Lawless as the Wind

Lawless as the Wind was be a FATE Core campaign run by Looweeja.

## Characters

* Gunn Moses
* Joseph F. Stein
* Snakeweed
* Walker

## Campaign

### Session 1

When the campaign starts, we find Gunn Moses, Snakeweed, Doctor Joseph F. Stein, Ryan Dillinger, and Walks-Twisted-Paths (sometimes referred to as “Walker”) venturing out to a small settlement that Victor Barnett is supposed to be coming through on his way to Black Creek, as Gunn was informed by a contact of his who’d infiltrated Barnett’s gang. They camp out during the night in the last patch of the forested area before the desert plains begin, using some natural rock formations as a cover. In order to stay alert, they set up a bell attached to a trip wire so that, should anyone try sneaking up on them, they would hear. They also take turns doing watches over the campsite.

Snakeweed takes the first watch. His watch is mostly uneventful, however, near the end, he hears a spurred footstep. Just one. He goes to investigate and finds a few footsteps near a tree just inside their campsite. He cannot, however, see what is causing them.

He wakes up Gunn and warns him about “ghosts”. Gunn’s watch is similarly uneventful until the end, as he hears a spurred footstep as well. He goes to check it out. He finds multiple footprints, one that defies logic and is directly underneath the completely undisturbed tripwire. He hears the footstep again.

Gunn wakes up Ryan. Ryan hears a couple of spurred footsteps during his watch, which he goes to investigate. He sees footprints that venture somewhere into the campsite before turning back around and leaving and heading back into the woods.

Ryan wakes up Walker, who witnesses a whole lot of spurred footsteps, which sound almost as if they’re communicating. At one point he notices one for a few microseconds, a translucent being’s long legs... and is sure he knows what it is.

Walker wakes up Dr. Stein and warns him not to follow any footsteps he might hear. Stein also hears the footsteps and goes to investigate. He disregard’s Walks-Twisted-Paths’ warning and follows the footprints slowly.

Then he comes running back to camp, extremely terrified. He gets back over the trip-wire into the campsite with no memories, of what happened with only a faint recognition of the color red. “I’ve never been this panicked before except when I was born, and that was the most pathetic version of myself”. He wants to go back out but finds that only his footprints are visible and that they have been cut off perfectly underneath the trip wire and are not visible outside the camp.

The group rides into town and set up at the inn. The innkeeper takes $15 for a room for Gunn, Walker, and Stein, but is angry that Snake wants a room all to himself and charges $50.

After getting set up, Gunn
goes around acquainting himself with people. He talks to the barmaid, and attractive but weather woman in her mid-to-late 30s. She reveals she is the Inn Keeper’s wife, and it becomes apparent that they are in a loveless marriage. The Inn Keeper even offers Gunn a night with his wife for $10 dollars more.

There are also to has-been duelers sitting in the back of the saloon (chuck and Tango) playing a weird form of blackjack, who apparently have had many nights with the bartender, and she seems very uncomfortable discussing this kind of thing in front of Gunn.

Gunn leaves as he is also feeling uncomfortable and goes to the general store.

Snake starts heading over to the general store but heads over to a blacksmith’s shop instead. At the black smith’s, Snake meets the under intelligent blacksmith. The blacksmith says he may have 12, 15 or 24 knives but isn’t certain. He retrieves 3 boxes, hunting knives, throwing knives and misc. knives. Snake loads up on the best-looking ones and throws them into the crate with the throwing knives which he buys for $15.

On his way back he encounters Gunn briefly but is challenged to a duel by Chuck at the back of the tavern, a man he knew and had on many occasions wound up not dueling. After agreeing to duel, Chuck barged into Snakes room proclaiming “He always lived because he fought dirty’ to only seconds later get stabbed in right between the eyes by a knife thrown by Snake.

Dr. Stein goes to check on Chuck who gets up, and pulls the knife from his forehead and tries to throw it back at Snake, but Chuck accidentally drops the knife on his foot and then takes another knife between the eyes.

Chuck tries getting up again, but is injected by Dr. Stein with opium, and slashes his own face badly, and damages one of his eyes. Chuck fall onto the ground in an epileptic fit, and so Snakeweed cuts most of his clothes off him and loots him.  Dr. Stein also steals the fingers off Chuck’s right hand.

Dr. Stein is adamant that he can fix Chuck, but then, at that very moment, a knife which snake planted on
the ceiling falls down and conveniently cuts Chuck’s throat.

The Inn Keeper comes upstairs to see what all the noise was about and is shocked and appalled to find one of his most loyal customers dead.

That is when Stein steps in, promising he can still indeed fix the man... for an additional room night. The Inn Keeper agrees and gives Stein $5 of Chuck’s money (this being payment for Stein’s first night).

Stein works like the mad man he is on Chuck and eventually gets the man into a barely functioning state and puts him back down in the Saloon at his table across from Tango.

From there, the group waits. On one night, a few days later, while doing a nightly search of the settlement, Dr. Stein smells an awful lot of smoke and notices the orange sky at night and
hears a horse galloping in from the south. The settlement is woken up by the dinky little church’s bells ringing.

The man on the horse is Scott Euclid, Gunn’s informant. Scott fill them in on what had just transpired. Apparently, Barnett was suspicious of Scott and fed him false information. Then Barnett had sent someone to the small settlement who reported back that Scott was indeed a traitor and attempted to kill Scott, but was unsuccessful.

Barnett then took another route through to the farms of Black Creek, more than half of which he burned to the ground.

The party raced back to the farmlands, stopping by Snakeweed’s ranch which was burned down. In the wreckage, Snakeweed found his brother, Seth, was dead. As they searched his house, they found Snakeweed’s sister-in-law severely wounded and his nieces and nephew, Sally, Terry and Molly to be tired and hurt to a lesser degree.

The group go their separate ways for a while, finding ways to help with the injured and even bump into Liu Jun. Finally, after a week of tireless work, and helping restore some peace to the city of Black Creek they head back out after Barnett.

They stop in Alder Bend, to ask if Barnett has stopped by. When there, a they go to a saloon/brothel and ask if Barnett had been by. The owner says he had and that he himself had kicked Barnett out. When asked why, he takes them upstairs and shows them one of his hookers, Delilah, who is covered in fresh bruises, sca,rs and burns from head to toe. Delilah says while quivering “didn’t even do anything to him. He just started beating on me.”

Walks-Twisted-Paths and Dr. Stein begin working on a number of different healing techniques to try and make her feel a bit better and then the party leaves to ride through the night and catch up to Barnett.

Just after leaving the come across a dog in their path. A massive dog with a humanoid face and a creepy smile, which on all fours stood taller that the party’s horses. Gunn and Walker ride away quickly, but Dr. Stein and Snakeweed stay behind to fight it. The thing rears up on its hind legs and morphs into a 13-foot-tall vaguely humanoid creature with antlers.

Despite the best efforts of Snake and Stein, it seems pretty much unbeatable. It slashes Dr. Stein across the chest and neck and throws Snakeweed into the ground pretty hard. It then runs off impossibly fast towards Gunn and Walker.

It catches up to Gunn and
Walker and runs beside them, looks at them, winks while smiling, and disappears
into the dim night sky.

Stein’s horse seems to have run off, but Snake’s is still around, so the more grievously injured Stein sits on the horse while stitching himself up as Snakeweed walks beside them as they head back to Alder Bend.

### Session 2

The party found themselves wandering back to Alder Bend to recover from their mysterious encounter. They talked on their way back in and Snakeweed, Stein, and Gunn all agreed that it was some sort of bear that attacked them.

## OOC

The characters on the poster, from left to right, are Liu Jun, Snakeweed, Walker, Dr. Stein, and Gunn Moses. Liu Jun, who only appears in a cameo in this story, was a Chinese Youxia who was supposed to be played by Jeb. While he attended session 0, the campaign ended before he had a chance to play the character.