The West, the Waste

There’s definitely alternative forms of knowing, alternative things to know, which the force of law has prevented us from accessing. There’s kinds of ways we could transform peoples’ perspective if they were open to it. Poetic powers, to grant hopelessness and red-fire courage to others.

The rule of law imposes itself on us, and these avenues are closed. The city is a place of things that cannot move, can only crumble. When people crumble in those cities on the east, they flee to the rocks and shrub-wastes of the west, where the wicked sun picks the sweat from their skin for itself to drink.

The cities are choked with people and within the miasma of the infernal industry. Babies drink in the demon smoke before they’ve learned to stop crying; it shuts them up real quick. Kids these days don’t have a light in their eyes, the shivering folk who’ve made it out will tell you. 

The west is full of broken people too. Bandits haunt these roads. The only surefire way to break a bandit’s curse is to hang them. If a man ride’s a horse, he is a bandit, or a servant of demons.

Towns are safe, until dark energies begin to fester in the makeshift laws and eat their way down to the social contract, turn the law into Demon’s Law. 

Many brave the roads because they cannot bear the demons in the eyes of the Other. But the people on the roads have demons too; in the silence of the windless days, in the witching hour of High Noon, reality becomes suggestible, and bandits reveal supernatural tricks. Merchants set off on treks to nearby towns, only to return because a strange man put them to sleep, and now they’ve lost their goods and cannot bear to witness the shadow cast by a form in light.

What is the engine of all this hate?

The demon engines. Trains of dark metal, spewing balefire from their metal demon-faces. Warlocks at the wheel, howling and screeching in the tongues of night creatures to scare those demons back into the coals and the flames. They understand that demons serve only those they fear, and thus make of themselves something more fearful of demons. 

The robber barons seek to steal our souls by poisoning our water with their dark magic.

The smoke from the balefire engines (demon souls are made of balefire) lingers in the airs, gathers into clouds. From them spring dark rains, and it seeps into everything. 

Who will protect us from this scourge of demons?

Texas Rangers. The Texas Rangers know each other by their equipment: hundreds and hundreds of charms, tenants of faith. When there are reports of wolves on the road, the rangers load their guns with silver bullets and stuff their pockets with nightshade. 

Clerics. When the smoke of dark magic makes the world inscrutable, Clerics are the wind and the light. They heal broken minds and broken laws. People won't ask them what they worship.

The Wilderness. The wild governs without law. If you can enter its order, you can escape the fester of Demon’s Law.

Sheriffs. The Sheriffs draw their power from, and serve, the Law. When it is corrupted, the Sheriff becomes a vile abomination, the worst of the offenses to the Good and the Sane.

D12 encounters outside town:

1. A man asks you for water while out in the wastes. He asks you if you know who he is. He says he’s very well-known. He peels back his skin to reveal what your face looks like under that flesh-mask of yours: “can you believe,” he says, “That everyone sees you like this?” The muscles stretches his lips back to reveal his canines and black gums.

2. A ten-foot-tall man wearing a grandfather clock drags two charred corpses behind him. The clock’s door is open, and the interior is entirely full of charms which sway as he walks. One of his legs has been transformed into a snake’s tail, and he props himself up with a long walking stick. He will return to normal height by evening, and will be unable to bear his load on one good leg.

3. You spoke to a stranger on the road. The sun set at noon, and you sat paralyzed on the ground as they rifled through your pockets and cut open your stomach to collect some blood. You cannot stop hearing the whispered nonsense they spoke in your ear as they drank from you.

4. A man wearing the Robe is being followed by a wailing family. They want him to find the men who stole their grandmother’s soul; he cannot help them, but they will not give in.

5. A train howls by; the warlock is struggling to subdue his demons. Huge gouts of flame blast up from the smoke hatch; shrieks of laughter and crashing thunder and lightning shake the engine room.

6. A train wails by. Buffalo snort and trample away from the tracks. Four men with skulls for heads grip their rifles in their shaking, lifeless hands, as a roc circles overhead. It is waiting for them to open fire, to transgress the ancient Law of the Land, so that it can descend and tear the train apart.

7. A train has come to a stop at sunset. Three men on horseback and one flying on great wings of darkness with glowing talon-bones rush towards it. A warlock stands on top of the engine, chanting in demon-tongue, as the smoke from the engine room begins to billow up and swirl around him.

8. A sheriff travels into the wild, his horse staggering beneath his weight. He is a gaunt man, but his Sheriff’s Star has grown heavy with the weight of his town’s demons. He is off to cut it from his skin and throw it into the river.

9. A bandit is being hanged on a hill outside a nearby town. They shriek a desperate incantation. You see people becoming agitated; the hangmen are moving slow, and many have begun sobbing. They fear the bandit’s power if he makes it alive to High Noon.

10. A parliament of owls have taken roost in an abandoned trading post. They want you to speak to the birds for them; the soil cannot bear the stench of demon smoke, and it is time to take action.

11. A group of men riding a great wolf like a howdah have separated the last railcar from a train. They are tearing it open to slaughter the horses inside.

12. A town chases its cleric out. In two days, the town’s sheriff will hunt the cleric down and murder her. In seven days, the river spirits will run their banks and wipe the town from the face of the earth.