RE: [DL] Keepin' the posse honest (spoiler)

["Jeffery Yates" <jyates@qlinktech.com>]

Spoilers!!!!








Is it just me, or is the word "Spoilers" exceedingly, umm, appropriate, when
discussing dead meat that is waaaay past it's freshness date?






To start, I'm talkin' about run o' the mill undead.  There's always a
manitou or two that are just smarter, stronger, what have you, and can work
with just a spec or two of brain.  That, and when my posse starts aiming for
the head, they usually follow up with shotguns, or sledgehammers, or
something very very destructive of the skull!

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-deadlands@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-deadlands@gamerz.net]On
> Behalf Of Munch Wolf
> Sent: Monday, March 26, 2001 6:41 PM
> To: deadlands@gamerz.net
> Subject: RE: [DL] Keepin' the posse honest (spoiler)
>
>
> ---Bertrand writes:
> > spoilers
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > The way I see it, if its brain is damaged or
> > destroyed, the
> > harrowed/undead
> > is down for good. Isn't that stated in the main book
> > or book o' the
> > dead ?
>
> Yes, that particular abomination is gone and its soul
> goes back to the hunting grounds (BotD pg 102), but
> there is nothing saying ANOTHER manitou can't revive
> the body as an abomination.  Note this wouldn't be
> common, timely, and would probably involve outside
> assistance (voodooist re-raising a partially complete
> body), but it is possible.  The only thing that would
> completely stop the reuse of a body would be the
> blessed 'Final Rites'.

But if the brain is mucked up enough to force one average manitou out, then
there shouldn't be enough left for another average manitou to re-use.  And a
harrowed doesn't work without the original inhabitant.  I'd say that if you
could force the manitou out of a harrowed without brain destruction, then
the body dies and the human soul goes to the after life like it wanted to in
the first place.  The now very dead body could be turned into a walkin'
dead, but not another harrowed.

>
> --- Jeffery Yates <jyates@qlinktech.com> wrote:
> > > spoilers
> >
> > To be a walking dead, or a harrowed, the brain needs
> > to be available and
> > whole.  Sufficient head wounds are assumed to
> > demolish the brain, leaving
> > insufficient material for a manitou to take up
> > residence.  This is in the
> > books.
>
> I would LOVE to know where this rule is, book and
> page.
> From the original rulebook, pg 161, "Whenever a player
> character dies in the game and her body is mostly
> intact (especially the head), ..."
>
> Mostly intact ... not completely intact ... not brain
> wholey complete ... not dies of only a guts wound ...
> mostly intact, I have yet to see the rule that says,
> "Sufficient head wounds are assumed to demolish the
> brain, leaving insufficient material for a manitou to
> take up residence." and would really like to know
> where it is.

I guess this depends on your definition of "mostly".  Five wounds to the
head is not generally "mostly intact."  Whole brains might be over stating,
but mostly intact to me means having a large percentage of the grey matter
still inside the skull, and still in it's original configuration.  In my
games, if you took a drill with a slightly bent drill bit, you can poke a
fairly small hole in the skull and kill the person.  If you then remove the
drill, the brain is complete enough to have a harrowed or walkin' dead.
However, if instead you ran the drill a while to scramble the brains, the
brain isn't useful enough to make a harrowed.  I would allow a walkin' dead,
because the remnants of the original owner of the brain aren't needed.  Now,
if you then took a straw and sucked out half the brain, you can't have a
harrowed.  In my interpretation of "mostly intact."  Again, some of the more
ornery manitou don't need much brain to work with, but I thought we were
talkin' average manitou and average walkin' dead/harrowed.

If the head wounds that cause death are themselves caused by bullets, then
the exit wounds would involve evacuating too much grey matter to make a
harrowed out of. (Like the scene in Pulp Fiction, in the borrowed car, when
Travolta shoots the guy in the head.  Brain on the window, brain on the
seats, brain in the carpet, but not much brain in the skull.)  Maybe walkin'
dead (tho shotgun wounds leave very little head left at all, I'd say, and
walkin' dead always need the head).  Now, if you don't want a harrowed or
walkin' dead, then you're talkin' about a whole different critter, with
different rules.  Things like Walkin' Fossils and Bone Fiends are not
Walkin' Dead nor Harrowed.  The manitou inside Walkin' Dead and Harrowed are
_smart_, whereas Walkin' Fossils and Bone Fiends would be _cunning_.  A
slight distinction, maybe, but its the difference between a "mostly intact"
brain and a "trace" of brain.  And Patchwork Science has even less to do
with your everyday Harrowed and Walkin' Dead, with other forces at work in
the creation of the creature.

And since the manitou that inhabits a harrowed can't quite heal the death
wound, inhabiting a body with lots of brain damage would result in a brain
damaged harrowed.  Brain damaged people got put into asylums often (if the
family could afford it), or locked up, or otherwise kept out of the way of
normal folk.  Being locked in a rubber room makes it difficult to mix with
society and cause fear, making brain damaged bodies unlikely targets for
harrowed-intending manitou.

>
> Now for examples where not alot of brain is needed ...
> Walking Fossils (RVC pg 121), "Whether animated by
<SNIP>
> Bone Fiend (RVC pg 88), "Most manitous are capable of
<SNIP>
> Finally, Patchwork Science (RVC2, pg 82), "Meister
<SNIP>
> and since I briefly mentioned it last time, but didn't
> fully cover it, check out the picture in Back East:
> the North on page 76, which was supposed to be the
> final answer on this question a long time ago (but
> seems that it's not).

Pictures are not good places to get rules from.  As another poster posted,
lots of ambiguities and different views of the same picture are introduced.

>
> >  There's no telling
> > what is or isn't the same anymore. Keeps players on
> > their toes!
> >
>
> You say you like keeping players on there toes, but
> find it difficult to accept the same body with a
> mostly intact brain could be used multiple times by
> different manitous for different abominations?
>
> -Munch Wolf

Yup.  But if all you do is have the same dead body showin' up, it isn't
scary any more, they start to expect it, and the posse doesn't stay on their
toes, they just shoot Zombie Bob some more and then wait for him to show up
again.  Granted, you could have Bob be alive at the start, let the posse get
to know him, then shoot him in the chest.  He comes back harrowed, the posse
identify him, are properly freaked out, and stab him in the head with a
knife.  While dealing with a black magician, putting down some Walkin' Dead
footsoldiers, they recognize Walkin' Dead Bob.  A bullet or two to the
noggin' puts him down again!  At this point it starts loosing it's
scariness, and starts getting corny.  "Look, there's Bob again!  I say Hi
and shoot him in the face!"  But if you really wanted too, the now freshly
re-dead Bob is found by a Mad Scientist, whose son was crushed by a Steam
Powered Thresher and needs a new body.  The MS uses Bobs body, and puts Jr's
brain into the skull, using metal plates to cover the parts of bone that are
missing.  But why?  Just to have someone call him the Energizer Zombie?  OK,
so that is kinda funny.  But my games don't usually go that way.  I provide
the scary, the posse provides their own (sick, twisted) humor.  Like on PC
using a dead bandito as a hand puppet, causing the saloon gal PC to fail a
guts check and die of a heart attack.  Well, it was funny at the time.

Jeff Y.
Marshal for the Dynamite Gang