Troublesome Times In Tumbleson County - Teaser Trailer

Calm Before the Storm

I haven't blogging as much over the last two months or so, because other projects have taken my focus.  Since my birthday in April I've been running my Southern Gothic MotWeek campaign, Tumbleson County, within earshot of a microphone.  Most of my free time has been consumed with co-production (editing, voice over, etc.) and we're hoping to have it ready for weekly release come Thanksgiving.  For more information, you can check out our network page here.

Not yet a link

Tumbleson County Glossary Part 2

 All the different monsters I've made list various keywords as Powers.  Here's the context and mechanics for Tumbleson County's haints and monsters. 


Tumbleson County is a God-fearing patch of Earth on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, too bad God forgot all about them.  The hunters are townsfolk, young and old, fighting to keep their town together.  Ghosts of a damnable past, and a bloodier future, rise up beneath the boughs and rotten plantation roofs sending it all tumbling down. 
Necromancer- Derived from the Etruscan tradition of communing with the dead, necromancy was once a sacred art.  True masters can do more than interrogate bones, they can command and control the mortal remains. Since the coming of Christianity the Black Art has become taboo.  Once a necromancer puts out the call, the dead rise for the next 2d6 moves.

Norn- To the layman the future is an open field of possibilities, to the fortune teller it’s a get rich scheme, to the oracle a nebulous cloud of events but, to the norn, the future is as straight forward as a railroad track.  If the hunters have earned a norn's ire then Doom is shortly at hand.  When a norn is the source of Keeper moves, then hunters have to spend an additional point of Luck to gain any benefits.

Oracle- Participating in an ecstatic tradition of seeing the future, oracular visions are a hurley-burley of conflicting images and actions.  Disorganized and conflicting from the onset, an experienced oracle massages the barrage into a rough sequence.  

Otherside- The Otherworld, Hell, the Umbra, or the Upside Down; whatever you call it the Otherside is a rough place where everything is backwards and more literal.  Left is right and right is wrong. Home to carnivorous entities such as Eidolons, 

Invert the stats rolled for moves, ex: roll +weird instead of +charm and vice versa.

Ourside- To describe Ourside as the physical world is short-selling the wondrous reality surrounding human minnows.  So much of the human mind's daily processes revolve around locking the doors of perception and staying mercifully disorganized. When you look to closely at the world, the world look back.  Attracting unwelcome attention is a soft move in Tumbleson County.

Shapeshifter-  Supernatural entities rarely hold fidelity to form, their flesh changes on a whim.  This makes corporal destruction a daunting task, especially out in the woods.  Sometimes the only way to be sure is setting a forest fire. But that comes with its own complications.

Silver Tongue- Some, like the Biblical Aaron, can sell ice to Eskimos and charm the Sun from the sky.  These golden calves are dangerous to themselves and others.  Like the Boy Who Cried Wolf they wear their veracity thin.  Any creature with this quality is a font of unvarnished truth and sincerity, until provided contradictory information hunters do not doubt them.

Sin-Eater- What's become an Appalachian tradition has its roots in the English hinter country.  Through the consumption of a ritual meal, a single person takes on the sins of a household.  In Tumbleson County, only the most trusted are allowed to perform the practice as it peels back the mask of gentility and reveals the family's myriad sins.  Sin-Eaters are a trove of discrete evils and possible blackmail.

Skin Thief- The dead don't need their covering and evil men desire to mask their sins.  With a prepared ungent, human skin, and the light of the full moon; a man may become a monster.  While wrapped in the stolen form, their conscience is suppressed and their ill thoughts spill forth.  Grotesque tableaus and violent crimes spring in the wake of skin thievery, graverobbing is just the first sign.

Spirits- Tormented echoes, whether once a dream or a living thing.  A torturous death produces a more powerful haint.  There isn’t any set form, the only thing they share is permeability.  Spirits gain power by kludging together but they then lose focus and threaten their long term existence as unfinished business becomes a poison of mass distraction. The monster moves through solid objects without hindrance and can drag hunters with them as a soft move, leaving them partly in as a hard move (5-harm)

Tumbleson County Glossary Part 1

 All the different monsters I've made list various keywords as Powers.  Here's the context and mechanics for Tumbleson County's haints and monsters.

Tumbleson County is a God-fearing patch of Earth on the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, too bad God forgot all about them.  The hunters are townsfolk, young and old, fighting to keep their town together.  Ghosts of a damnable past, and a bloodier future, rise up beneath the boughs and rotten ceiling beams sending it all tumbling down.

Eidolon- The Greek word for apparitions, describes immaterial entities of the Otherside too great to exist on Ourside without flesh to anchor them.  Unembodied, the best they can do is leer from mirrors and other reflective surfaces. The monster always deals at least 2 points of harm, regardless of spending Luck.

Emanation- Supernaturally potent beings composing Ourside, often clothed in religious symbolism and described as gods or angels.  They command a particular portfolio of earthly properties but overlapping identities.  They will bend an ear to human supplication, but are otherwise uninterested in our mayfly existence. Confronting an Emanation causes it to passively assault your bits that fall under its sway (mark unstable, cannot be reduced.) Ie, Mother Mud causes your fertility to literally rot out of your body.

Embodied- When and Eidolon is anchored to a prepared vessel.  Could be the work of others or a supplicant.  Once embodied, our perceptions invert around the Eidolon’s true nature.  For example, Kindness is anything but sensitive to our feelings. Embodied Eidolons unleash a death curse as they're slain.

Face of Innocence- The mask of civility and normalcy remains in place because people are desperate for pacifying routine.  Some monsters prey on this weakness, blending in with the masses and obscuring their true nature to hunters.  The monster in indistinguishable from bystanders, unless a hunter exposes themselves to the true horror of reality.

Great and Terrible- Some monsters clothe themselves in atavistic fear, provoking fight or flight response in onlookers.  Hunters take -1 forward until a 10+ Acting Under Pressure breaks the fear.

Immortal-  Some things are just too ornery to take the Reaper's hand, clinging to life with terrible tenacity.  This monster takes -1 harm even if the attack is armor peircing.

Juggernaut/Leviathan:  Some foes are so great that the usual tools for killing aren't up to the task.  Can only be harmed by weapons and effects with the messy tag.

Magus- Well read and learned in the dark wisdom, magi are incredibly dangerous foes to hunt. Able to bend the forces of magic and the weird to their will, the best prepared hunters are underequipped. The Keeper applies Use Magic Backlashes with soft and hard moves.

Mesmerism- Popularly known as hypnotism, meserism is concious communication with the subconcious mind.  Implanting suggestions, manipulating memory, seeding new habits or abolishing old ones; these are only the surface.  Hunters start missing time, God only knows what evil they've wrought in those lost minutes.

 

The River Remembers

 

 Old Man River
The River flows through both Sides, bearing wisdom, greedy for Sky, and jealous of its past. It remembers strangling the Land for forty days and forty nights. When its grasp was broken, it took everything it could carry to the bottom.  The River longs to hold and cherish everything again, never letting go.  Its agents work to complete the River's collection one piece at a time.

The Hellion- a cursed river boat casino, "do what thou wilt" is the only rule until you're caught cheating the House.  The ship is staffed by the Union soldiers forced into the River, fleeing the Harmans' night of vicious revelry.  Passage is negotiated at the crossroads by the Burnt Up Church Place, a night on the Hellion is ephemeral and costly.
Monstrous Motivation Queen
Powers
Spirit, Juggernaut
Harm-  Bloated Boys in Blue 2-harm, messy, loud, ranged Armor- Warped wood armor-2 Health: 12 Health  
Unique Moves

The House Always Wins- When a hunter rolls 10+ the Keeper still makes a soft move. 

Stoke the Fires - When a hunter rolls +Weird, increase the harm caused by the bloated boys in blue by 1 or heal the Hellion 1 Health. 

Salome LaBeija- an agent of chaos and a seer, she uses Kindness' left eye as a crystal ball. She now dwells on the Hellion, since she was drowned in the River, offering self-fulfilling prophecies and cold reading.  Salome's upper vertebrae were harvested for gris-gris, coveted all over the region for their myriad properties.

Monstrous Motivation Trickster
Powers
Face of Innocence, Oracle, Un-Dead
Harm-  Chaos bolt 3-harm, magic, Armor- Unfeeling flesh armor-2 Health: 9 Health  
Unique Moves

Entropic Barrage - When Salome causes harm, she damages another hunter for each degree. 1 additional hunter on a full success, 2 on a partial sucess, and three on a failure.
Lightning Dance- When a storm rages overhead, Salome can appear anywhere behind a lightning strike congealing from the aftermath. 4-harm entrance. 
False Visions - Salome can actively obscure premonitions of the future, hunters take -1 forward when following her poisoned futures.

Baphomet- This great Watcher is trapped in the River's collection since the Good Granny buried its Reliquary in the riverbed.  Bound to the Hellion, s/he runs the Blackjack table and bargains for the souls of mortal folk.  The combination of opposites, its paradoxical nature allows it to slip the Keeper's leash in small ways.
Monstrous Motivation Tempter
Powers
Watcher, The Paradox, Sacred Hermaphrodite
Harm-  Gore 3-harm, messy Armor- Otherworldly flesh armor-2 Health: 13 Health  
Unique Moves
One Man's God, Another Man's Devil- When a hunter makes an offering, roll +Weird - on a 13- hold 3, 10+ - hold 2, 7-9- hold 1. Hunters may spend the hold to cause Use Magic effects in addition to Keeper moves. 
Know Thyself- When Baphomet locks eyes with a hunter, that hunter must confide their weakest moment. Afterimages haunt the hunter, -1 forward in scenes reminiscent of that moment. 

The Apple Fell Close

Original Sin
While the 3 Kings are united in purpose but divided in method, Original Sin is the inverse. They have overlapping goals and share methods, they will be enemies in the end. 

Erica Harman and the Horror That Follows -  If the service hadn't been interrupted, Erica  could have been the Witch of Endor to the Rex Mundi. Now she wants the circle to go unbroken and run through her. One mind, one body, one spirit. 

Monstrous Motivation Collector
Powers
Face of Innocence, Oracle, Grotesque, Spirit
Harm-  The Press of Bodies 3-harm, messy Armor- Pulped mass armor-2 Health: 13 Health

Unique Moves
Tangle of Limbs- When Erica deals harm to a hunter, they take -1 forward as they're caught up in the jungle of her anatomy.  This is cumulative, anyone who takes more than a -3 forward is pulled into the mass and must be rescued.

Heaving Flesh - Hunters roll +sharp when fighting Erica instead of any other stat.  She recovers 1 Health
when she doesn't take any harm as a move's result.

Soiled - Seeing Erica stirs up a wealth of unwholesome feelings, hunters discover they have some issues to work out.  Roll +cool to suppress. 

Barren, the Mother Mud - A spiritual cast-off, Barren forgot her intangible past and found a new purpose in fundamental muck. If she gets her way, the rain will fall ceaselessly and tje mud will brim with new life in her image. 
Monstrous Motivation Breeder
Powers
Emanation, Leviathan
Harm-  Spectral Tadpoles 3-harm, magic, messy The Tongue 2-harm, sticky Armor- Greater than you armor-3 Health: 14 Health
Unique Moves
Human Mud - Anyone dealt damage by a Spectral Tadpole hosts a rapidly gestating Frog Demon minion. Next missed +tough roll births the minion. 

Reel Them In - When a hunter is hit by The Tongue they get pulled into Barren's gullet. 

Formed From Dust - Mother Mud sloughs off doppelgangers of people she's eaten.  They're stuffed full of Frog Demons and don't always survive birth trauma. 

Bayard Tagert- An unrepentant gambler, Bayard ignored his sister's advice and went out to Burnt Up Church Place. At the crossroads he lost his soul to Mother Mud with a roll of the dice. For fear of what he had wrought, Bayard attempted to enlist the Queen. Barren would have none of that and consumed him. Sloughing off a doppelgange of old B.T. and binding his spirit to the Hellion. Now he wants a new chance at life, maybe behind Cam Dolittle's face. 

Monstrous Motivation Tempter
Powers
Silver Tongue, Spirit, Skin Thief
Harm-  Revolver 2-harm, loud Armor- Spectral flesh armor-1 Health: 8 Health
Unique Moves

Helter Skelter - Bayard throws everything not nailed down in a flurry. Roll +tough, everyone marks unstable and suffer 2-harm 

Ghost In the Shell - Outside of Lacuna, Bayard can't physically embody and is forced to interact through machinery. 

We Three Kings

Eidolons. The Greek word for apparition, applied to entities of the Other Side too great to crossover bodiless.  Each Eidolon represents an element of Our Side: wrath, gluttony, greed, etc. Filtered through the Looking Glass, perception distorts their meaning.  Their nature remains static but people interpret the inverse. Thus Deceit is seen as Truth.

The Kings were once lordlings of the Other Side but global events shifted the order of things. The Great War fed souls and pain to Hope, a rising power that usurped their eminent position.  Nostalgic for nights before gods-on-sticks and sterile worship they seek a return to blood, love, and pain. With physical vessels prepared for their spirits, they set their plans in motion. 

Patience, the Cold King -
The long-toothed lord of ambush is known among the folk of Tumbleson County as Charlie. Sprouting from the Ferguson's cthonic seed, the flesh is clay to his will.  He has waited a long time for the Eschaton, he will not wait anymore.

Monstrous Motivation Devourer
Powers
Eidolon, Shapeshifter
Harm Massive Craw 5-harm, messy, magic Armor- A higher order than you armor-5 Health: 20 Health
Unique Moves
Just A Log - May be present in any scene as a piece of the landscape.  When Patience makes his move, inflict 5-harm and hunters take -1 forward as their lizard brains freak out.

Swallow Whole - anyone dealt harm from Patience's Massive Craw could be swallowed whole. Soft move, sliding towards oblivion and separated from the party. Hard move,  lost completely. 

Appeasement - Patience is appeased when families drown their youngest child. He bestows prophecy upon those performing the gruesome rite.
 

Abstinence, the White Teeth -
A large composite skeleton wrapped in gauzy flesh, Abstinence lairs beneath Hollow Hill, the Harman family estate. Each death on the Harman family adding to her mass. Plagued with nagging emptiness, she longs to be full.

Monstrous Motivation Beast
Powers
Eidolon, Necromancer,
Harm- Gnawing and tearing 4-harm, magic, armor piercing Armor- A higher order than you armor-5 Health: 16 Health
Unique Moves
Leftovers- Abstinence vomits Leftovers when threatened, minions made from misshapen beasts and people pulped together. Hunters need to roll +cool to keep their lunch down

Thirsty- Abstinence recovers Health equal to harm dealt. 

Appeasement- Abstinence' favor is earned through debased consumption. Raw offal, feces, cannibalism, the more extreme the greater your favor. The Eidolon grants the ability to wear the flesh of the dead. 

Kindness, the Blackeye Huntress -

A quiet menace, invisible against the night sky, Kindness misses the nights she could inflict cruelties on the human mice. The Rambler, Otis Lee, desecrated the Governor's son's corpse, a blood caked owlet congealed in the remains. She ate his heart and curled up in the cavity. Since the Rambler's arrest she now nests in the jailhouse.

Monstrous Motivation Torturer
Powers
Eidolon, Mesmerism
Harm-  Long Claws of Night 3-harm, magic, armor piercing, mark unstable Armor- A higher order than you armor-5 Health: 16 Health
Unique Moves
Dark Wisdom - Apply 2 backlashes when a hunter attempts to Use Magic. Apply 1 when they roll +weird.

Falling Up- When a hunter suffers harm from Kindness' talons they are drawn hurling upward.  Roll +weird to navigate the surging weightlessness. Plummet to Earth on a miss. 

Appeasement - Missing its right eye stirs Kindness' envy. Offerings of human eyes, especially from the heads of of willing supplicants, draws Kindness' attention. The favored move with the silence and presence of shadows. 

Everyone Trusts Granny

 The Kindly Grandmothers
Beldames, termagants, maenads, and witches are a few of the names you'll hear describing the wild women who dwell far away from Tumbleson's townships.  Sought for favors by the desperate, the cost of business is more  terrible than the nuisance.  With their long memories and longer legacies, these women have a deep influence over County affairs following the Spinner's inscrutable directions.

Good Granny - preys upon her granddaughters and wants to free her grandsons from Abstinence. She uses the Great White Teeth's investments against it.

Monstrous Motivation Parasite- to infest, control, and devour
Powers
Magus, Shape Thief, Sineater

Harm- Hideous strength 3-harm messt Armor- charms braided into her skin armor-1 Health: 12 Health
Unique Moves
Worm in the Apple - Anyone who owes Good Granny a favor bears her worm in their ears, it shares their senses and takes over their bodies when they are willed to do so.
Counterspell - When a hunter rolls +Weird against the monster, reduce the success level by one.
Iron Nails - Good Granny Bulloch can hex any place or person that has one of her iron nails stuck in it.  They look like normal nail with hair wrapped around it. 

The Spinner- under England's gray skies they called her the Cutwife. In the New World she puts her Scissors to the Great Work.

Monstrous Motivation Parasite- to infest, control, and devour
Powers
Norn, Great and Terrible, Immortal
Harm-  The Scissors 2-harm, magic 

Armor- Death trembles to take her armor-2 Health: 10 Health
Unique Moves
Seen It All Before - When a hunter rolls against the Spinner, reduce the success level by one.

Welcome To My Parlor - Anyone who enters her Sanctum is unable to leave without permission. 

The Clean Cut - The greatest power held by witches is centered around fertility. The Clean Cut severs fecundity and fortune, requiring only the victim's bodily scraps. 

Wisteria Coryell - an herbalist first and will worker second, she is deeply involved in the life of her grandson Simon.

Monstrous Motivation Parasite- to infest, control, and devour
Powers
Face of Innocence, Herbalist, Medium
Harm-  Daddy's Peacemaker 2-harm, loud Armor- Innocence only preserves so much armor-0 Health: 11 Health
Unique Moves

A Kiss of Nightshade - If a hunter has consumed something prepared by Wisteria, they are considered poisoned when she wills it.

Malignance - When a hunter rolls +Weird against the monster, take -1 forward on future rolls. 
Daddy's Little Girl - A hunter rolling a miss on +Weird becomes possessed by the ghost of Wisteria's father. Turning on the other hunters, targeting the weakest one first. 

Bumps In the Night

This is a high point perspective of the competing supernatural factions in my Southern Gothic setting.  I will define the terminology and cosmology in entries focusing for intensely on each group.

 The Three Kings

These 3 Eidolons predate Man's arrival beneath the brackish canopy and grew addicted to his worship and flesh. Like junkies hungering for a fix the Three have differing methods to capture Man's fascination. But they share an end goal: aid the Rex Mundi in his Ascent and bask in the adulation of the Eschaton.  To do that they will need an Embodiment, so they can walk on our Side and intercede.
Movers & Shakers
Patience, the Cold King - born to one of its cultists and a Ferguson, its Embodiment is still a child but maturing rapidly.
Abstinence, the White Teeth - entered into a pact with Goodberry Harman, a bit of itself Embodies within every Harman boy.
Kindness, the Blackeye Huntress - the Rambler, Otis Lee, incubates its Embodiment where his heart should be.

Old Man River

The River flows through both Sides, bearing wisdom, greedy for Sky, and jealous of its past. It remembers strangling the Land for forty days and forty nights. When its grasp was broken, it took everything it could carry to the bottom.  The River longs to hold and cherish everything again, never letting go.

Movers & Shakers
The Hellion- a cursed river boat casino, "do what thou wilt" is the only rule until you're caught cheating the House.

Salome LaBeija- an agent of chaos and seer, uses Kindness' left eye as a crystal ball. Dwells on the Hellion since she was drowned in the River.

Baphomet- This great Eidolon is trapped in the River's confines since the Good Granny buried its Reliquary in the riverbed.

The Kindly Grandmothers

Beldames, termagants, maenads, and witches are a few of the names you'll hear describing the wild women who dwell far away from Tumbleson's townships.  Sought for favors by the desperate, the cost of business is more immediately terrible than the nuisance.  With their long memories and longer legacies, these women have a deep influence over County affairs following the Spinner's inscrutable directions.
Movers & Shakers
Good Granny - preys upon her granddaughters and wants to free her grandsons from Abstinence.
The Spinner- under England's gray skies they called her the Cutwife. In the New World she puts her scissors to the Great Work.
Wisteria Coryell - an herbalist first and will worker second, she is deeply involved in the life of her grandson Simon.

Original Sin

Burned alive on a Protestant altar, the death of Erica Harman and a generation of young people gouged a hole to the Other Side. Since then the Burnt Up Church Place is the center of superstition and avoided at all cost. Numinous power gathers and empowers otherwise minor spirits and Eidolons
Movers & Shakers
Erica Harman and the Horror That Follows - a nubile, young lady to the hips heralds the extruded tangle of human limbs and body parts behind it. She wants all of humanity to join her in unity.
Barren, the Mother Mud - the fecundity of the swamp given volition. Jealous of Man's independence, Mother knows best and wants him home.
Bayard Tagert- reneged on a debt he owed to Mother Mud, his soul is now trapped on the Hellion. Her agent in the court of foes.

Tumbleson County Family Album Part 2

The Harmans - Dark bargains with the Devil, also werewolves.

Yankee blue only set foot on the Tumbleson soil in a destructive but ultimately failed invasion.  Many antebellum palaces burned that night, but Sherman's boys met their match under the moon at the Harman plantation.  The clan's patriarch, Goodberry Harman, struck a deal with the shadows in the pines, consigning the daughters of the Harman line to unholy matrimony.  In exchange the Harmans run with the moon as beasts.  Since then they are the only family still living in their ancestral home, the others still stand but slowly succumb to structural damage and the incessant rot. 

Transactions with the Other Side recur with eery frequency in the Harman family history, contributing to folks distancing themselves.  Cut off from the town's mainstream economy they've taken to selling antiques and cultural heirlooms to dealers in order to bring in cash. Five of the six Harman sons actively, and aggressively, salvage such goods from the various ghost towns and abandoned homes in the County.  The sixth son went missing across the River six - eight months ago, his brothers don't seem too concerned though their father is pulling his hair out.

The Conerlys - Grappling with the Beast

Originally pig farmers, the War of Yankee Aggression left the Conerlies with a morass but no livestock.  Quickly adapting to their new normal, Shem Conerly rustled several alligators from the Bigtree Gator Farm over in Louisiana.  These beasts provided the intial stock of the newly started venture.  The thing is Shem wasn't counting on their ceaseless fecundity, and they quickly overran their enclosure and spilled over the surrounding landscape.  The Conerlies simply built a larger perimeter fence and called it a day.

Since then the Conerlies and their gatores have become county mascots of sorts.  Picking up alligator wrestling tricks and putting on shows and surrounding fairs doesn't hurt.  Since hiring a retired Seminole wrestler to teach them the Conerlies stopped going to any of the churches in town.  Instead opting to provide space for a cavalcade of travelling preachers and parsons, all of whom whip different, deviant Scriptures.  The Conerlies don't really care what's said, they like the snake handling ones best.

One thing that unnerves about the Conerlies, other than age, they all look about the same.

Next Up: Everybody Else.

Tumbleson County Family Alblum Part 1

The five founding families of Tumbleson have rotten roots that dig deep into the lives and loam of the land and everyone who lives off of it.  Here's three of the families: who they are, what they've done, their woes, hopes, and seeds of corruption.  I'll round out the last twoa nd everybody else in my next post.

The Golds - Shipping magnates, the pyramid's top

The Golds were able to get an early stranglehold on shipping out of Tumbleson County through use of force.  Though the times and methods have changed, their control over navigation and logistics have not.  Want to cross the river into Battiste Parrish?  You'll deal with the Golds. Head down the river to New Orleans?  The Golds again.  Head North?  Still the Golds.  Just a few months ago they buried the patriarch, Miser Gold, with an ostentatious grave marker. Rumor is that the Old Miser's bones and hair aren't in his grave but in the statuary itself.  His oldest son, Donny Gold, is mum on the matter.  He's too concerned with keeping the family empire together.

 In the light of day Beulla Gold is the picture of antebellum beauty and propriety, the young women all the men come 'round to court... until the sun sets.  Often found down by the river, straddling gentlemen callers with maniacal frenzy and exposing them to unwholesome rites. Beulla's reputation stays unsullied outside the county after Donny pays hush money to the bruised and broken suitors, but around Tumbleson she's the scorpion to Donny's frog.

The Tagerts - Impoverished farmers, can't win for losing

Cursed by Elizabeth Harman's dying breath, Preacher Goodenough had his family line change their names to escape the shame and get out of the state.  Unfortunately they couldn't all move away, and the county still remembers the evil done by that night.  Regardless of their involvement, little sympathy is gleaned when the Tagerts' labor force moved North for better jobs.  Since then their fields sit untended and rampant, this is exasperated by the sheriff's targeting of Tagert youth to send up to Parcell State Farm.

Pa Tagert hopes that marrying his eldest daughter, Jeanette, to Snake Hands Jimmy of the Fergusons will help alleviate some of their pressures.If they're kin, then Sheriff Horace Ferguson might stop scooping up his nieces and nephews-in-law on trumped up charges for Parcell's bleeding.

The Parcells - Failed ambitions, drowning hope

After the town of Nevermind failed, the Parcells only asset is the state incarceration contract.  Convinced that Jimmy Copeland's treasure is buried in his fields, Bobby Parcell has a special work detail that excavates the surrounding contryside looking for treasure.  Populated by prisoners being punished by the staff, they do harder labor and take fewer breaks.  This is the third such group, the previous two found things buried in the fields and put to the gun to contain it.

The Tagerts' hard times have been to the Parcell's benefit, as the Golds now ship surplus Parcell State produce.  The prison's harvest is used in other ways as well, one of the guards, Zeb Coryell, has taken to illegally leasing convict labor to the Tagerts.  Usually healthy, unprocessed prisoners are siphoned off and sent to the Tagerts' place.  Careful not to send the Tagerts any of their own kin, it's only a matter of time before the sheriff blows the whistle on the arrangement.

And Their Bigger Sins

 A haunted, bloodstained landscape, the South sleeps uneasy with nightmares of antebellum atrocities. Abandoned buildings and worn rope cling to hillside and tree refusing to be forgotten, providing perch and shelter to the haunts, phantasms, and revenants hungry for more.  In these parts secrets and generational guilt get up to walk around, moving with malevolence all their own and may just visit you in the middle of the night.

The Largest Town Hides the Biggest Wrongdoing 
Young Town - The Chickasaw village was built where the Veil is thin, enabling magic and medicine tied to Spring. Forced off by the government, the Anglos quickly moved in and found the area's propensity for miracles wondrous and frightening. Preacher Goodenough saw his control slipping as the congregation fell under the sway of a charismatic girl, Elizabeth Harman. She took to performing miracles under the full moon, a whole generation of townsfolk in attendance. Late night revivals she called them; casting out demons and such.

The church sat on a high mound, the windows shuttered against the chill October night. The Preacher stirred up a hooded mob, burning down the church and trapping all within. The helpless deaths of all within tore a hole in the Veil, fostering a fecund malignancy. Spurring trade in particular herbs and animal life only found on the Eastern side, demanded by rootworkers in Battiste Parrish. 

Unincorporated Townships
Odem Railroad Station -If you're hard up for cash Odem will buy whatever you can kill in the woods, no matter how dubious. Turns them into the most beatific links you ever laid eyes on, spiced tubes of intestinal heaven.

Burning Bush - The most infamous in a long line of deviants from Burning Bush, the Rambler had the gall the kidnap the governor's son.  Could barely recognize the boy once the search party found him.  The others all have titles rather than names, only someone from Burning Bush could name them all.  It's a sickness.

Mockingbird - People are going missing, and the bodies haven't been found.  The whole Lancaster homestead has been abandoned and no witness to what happened.  As if they were swallowed by the night sky.

Blackwell -  Siobahn Ferguson has started wooing town youths down by the river, initiating them into the Cult of the Skinless Man.  This doesn't sit well with any of the local clergy and they've all begun outreach programs, turning Blackwell into a battleground of faith and proselytizing.

Sunflower -  Birth pangs may become death spasms, the Sunflower Lumber Co. is refusing to honor paychecks written out to flight risks, even unemployed ones.  This has marooned a growing population up in the hills and the town suffers from burgeoning overpopulation and tensions.  Whitecaps have been harassing the tent city fringes with torch and saber but haven't killed anyone yet.

Jug's Corner -A strange lot, the Fergusons exhibit strange permutations.  Look at Snake Hands Jimmy, yes, his hands are eyeless vipers.  His Uncle Simeon is worse, and let's not talk about the women.  Eager to gain legitimacy, these Stygian moonshiners are marrying into the Conerlys.  Lorecia was just the first of several arrangements between the two families.

Ghost Towns
Bloodland - A prime example of the haunted South, this den of wickedness drowned in its cradle. God had nothing to do with it though.  The night that storm hit, everyone in the county was trapped in their beds, caught up in the same fever dream.  Prime time witchcraft I tell you, that much death served another purpose.  Probably still down in the ruins.

Nevermind - Surrounded by the moth eaten vestiges of failed ambition, the State Farm's warden is always a Parcell. And that family clings to grudges fiercer than anyone else. The Tagerts fear the Farm more than anybody else. They have their own section of the Prison Cemetery.

Questing - Never actually home to a courthouse, Questing benefitted greatly from Reconstruction.  Moved to violence with envy and greed Johnny Copeland organized a mob who rode through the town and burned it all to the ground.  Doubling down, Copeland took his father's sabre to every citizen of Questing he could lay steel on.  Things got so bad the moon averted her gaze, cloaked in smoke.  There in the Questing Methodist Church, the Devil claimed Johnny Copeland, leaving the sword plunged into the altarstone in that hell-kissed sanctuary.  The bloodthirsty blade Johnny's daddy wielded in the War is the only treasure in Questing.

Tumbleson's Seven Small Towns

The Largest Town in Tumbleson County
Young Town - Chickasaw initially settled the area, the French intermingled with them and established a village until the Indian Removals of 1830.  As the federal government swept indigenous peoples aside, the Chickasaw quietly slipped across the river to Battiste Parrish.  Afterwards Anglo settlers moved into the area and the settlement grew.

A reporter described the "brave little city" as the "heart of navigation up and down the tributaries feeding into Old Man River," the muddy water bearing hundreds of bales of cotton by keel boat.

The first settlers were the Tagerts, Golds, Conerlys, Harmans, and Parcells.

The Golds owned a boat company, shipped cotton and other freight downstream to New Orleans. 
There was a post office, a dry goods store, and a pottry that made bowls, churns, and plates.  The first church was at "The Old Burnt Meetin' House Place", struck by lightning and burned to the ground in 1847.  Young Town also has a camp ground and a Methodist church.  Tumbleson County was organized in 1855, and the first courts and meetings of the Board were held at Young Town.  Since then, the town has been the heart of Tumbleson County's economic and political landscape.

Unincorporated Townships
Odem Railroad Station - An unincorporated township in Tumbleson County, the mail coming into the area starts here.  Built up around the Black River Rail Company station, the town's other notable feature is Odem's.  A roadhouse specializing in sausage of all sorts.

Burning Bush - Bearing the dubious honor of being the Rambler's hometown, Burning Bush is a god-fearing town home to three Baptist churches.  The second largest settlement besides Young Town, the town's population provides labor for the surrounding farms, mostly cotton and tobacco.

Mockingbird - A lumber town and the site of the 2nd courthouse built in Tumbleson County.  The first courthouse was in the ghost town of Questing.  Sitting on the Pascaloosa River, much of the lumber is ran down the river current to Young Town.

Blackwell - Founded as a gator hunting camp and river fortification housing the U.S. interpreter for the Chickasaw Agency to communicate with the Chickasaw Nation.  Unfortunately, the low-lying site of the town is prone to flooding and the Indian Removal of 1830 robbed it of purpose.  Since then the settlement has largely been abandoned and populated by squatters.

Sunflower -  Deeper in the woods from Odem, Sunflower is home to the first electric saw mill in the region kick starting a lumber boom. Now the town is growing at a rapid rate and experiencing growing pains.  Once just a dry goods store and a hotel, a large tent city has since popped up.

Jug's Corner -This moonshiners' settlement has been invaded by the Fergusons who've come down from Black Rock, West Virginia.  They have muscled their way into the manufacture and distribution of moonshine, a match to the powder keg of backwood feuds.

Ghost Towns
Bloodland - Once the nest of vice and iniquity, a raging storm swept in from the Gulf and squatted over the town.  The waters rose and the roofs were beat in, the town's population drowned in their wickedness.  Or so the preachers would tell you.

Nevermind - Founded by the Parcells to compete with Young Town, an ambition that ultimately failed and led to the financial collapse of the family.  The only thing left is the Parcell State Farm - the local state jail.  Surrounded by the worst of the local terrain, escape is nearly impossible to organize from within.

Questing - Home to the first courthouse built in Tumbleson County, it and the town were burned down by the outlaw Johnny Copeland and his gang in a night of plunder and destruction.  Rumors persist that he stashed his stolen gold and silver coins somewhere around the town.