Brian felt we had rushed the end of the last game so he wanted to back up and spend more time roleplaying some things.  Unfortunately, this meant that we were unable to play the flurry of cards that we used last time to aid this since we no longer had them.  But first, we had to introduce Dave’s replacement for the dead Slim.  Brian decided to explain Andy’s Doc Hawthorne’s absence by saying that he went to Denver with NPC Laura Giles.  While there he met an old Indian friend, who followed the “Olde Ways”.  Onacona.  He had been having visions of some great imbalance in the natural world and when he saw Hawthorne, he knew that’s where he needed to go.  Brian also allowed them to bring the horses we all intended to buy but could not have had on the train.  They all arrived in town, sensing that the fear factor was much worse.  As they tried to piece together what was going on, we shifted to the cleanup of the last battle.

The marshal with his deputies emerged from their stronghold and started bossing people around.  He started hassling Virgil who had just broken out of jail the night before.  When it was pointed out that Virgil had just assisted in saving the town from these walking dead, the marshal graciously allowed him to remain free.  However, he accused us of bringing some of this misfortune with us, not entirely untrue, and put the responsibility of clearing the rat problem on Virgil.  Phoebe Ann attempted to assist him with some fast talk but only got herself on the hook as well.  Meanwhile, Thomas examined the body of Slim and was pretty sure he was dead.  But he had no medical skill so he ran to the nearby town doctor’s office.  That doctor was more interested in examining the walking dead (science!) than helping him.  However, Thomas then spotted the rest of the group and knew Buster had some medical knowledge.  So most everyone went to the stables to view the grisly scene.  I believe it took a Guts roll which Phoebe Ann missed.  This sent her crying back to the hotel which allowed those 2 characters to get re-linked in.

So, we got Slim out of the filthy barn and put him somewhere.  The other bodies were cleared up.  Buster and his ex-wife competed for the true story of the events, Slim’s heroic last stand, in particular.  But since Thomas was the only living witness to it and he was Buster’s friend, Buster pretty much got the scoop.  We debated what we should do.  The choices were to try to deal with the things going on in the town or go to the mine and try to help the Indian spirit.  Since the town seemed on the brink of spiritual collapse, which course would have the best immediate impact? Opinions fell on both sides but all could agree that we had to bury Slim in the morning first so that decision was deferred.  That afternoon, Phoebe Ann stopped by the general store to see if they had any rat poison or traps.  That led to an attack of killer wasps.  (This town is like a dungeon.  Every building is a monster or a trap or some other problem.)  She managed to get away and stopped at the saloon to get a beer to steady her nerves.  Bella managed to convince her to stay longer and drink more than she intended.  When she didn’t return to the hotel, several characters went looking for her.  They too encountered the wasps, the Doc getting the worst of it.  Eventually, they found Phoebe Ann at the saloon.  Bella tried to charm Big John but he managed to out fate chip the GM and everyone got out. (Dan: I played a card that turned her critical success into a failure.  Brian says that John swears he saw fangs).

 The next morning, we prepared for the funeral.  Phoebe Ann, unphased by her late night of drinking (ah, youth), assisted by walking the town and inviting the people.  Virgil started it by making a speech.  He rolled a critical failure and ended up focused on what a mean SOB he was.  Buster went next.  With his storytelling edge, he could reduce the fear level in the town with a good roll.  He did okay and with support from some others, managed to do some good.  Phoebe Ann noticed a fresh grave with her name and today’s date on it.  We also noticed that the tomb of Mr. Pearl was opened.  A modest tracking roll indicated that it was opened from the inside.  Unfortunately, with all the people in the graveyard, there was no way to track him further.  We were then back to the debate on what to do.  Virgil, in particular, could not just leave town with a walking dead unaccounted for.  Phoebe Ann, on the other hand, had had enough of this town and was ready to go.  As we debated, we headed towards the burned-out Pearl estate and spotted our zombie.  A quick firefight put him down again.  He was placed back into his coffin and we left town.  As we left, the marshal locked eyes with Virgil and gave him the “you’re dead” sign.  Thomas suggested we search for poison plants as a cover for leaving town before dealing with the rats.  It turns out, with the fear rating so high, the woods were full of them.

He headed up to the Broken Earth mine.  We suspected it would be guarded by the Reverend’s men since it seemed to be the source of his power.  However, when Onacona’s owl scouted ahead, it reported no humans around.  We searched the buildings for some lanterns and headed in.  We came to an elevator however Onacona declared that his commitment to the “Olde Ways” would not allow him to ride in a mechanical thing such as this.  He would climb down afterwards.  As we piled in, Phoebe Ann spotted piles of rocks on trap doors above the car.  We piled out and Thomas climbed up to see if there was some sort of catch to allow the Reverend’s men to use the elevator without getting crushed.  There did not seem to be but he eventually triggered it.  Once the rocks were cleared, we headed down.  Onacona had no issues climbing.  Once down, we encountered the spirits of several miners.  They offered to help if we’d allow them to merge with us.  Buster, Onacona and Phoebe Ann took them up on it.  These spirits were forced to become Blood Men.  (Or was it Mud Men? I was never clear.)  Some questions were asked on them but they added nothing we didn’t already know.  With them as guides, we headed straight to the main chamber. 

In there we saw the Indian spirit, suspended above the ground by some sort of energy field.  We saw two Mud Men shoving mud into a miner, transforming him into one of them.  And we saw a guy fitting the Evil Reverend’s description, although none of us had ever seen him.  He commanded his minions to kill us and then dove into one of the mud puddles, never to be seen again.  So, the Mud Men had a big melee attack 1d10+1d6 and a decent ranged mud fling.  And 7 points of toughness to overcome.  We started blasting and they charged to attack.  The first round Brian used some fate chips to hit Onacona and Buster, exploding that d10 and doing massive damage.  Paul managed to explode his soak roll and did okay but Dave rolled “merely average” and was on death’s door again.  The spirits launched out from the possessed and attacked what we thought were their original bodies.  But once those bodies were dropped, the spirit disappeared so they didn’t have a big impact.  It looked dire but they missed a lot and we were doing multiple shots and after 3 rounds, they were out and we were all standing.

The spirit, once everyone stopped interrupting him, thanked us for our efforts but told us our work was only half done.  He then gave us a vision of the church, all decked out with evil pentagrams.  He said he had enough power to allow us to use the same portal the Reverend did to get there instantly.  Some more questions were asked but no further answers were given.  We tried to figure out how to heal Onacona who had taken 3 wounds.  Since it was the end of the night, there was a flurry of card questions, everyone trying to “bend” the intent of their cards to fit the situation.  It was a bit of a mess.  Eventually, I think Brian allowed Dave to use one of his cards to get the spirit to just heal him up so that we could move on.  We stopped there although further discussions about various things continued on into the night.  Next time, hopefully, we’ll finish off this guy.  How much of the town’s problems will be solved by that and what possible ramifications there might be (i.e. there’s a lot of pro Reverend people in this town), remains to be seen.  No advancement was given but we’ll probably get one next time which should boost us up to “seasoned”.