Originally shared by Wynand Louw
While the Cowboy World rules are more or less finalised after two years of playing, we are just now venturing into the weird. So armed with moves for Going Weird and going insane, we had our first weird session last night.
GM: Me
PC’s
Ivor Oppenheimer, played by Pieter. Ivor calls himself a “practical ilusionist” and has a travelling science show. He is from Prussia and speaks with a heavy German accent. Gear: A Gauss Rifle and an electrical device that he charges with a crank to shock his heart back in to rythm when he gets an aryrhmia. His goal: to bring the dead back to life.
Juan Miguel Lopez, played by Dawie is an undertaker, who has a Secret Identity: He is also a masked luchador called The Undertaker. Jaun buries the dead at day and fights in saloons at night.
James Jones played by Sam. James is a military doctor who served with the Confediracy during the war, when he lost a leg. He now has a clockwork prosthetic leg and wants to prove that the supernatural exists since he is convinced that he fought some sort of supernatural being when he lost his leg.
Demas Azarius played by Thomas is an immortal vampire hunter. When the nephilim were destroyed during the flood of Noah, some were spared on condition that they turn from evil and become demon hunters.
We start our adventure in the Texas Saloon on Hell Street in Canyon Diablo. The year is 1883, and it is the night of the big fight between The Undertaker and El Lobo Loco, an upstart who just came to town from Mexico. The saloon is packed to capacity with large volumes of rotgut being consumed and money bet on the two fighters.
Oppenheimer presides as umpire for the fight and uses it as an opportunity to demonstrate some of his weird scientific gadgets to the crowd. When he makes a bad call in favor of Undertaker the crowd turns on him and he has to change his decision. Undertaker turns the fight around in his favor by hitting El Lobo over the head with a whiskey crate.
During the fight Demas is approached by a stranger at the bar. He grabs Demas by the arm, and seems to be relieved to see that Demas is simply annoyed. Then he shows Demas he has crosses tattoed on his palms. If Demas were a vampire, contact with the holy symbol would have caused him excruciating pain. Having confirmed that Demas, who he recognised as a weird creature, was not a demon or a vampire, he offers Demas a job. Demas accepts when the stranger mentions the Plague Doctor, an entity Demas has been tracking for decades.
Juan, James and Ivor join them as they leave the Texas Saloon and walk down the street to the Colorado Saloon. The stranger (his name is Obadiah Grimm) enters a dark alley next to the Colorado, when they hear a woman scream at the back of the inn. They rush around the corner and see a woman stooped over a body lying on the ground.
Grimm levels his shotgun at her and shouts, “Step away from her!” She stands up, her back to the group and says, “Why Obadiah. You found me at last.” Then she turns around. Her eyes burn like coals and she snarls, revealing an impossible set of razor sharp fangs as she manifests as a vampire. The lower part of her face and the bodice of her dress are red with blood.
Demas responds by firing his wooden bolt-shooting crossbow at her heart. He misses and hits her in the left shoulder. Grimm turns on Demas and hits him with the fist. James fires his Winchester at the vampire but misses, and a moment later a bunch of cowboys rush into the alley, guns and shotguns ready.
The vampire immediately turns human again, and accuses Grimm of murdering the dead woman at her feet. When they see the bolt in her shoulder they are convinced, but then Ivor tells them that she is crazy. (He makes a succesful Influence move) For a moment the cowboys are confused, giving Grimm an opening. He rushes forward, grabs the vampire by her neck, presses the barrel of his shotgun to her chest and says, “Go tell Mortdecay I am coming for him. His time is up.” Then he shoves her away, she screams and runs off in the night. He walks off in another direction.
There is a tense moment as the standoff between the cowboys (security guards and bouncers working for the Colorado) and the group is resolved. Juan breaks the tension by offering to remove the body, he is the only undertaker in town, after all.
After examining the corpse (her throat was ripped out by the vampire, and she is bled out) they make a successful Tracking move and follow the vampire’s trail of blood to Clabberfoot Annie’s, one of the brothels in town.
We ended the session there, because we started late and because sick dogs. The whole session, including character creation of about thirty minutes, lasted just under two hours.