I am just putting this out there werewolf Sloan would have been bad ass
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So is there anything the story team can reveal about future storylines that were planned?
I’m particularly curious what was intended for the Eagles and the 108 since they weren’t given much time to be developed in terms of actual plotlines beyond their basic premises that the Wardens were there to ‘stop evil’ and the 108 were, well sort of free wheeling robin hoods that wound up fighting the nasties.
The Full Moon Brotherhood is also described as the next ‘branch’ of whatever the Fourth Ring ultimately was, were other branches planned down the line? Was there a specific Reckoner empowering this organization?
Kevin is mentioned as having followed on into the FMB, was he similarly a sort of sidekick to Adler or was he just intended to be leftover from the Ring joining up with the Brotherhood? Was there more backstory to him?
Did we ever find out who hired the Sloane gang to begin with? (if it has been revealed, I just don’t recall offhand)
Were there any other ‘famous’ cameos planned from Classic or the Deadlands setting in general?
So, Armitage was released and Tyx was sealed in the orb, what mischief was -that- going to cause?
Was there more to Valeria’s story or did she book out of town with Ivor dead and Slavin avenged?
[quote=“Doomdog, post:10, topic:1236”]
Why did Ivor have Richard Slavin steal all those Mystical goods early on? Was that a wider Fourth Ring plot?
Was Slavin’s soul used to create Junior? I figured that’s what happened based on Ivor’s words and the card art/ability, but it’d be nice to get an answer on that
What was the power behind the Legendary Holster? I think one of the early fictions could be read as a hint it might be linked to Jebediah Whateley in some way.[/quote]
Jonah Essex was the mysterious third party who hired the Fourth Ring to acquire the various mystical items from around Gomorra. 
Jonah Essex is part of a member of a very small and secretive cult that has existed for close to a millennia. They worship and serve one thing … the being inside the holster, named “Sloane”. The holster has not always been a holster though. It has taken many shapes over the years, being reworked and reshaped by the members of this cult to fit the times (naturally a holster is a perfect fit for the American West). He is responsible for giving his master an outlet by attaching it to the gang’s leader all the while searching for a way to resurrect the true “Sloane” in a new body to wreak havoc across the world once more.
“Sloane” is an agent of Death that dates back to LONG before the Reckoning. So Jonah himself serves Death as well, which is why he orchestrated the Election Day Slaughter (well not all of it … a lot of that was just gravy).
Jonah had sought out the various mystical items in an attempt to resurrect his master, to free him from the prison of the holster. However, he couldn’t jeopardize himself and his place in the gang in the process. So he secretly hired Ivor to obtain them for him.
In Mario as a harrowed person, Jonah had finally found a vessel that could allow his master some room to breathe and play, but it proved too dangerous and uncontrollable. Regardless, Mario and the manitou were still present, so it was never an ideal solution for his master. But with the coming of Dr. Blackmore, Jonah finally discovered a way to resurrect the being in the holster and restore him to this world permanently.
And no … Junior is not Richard Slavin. Very interesting theory that I never would have seen. But now that you mention it, the similarities with the ability and all that are a bit uncanny. If we had intended to keep Slavin around in one form or another though, I definitely would have made that clear … it would have been a really fun fiction piece toward the end to have Junior encounter Valeria in some way.
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[quote=“Tredain, post:22, topic:1236”]
Did we ever find out who hired the Sloane gang to begin with? (if it has been revealed, I just don’t recall offhand) [/quote]
It was indeed Nicodemus who hired the Sloane Gang to murder Byre and Crowley, leaving the door wide open for him to become mayor of Gomorra.
[quote=“Tredain, post:22, topic:1236”]
Was there more to Valeria’s story or did she book out of town with Ivor dead and Slavin avenged?[/quote]
It should have been clear by the De Annulos Mysteriis preview piece that Valeria decided to join Abram’s posse in tracking down the secrets of the Fourth Ring in and effort to bring the entire group to an end. I’m sorry if that wasn’t.
Basically, Ivor created a powerful enemy for the Fourth Ring and the Reckoners in general when he murdered Richard Slavin. Valeria possesses great knowledge about the dark things of the world and she now uses that knowledge to help Abram and those with them to hunt them all to the ends of the earth.
Like Abram and his cause, what her ultimate fate will be lies in the imaginations of Deadlands and Doomtown fans. 
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The way things have ended does nicely allow for Abram & Valeria’s posse to show up as potential allies when I next run a Deadlands game 
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This is what I get for asking something so late at night XD it was clear, I just mind derped on it because I got on a different line of thought.
Indeed … and don’t forget Prescott.
I know I had certainly envisioned a longer story and ending for Abram’s posse v. the Fourth Ring that extended beyond where we were, but the game’s cancellation cut that off.
The upside is that it’s now a situation similar to what Pinnacle did with the Cackler story … the story ends with a dangerous enemy stalking the Weird West and a group dedicated to stopping them … all for players and fans to play and have fun with as they continue their own adventures.
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Perhaps … there were a number of people who were certainly concerned about Mario’s behavior, including Mario himself. On the Story Team, we kind of characterized Mario’s new state as being somewhat hyper energized because of how easily the power of the holster flowed into a Harrowed’s body. So it was like he was on a crazy adrenaline rush ALL the time. As the Sloane Gang takes over the town, all of them, including Mario notice that such behavior won’t allow them to stay for long … the people will either all leave or revolt or Mario will go nuts and kill them all, ruining their hopes of living like kings in Gomorra.
The plan was to use Mario’s irrational and violent behavior to lead to an alliance between Mario and Lillian Morgan. Lillian noticed what was going on and concocted a witch’s brew of sorts that would help dull the effects of the holster just enough to let Mario (or I should say the manitou controlling Mario) resume acting more or less like a normal person, making them a more controlling and calculating figure.
You can decide which of those two is actually MORE dangerous for Gomorra.
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From the beginning, we tried as much as possible to focus the story around just a few characters, the “voices” of the game if you will. We wanted people to care about the characters a bit and have some investment in seeing what happens to them. We ALSO didn’t want to inundate the players with so much fiction that it became an obstacle to new players (“Oh you want to understand why Lane Healey said this one quote in the flavor text on this card? Here are links to 400 pages of fiction that you’ll need to read before you can make sense of it.”), which caused us to limit the fiction to about 5-6k words per release.
In order to keep the story moving, that meant that we needed to use our fiction slots wisely. Which also meant that some stories would just never have been told, including elaborating on some of the characters. Some characters were just fillers … but others had some kind of general story premise that could have produced some pretty fun stories given the opportunity.
Margaret and the Wretched were a design requirement. They needed a Drifter Union Mad Scientist and had a place for the Wretched with it. IIRC, it had been put off for some time, but when Faith and Fear came along, it couldn’t wait any longer. I always saw it as being a filler character, but Paul Durant really took the character and ran with it.
The idea is that she was a desperate woman who’d lost her husband (if you look REAL closely, you should be able to see they wear the same rings in Margaret’s picture) to the dangers of the Weird West. In her despair, she believed she could only ever be happy again with her husband by her side, so she easily bought into the manitous’ whisperings that he could live again. This was his request for her artwork … “The expression on her face is an almost terrified glee, like she’s going to start laughing or crying or both and won’t even know which one she should be doing. What she is about to do will be horrible and blasphemous, and will either bring her happiness when nothing else would, or it will obliterate her completely.”
The Wretched just kind of fell into place along with her as her resurrected husband, now some kind of horrible Frankenstein’s monster.
Truth be told, it would have been a great story to tell, but it had no connection to the broader story that we needed to keep developing in order to bring it to its climax at the right time. So instead, it became one of those story pieces that players would have to imagine for themselves.
To be honest, El Grajo was a request of mine, based off the character of Yang from the move, The Warrior’s Way. A ninja assassin who gives up his life of killing and tries to hide from his past in the Americas, only to eventually be forced into drawing his sword again in defense of his new home. I had wanted him to remain largely hidden for a while until eventually he and Abram came to blows before realizing they were both warriors for good in the town. That meant requesting some pretty low-key artwork for the time being.
However, Todd Rowland, the brand manager and art director at the time, (rightly) asserted that this character needed to be more exciting than that. He said, and I’m quoting, “I mean, come on, we have a ‘master swordsman’ card in Doomtown. It HAS to be a Zorro character. There is no discussion.” The result was a super-cool action hero to add to the game.
Again, we didn’t get to do much with him because we didn’t envision a big role for him in the larger story. However, I was tossing around the idea of involving him as an ally for the Law Dogs going forward as they were forced underground into a vigilante-type role. But alas, that was not meant to be.
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Lane Healey! There’s an interesting dude with backstory and an unresolved debt issue. I guess he’d have featured more as the Morgan Regulators stepped up to keep order in the places owned by Lula and Lillian. The real question though is would he ever eventually ‘win’ an encounter with a huckster? 
I was surprised to read that Sloan and Lucy survived. The orphanage battle concluded with them out of bullets and the blighted just about to beset them. Was it just that at that moment Ivor was taken down?
I just figured Nicodemus and Shane & Graves’ charge drew the attention of the Blighted about to swarm the orphanage, or something like that.
You know, when people say things like this, I was always kind of surprised. To my memory, we made it pretty clear that they somehow escaped with their lives. However, looking back at the fiction, I now see that we really did leave it pretty open-ended … and even suggestive that they didn’t make it out alive.
So consider this an apology on my part for not making that clearer. The focus of the piece was always on revealing that the holster had desires of its own beyond Sloane … and that Sloane would prove too strong-willed to be controlled by it any longer. This is what prompted Jonah to go behind her back and offer the holster to Mario instead; Jessica was a poor vessel.
I think we communicated that part well. But we didn’t do well enough with the resolution of that particular line.
While it’s not terribly clear because of how the story unfolded across three sets, many of the events of A Grand Entrance and The Showstopper were taking place concurrently, or at least close to it. So when Sloane, Lucy, and Xui Yin are fighting for their lives, Shane and Graves and the Whateleys are fighting for theirs … and Abram is building up the resolve to lead his posse out against Ivor. They’re not all at the exact same time, but it all takes place in a relatively short amount of time.
I always imagined it that Lucy and Sloane were shaken from their moment by the Blighted surging over the threshold into action once more. With the kids evacuated, they were free to abandon their post, managing to escape the orphanage and get back out into the open air to survive the night.
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It was noted how with each new home card added, we saw the evolution of the faction. What, if any, can you tell us about where the factions would be heading. I get the renegade law, and Sloan organized crime. MCC under new management and 4R being a new brotherhood, I really want to know what characteristics we would see emearge from them, the bandits, or wardens. Anything, please!
One of my favorite dudes in the game was Chuan “Jen” Qi. I can’t say I have read 100% of the story pieces, though I have tried to keep up. I never saw very many references to her. Can you share anything about her story, about where she’s from and where she might have been headed?
Of all the dudes in the game, I wanted an Experience 1 Jen the most…
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Oh what ever came of the train MCC was building. Was that ever going to become important?
The MCC were building a train? I must’ve missed that!
I know there’s a train in the background of Eustace True’s artwork. Where else is it mentioned?
One of the things I would’ve liked to have seen is that there were no non unique guys but 4 guys at that value like the 2 of clubs clown could have 4 different cards each named floppy,happy Jackie and spot but you just get one of each that way floppy could die in a fire but spot could still be in the story lol
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That would have been splendid and entertaining! Presumably printing issues complicate things like this, I know card games used to be printed on giant sheets and the individual cards cut out (so you’d have ended up with needing to print a set of clowns on their own small, inefficient sheet), not sure if modern methods have moved on.
The train thing was an early idea that I had created. It was meant to just play off of True’s artwork and serve as an introduction to MCC and their aspirations. There was never really anything big planned with it, and as the Story Team really started rolling any awareness of the train project was pretty much lost.
Let’s just say he finished the project, then moved back to focusing on re-creating mutant cattle.