The Journal of Cassandra Kane: Her Adventures in the Wild Wild West

Dime Novel: The Abyss

Real World Date: December 2008

Game World Date: January 1879

Season Two, Episode Seven

January 11, 1879

Back in Freedom we see the troops around the tow packing up to join the front line in the Mexican army. Report back to Mr. Parker and fill him in on our encounter with the Major.

Mr. Parker says that Mr. Conklin is currently touring the Union states and currently has no plans for us at this moment.

In the middle of a discussion about heading to Fort Lincoln my head starts hurting and I get a vision. I didn’t even try to hunch anything…

Vision: I see the Major, some of his poncho wearing men, about a half dozen of Grimme’s priests and troops of the undead Mexican army. They come up on a valley and at the bottom of it are Union troops. The army starts attacking and Grimme’s priests pop up all over the place black bolting the union troops.

January 15, 1879

We arrive at Fort Lincoln and I with the Captain to give the report to Col. Wembly about my ‘vision’. He says that 3 days ago (about the time I got the vision) he said he got reports about that battle. The Colonel asks the Captain when he’ll be training troops to fight the sorts of things we have. He also has a file on me (all of us) from Conklin.

January 16, 1879

The Captain’s men that were guarding the 3 scientists finally arrive in Fort Lincoln. The scientists remember something that the Major & his men were saying about hearing the name ‘Dragon’s breath” and how Grimme is looking for some ‘chains’ that are buried.

We also get reports that Lynchburg (in the Maze) is being attacked.

Col. Wembly said Rose Petal is the leader of Dragon’s Breath she has influence with Kang – who we really should try to form an alliance.

January 18, 1879

Come across Grimme’s zombie and 2 women leading them. One is the blonde is red leather pants we’ve fought before and the other a black woman.

They proceed to shoot both me and Marguerite and take over the Captain who starts shooting Reggie.

They also are covered in a blue ‘wall’ that bullets won’t penetrate. We kill a lot of the zombies and then the woman in the leather pants finally teleports away when Reggie hurts her enough. The other woman tells us her evil plan:

My plan is to kill Marguerite and take my family’s assori back. And Grimme has given me the power and means to enact that.

Murphy runs up and grabs her but the kisses him and teleports away, Reggie ends up accidentally shooting Murphy,

January 20, 1879

Dragon’s Breath: A pirate city but everyone is allowed in (if they pay)

We get a room in the nicest inn and ask the innkeeper how we would go about getting in touch with Miss Rose Petal. After giving him some money he tells us about a florist named Mr. Zao.

At Mr. Zao’s, the Captain pays him $1,000 to put us in an audience with Rose Petal where she would be amendable to listening to us. He tells us to return at 8pm that night.

Aieslynn wants to go shopping to pass the afternoon. The Captain and I go with her and while I was in one of the shops I got another vision.

Vision: I see the Major’s face, as if he may be looking in a mirror. Getting dressed, seems happy. In a room. I see one of the Captain’s men tied to a chair. The Major says to him that he has no more information for him and then he shoots him in the head.

I go lie down for a while until it’s time to meet with Miss Rose Petal. The Captain, Aieslynn, and I go to the meeting. The rest try to keep an eye on us from a distance.

The Captain tells Rose Petal about the Union’s interest in having the triads side with us. That perhaps we can work together to each other’s benefit. Obviously they stop raiding our water ships & supplies and we can get them some water.

She requests 4 water ships a month and a relic, statue, that is another rival family has in Shan Fan. And that we could gain her support when the Triad Council has a vote on this. The rival family we’d be taking this statue from is not that important though they would still have a vote. We have 2 months to acquire said relic and get authorization about the water ships.

The Captain also asks about some of the Major’s men that arrived in town with some chains and buried them somewhere.

She says we should get in touch with Sgt. Buel. He was a former solider in the Rebel army (missing an eye & leg). He gathers information and hangs out by the wharf.

After buying him a drink and paying him, because the Major paid him and he was worried about him paying him a visit, but he money makes people talk. He said he was carrying something and looking for a place to bury something in consecrated ground. A Shaolin Monastery nearby. He said he a scholarly guy (Mr. James Thomas) with him. He also said he was looking for components, Aieslynn after hearing the ingredients thinks it’s some sort of binding ritual.

January 21, 1879

The next morning we head out the Monastery outside of town. As we get closer to it ghosts of Monks appear before us. They tell us to leave or we will perish. Aieslynn tries to speak with them but their leader quickly yells out ‘attack’. Suddenly more ghost monks appear and we are quickly surrounded.

At one point we feel the earth shake and Murphy suddenly disappears and reappears in the center of the courtyard in a circle of green fire with a large monk squaring off against him.

Finally we destroy the ghosts and enter the temple.

There’s a ritual circle on the floor. Aieslynn & Marguerite dispel the magic surrounding the circle so we can pass through. After a couple of hours of digging in the ground we find a chest with a note tied to it. I pick up the note and it has Gabriel written on it. I open it up and get hit by several waves of magic, getting considerately deadly.

After I drop it the Captain picks it up and it is a note from the Major warning him not to open the chest, as it would be like releasing Pandora’s box upon the world. That Marguerite & Aieslynn should do another ritual of protection and binding and reseal the chest in the ground.

Marguerite tries to mind ride the blood that is on the paper. The Captain scrapes some off after I touch the paper to check to see if that magic is still active (it is). She ends up passing out. Aieslynn calls for Jonathan who does something to help Marguerite. She starts screaming but then tells us what she saw. It looks like hell with demons and people in chains being whipped and tortured and torn apart. She sees a large demon in chains. A flash of light and then the chains break off of him and as he starts to head towards her she snapped out of the Mind Ride.

Jonathan says that I might be receiving visions because of something that happened in the fairy plane because of what the Major did. He said that because the Major gave me nightmares he might have become connected to me and that though (my opinion) he might not yet realize we are connected he may later. That this is why you really shouldn’t do magics to give people nightmares because you can leave a piece of you behind.

I just hope we can find useful information in all this and the Major can’t start to see through me.

After discussing it for a while we agree to open up the chest. Once the Captain does the red sigils on the inside of the lid start to turn blue and then 4 bolts lightening shoots out of the chest destroying the roof. As the bolts get up into the sky they start to coalesce into 4 demon type shapes. Jonathan starts flapping around like crazy and then we all suddenly appear outside of Freedom with all our gear and the chest full of chains.

Jonathan says he teleported us to safety. He said those things are what he would call the Old Ones (supposedly different ones than Aieslynn have mentioned), champions of the old ones. He said they would probably fly off to find the places they used to control. I asked if they will start killing people, he said most likely would start controlling.

He will do what he can to find out about these chains but he feels some will not share information with him if they find out we realized this upon the world. Other will say the world is already doomed because the 4 horseman of the apocalypse are already among us. Mr. Stone is the Horsemen of Death – the hat being on his head for a very long time has some sentience as has tried to break the Captain’s will.