Casting Shadows

This week’s seed is another for Psychobilly Retropocalypse, mostly because I like the name and mood of the game so much I try to slip it into regular conversation. Such gambits usually fail with the accounting team – humorless bastards.

In their honor, I present to you this greasy little seed.

The seed

The characters, en route to somewhere better and cooler from someplace far too square, have been mistakenly identified as Tax Men from a blighted nest of politicians and glad-hands, best thought of as a Coalition of the Greedy, a little further north. The locals, unwilling to pay any further property taxes assessed on pre-war property values, have decided to band together and make sure no one ever sees the money-grubbers again.

Planting the Seed

To use this currency-based, village of the damned, ‘us against everyone’ seed with your crew all you really need is for them to be headed somewhere and/or looking for something. The first person they speak to will direct them toward something deadly and glowing, and the ensuing fight/flight/revenge on yokel cycle will keep things going until either the characters or the townsfolk have been rocked, rolled, and put away bloody.

The Details

For this seed, I think it is best to crank out all the geographical impossibilities that you can, and have this small town be riddled with back roads, but curiously lacking in whatever a front road might be. Hills, mountains, forests, swamps, low-lands, farmland,Main Street, tumbleweeds, horses, hot rods, short shorts, and lace gloves, all wrapped up like a slightly glowing Christmas present of death and dismemberment.

The snide, fat, Cruel Sheriff with the bored looking hound

This gent will ostensibly be the group’s only ally, but is of course the mastermind of the whole plot. He will arrange damage to the characters’ vehicle(s) so that they are forced to ‘stay a spell in our fine town’ [so he can make sure they die there]. He will patiently listen to any complaints against strange locals and promise to see to it, first thing ‘tomorrow.’

The hound dog farts.

The Smokin’ Waitress

Part Tease, all Killer, Annie will direct the group to Pooter’s Gulch, leaving the impression that something useful to them can be found there. What is actually there is a very lonely mountain lion standing 8 feet at the shoulder that loves the smell of pomade in the morning.

The Scrawny Mechanic with the quavering voice

You will want to call this fellow Virgil, but fight the urge… Call him something else. Whatever you do, don’t call him Virgil… don’t even think about the name Virgil.

He, whatever his name is, will imply the parts for their vehicles may never come in, but he will suggest heading out to Snowpea’s Farm on Oak Road to see if they will let the characters buy or trade for the needed items. Of course, Snowpea’s farm has been abandoned since the Ooze Beast infested the fields and redefined the concept of Creeping Death from below. In the fields, no one can hear you gurgle.

The Preacher

Yes, even the local parson hates the Tax Man.

Reverend Smallwood will offer to drive the group wherever they wish to go, if they promise to help him stack wood in the basement of the church. Sadly, his car has not worked since before the bomb, and the only thing in the basement is a horde of zombies, but we are sure his heart – when he still had one – was in the right place.

The Town Pump

…has very sharp teeth.

The One Cool Kid in the Crappy Town

…died yesterday. His corpse will come after the characters like a force of nature if they touch the Jukebox.

Yokels 1 – 20

Found in various tasks in various parts of town, sometimes with recognizable gender and species, the local-yokels tend toward dirty-denim chic, with hayloft sensibilities, and the light of vengeance, hellfire and moonshine in their eyes. These folk are less clever than the previous set and will recommend routes of travel or somewhat transparent misdirection to travel over washed out roads, rickety bridges, by boat through the swamp at night, and the like. Many will suggest that the group can get what they are looking for at ‘the Gator Cannery.’  Some of the older ones will just grab up a shotgun and start blasting away.

Gator Cannery Worker

The Cannery does not produce canned alligator meat. It sells dog meat and passes it off as gators. To enhance the illusion, the staff chooses the most rabid dogs. Many samples of the slavering beasts can be seen roaming the grounds with bits of worker in their mouths when the characters drop by.

Mrs. C

A sweet-looking, red-haired matron will pretty much seem like the only normal person in town until she tries to lure the characters down into her basement dungeon. If captured, the group will have a chance to meet another captive who goes by the name of Chuck. He is tall, athletic, and blonde, and is wearing a T-shirt with a band logo touting a three-piece outfit from Chicago called Hoffa & the Dirt Nappers. Chuck is pretty close to the edge of madness, but he can find the lucidity to ask the group to remember him to his brother Ritchie if they should run across him in their travels.

The Real Tax Men

File this under, “things can always get worse.”

Miffed with the low-quality pie at the roadhouse, the Tax Men, unmolested in any other way by the locals as they were too busy trying to arrange an ‘accident’ for the characters, have decided to wipe this pissant burg off the map. They start immediately, and intend to slaughter everyone within town limits and salt the earth. This includes the characters. As they wage war on the town, they can be heard to make accounting jokes, and abuse the word ‘tally.’

Enjoy!

  I hope to hear about the soundtrack you use for this brutal killfest~

Related articles

• [’45 Hot Rod Retropocalypse] Judy “BlackHeart” Jones from A Character For Every Game (rpgcharacters.wordpress.com)