Annabelle's Diary - Shadows of Brimstone

A record of our Shadows of Brimstone game, from the perspective of one of the characters.

Day 1

I’m writing all this down, in case anything happens to us. I can’t believe I let Uncle Zeb go through with this. Well, he’s not really my uncle. I just call him that.

Bout ten years ago, these bad men came through, doing bad things. They kilt my family, stole our stuff, and that included me. Said my momma was too old. Back then I was too young to realize what they meant, but now I do. Zebulon McDannel was a prospector out looking for gold. He found me at the bandit camp, shackled to a wagon, whilst they were out hunting. He got me free, but I kept the shackles, as a remembrance. Been with him ever since.

Anyways.

Something happened up in the Brimstone area. Way I heard it, folks up there found some new alternative to gold. Dark stone is what they called it. They said it had magical properties, and sold for a bunch o’ money. When Uncle Zeb got wind of it, he wanted a piece of the action. Might be the next great gold rush he said, so he wanted in first. Somethin’ ain’t right though. The whole town exploded, and folks say weird things is going on around here.

But here we are, camped outside an abandoned mine, gonna explore it at first light, and see what we find. There’s a cowboy fella and a rancher woman camped nearby. They seem nice enough, I reckon we might be explorin’ together.
We’ll see what happens.

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I missed these.

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Great story… you need to make more.

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More!

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Had to play some more to have more!

As requested-

Day 3

Well that didn’t go good.

We got up bright and early, and went into that mine. As expected, the cowboy and his rancher friend was there too. Said their names were Duke and Sarah. We decided to explore together. Strength in numbers, and all that. Besides, we only had one good lantern, and everybody wanted to stay near the light.

Folks weren’t kiddin’ about strange things. Things popped out of the dark corners that seemed straight out of one of Uncle Zeb’s ghost stories. Its one thing to hear a story round the campfire, but its a whole new scared so bad ya mess yerself when you see a purple spider thats as big as a wagon wheel.

We did find a bit of the rock they call Dark stone. But then things just kept goin south. I got knocked out at some point, in one of the fights. When I came to, the group was talking about just gettin’ out of there. Nobody thought we had enough left in us to fight anything else, we was low on bullets and bandages all, so we decided to hightail it out and find a place to rest up.

The next day we spent traveling. Some Indians jumped us and tried to take our dark stone, but we fought 'em off. Then we came across a farm house on fire. Duke and Zeb went in to see if they could find anybody, and sure enough they did. Duke, the cowboy, he was the big hero. He came out with a little young’un he had found in there somewhere. That made everybody happy. Later in the evening some weird looking wolves attacked us. And this wasn’t even inside the mines.

So now I sit in a hotel room, in the town we came to the day after that, writing. Theres a pile of dark stone on my bed beside me. Because guess what- Half of this town was destroyed by odd ‘other worldly’ creatures, and that included the outpost, the very place that you could sell dark stone. We tried the General Store, but he didn’t want any part of it. Since there’s nothing here for us, and we don’t have enough gold to buy anything, Zeb and Sarah and Duke want to try their luck again tomorrow, at a different mine.

Guess I’ll tag along and hope for the best.

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Day 7

I don’t have a hotel bed to sit on and write comfortable like. On the ground, writin by the light of a campfire. Things is gettin from bad to worse out here.

We got up that next morning, and headed to another mine, to try to find somethin, anything we could sell. Soon as we got inside we got jumped. I don’t even remember what it was, or how to describe it- some kind of creatures from some other world. But they was a lot of them. This time Sarah, the rancher woman, was the one that got knocked out. She ain’t real good with a gun. No wonder she ain’t got a ranch to protect anymore.

We was about ready to leave again, and then we saw somethin truly weird. It was a big glowin doorway. We stuck our hands through it, then stuck our heads through, then our whole bodies, when we saw it was all right. Came out in a different place altogether. We wasn’t even in a mind, we was outside somewhere in a canyon. Didn’t recognize the place at all. But then we got attacked again. Uncle Zeb is doing great with swinging his pickax, and I was holding my own with my little pistol, but no way we was gonna survive much longer without some doctoring. So we went back through the glowing door, and the mine we came in, and decided to head back to town. I thought gettin rich off this stuff was gonna be hard, but not THIS hard.

Well we got to the town, and found out that them creatures had done been to this one too. The town was bigger than the last, but a couple buildings had been destroyed. At least it had a working Outpost, so we could sell what little dark stone we did have. Uncle Zeb bought himself a handful of dynamite sticks. He’s big and strong, and good with that pickax, but when he said if he sees much more of them monsters, he wants to have enough dynamite to just throw that in the middle of em. works for me.

After we spent about half of what we had on dynamite, we met up with Duke and Sarah at the hotel for the night. They had gone to to the doc’s to get Sarah patched up.

The next morning, me, Zeb, and Duke all woke up with a fever. Sarah was the only one not sick. Guess the doc either gave her something to prevent it, or went ahead and healed her while she was there. Anyway, there was no headin out. We all went to the same doc, and spent the rest of our gold on medicine and healing. We rested up most of the day and was feeling better by night.

Good thing too. The next morning, we was out in the street, and heard a rumblin. Sounded like a train coming through, only there weren’t no train tracks. It was a twister. A big ol’ purple twister, looked like it was straight outta one of them glowin doors. Folks was runnin and screamin all over the place. There was dust, and things flying everywhere. We barely survived. and I mean BARELY. But the town didn’t. Not one single building was left standing.

We didn’t know what to do until we was approached by a fellow on the road yesterday. He had on a fancy suit, and said he had bought one of the mines nearby. He wanted to mine some dark stone, but before he went in, he wanted to make sure it was clear. Told us he would pay us to go in and explore it for him.

We coulda told him right then and there it wasn’t safe. But he said he would pay good if we could at least look in ever nook and cranny and take care of any creatures we could find. We said we’d try. We need to buy food.

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Day 10

I swear its gettin harder and harder to remember to write in this thing. The past couple a’ days has been a blur. I’m not even sure how many of 'em went by, ta tell the truth.

This dark stone stuff is of the devil, plain and simple. It ain’t enough that we been seein’ creatures that we ain’t never seen the likes of before. Now one of them is livin’ inside the rancher woman.

We went in that mine the other day, to explore for that rich feller we met. First big room we were in, right after we got in the place, Sarah was searching through some rubble, just trying to find something she could sell or use, you know? And out jumps something and it goes right into her shirt. Her eyes was as big as saucers. She won’t show us, an’ I’m not sure I want to see. But if you look real close, you can see something on her chest moving around. And it ain’t her bosum. She says its attached itself to her, and there ain’t no gettin’ it loose. All I know is me and Zeb are carryin’ around crosses now. I got one I’m holding, and Zeb tied his on a chain around his pickax.

The rest of the mine was pretty much the same thing we’ve been seeing, strange creatures skitterin’ about, but we got a whole lot luckier. We actually were able to explore the entire mine, every nook and cranny this time. We cleared out all the vermin, and managed to find a good bit of dark stone. Well, the others did. I’m not sure that I want to carry or touch this stuff. Uncle Zeb had a whole big bag of it. He kept it right beside him when he slept, guarding it.

In the morning, he had eyestalks.

Its of the devil, I tell ye.

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