Field Guides #1 - Sunflower River Trail

15 December 2023

Contents

• Intro
• The Trail
• The Rules
  • No Driving
  • No Diving
  • No Dying
• Landmarks on the Trail
  • The Outer Reaches
  • Doc Warboys' Clinic
  • Black Forest Radio
  • Other Sights
• Pilgrims on the Trail
  • Misery (or Beth)
  • "Chloe"
  • Doc Warboys' Corpse Boys
  • Other Wanderers
• Hazards on the Trail
  • The Path Eaters
  • The Law
  • The Horse
  • Encounter Table
• Hooks
• Inspirations and Touchstones

Intro

The Sunflower River Trail is where you go when it's time to move on, but you're still here.

Most folks meet Death in quick, hot flashes - the warm carress after a gunshot; a hand over the eyes while a wire tightens around the neck. The lonely echo when you say: go on without me, and they really do it. This is the gospel: everyone's a poet when they're fading away.

But the Sunflower Pilgrims exist in cold. Death turns from them with covered eyes and heavy heart. She doesn't walk them home or sing them to sleep. She does not see them, and they do not see her. No matter how hard they try, they cannot die.

Everyone's got a different story. Paul fell into the woodchipper and awoke in pieces. Sue got her head split by a meteorite and ran out of her own funeral. Some rare few just woke up one day knowing their time had passed.

The directionless life after life is a weird thing. How lonely! Who wants to invite the should-be-dead to a baby shower? They're a morose bunch, ambition lost, not experimenting with their eternity because (they hope) they could collapse at any time. They're subsisting on unpaid electric bills and no idea when the power's getting cut. So, with nothing left, they follow the tug in their wanderer's hearts and seek out the Trail.

The Trail

Sunbleached, timeworn, eroded by settlers and left behind for greener pastures, the Sunflower River Trail limps through a valley between pustular mountains, the river to the north and what's left below. Dreams line the southern border: burned cabins, windbeaten tents, entire villages frozen in autumnal unlife, an unbroken line from yesterday to now.

Here is the only fact about the Trail: it starts and ends at the Holy Ghost Trailhead.

Here is a commonly accepted truth about the Trail: it takes about a day to walk its length.

Here is the rest: landmarks slip down mountainsides like oil on canvas, sidling around each other and shoving themselves into new spots. The Trail changes with age, shrinking and shifting. The shape is the same, but the innards are different. The pilgrims know that much, at least.

The Rules

The tourist sign at the Holy Ghost Trailhead has been beaten down into illegible static by the changing of seasons. A helpful pilgrim has carved the following into the sludge:

1. No driving.
2. No diving.
3. No dying.

No Driving

You've got to walk this lonesome valley. No carriages, cars, bikes, skates, or wings. Anyone traveling without feet on the ground finds the trail deadending at Darby's Antiques after a mile. Darby's a strange little man with a head of salty hair and resting anxious face. He huffs spores to predict next week's deaths and swoop in on estate sales before his rivals. He doesn't know shit about the trail, and his door always opens back to Bastion.

No Diving

Water's for bodies only. Doctor's orders. Floating down Sunflower River always takes you to the water wheel at Doc Warboys' Clinic, and he hates it when living folk clog up his system.

No Dying

Centuries ago the Sunflower Pilgrims banded together and decided that if they can't die, neither can any fucking tourists, and that anger hangs in the air today like a holy vow. If you're walking the trail and your STR hits zero, your mortal soul will stick gluey and painful to its old body. Don't worry - Doc Warboys' Corpse Boys will toss you in the river, and the Doc himself'll get you fixed up right quick. For a fee, of course.

This rule belies a hidden fourth rule, burned behind the eyelids of every pilgrim on the trail: if you want to move on, you'll have to ride the Horse.

Landmarks on the Trail

There's still life between the ruins.

The Outer Reaches

Deepest dive this side of the Underground. The Outer Reaches is a bar that only stays in business because its clientele can't die and won't see a therapist. Their beer: dire. Their floors: sticky. Their vibes: rancid.

The only thing the OR has going for it is that it's a sort of convergence point within the multiverse. Every possible universe has its own Outer Reaches somewhere, somewhen, and each of those shitty bars overlaps with the other, however distantly. You always enter and exit to the same place, but the closest neighboring universes bleed into ours while you're there. Guests from these neighbors flicker in and out like ghosts in the static. Each night there's a new hazy band in the corner, echoing out across time and space, outlines etched in the old wood behind them.

Garl, one such guest, is bartender and head storyteller. He knows your name and usual order, and he'll talk your ear off if you let him, but hey, kid, he knows you've got places to be. Take this one for the road and come back safe, okay?

Which neighbor is bleeding through today?

Doc Warboys' Clinic

Converted from a decrepit sawmill to a decrepit clinic, Doc Warboys is as good as this county's gonna get. World weary and a bit of a mystic, he holes up in his office all day brewing potives from local algae and sending his corpse boys to dump bodies in the river - the old water wheel scoops 'em up and puts them on his table for easy fixing. He's resourceful with materials and lives off the land, but no doc has everything. Sometimes he just has to skim a bit of flesh off the top. Who knows? The next patient might need it more. And don't come to him with any booboos! He only works on corpses.

The revival fee is ($100 x your STR). If you can afford it, he'll heal you back up with no issues. Otherwise he'll have to patch you up with whatever he's got lying around.

What's the Doc fixing you up with?

Black Forest Radio

Special: using the radio station calls The Law to your location.

There is no sound within a mile radius of BFR. It's not like sound from outside gets eaten or dissolved or whatever - it crashes into an unseen barrier like a brick wall, clattering to the ground and jumbling in constant cacophany. One side of the threshold is a pots-and-pans nightmare, the other is silent paradise.

The door's blocked up with a big STAY OUT warning. Inside is a mess. Mostly it's a crunchy hippie nest full of half-eaten food and crusty sleeping bags; feel's like it's just on the other side of a squatter eviction. The equipment's pristine, though.

Turn it on, feel (but not hear) the antenna hum, spin a record or two. Here's the thing: BFR beams its output straight into the minds of everyone on the trail and there's no option to tune out. All those unfortunate pilgrims are hostage to this place and they hate hate hate it when people break in and start spinning. Listeners can "call in" by thinking really hard about it, letting folks in the station taste vitriol in the back of their spines.

If you were inventive and an asshole you could extend the range back to civilization with a few repeaters, but who would want that? Better just leave it be.

What's on top of the record stack?

Other Sights

Pilgrims on the Trail

A few special faces on the path.

Misery (or Beth)

Misery drowned. That's half the story, at least - she keeps the rest under wraps. Her skin is wrinkled to all hell and her bloated, distended body floats a few feet above the trail. She has to reach down and scrape with her little fingers or ask other pilgrims to carry her along if she wants to follow Rule 1. She's nice enough despite it all and happy to shoot the shit with her smoker's rasp. She knows the old secrets, but only accepts stories in return.

What secret is Misery selling?

Her identical twin, Beth, is a hateful snake in the same predicament. She ruins her fingertips day in and out to crawl the path and spews stomach acid (1d6 bile blast) on anyone who gets close.

"Chloe"

HP 0 | STR 1 | DEX 1 | CHA 1 | Snarl and bite 1d2

Special: the Horse will never naturally appear while Chloe's around.

Oh, pathetic creature. Chloe's walked the trail longer than anyone can remember. She's been sent to Doc Warboys so many times that eventually he ran out of bits to patch her up with, and now she's mostly just mush. Nobody's even sure what her name is, but someone at the bar suggested Chloe and it stuck.

Still she schlorps along each morning without fail, usually ending her day getting scooped into the river by the boys. She can't (or won't) speak outside of feral growls. Folks usually toss her a few scraps of food and let her by without incident.

Doc Warboys' Corpse Boys

(each) HP 6 | STR 13 | DEX 6 | Burly arms 1d8

Two classic goons the Doc hired to walk the trail and dump bodies in the river. The Guns are custom installed by the Doc himself - bigass anchor arms built to carry the heaviest stiffs. The Doc pays them in food and drink per body, so if they're bored they might... create a corpse out of available pilgrims.

They work for the doc but honestly will follow orders from anyone who looks like they have a medical degree.

Other Wanderers

Hazards on the Trail

Even the deathless can fear.

The Path Eaters

HP 6 | STR 12 | DEX 12 | CHA 8 | Mummifying Breath 1d8 DEX

• Slithering shadows running from the literal past. Dubiously sapient.
• Accost anyone who wanders too far off the trail.
• Scream and dissolve if forced to stop moving.

Omens: Rustles in the brush; whispered numbers, an endless stream, with no rhyme or reason.

The Law

HP 10 | Armor 2 | Templar's Buckshot 1d10 Blast

Special: The Law knows a song which, when sung under a new moon, calls the Horse to you. He has vowed to never sing it.

• Burned skeleton, body packed with cement-like clay and thrown in the kiln, lives to enforce the Rules.
• Stalks the trail and tests each pilgrim's undeath with a few rounds of buckshot. It's okay. They'll recover.
• Perfect tracker. Can't move faster than a slow walk.

Omens: Stomp, stomp, stomp; slowly loading bullets; gravel voice humming hymns.

The Horse

Special: Won't attack. Can't be physically harmed.

Smoke-wreathed, coat like soot, bringing that cold mountain fog wherever it goes, every pilgrim knows from the moment they were supposed to die that the only way to move on is through the Horse.

Here's what little they understand:

• The Horse takes one person at a time. Sometimes none.
• When the Horse appears, nobody can leave until someone willingly gets on its back.
• Wherever it takes you, you won't come back.

If a player gets on the Horse's back, roll 2d6. On snake eyes, it takes them into the fog and their character is permanently removed from the game. Otherwise it whinnies mournfully, lets them off, and walks away in solitude.

Can you bait the Horse?

Sure. There's bound to be a record at the radio station that can lure it in. The Law can call it too, he's just too full of loathing to do so. Misery could know a secret that calls it at great personal cost to the whisperer. One of the guests at the bar could know a way, if you figure out how to talk to them. Never hurts to just try carrots and apples either. At the end of the day, it's still a horse.

Omens: white fog; cold chills; the North Star dims.

Encounter Table

Hooks

Inspirations and Touchstones

Kentucky Route Zero by Cardboard Computer

The music of John Fahey and Reverend F.W. McGee

Un Lun Dun by China Mieville

The Path Eaters inspired by Stephen King's Langoliers.

The Law inspired by It Follows.

Pictures generated by Microsoft's AI image tool through bing.