Just like in Part One, I’m continuing to share my prep for an upcoming one-shot for a system I’ve not run before – the Weird West setting Ghost Mountain, for Index Card RPG. In part one, I did my pregens and randomly generated a plot that I modified and started to flesh out. The next step is to write it up – a full write up is below.

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Note that I don’t always put these many notes down – by ICRPG is quite rules-light, and this is for the channel, so I want my descriptions and effort to be as spot-on as it can be. There’s a short dungeon section in the middle, but I don’t expect it’ll play much like a dungeon, and I think different parts are fairly collapsible if I run out of time:

The caves can be run as one scene in montage fashion as they discover the ritual and stop it

The final confrontation could take place stopping the ritual rather than the big fight against the zombie horde.

BURY ME NOT IN GHOST MOUNTAIN

A one-shot for Index Card RPG set in the Ghost Mountain World

Introduction

Welcome to Ghost Mountain. Sometime back, not when anyone can remember – in fact, whenever people to try remember it all gets hazy – Ghost Mountain and the surrounding area got cut off. Cut off from the rest of the world, that is. People still arrive, but folks don’t seem to leave – even if they die. Old timers think this is also when the demons started arriving, and the dead stopped staying dead. So now you’re on a floating hunk of western landscape, caught between heaven, hell, and some other place – purgatory, some call it, but that might be too simplistic a term. Either way, things got wilder here when the mountain got cut off, and every day is a mortal struggle for your souls – and the souls of the land. So, saddle up!

Scene 1 – The Desert Flower, Dead Rock

TARGET: 10

A tight, crowded little bar, late afternoon as regular folks are joining the seasoned drinkers

The smell of stale beer and sawdust

An out-of-tune piano, keys tinkling on a chirpy tune

Heavy, dry air, makes your eyes blink

The piano stops as you enter, naturally. There’s a creak as the head of the pianist turns towards you – a blank skull, a muerto – already dead, but still here. His skeletal fingers strike up again

The barman’s stout, and thick, and his fat fingers barely fit into the shot glasses he’s polishing. Did he nod before everyone turned back to their cards and the piano started again? Hard to say. Thick mutton chops either side of a sweaty face. (Wes Fultz)

The tables are round, with an assortment of characters propped up behind them. Several bear the marks of gunshots, and a couple are stacked up in the corner, shot to pieces, one leg loosely hanging off.

Stairs lead up to – presumably – rooms, painted gaudily red, a door slamming upstairs as a woman in an extravagant lace dress storms down before fluttering her eyes at you. (Katie Crosby)

A game of cards is in full flow, a big stack of chips in the middle of the table. As you arrive, a young priest (Brother Dean Bailey) is throwing his bible in as a wager to shocked faces.

As you take your drinks, you overhear an argument brewing near you. A short, stocky trader, who bears the mark of the Hepawa Nation, but he’s dressed in a Western style (Jay Flying Crow), is being berated by an overweight man in a suit (Dallas Burrowes)

• I’m not falling for the same horse-shit as Barclay Kleinschmidt – this caravan ambush is a load of nonsense!
• Please, Mister Burrowes – the whole convoy was attacked – out of the caves, men and outlaws – I barely escaped with my life – that horse was all that saved me!
• Men living in caves! On Ghost Mountain! You’re liable for it all, you rat, and I’ll start by taking that old nag – shoot her! 

A man next to him makes to go out, rifle in hand. Flying Crow tries to stop him, and a backhand sends him flying into the PCs, nose broken and bleeding.

• Lay hands on my men, Crow, would you? Let’s teach you a lesson!

The man props his rifle up and rolls up his sleeves, flanked by a group of company men. The card game continues unabated, the piano steps up in tempo.

Once battle starts, in D4 rounds the law will come up – and they’ll of course take Burrowes’ side.

There are Four Company Men – 1 Heart each, +1 to all rolls – they flee if two of them are taken out, and can also be affected by demoralizing / other approaches as normal.

Scene 2 – Aftermath

TARGET 10

One way or another, they are enlisted to find the missing caravan and rescue Flying Crow’s friends.

• If the law show up, finding evidence is the only way to clear Crow’s name
• Crow saw some of his caravan guards captured – dragged off to the caves
• The Kleinschmidt caravan was ambushed there a week ago, it seems – they were carrying gold mined from the far mountain caves – could be worth a fortune?
• The caravan Crow was running was bringing Hepawa nation tokens – containing within them SOUL – to Dead Rock. Maybe this was why Burrowes was so tetchy?

Scene 3 – On The Road

TARGET 12

As they approach the site of the ambush, they feel strange forces around them – Ghost Coyotes have come to haunt them – and warn them away from the area! If they succeed in convincing the coyotes to help them, though, they might be able to share their knowledge with them

Ghost Coyotes (Hearts 2), +2 to all stats, cannot be harmed by non-magical weapons (read magical generously, e.g. a blessed bullet)

As they fight, the ground beneath them shakes – you have D4 rounds until the earthquake hits.

Surviving the earthquake might mean grabbing on to things, acrobatics, magic / learning, etc.

On a success, they see the caves opened up to them (start scene 4 in room 1)- on a failure, they awaken in the prison room (room 2)

Scene 4 – The Caves of the Cult

TARGET 12

The Players can move through the cultists caves freely, depending on if they’ve been captured or not. There are an undefined number of cultists (+1 to all rolls, 1 Heart) – “as many as needed”

Flickering shadows lit by oil lamps

Soft smell of brimstone (stronger near the ritual area)

Ominous sense of being watched (by the spirits, if not by hidden cultists)

1. ENTRANCE

– drugged up cultists x3 arguing about who should brew the tea

2. PRISON

– guarded by shift changes of cultists who are surly and mean

– fellow prisoners JED and BUCKLE, guards from Flying Crow’s caravan – they blame him. They’ve fashioned shivs and threaten the PCs

– they know that the cultists have been gathering SOULS for sacrifices from Hepawa, but they don’t know why they’re still alive (they’ve both been baptized – they’re sacrifices)

3. CULTIST LIVING AREAS

– cultists milling around,reading, brewing psychotropic tea

– they are talking about the better times to come when they will escape the world once they have enough souls

– a mixture of people, e.g.

RUNNING CRANE a gruff Hepawa brave

SILAS FARN, an excitable fur trapper

THE DIXIE KID, a once-famous gunslinger now shaky and devout

HEINRICH KELLNER, a railroad man now obsessed with inventions

– they are all dressed in their regular clothes, so should be easy to blend in – in fact they assume the PCs are cultists if they’re quiet

– they are all excited for the big ritual tonight, if it happens

– EDWARD HALFPENNY is in charge – he received a vision and knows a way out of it

4. RITUAL AREA

– being prepared for the ritual, overseen by HALFPENNY who is a tall, portly white man with a monocle. Huge numbers of Hepawa trinkets, bodies, etc, are here

His right hand man – DEVONSHIRE HALFPENNY, his dead brother. Devonshire doesn’t know that he’s part of the sacrifices

– the ritual will actually give EDWARD power, and it’s very unlikely it’ll return Ghost Mountain to the world – and more likely it’ll open a portal to Hell and empower him

– the room is covered in arcane runes and rituals; a study of these will reveal that the ritual will also use the SOULS from the dead back in town to grant power to Halfpenny – and it will raise them into a zombie army!

5. STORAGE CHAMBERS

– piles of both bodies and trinkets – there are 10+1D6 SOULS here in various canopic jars, scrolls, and tokens

– many are being taken for the ritual – but not all, which may beg the question why EDWARD is saving so much

– CHARLIE STRIPE is the attendant here, terrified and trying to get out. He didn’t want to be a cultist, he’s just a bureaucrat, but he’s very useful to them here.

– there’s a small library here which contains the sort of ritualistic books that can give the same information as in room 4 about the ritual

Edward Halfpenny, cult leader +3 to all rolls, 3 Hearts

Devonshire Halfpenny, already dead assistant +3 to all rolls, 2 Hearts

Once they decide to stop the ritual, they will release the living dead – maybe in the caves, maybe in the town.

Scene 5 – Boot Hill Rises

TARGET 15

The PCs face a race back to town to find the streets overrun by the living dead, and must stop them!

The Zombie Horde – 3 attacks, +1 to all stats, 3 Hearts