Sleipnir
The Eight-Legged Norse Horse
The Concept
Crossing the Mississippi River leaves you in a completely different world than the one you came from. The West is many things, and "wild" is one of the milder things you could call it.
Folklore comes back east all the time: Red demons, real ones, with spindly legs, indescribably features, and spines sticking out of their back. Women in white wandering and wailing along the rivers, seeking victims to drag into the current with them. Monstrous coyote-beasts sucking the blood out of man and beast alike. Headless men riding devil horses. Strangers in suits waiting at the crossroads, promising riches and glory, for a price.
The West is a wild place -- a weird one, too. Once you cross that river, and especially once you get out into the lonely, dusty corners of the Kansas hills and the Utah deserts and canyons, the alien volcanic fields of Wyoming and the icy, hostile snowy mountains of California or Colorado, you might just find out it's far, far worse than you originally thought. It's as alien and as mysterious as the seven seas.
No one knows when it started, or if this country has always been so strange and full of dark forces. Maybe it was like this from the beginning of time. Some local indigenous folk blame it on white men, and hell, that's a fair enough thing for 'em to say -- they've got lots they can blame on white men. Some claim it was the greed for gold and silver that brought on the evil. Others say it was the bloodshed, the lust, the animal violence they brought with them. Others yet might tell you the land itself is fighting back against Manifest Destiny, pushing the intruders out. No one knows for sure, though. All anyone knows is that there are ghost stories, sightings of strange creatures, and other dark, occult happenings that abound throughout the west. Stagecoaches and trains get held up by men who have been dead for ten years or more, with grinning skulls for faces and empty eye sockets searching for ill-gotten spoils. Most forts you'll see out there have church affiliates not just for the immortal souls of the soldiers, but for protection, too. Some towns you come across have terrible tragedies and terrible stories to share about the demonic beasts and things they've seen. Others have dark stories they won't share with you... the sorts that make you wanna move on real quick, because there's something in that town you want nothing to do with.
Cults worshipping dark things, the undead, the alien, the ghostly... it's all out there, if you know where to look, and it's always looking for trouble. These things have always been present, as long as immigrants have been leaving Independence, Missouri. In recent years, it's been getting worse. It might just be that more people are coming to settle, and they're butting heads with the weird of the west more often. But it might be something deeper than that. Some of the more isolated people, who meet with the strangeness out there more often, suggest it could be that the uptick in monsters, ghosts, and demons might just be connected to something bigger than simply "more people means more interactions".
With more and more people coming West, responses to the occult frontier have started popping up -- responses like bounty boards, promising money for the extermination of ghosts, zombies, chupacabra, and other terrible creatures, and folks trying to make science out of the occult. It's getting more and more common as more and more of these creatures appear, and while the East still doesn't believe the stories, most towns and cities out west at least know the tales, even if in quieter areas, they don't believe them.
The Hook
One town looking for help is the little town of Crawfordville, down in Utah. It's right in the middle of a canyon, and all over the place, narrow, deep slot canyons flash flood and pour into the river that runs by their town. Flooding is a normal problem for them -- every dam is new every year, because every year, the flash floods knock 'em out again. This season's been different, though. Folks keep hearing voices coming from those dark, narrow mazes. Some promise riches. Some promise pleasure. Others speak with the voices of loved ones you've lost, calling out to you. They always appear alongside the monsoons, always in different canyons... Always the ones where flooding is imminent, where entering means certain death. The locals have taken to calling them "canyon sirens", and the town has gathered up community money to pay a bounty on them, hoping to get rid of them for good to protect their town from the predators stalking the town from the rocky labyrinth beyond.
This is the mission: Kill the canyon sirens, get some cash. Easy enough, right? But these canyon sirens are a new problem -- one that has never been seen in the canyons before, perhaps ever. Crawfordville isn't the only town they could target -- Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado... they're all teeming with the sort of habitat a canyon siren might call home, and no one has ever reported them before. It's something new and dangerous, and at the moment, no one knows for sure where they came from, or what caused them. It may be a signal that something deeper is going on, and there might be a root cause to the influx in monsters out there... And a determined team of folks looking for answers might even be able to get to the bottom of it.
Meta
I'm thinking about starting a weird west game, in line with things like the tabletop game Shadows of Brimstone, the Six-gun Tarot book series, and other paranormal/weird western genre stories. It's my favorite genre, and I'm eager to try to start something up in it!
The plotline I'm going for here would be for a group of folks to go hunt some monsters, which leads them onto a bigger plot to discover what's causing the influx of terrible things in the weird west -- demons, ghosts, and other dreadful creatures. I want this to be kind of sandbox-y, and would love for everyone to have a chance to direct the story some. Regardless, I wanna do some wild, weird west.
I'd like to focus some on western folklore, or folklore that can be adapted to fit the western setting rather than more generic european stories. Beyond that, the vast majority of what I'm thinking is that I'd like to see a game that's kind of open and sandbox-y, so people can go where they want and build lore along the way, with their own little villains and stories to explore within the world. It can be a bit crazy and a bit over the top -- the wild west and especially weird west can be that way, and while I'd like to maintain a somewhat serious vibe, it's fun to lean into the wild.
Crossing the Mississippi River leaves you in a completely different world than the one you came from. The West is many things, and "wild" is one of the milder things you could call it.
Folklore comes back east all the time: Red demons, real ones, with spindly legs, indescribably features, and spines sticking out of their back. Women in white wandering and wailing along the rivers, seeking victims to drag into the current with them. Monstrous coyote-beasts sucking the blood out of man and beast alike. Headless men riding devil horses. Strangers in suits waiting at the crossroads, promising riches and glory, for a price.
The West is a wild place -- a weird one, too. Once you cross that river, and especially once you get out into the lonely, dusty corners of the Kansas hills and the Utah deserts and canyons, the alien volcanic fields of Wyoming and the icy, hostile snowy mountains of California or Colorado, you might just find out it's far, far worse than you originally thought. It's as alien and as mysterious as the seven seas.
No one knows when it started, or if this country has always been so strange and full of dark forces. Maybe it was like this from the beginning of time. Some local indigenous folk blame it on white men, and hell, that's a fair enough thing for 'em to say -- they've got lots they can blame on white men. Some claim it was the greed for gold and silver that brought on the evil. Others say it was the bloodshed, the lust, the animal violence they brought with them. Others yet might tell you the land itself is fighting back against Manifest Destiny, pushing the intruders out. No one knows for sure, though. All anyone knows is that there are ghost stories, sightings of strange creatures, and other dark, occult happenings that abound throughout the west. Stagecoaches and trains get held up by men who have been dead for ten years or more, with grinning skulls for faces and empty eye sockets searching for ill-gotten spoils. Most forts you'll see out there have church affiliates not just for the immortal souls of the soldiers, but for protection, too. Some towns you come across have terrible tragedies and terrible stories to share about the demonic beasts and things they've seen. Others have dark stories they won't share with you... the sorts that make you wanna move on real quick, because there's something in that town you want nothing to do with.
Cults worshipping dark things, the undead, the alien, the ghostly... it's all out there, if you know where to look, and it's always looking for trouble. These things have always been present, as long as immigrants have been leaving Independence, Missouri. In recent years, it's been getting worse. It might just be that more people are coming to settle, and they're butting heads with the weird of the west more often. But it might be something deeper than that. Some of the more isolated people, who meet with the strangeness out there more often, suggest it could be that the uptick in monsters, ghosts, and demons might just be connected to something bigger than simply "more people means more interactions".
With more and more people coming West, responses to the occult frontier have started popping up -- responses like bounty boards, promising money for the extermination of ghosts, zombies, chupacabra, and other terrible creatures, and folks trying to make science out of the occult. It's getting more and more common as more and more of these creatures appear, and while the East still doesn't believe the stories, most towns and cities out west at least know the tales, even if in quieter areas, they don't believe them.
The Hook
One town looking for help is the little town of Crawfordville, down in Utah. It's right in the middle of a canyon, and all over the place, narrow, deep slot canyons flash flood and pour into the river that runs by their town. Flooding is a normal problem for them -- every dam is new every year, because every year, the flash floods knock 'em out again. This season's been different, though. Folks keep hearing voices coming from those dark, narrow mazes. Some promise riches. Some promise pleasure. Others speak with the voices of loved ones you've lost, calling out to you. They always appear alongside the monsoons, always in different canyons... Always the ones where flooding is imminent, where entering means certain death. The locals have taken to calling them "canyon sirens", and the town has gathered up community money to pay a bounty on them, hoping to get rid of them for good to protect their town from the predators stalking the town from the rocky labyrinth beyond.
This is the mission: Kill the canyon sirens, get some cash. Easy enough, right? But these canyon sirens are a new problem -- one that has never been seen in the canyons before, perhaps ever. Crawfordville isn't the only town they could target -- Utah, Nevada, Arizona, Colorado... they're all teeming with the sort of habitat a canyon siren might call home, and no one has ever reported them before. It's something new and dangerous, and at the moment, no one knows for sure where they came from, or what caused them. It may be a signal that something deeper is going on, and there might be a root cause to the influx in monsters out there... And a determined team of folks looking for answers might even be able to get to the bottom of it.
Meta
I'm thinking about starting a weird west game, in line with things like the tabletop game Shadows of Brimstone, the Six-gun Tarot book series, and other paranormal/weird western genre stories. It's my favorite genre, and I'm eager to try to start something up in it!
The plotline I'm going for here would be for a group of folks to go hunt some monsters, which leads them onto a bigger plot to discover what's causing the influx of terrible things in the weird west -- demons, ghosts, and other dreadful creatures. I want this to be kind of sandbox-y, and would love for everyone to have a chance to direct the story some. Regardless, I wanna do some wild, weird west.
I'd like to focus some on western folklore, or folklore that can be adapted to fit the western setting rather than more generic european stories. Beyond that, the vast majority of what I'm thinking is that I'd like to see a game that's kind of open and sandbox-y, so people can go where they want and build lore along the way, with their own little villains and stories to explore within the world. It can be a bit crazy and a bit over the top -- the wild west and especially weird west can be that way, and while I'd like to maintain a somewhat serious vibe, it's fun to lean into the wild.
