Wild West Campaign Update

In today's adventure:

-Wyatt Earp was still away with a couple of men, hunting down a wanted bandito; proving his relentlessness he followed him almost to Santa Fe.

-It was the Centennial of the United States. The PCs read about the exhibition in Philadelphia, and were very amused to hear of the star attraction being the arm of the Statue of Liberty, which was gleaming bright copper.  They didn't know that this was the color of the statue for the first 20 years or so of its existence, until it started to grow the grotesque greenish sheen that came to be the color we know it as today.

-The players and the west as a whole was shocked to learn of the death of Wild Bill Hickok, the deadliest gun in the west. Shot in the back in Deadwood.

-In Dodge, it seemed that the news was threatened to be mirrored, as a meek brush salesman informed one of the PCs (Jim Smith) that he'd overheard two men discussing a $200 price on the head of Sheriff Charles Bassett.


-Another PC ends up working for the fascinating town businessman and local eccentric James H. "Dog" Kelley.  Kelley owns the Alhambra Saloon (the other great Dodge City saloon aside from the Long Branch), the local dog-race track (hence his nickname) and is known for his wild ways and his famous pet bear "Paddy" that goes with him everywhere.

-The PC ("Kid" Jim Taylor) is hired to work for Kelly to help guard the Alhambra during the peak of the cattle-drive season, where Dodge is filled with wild Texan cowhands with too much money, too much alcohol, and too little brains.  His fellow guards include Kinch Riley (a batshit nuts former buffalo hunter friend of Riley's), local roustabout Dave "prairie dog" Morrow, buffoonish dude Bobby Gill, and of course Paddy the Bear.

(Prairie Dog Dave)

-a third PC ("butcher" Miller) was finding himself increasingly and not entirely consensually courted by aging dowager widow Doris McKnee.  His walk through town escorting this wilting southern belle gets him into some trouble with a pair of drunken Texans who take umbrage at her being accompanied by damn-yankee gigolo.  This erupts into a bar brawl between two of the PCs and said Texans at the Long Branch, where the PCs learn a hard lesson about just how well-deserved the Texans' reputation for brutal skills at laying beatdowns can be.

-Cooter, the jailor at the sheriff's office, is shot in the night.  It's supposed this is a case of mistaken identity at the hands of Sheriff Bassett's would-be assassin. But Bassett, with a bit of help from the PCs' forensic skills, realizes that whoever did this was an amateur, and they come to the conclusion that the most likely suspect was the brush salesman himself.

-Bassett and one of the PCs ("Kid" Jim Taylor) discover the brush salesman in his room, and in a quick-draw situation Kid Taylor proves himself the fastest of the three, blasting a bullet through the would-be murderer's chest, killing him before even hits the ground.  All of a sudden, the Kid's going to get himself quite the reputation.


That's it for today, the players certainly had a lot of good fun, and it was a good adventure for introducing the party to some of the other fascinating mostly-historical personages of Dodge.

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