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

Dime Novel: The Battle of Five Armies

Real World Date: April 2007

Game World Date: June 1878

Episode Four

June 13, 1878

We arrive back in Fort Lincoln after the whole Grimme thing.

Corman is not a good a mood about how we got back on the boat. Geez, you’d think he’d be happier if he ended up dead. Or stayed dead in his case since he’s pretty insistent that he was dead dead.

Reggie took off the second we hit land.

Back in Freedom with give Mr. Parker the report on the happenings with the invention and our slight altercation with Reverend Grimme.

Mr. Parkers says to stay away from Reverend Grimme directly but we could attack his (evil) missionaries.

But he doesn’t have a new mission for us yet.

I’m sending a letter & telegram to Mr. Fairfax.

Reggie shows back up all cleaned up and with a brand new outfit!

The Lieutenant says he got some orders from his commanding officer. He needs to find out why Mexican troops are marching around California.

So after a couple of days rest we’re gonna head out to Progress. A town in the maze.

June 18, 1878

Corman’s really mean. He knew what Progress would be like and didn’t tell us. He knew it would make Aieslynn unhappy being in a town full of Ghost Rock inventions and he wanted to laugh at her.

Except for Aieslynn being unhappy it’s really a neat place. It’s full of Scientists and their amazin’ inventions. This giant lift thing could take you up the side of the cliff. I walked up all the stairs with Aieslynn to keep her company.

A guy was flying around with a pack of some kind. He didn’t get far before he fell.

I meet a Mr. Jeffery Sampson – who made a bullet proof vest. Cost about $1800 though.

We didn’t spend much time in town as it was making Miss Aieslynn nervous and cranky so we headed out looking for the Mexicans. We heard they were looking for Pirates, and that the Pirates were looking for something on the Coast.

Corman hates Mexicans.

June 19, 1878

Headed further South by horse and found the battlefield wither the Mexicans and Pirates fought a few weeks back (May 5^th Tombstone). Big bloody field, but no bodies.

I “saw” the battle.

We decided to head further in from the Coast –maybe we could find what everyone was looking for.

One point during Miss Marguerite’s nightly “activities” she got accosted by 5 Guardian Angels. She did a good job of fending them off by herself. Some of the Lt’s men helped finish them off. Guess I gotta make sure to follow her when she wanders off. Told her it wasn’t safe.

June 20, 1878

Passed by a group of Confederate soldiers looking for any remnants of the Mexicans. Reggie, Corman, and the Lt get all tetchy. But luckily no gun fighting ensues.

We came up on a campfire and met a Mr. James Thomas and his friend Horatio Gates. Mr. Thomas is some sort of professor archeologist type. He’s gonna write a paper about the thing he’s looking for. He really didn’t want to tell us – guess he thought we’d steal his idea for a paper.

He did say he saw the Mexicans ride by a couple of days ago.

We finally convince him to tell us what he’s looking for. He says it a chalice and he just looking for it for academic curiosity. That it’s own by someone in Progress named Henry Johnson but it hasn’t been seen in a while. He thinks it’s in the mountains close by.

He seems nice but a little wary of our group.

We keep going to see if we can catch up with the Mexican army.

Corman goes to scout their encampment and says there’s 5 HUGE tends that smell of Death.

Yay. More Zombies.

We decide to plan an ambush on a patrol and capture one alive to find out what he knows. Our captive says that they have bodies from the battlefields and ones that they brought off the boats. And f15 bad magic men are doing something with all the undead. Making the army look bigger than is is my guess.

Then in the middle of the night we see them start to break camp and moving to the East. We figured we’ll try to get ahead of them (we also see lights from another camp nearby) and we’ll go check out the other camp.

But then we hear Horses behind us and it’s James & Horatio – they stop and talk to us and Mr. Thomas says he just cracked the last clue and figured out where the chalice is, so we head of with him to find it. Not surprisingly the Mexican army is moving into the foothills of the mountain – just where Mr. Thomas figured the chalice might be.

We arrive ahead of the army and the Lt’s men keep watch to let us know how close they are getting.

We find a cave in the side of the mountain and follow it. The path leads into bunches of rooms and Miss Marguerite takes down all the magic in each of the room before we go into it. Don’t know what it might have done but it couldn’t have been good.

The last room has a guy (dead guy) in a chair with 2 cylinders in his hands. Not surprising he gets up to attack us, but we take him down right quick – before he can even attack us. Reggie takes the gun shaped cylinder things.

We find the chalice buried in a box in the ground under his chair.

After that we try to get a move on but one of the Lt’s men finds us and says that the Mexican Army and the Confederate Army have met up and are fighting. And the battlefield is right outside the cave entrance.

So before you know it (with plans for Mr. Thomas to get away with the chalice if need be, meeting up with us in Progress) we fight on the Grey coats side. They really aren’t paying attention to us. I’m sure the Lt was right cranky about fighting with them, but it’s more like fighting against the Mexican mostly zombie army lead by Santa Ana.

We figured we’d fight our way through enemy lines and just keep going and get the heck out of there. Ooh and by the way it was night time and raining and all dramatic!

It’s pretty tough as we were making our way through and Miss Marguerite was throwing off her stunnin’ spells. And most of us were just shooting at anything in front of us so we can ride the horses hard by.

Then the lightening started! Suddenly more undead are surrounding us but there wearing closer to the Union outfits but in black. More of the those undead 51^st infantry guys that have been following Corman around. Then we hear something unearthly yell “Cooooorrrrmannnnnn!”

And it’s that Colonel Blackstone fella (that Corman hates – and who apparently hates him too). He tells us his evil plan that he wants the chalice so it could bind him to this mortal coil and that killing Corman is just a perk!”

Reggie then shoots him out of existence in a flurry of bullets!!! We think were in the clear for about a minute when… more lightening and he comes back!

This time Mr. Thomas hexes him right out of existence before he can do anything. We keep waiting for him to come back I’m thinking that maybe on Corman killing him deader will keep him away. But I guess he must have run out of time cause he didn’t come back this time.

Course now we’ve stopped moving in the middle of battle and it’s harder to get the horses going again as were surrounded by 2 types of undead (luckily some are fighting each other), Mexican’s and our allies the Confederacy.

THEN we hear this noise and look up and see a guy in a Derby (I think THE guy in the Derby) flying up to us in that Ornathopter thingy and firing at the undead and Mexicans and trying to give us a clear path through. Suffice it to say Aieslynn is confused. The ‘feds are cheering us (heck they think the Lt is a hero!!) and we finally fight our way through the battle.

We almost made it out, really hurt but alive, when some of Santa Ana’s spell slingers hit us with a blast of fire. One of the Lt’s soldiers.. sitting right in front of me on my horse was killed. I didn’t even know until finally got through. Aieslynn was just this side of dying herself. Up until then she’d been really lucky. Marguerite managed to pull her through – it was close though.

June 24, 1878

We’re gonna rest up in Progress here for a few days. Aieslynn can’t complain too much as she needs the rest. Plus between the chalice and some papers they found in the closed down library in town she, Reggie, Marguerite, and Mr. Thomas are doing a bunch of research.

Heck we even found out after we finally checked the wallet Reggie pulled off the dead guy in the cave that he was Henry Johnson – the previous owner of the chalice. Looking through some back issues of the paper they found out he was supposedly killed in 1873 and stabbed in his home by Mr. Rufus McKnight who took his stash and hide the chalice.

Don’t know what happened to Mr. McKnight though or why Mr. Johnson’s body was all zombied in the cave. I’m sure they’ll figure it out.

I’m gonna see if Mr. Thomas will come to Freedom with us to meet Mr. Parker.