they wanted to join Jackie in the future. Everyone said no, they were enjoying the game as it was. I have to admit, I was kind of disappointed, because I liked the idea of Penwood and Heinrich learning to handle how much they wouldn’t know about stuff in the future. Plus, there’s another adventure that connects the Wasted West to the Way Out West and I would have loved to have these jerks go from the Weird, to the Wasted, and then all the way out to the Way Out West. Perhaps another Posse will do it…

Anyway. I had something else to do. As you might have noticed, the Posse was getting to count of Phil too much. I knew it was time for him to go. So, with a final salute to his friends, Phil jumped into the Portal right behind Jackie, leaving the Posse to their own devices.

Ming’s player was devastated. Phil had just saved his character’s life and he just… Was stunned. I honestly think that he was mad at me. But, I also wanted to play Cookie, so I thought it best to get rid of Phil. At least for a while. The rest of the Posse was also a bit sad. Phil had a good run. But, his story isn’t over quite yet…

And that was where things ended. It was getting late and it was time to wrap things up. Honestly, I didn’t want to deal with the escape part of the adventure, so we just skipped it. Hand waving for the sake of saving time is how we roll in these parts.

That said, there’s one more adventure with these jerks. Stick around to read it. Oh, and it’s when I got to play the game as Cookie.

Oh, and Happy Halloween!