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Region F: South West Encounters
Location Discovery
| Encounter Text | Location Unlocked |
|---|---|
| Through the shimmering waves of heat you see a massive pile of bones on the horizon, and veer <horsename> toward it to investigate. It turns out to be an even more massive pile of bones than you initially thought! | Buffalo Pile |
| You grab a piece of blowing garbage to wipe the sweat from your brow (you should really get a handkerchief if you're going to keep riding in this heat) and the garbage turns out to be a flyer for a nearby tourist attraction. | Petting Cemetery |
| You see a few buildings off in the distance and spur <horsename> toward them to investigate. It turns out to be the old Kellogg Sanatorium -- you remember reading about this place in the papers! Crazy guy, obsessed with bodily and spiritual purity, charging rich people an arm and a leg to eat bad food for a few weeks. | Kellogg Ranch |
| You notice a black spot at the base of the mountains to the East. You feel compelled to go investigate. | Madness Maw Mine |
| You see a fading old billboard off the side of the trail that reads "ROY BEAN'S HOUSE OF JUSTICE AND JELLY BEANS, THISAWAY" with an arrow pointing towards a small building in the distance. | Roy Bean's House |
| You see a splash of color out of the corner of your eye, and it turns out to be a giant multicolored banner hung across the front of an old army fort. | Fort of Darkness |
Non-Combat Events
| Type | Encounter | Conditions | Options |
|---|---|---|---|
 ∗ |
A spiky, bright blue shape catches your eye. You hop off of <horsename> to investigate it more closely.
It's a Hagar's Agave! They're native to Panama, but they can grow in these parts, especially in places that are too hot for teachers to be comfortable. |
Repeatable |
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∗ |
You spy a patch of loco weed growing next to the trail. You hop down for a closer look, just to make sure it's not loco grass or loco flowers. | Repeatable |
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 ∗ |
You come across a deserted campsite. There are signs of a struggle, but the only intact object is a crate with military stencils on it. You think they're military, at least. It's hard to tell with all the mushrooms.
Oh yeah, the crate is also, like, covered with mushrooms. I kinda buried the lede there. It looks pretty flimsy, but you're not 100% sure you want to touch it. |
Repeatable |
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∗ |
You find a crate lying at the side of the road. It has "LOST DUTCH OVEN MINE" stenciled on it -- isn't that way in the opposite corner of the territory? That's pretty lost. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
You find a poor lost crate, which has been abandoned and forgotten by its owners. How sad! | Repeatable |
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∗ |
You find a rectangular hole roughly three feet wide by six feet long by six feet deep. So it's either a grave or the future site of half an in-ground hot tub. | Repeatable |
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 ∗ |
Your transponder starts making that bleeping noise that means either treasure or a monster, and who can resist that gamble? Not you!
At least, not in this encounter! Anyway your involuntary risk-taking is rewarded when you find a high-tech crate. Sadly, it is locked. |
Repeatable [El Vibrato transponder] |
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∗ |
Wouldn't you just know it, the trail is blocked by a bunch of boulders and fallen logs and barbell weights and an old cast-iron printing press, and all kinds of heavy stuff. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
Partway down the trail, <horsename> stumbles. They seem pretty tired from carrying you around all the time. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
In the front yard of a small adobe building just off the side of the trail, you see a young woman working on a broken water pump. She pauses to dramatically wipe sweat from her brow with her hat. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
Off the trail's shoulder, you see some ancient petroglyphs carved into a rock. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
This stretch of the trail has a fence bordering it, and someone has gone and put tin cans on all the fence posts, without shooting them off afterwards! What in the heck? | Repeatable |
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∗ |
Off in the distance, you spot a hungry bobcat sneaking up an a cute li'l desert squirrel. How do you feel about that? | Repeatable |
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Combat Events
| Type | Encounter | Conditions | Non-Combat Options | Combat Option | ||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
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A shirtless man in tight stretchy pants charges at you out of nowhere.
No more! No more mushrooms! No more yogurt! No more exploring my inner consciousness while running in place! I'm gonna kill something! Kill it and eat it! |
One-time |
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Out in the open desert, among the rocks and dunes and underneath the scorching desert sun, you encounter a chef.
That probably doesn't sound all that strange, comparatively, but hold on while I go into more detail. He has, somehow, hauled a full-size iron potbelly stove out into this blistering hothole, and is cooking something on it, though you can't tell what because all you see in the pan is fire. Rather than being drenched in sweat, he is literally steaming. Furthermore, he is muttering wildly to himself: "Hotter gotta be hotter hot hot gotta cook cook it right through needs to be hot hotter hotter" |
One-time |
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You hear gunshots and someone shouting nearby, and decide to investigate. This instinct is basically what separates an adventurer from a sane person.
You find a bandit in scorched and blackened clothes, wildly firing his pistol at the scenery. Everything he shoots bursts into flames, somehow. |
One-time |
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 ∗ |
The already-intense heat intensifies. Sweat stings your eyes, and while it's stinging them you fail to use them to notice that you've ridden right into the middle of a herd of pyroboves. | Repeatable |
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∗ |
You see what you take to be an oasis in the boiling heat of this region, and spur <horsename> toward it.
As you near it, you discover that you've been fooled. It wasn't an oasis at all, but an evil towering black stone cow monolith. Anybody could make that mistake, really. |
Repeatable |
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Off to one side of the trail, you spot a cactus that doesn't look quite right. Specifically, it doesn't look right because it has a goblin face. As you get closer, you become pretty sure that it is actually just a goblin in a cactus outfit. It gives you some annoyed side-eye and tries to wave you away, but the cactus-arms aren't very mobile. | One-time |
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An odd flash of light nearby prompts you to stop and investigate. You discover a goblin with a strange hinged board covered with shiny foil, which they're using to reflect sunlight onto a pair of leather boots. | One-time |
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There's a goblin marching down the trail in a soldier's uniform, the pants of which have been seriously pinned-up to account for the goblin's stubby little legs. It salutes when it sees you. | One-time |
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 ∗ |
There's a skeleton out here in the desert. That's not very strange, because people die all the time in the desert. This skeleton, though, is doing arm-curls with a pair of iron dumbbells. He/She doesn't have any muscles, but somehow his/her bones are extremely ripped and/or swole. | One-time |
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∗ |
Your travels are interrupted by a fairly disturbing sight -- a skeleton covered with weird glowing mushrooms, which is shambling toward you and making angry hissing sounds and weird gestures. | One-time |
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∗ |
A shot rings out, and you duck just in time to avoid your hat being ruined. A skeleton is standing in the road ahead, arms akimbo, hands just over his/her holster, ready for another quick-draw.
Oh also he/she is literally on fire. I almost forgot to mention that. |
One-time |
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∗ |
Phew, it is crazy hot out here. The desert is just the worst. If you stay here too long, you could end up like one of those charred-black skeletons clacking toward you. | Repeatable |
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You stop to investigate a plume of smoke, and discover that where it is, there's no fire.
The next thing you discover is that it's not so much smoke as the charred ghost of someone who suffered a particularly grisly death. |
Repeatable [Pale Horse] |
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 ∗ |
Looks like someone left their campfire burning. That's dangerous!
...On closer inspection, it turns out to be a nest of fire snakes. That's still pretty dangerous! |
Repeatable |
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∗ |
Your El Vibrato device starts bleeping, and the bleeping leads you to an unremarkable sand dune. Which quickly becomes remarkable when the robot buried underneath it wakes up. | Repeatable [El Vibrato transponder] |
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