Silverlode 1908
Dramatis Personae
Episode Guide
Gazetteer

Risus Monkey

Tornado Kate

Description: A 6' tall, good-looking red-head with way too many weapons. Honorable to a fault but tends to be rather ornery.

Clichés: Mana Damper (4), Good-looking Gunslinging Mountain Woman (3), Furrier (2), Gambler (1).

Lucky Shots: [ ] [ ] [ ].

Questing Dice (Revenge Brother's Death): [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ].

Hook: Claustrophobia ("Cave crawling? Are you kidding? I'll sleep outside, thanks.")

Languages: English, Ute, Sign Language.

Equipment: Horse, shotgun, six-shooter, knives, assortment of furs, some money.

Tale: When Kate was ten years old. Her brother took her with him and finished her raising out in the wilds. She learned how to hunt "critters" - anything from squirrels to bears - and skin 'em, and trade the skins for things they needed. They traded with both white folks, and Native folks, moving back and forth between the two worlds pretty freely, up until recently.

Not long ago, Kate and Hawk were out in the woods, hunting, as usual, and it was getting along towards dark and they hadn't found anything yet. So, they make dinner with their hardtack and find a good place to settle down for the night, taking all the usual precautions.

About halfway through the night, Kate hears wolf-howls, but they sound a ways off, and she thinks nothing of it and goes back to sleep. Just before dawn, There's a scuffle in the underbrush, and a scream. Hawk yells "Kate! wake up!" She's on her feet, got the shotgun in hand, before she's almost got her eyes open. There's a fight going on, and Hawk is yelling, but Kate doesn't want to shoot, for fear she'll hit her brother. So, she fires one barrel of buckshot into the air, hoping to scare off whatever/whoever it is. Suddenly, there's this huge... thing... looming above her. Kate doesn't know if it's a grizzly bear, or what, but she levels the gun and fires the second barrel at it. It doesn't even seem fazed, but swipes the gun out of her hands.

She turns and jumps for the nearest pine tree. Bears climb, but not as fast as piss-scared humans. She makes it about ten-fifteen feet up the tree, hears crashing in the branches below, looks down, and in the first light of dawn, sees a man's face, an Indian, teeth bared, terrible cuts and a couple of pocks from buckshot across his cheeks. She draws her pistol and shoots him right in the eye.He falls down out of the tree and lands with a thud, but by the time Kate gets down to the ground herself, he's gone.

Hawk is dead, cut all to ribbons, with his innards all outside and chewed on. Kate gets the dry-heaves with just a glimpse of him, but she manages to get him covered with a blanket. In their gear, they carry a small shovel, so Kate gets busy digging a grave right there. It takes all morning and part of the afternoon to get Hawk buried and his grave covered in rocks, which she carries from a nearby stream.

By that point, the fear has ebbed. Nausea has passed. Grief is still too fresh to even weep, but anger! _There's_ something Kate can do something about. She gathers up their gear, re-loads all the guns, finds the blood-specked trail of footprints out of their clearing, and sets off to find the thing... man... whatever it was. A man with a pack of dogs? There were canine paw-prints around the clearing also...

Or a campfire story come to life? She'd heard tell of things that shift from shape to shape. The Indians call them Manitou, or the First Ones. Well, she was never scared of campfire stories. And if, no, WHEN, she finds this First One again, she's gonna make sure it's a LAST one.

Before long, though, the trail ended. Right across a wide clearing with a big, dead tree-stump in the middle. There was no more blood, no more footprints. All the signs just... evaporated. As if whatever she's chasing suddenly grew wings and flew away.

Well, Kate's flummoxed, but she figures that thing has got to be around here somewhere. She spends the next week canvassing that stretch of forest, hunting her dinner in between times. But there's no further sign of the man, or beast, other than the natural critters. Eventually, she has to go back to "civilization" to sell the pelts she's accumulated, buy more ammunition, maybe enjoy a nice, hot bath and a round of cards at the saloon, too.

Mana Damper: Unconsciously neutralizing spells, enchantments and other supernatural activity.

Good-looking Gunslinging Mountain Woman: Being attractive, shooting (guns & bows), throwing, brawling, being quick-on-the-draw, riding, climbing, hunting, tracking, trapping, skinning animals, surviving in the wilderness, getting along with Indians, speaking Indian dialects, being generally athletic, being alert, being hardy.

Furrier: Skinning animals; creating useful bits with the fur and leather; cooking up the other bits; getting a good price for goods & services; having mediocre anatomical knowledge.

Gambler: Gambling, carousing.