Wild West Campaign Update

Today, the PCs did quite a lot of house-hunting, mostly unsuccessfully.  They're at this point in the campaign where they've got some money, but not quite enough to be really respectable yet. Of course, that's pretty much par for the course for wild-west heroes.

Two of the PCs, the Mormon Gambler and.. well, the other gambler, ended up participating in a high-stakes poker game at the Long Branch, on the date of the U.S. Presidential Election (1876). It was a lucky thing they weren't going to be playing until the winner of the Election was decided, given that Rutherford B. Hayes and Samuel Tilden ended up in a contested draw that would end up dragging its way through every level of government, and would take months to finally be decided (in a series of events that would make the 2000 Bush/Gore election seem simple by comparison)!

Anyways, the Mormon Gambler lost his whole stake, while the other guy did quite well. And he's started to eclipse the Mormon Gambler as one of the regular Long Branch dealers. Especially given that the clean-living Mormon Gambler won't ply his trade after 9pm.  In Dodge City that's a pretty big disadvantage.


Meanwhile, the city is visited by it's very first 'celestial', who is seriously pissed off at having been robbed on the road to Dodge, and having had a mysterious box in his possession stolen.  He wasn't able to explain the contents thereof, which naturally led half the town to assume that it must be a treasure box full of jewels, because that's the kind of thing that incredibly bored townsfolk tended to do in the 1870s. This starts a bit of a mad scavenger hunt through the town.
Meanwhile, the ladies of the Dodge City Anti-Chinese League are absolutely thrilled at the presence of a Chinese person in Dodge, since until this time their association didn't have much of a reason for existing.  One of these upstanding citizens is the widow McKnee, who is currently engaged in a scandalous may-december romance with one of the PCs (the same guy who is secretly working as a butcher in a cattle rustling operation in the summer months), and she tries to impress upon him the importance that the 'chinaman' stay in town, as this would enormously increase the social profile and importance of the league.

The Chinese visitor meanwhile demands justice from the Sheriff, inasmuch as he can with very little ability to communicate in English.  The lawmen PCs decide to investigate. Even so, the Chinese visitor to Dodge, determined to get his revenge, decides he can't wait for the long but slow arm of the law, and slips away to try to hunt the crooks down himself.

The two muggers turn out to be a couple of opium addicts, who mistook the traveler for the guy who made the weekly opium delivery to the town's only opium den (on the wrong side of the tracks, which the PCs ended up exploring quite a bit of in this session).  The investigation was complicated by the fact that the corrupt and useless Marshal Deger has an investment in the Opium Den and wants to make sure that Sheriff Bassett's investigation won't mess up his percentage.

Whatever is in the immigrant's box, it is neither jewels nor opium, leaving the two addicts desperate to get a fix, some money, and a way to get out of dodge.  Unable to go back to their hovel, or go to the Opium den which now knows just what they did and would probably kill them, and not even able to sell the ornate but largely unlucrative box, they plan to steal some horses and ride out, but first they're going to need some kind of smack for the trip. So they assault the town's Doctor, severely injuring him and getting away with all the laudanum and morphine they can carry.  Kid Taylor, the PC with the best skill in medicine (though  not very high at all) is left trying to tend to the Doc's life-threatening head injury, while Bassett and a couple of the PCs are trying to hunt down both the addicts and the 'celestial'.

As it turns out, the Chinese traveler is in fact a doctor, and when another PC finds him, he puts aside his quest for revenge and goes to do what he can, even without his box (which contained all his medical gear), to help the ailing Doc; this obliges Kid Taylor to put aside his heavy dose of racism and trust a foreigner who has the only chance of saving the town's only full-time doctor.

Bassett and a couple of PCs find the muggers hiding in an alley dosing themselves with laudanum before their intended horse-thievery.  The one carrying the Chinese Doctor's supply-box runs, the other one (the one with the pistol) takes to fighting, and he's so drugged out of his mind that it takes five bullets to finally drop him. The runner gets hit in the leg and finally chased down.

With the ministrations of the Chinese Doctor (once he recovers his supplies), Doc ends up making a full recovery.  He thanks the PCs and other townsfolk for their help, and carries on with his journeys.  All's well that ends well, for everyone except the ladies of the Anti-Chinese League.

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