Wushu Skidoo

Wars have been waged over far, far less. The conquistadors tried to take the spring by force, and the natives fought back. Blood spilled into the pool, befouled it, desecrated it. At that moment, the Wild Gods placed a curse on anyone who had ever touched the holy waters: Their souls were extinguished, leaving their lifeless bodies to walk the earth forever.

These are the Savages and, if you should ever cross their path, they will give you the only thing they can never have... death.

This is the first of four articles dealing with different aspects of one, sprawling setting. Sources of inspiration include such anime classics as Trigun and Full Metal Alchemist. Due props also go out to Vasco Brown, who has been collaborating with me on this baby for several years (back when it was called "Black Powder"). These articles will only scratch the surface, but I think the setting deserves some visitors. Welcome to Bad Lands.

Western Steampunk Anime

The Old World is gone. Ravaged by the Long War, its nations have balkanized into dozens of isolated city-states and hundreds of squabbling noble families. Its natural resources have been drained, burned, and gutted. Its island chains have been dwarfed by the discovery of an entire continent in the Western Ocean, and its ancient cultures have been eclipsed by new philosophies. The Old World is dead.

The New World is the future, the limitless horizon of a new age. Its people are refugees and wage slaves, farmers and fur trappers, seekers of ancient wisdom and followers of new religions. They push back the frontier another mile every year, but the further west they go, the weirder things get. No one has ever seen the far side of the continent. Some folks think there isn’t one, that the New World just goes on forever... or drops right off the side of the world.

This land of fortune is ruled by a new aristocracy of profiteering Moguls. Their fathers and grandfathers were explorers who planted the flags of kings on the New World’s shores. In exchange, they received charters that gave them the right to administer those lands. Far from the dwindling power-centers of the Old World, their heirs have become kings in all but name.

The New Word's leaders are men of science and industry. Alchemists have learned to reshape the material world by deciphering the language of creation. They seek to build a new kind of civilization, one based on reason and liberty. Mechanologists have ushered in the industrial age by reverse engineering advanced technology found in the Black Sands. They fight to free the lower class from debt slavery and make both Moguls and aristocrats obsolete.

Out West, railroads bring civilization to the frontier. Boomtowns spring up around every terminal, their saloons and bordellos fed by a constant flood of cowboys with cattle to sell and prospectors with money to burn. Where the rails don’t yet reach, Torchbearers carve their own civilization out of the wilderness. Mountain Men wander the Badlands, risking both their lives and their sanity for total freedom. Off the edge of the map, there be only Savages.

Triggermen

Every frontiersman is a do-it-yourselfer, but none are as notorious as the Triggermen. Mixing alchemy and mechanology, they create weapons of terrifying power, from bullet hoses like the infamous "Devil's Paintbrush" to pistols that shoot salt acid. Sure, you can get a shotgun or a six-shooter at the general store, but it takes a special breed of gun fanatic to build such dangerously over-powered firearms as the Lightning Rod.

To play a triggerman, all you have to do is devote one of your character's Traits to the maintenance and use of your particular flavor of weapon. For instance...

• Shootists build light firearms that spray streams of bullets as they leap and dive through the air. If they can wield one in each hand, all the better.
• Riflemen focus on accuracy and stopping power. Their complex sighting devices allow them to hit (i.e. annihilate) targets at extremely long range.
• Gunslingers use exotic ammunitions that burn, explode, dissolve, bore holes in, or even transmute anything that gets in their path.
• Quakers forget about the guns and just make things that blow up real good: bombs, grenades, rockets, booby traps, etc.

During combat, triggermen can earn dice in many ways. They can describe the mechanical workings of their weapons or the ways in which they occasionally misfire. They can invoke special effects from the telltale glow of alchemy to the hot blast of an incendiary round. John Woo-style acrobatics and slow motion sequences go without saying.

Triggermen, like their guns, are capable of both incredible good and unmitigated evil. Most are outlaws, to be sure, but some are lawmen and many are itinerant do-gooders who make their own law. Even those who rob banks and trains usually target particular moguls with whom they have some bone to pick. More than anything else, they are simply lawless men and women with a higher-than-average capacity for violence.

Patterson Detectives

No doubt the "outlaw band" of dime novel fame will be your first option when it comes time to pick a narrative structure. In which case, the Patterson Detectives will be your most dogged adversaries. Every mogul and most large cities have hired Patterson Detectives to act as bodyguards, bounty hunters, peace officers, and strike breakers. Their operatives are taught how to tail suspects and process a crime scene. A few teams specialize in investigating claims of supernatural activity on the frontier.

However, the Patterson Detective Agency also makes an excellent narrative structure for PCs of mixed backgrounds. The company employs alchemists, mechanologists, former lawmen, reformed outlaws, mountain men, unionists, and even a triggerman or two. (Future articles will provide more detail on these other members of Bad Lands' extensive rogue's gallery.)

Like the triggermen, Patterson Detectives don't wear strictly white hats or black hats. Context is everything. Out on the frontier, your enemies can become your friends in a heartbeat, especially when Savages prowl the wilderness...

Savages

No one has ever seen a Savage and lived to tell about it, at least not in any sane manner. Some say they don't exist, but those people have a lot to account for: Demoniac footprints have been found all along the frontier, often in numbers far too large for any herd of animals. Whole towns have been slaughtered or razed by unknown armies. Countless settlers have been attacked and/or chased off their lands by elusive, braying monstrosities.

GMs should use Savages as the ultimate boogeymen, every bit unpredictable and unstoppable as the weather. October's article will provide several possibilities, but there will never be a definitive account of the Savages or their origin. In fact, feel free to use them multiple times, with multiple back stories, in the same game. Unlike Highlander, there can be more than one.

Pick Me Ups

Anyone who wants to put the hurt on the mogul would do well to rob banks in their boomtowns. Such is the intent of your outlaw band, but there's a complication: right in the middle of their heist, the town is attacked by Savages! Take your pick of: cloven-hooved beastmen with a thirst for human blood, a sentient storm and its brood of winged serpents, or a cthonic behemoth that tries to swallow the town whole!

A band of triggermen has been hired to protect a mogul's payroll car as it travels out west. Along the way, a group of outlaws tries to hijack their train. The bandits are lead by an insane Quaker whose vest is packed with enough black powder to obliterate the train and several miles of landscape in all directions. For once, our heros won't be able to just shoot their way out of trouble. (They'll have to think first, then shoot.) If you need a little more, the surviving bandits make off with a few of the female passengers. Any rescue attempt takes them to ancient cliff dwellings where things either go ballistic or take a turn towards survival horror as the long-dead, and very pissed-off, residents rise from their graves!

Triggermen from every corner of the New World have gathered in a remote town for an illegal dueling contest. Most are there for the ridiculous prize money, but some have come for revenge. One of the latter is a creepy chick with some supernatural juju: maybe she can't be killed by bullets or maybe she can catch and throw them with her bare hands. In any case, the PCs try to stay out of her way, but eventually someone tries to quit or cheat and she just goes bang-bang crazy. Then, they either have to stand against her... or help her get her revenge.

Next Up: Enlightened Alchemy in Bad Lands!