Howdy Vados!

It’s Jonathan here with a final DR:TX Rules Ramble for the season, as we begin our summer break! This was our part one of the FINALE story for Season 5, led by Heather Halstead and Jonathan Loyd. In September, we will wrap up the story with THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD. This week, we are recapping the major plot points from the weekend and leaving you with a few spoilers to consider over the summer!

Our Bluebonnet Shores Work Day is on May 31-June 1. You can earn TEN (10) XP for helping our Girl Scout camp get ready for the summer season. Don’t miss out on your chance to give back and earn some tasty XP for your characters!
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Our next quarterly Network Advisory Board meeting happens this Thursday, May 23. You can listen to the meeting once it’s uploaded at the Dystopia Rising Live website.
Dystopia Rising Texas will be at Anime Fest in Dallas, on July 25-28. We will have a community table near the Dealer Room, so stop by and say “Howdy!”

++ SPOILER WARNING ++

I’m going to detail the big secrets we revealed during this game, so if you’d rather learn about this in game, skip to the end!

Our photos for this post were taken from our May 2023 DR:TX event by the talented Lauren Guzaldo.

The Atrocity - A RECAP

If you didn’t get to attend this event, we had some BIG revelations come from our finale. I’ll try to summarize the major plot points in this recap, but you can read about our teaser blog posts from the last few weeks:

The Premise of the Atrocity

Felicity Redfield is dead.

After months of secret imprisonment on charges of treason, Felicity was found slain in her cell in Essex, a Golden Spike lodged in her chest, her flame red hair extinguished with drying blood. There are no suspects, and there will be no investigation.

In Bravado, the drums of rebellion have beat a fevered cadence. The Rebellion is poised to strike against Essex, a final blow against the power of the Board. Chastized and rebuked by the town, the Chairman's wrath now burns solely for Bravado, eschewing the rest of the San Saba for vengeance.

The Chairman has brokered a deal, a bargain wrought in blood, crystal, and fell promises. Whispers on the wind speak of ill tidings. The sun darkened to blackness. The rivers of the San Saba rendered still. Farmers clawing at their eyes in their sleep until blind. These dark omens resonate with the Music of the Spheres, a portent of impending and terrible violence. A prophecy of an ATROCITY foretold in ancient Barogian manuscripts, an echo of a crime committed in the past.

And it is coming to Bravado.

The Obelisk at the crossroads has repelled The Prince Undying once, but it is unclear if it can withstand a second onslaught, or if it was created for something else entirely. With the Obelisk bolstered, any Nightmares that force their way into Bravado are disoriented, relying on sound to hunt their prey. To speak is to invite death, as your very words solidify the imprint of the living.

But Felicity has not left Bravado to weather this hardship unaided. There is a duty to uphold, and contracts to keep that not even death can hinder. There is none that rivaled her knowledge of the Lost City and its forgotten history, no architect of lore that matched her research. Rumors fly that her journal was smuggled out of Essex, and that it holds her most powerful secrets of the past meant for her beloved Bravado.

Everything that has happened before will happen again.

But what if didn’t?

Only if the prophecies can be unwritten, a Prince contained, and The Atrocity averted, can Bravado be poised to claim their destiny…

Let’s get started!

The First Night

Our event opened on Friday night with a MURDER. Our Dusters found themselves escaping from Essex with a blood-covered felon after the murder of Felicity Redfield, the CEO of the Railroad Conglomerate. Early reports suggested that she had been found with a GOLDEN SPIKE stabbed in her chest, a call back to the very first game of 3.0. A few even suggested that her body had simply stood up and walked out of Essex. Regardless of what actually happened, the Dusters had to escape guards in hot pursuit of a killer and had to deal with the shadowy monsters that hunted at the edge of their vision, the Nightmares of the Prince Undying.

Folks all over the San Saba were starting to disappear, drug away in the night by strange shadows or torn to shreds by something no one could see. The nightmares of the Prince Undying invaded the town as the sun set, intent on some grand design few could appreciate. A few loud victims made their way into town, and a few enterprising survivors picked up on a similarity between the folks being chased by nightmares. Every person that had disappeared had some kind of tie to Bravado, via family, past residence, or some loved one that lived downtown.

As the last rebel mail run from Essex made it to town, a few individuals found their way across a journal, lost in the mail and the pages scattered between survivors. These journal pages were written with a familiar scrawl, and a few of the survivors took it upon themselves to collect the pages. Within the journal, the last words of Felicity Redfield were recorded for those lucky enough to find a piece.

[SPOILER] If you would like to read the Journal and weren’t able to find all the pages in one place, you can find it on our website in its entirety. Heather did a great job on this cool story, and we want to make sure that anyone can read it if they like. However, it does contain story spoilers, so reader beware!
- The Journal of Felicity Redfield

On the war front, the armies of the Prince Undying were quickly approaching Bravado. After being turned aside at Tremorsands Post and at Castle Falken, the horde of undead reached the walls of Killhouse to the north. As the brave defenders of the Bravado Revolutionary Army stood firm, more of the nightmares poured from the depths of Killhouse BEHIND the line of battle. It would seem the Nightmares could travel between the strange obelisks found across the San Saba, including the Obelisk of Betrayal deep in the XXX Wing at Killhouse. Despite the two-front attack, the armored defenders managed to withstand the overwhelming assault and blunted part of the Prince’s advance towards Bravado and Drywater.

The Return of Sister Mammon

Late into the night, a familar face arrived in Bravado. Clad in the desert robes of the Dune Sea, black and red makeup on their face and a golden spike buried in their chest, Sister Mammon, the Final Knight prophet came to the aid of Bravado in the darkest hour. Shockingly, the face she wore was of someone much more familiar.

Mammon wore the face of Felicity Redfield, late CEO of the Railroad Conglomerate. Her curly red hair was kept back and the eyes that shined in the darkness seemed strangely familiar, but somehow older and ancient. The true reason that Felicity couldn’t remember her past was that she was only a fragmented personality that shared the body of Mammon, the prophet of Barogue. With Felicity’s death, Mammon was awoken once more to claim the body that was rightfully hers.

Sister Mammon laid out a plan, once that had been waiting for years untold to come to fruition. The Prince Undying was set on recreating his great ATROCITY, a single night of terror where the entire people of Barogue were dragged screaming into the Grave Mind to serve as eternal servants of the Prince, his Khibrath Murea, the Nightmares of the Prince Undying. Using the connection and sympathetic bonds each person’s imprint had with their town, the Prince would erase every last person with a tie to Bravado, killing everyone before the sun could rise on Sunday.

This was the reason citizens were disappearing from the outskirts as the Prince drew closer. Anyone and everyone with a connection to Bravado was being targeted by the Nightmares, killed in the name of the Prince’s atrocity. Stopping or preventing the Atrocity would not be easy. Sister Mammon’s enemy, the Prince Undying, was functionally immortal. He was an imprint trapped in the Grave Mind, a sort of Mortis Shard that let him walk among the living, while not really existing in either realm. No weapon or bullet could really stop him, so Mammon had devised a plan to instead use his immortality against him. If he could not be killed, he could be contained.

The obelisk in the center of Bravado was not just a relic of ancient Barogue. It was an elaborate TRAP that was meant to contain the Prince Undying, a final weapon of Salvation, provided they could lure the undead horror into Bravado proper. Crafted without the Prince’s knowledge by Mammon, the Obelisk was connected to the same Network he used to protect himself. The network of Obelisks scattered around the San Saba were the source of the Prince Undying’s power, split across the entire region. The Obelisk of Salvation could contain the Prince, locking him into an eternal prison separated from his army of Nightmares, separated from Barogue, and contained in the final resting place of Mammon — the town of Bravado.

To do so, they would need to sever the connections of the Obelisk network of the San Saba through a foul Final Knight benediction, so that they could prevent the Prince from simply using the Grave Mind to escape. Each ritual would require the survivors to pour their fears and nightmares into the obelisk, to attune it to the strange realm of Nightmares. Using aspects of each of the other obelisks in the San Saba, they would sever the connection they had with Bravado, isolating the town from the greater San Saba and creating the perfect trap for the villain.

Severing the Obelisks

Each time a survivor poured their fears and nightmares into the Obelisk at the crossroads, a spark of prophecy escaped their lips, a strange puzzle of cryptic phrases and predictions that seemed to explain how the rituals would function.

Throughout the night and next morning, the townsfolk of Bravado worked to enact Mammon’s plan through various means. Roaming nightmares made this challenging at times, as they seemed to be drawn by sound and the essence of the living. Striking from the shadows, they would appear suddenly in a frenzy of violence, and if you weren’t silent they would attempt to tear you to pieces.

There were nine different Obelisk rites to complete, and each required an act that echoed the history of Sister Mammon, and her journey through the desert to escape Barogue.

The Obelisk of Knowledge, one of the artifacts kept in the crashed city of Waking required the Rite of the Sundered Mind. The obelisk that had once helped Felicity translate the Barogian script would be severed by making a mockery of the inspirations and aspirations of a scholar, beating them to near death and gouging out their eyes in a form of horrific torture, echoing the violence committed against Mammon in her escape from Barogue.
The Obelisk of Entropy, required a Binding of All Day’s End to sever the second obelisk in the heart of Waking that was taken from Aggieland. The rite required them to execute a forsaken martyr that was stripped of their gear and made to fight to the death with only a single dagger. The sacrifice would face the Grave Mind alone, forsaken in their death like Mammon, cut from their faith and civility and trampled under hoof and claw.
The Obelisk of Endless Sands, a lone monolith in the heart of the Dune Sea required the Rite of the Blind Wanderer to end its connection to Bravado. As part of the ritual, a blinded Nomad would be set to aimlessly wander, stalked by a wandering danger that burned away the path through pyrokinesis and violence, in an echo of Mammon’s lost wandering through the Dune Sea. They had to create a map through the endless sands, recreating her journey to find salvation outside of the desert.
The Obelisk of Betrayal, deep in the prison of Killhouse, required the Rite of the Black Hearted Betrayal to end its connection. The survivors had to find one that held the role of betrayer among them, binding them and cutting out their heart as they discerned truth from fiction. A game of questions and elimination, it required them to confront difficult truths, as Mammon had when she started the fall of Barogue.
The Obelisk of the Tentacled Depths, worked into the lighthouse in the Clutch, needed the Rite of the Drowned Shark to sever the bond. Lashing a survivor to the mast of the boat in Anyport, they had to be bled out while under the water, choking on their last breaths in a horror of asphyxiation. Invoking the ancient rites of the sea to forsake the wanderer’s purpose, the rite echoed the brutal exile and separation of Mammon from her people.
The Obelisk of the Open Path, standing tall in the heart of old Barogue, required the Rite of Unprisoned Time to end its threat. The gate of worlds had to be sealed away with the time of the sacrificed, giving up their ability to refresh Mind, and translating the ancient laws of punishment from high Barogian while under assault by Nightmares. An echo of Mammon’s sentencing, the rite recreated her final punishment before she fled Barogue, severed from the Scion Vossa.
The Obelisk of Creation, the source of the forests in the heart of Essex, had to be severed by the Rite of Poisoned Earth. By salting and poisoning the farmland of Bravado, working the bleeding bodies of the sacrificed Landsmen into the very earth itself, they could replicate how the Prince had punished Mammon by killing anyone and everyone they had known. Despite being recently restored to function, the Meadows will likely take some time to recover from the rite, sown with death and salted with poison blood.
The Obelisk of Memory, found in the quiet hamlet of Widow’s Peak, was severed by the Ritual of the Flock. Bonding themselves with bloody feet and hazy minds, they had to alter their very memories, replicating the blood of the covenant that was sworn when Mammon pursued her revenge against the Prince through the years, despite the fog of ages.

The last obelisk

In the afternoon, the defenders of Bravado and Drywater met the forces of the Prince Undying, now on the doorstep of our hometown, intent on committing his Atrocity against any that shared an imprint or connection with the tiny town. Despite nearly overwhelming forces, the defenders stood firm, breaking wave and wave of the undead terrors, and closing the gauntlet behind the Prince. There would be no escape from Bravado, as the Rebellion worked to make sure the Prince was drawn into Mammon’s trap.

Sometime in the afternoon before the final stages of the Prince’s defeat, Mammon presented the town with the last wishes of the host she was using as a body. On Felicity’s corpse was the prize she had protected with her life, her Last Will & Testament. Inside, a signed contract with the Chairman of the Board itself bequeathed the town of Bravado to its residents, a final spiteful act against the Board, bound by the same rules it claimed to uphold. The Will returned the town of Bravado, its surroundings, and the mineral rights to the people of Bravado, and is an iron clad testament to any of the great factions that would oppose the town in the aftermath.

Another group of survivors did the unthinkable and snuck into Essex to steal the prize of the RRC and the Board, the OX itself. Stopping the Board from airlifting the locomotive engine out of the besieged city, they had to defend the train from mercenaries of the Red Ledger intent on stopping the theft of the symbol of the Board’s remaining power. The survivors released the Ox from the wheel locks they immobilized it, fueled it with the black ichor of Oxblood, and defended their engineers as they escaped from the City of Light and Sound. With the Ox secured in Bravado, the forces of the Bravado rebellion could begin their offensive on the last capital controlled by the San Saba Board.

The final Obelisk, the Obelisk of Midnight, would need to be severed from within the grave itself. Erected within the strange Nightmare of the Prince Undying, a realm of strange angles and mind-bending physics, it was the last refuge that the Prince could use to escape Mammon’s trap. The last connection needed to be severed by cutting the right pieces of ephemera and gristle connecting the icon to the real world. By bodily entering the Mortis, they rushed to cut the right connections while evading the horrific Nightmares that pursued them. Inside they found the desiccated husk of General Rampart, his last twisted scream burned into his body by a faulty psi-tech relic, a sacrifice to the Prince Undying to seal the promise made by the Chairman. With the final obelisk separated (and Rampart’s hat in safe hands), they escaped back into Bravado with Nightmares on their heels.

The final confrontation was near, and the town needed but one last step to seal away the Prince Undying for good.

The Final Seal

With the town of Bravado isolated and disconnected from the various towns and strongholds across the San Saba, and the armies of the Prince Undying on their door, it was time to prepare the prison that would contain the undead horror that prowled the darkness in ochre robes. Mammon returned for a final time to outline her grand design, a series of archaic SEALS that would close the doors opened by the Prince Undying when he escaped his prison inside Barogue. Each of three Nightmare doors would need to be sealed, calling upon the true names of the Final Knight demons worshipped by the red-haired cultist. Mammon would teach them the goetic runes they could use to complete the seal, but they would need to defend the crafters while they attempted to seal the doors.

The first seal, the sign of Astaroth, was put into place at the Bravado Morgue. The strongest connection to death, and one of the places the Red Death had emerged from last December, the door was defended by the Prince Undying and his hordes of Nightmares and undead. The purple sickly glow illuminated the strange door that was now visible, and the agitated and disturbed Mortis Amaranthine seemed to growl in defiance to the process.

Each time a seal was finished, the agonizing ritual robbed the psionic potential of any that participated in the rite. The strange Barogian seals were effective, quelling the energy radiating from the strange portal to nowhere. The survivors quickly moved to the site of the next Nightmare door, the Depot. In the middle of the busiest building in Bravado, the town established a perimeter to defend young Dusters selected to place the Seal of Paimon under heavy assault. Each time the Prince appeared, he moved through the crowd with lethal intent, but seemed completely immune to most attacks that would try to stop him. The Vados created a physical wall of bodies to protect the crafters, holding the line of shields against the wave of undead.

When the second door was closed, the townsfolk moved to the last location, the Crossroads door, illuminated by the glow of the obelisk that stood nearby. The Prince returned with a fury, striking down his foes with a touch, and turning others to his command. Each time the Prince would command the loyalty of the defenders, and turn their own defenders against the living, the shield wall stood firm and protected the chosen that placed the Seal of Vassago on the Nightmare door that stood alone in the darkness. Each seal was more intricate than the last, and it took some time to recover each time the line broke under the nightmarish assault. Three doors of nightmare were opened, and three doors were sealed and closed, lest the Prince Undying enact his atrocity.

With a fierce battle cry, the town pushed back the undead horde, moving as one to the final part of Mammon’s trap. With the doors to his Nightmare realm closed, the Prince attempted to escape into the Grave Mind, using his network of obelisks to survive another day. When he did, the trap was sprung and the yellow robed horror was instead drawn inside the Obelisk of Salvation, a final tomb for the unstoppable nightmare. Thirteen psions were gathered, pouring their psionic energy into the Obelisk as they created the final seal, the Seal of the Betrayer, the seal of Mammon herself. It was a cage to contain, awake from the the nightmare, that would fade into the fog of memory as the Prince was sealed away for good.

With a resounding cheer, the Nightmares of the Prince Undying were vanquished, torn asunder like awaking from a bad dream, forced into retreat by the efforts of the brave citizens of Bravado, the final atrocity stopped at the last moment by the rites of Sister Mammon and their last stand at the crossroads.

The Battle of Essex

With the Prince Undying contained, the Rebellion turned its eyes toward Essex, the City of Light and Sound. The last bastion of the Chairman, the home of the Grave Council and the Fountainheart, and the beating heart of the San Saba, the city was the last resistance remaining. As the brave soldiers and mercenaries of the Rebellion approached the city for a final battle, they realized the desperation of the Chairman knew no limit.

The intimidating mercenaries of the Red Ledger had been contracted to the defense of Essex. Skilled killers and veterans, there was almost no greater military force in the San Saba Territories, save for the Bravado Revolutionary Army. Their enemy ranged from hired muscle and brutalists, to guttersnipes and assassins. Punchdrunks, redliners and zealots all signed their name in The Red Ledger, to the purpose of glory, gold or god respectively. Fanatic to the end, the Red Ledger was committed to a unifying truth that safeguards them against terror, trial and (often) common sense - death is an inconvenience, a moment to breathe and recover.

The Rebellion Army met their skilled foe and proved victorious, shattering the counter offensive by Gustav Glasseyes, and pushing towards the grand Spire in the center of the town, where the airship of Arthur Lovelace was docked. Pushing past the mercenary line, the Rebellion faced the final betrayal of the Chairman, when he did the unthinkable.

As the Rebellion forces approached, the Chairman turned the guns of his flagship onto the town itself, a withering cascade of artillery that fired on citizen and soldier alike. Countless people died from the indiscriminate bombardment, buildings and innocents caught in the crossfire of the war. Suffering devastating casualties from the salvoes, the Rebellion fought through the barrage to meet the last defense of the Chairman, his elite Praetorian Guard, led by Lawrence Graves, the right hand of the Chair. Despite the odds, despite the cowardly bombardment, the Rebellion pushed ahead, closing out the War of Antlers with a might victory over the last remnants of the Board’s might.

In the chaos of the final battle, the united forces of the Rebellion proved victorious, though the Chairman somehow escaped justice once more. When General Hargrave’s forces reached the pinnacle of the spire and prevented the escape of the Chair’s airship, the Quiet Folk leader was no where to be found. Despite his escape, the city was taken by early morning light and the capital of Essex was liberated once and for all from the tyrannical rule of the San Saba Board.

The Aftermath

At the end of the weekend, the exhausted survivors of Bravado contemplated the impossible. A bright new dawn, free of the Board’s influence, cheers and rallying cries of victory rising across the town as they celebrated their successes. They had stopped the Atrocity, and contained an undying threat, hopefully for good, and freed Essex. The Rebellion was successful, standing up to everything the Chair could throw at them, and thriving despite the challenge. It was a bright new day, full of possibility, underneath a Lonestar Sky…

There were a few threads of note that were left at the end of the event that are worth mentioning:

The Chairman escaped the Battle of Essex, but thankfully, he’ll simply comply with the rule of law and stop his vendetta against Bravado, right? If making a deal with the Prince Undying to wipe out Bravado wasn’t successful, there’s surely nothing left for him to try, especially as we contemplate the FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD…
The San Saba Territories are splintering, torn between various factions holding onto power in their respective strongholds, and the sudden loss of formal power across the region. Civilization is the veneer for man’s brutality, and the social contract that once bound the wastes of the Lone Star seems to be defunct. Each of the major factions are scrambling to adjust to this new paradigm, and the aftermath of this defeat is going to be felt long after the summer is over. How will the major factions change and adapt over the summer?
The binding of the Prince Undying and the strange rites performed by the town to sever their connection to the greater wastes appears to have worked as intended. However, Sister Mammon and the body of Felicity seem to have disappeared as well, and no one has seen her since the completion of the Seal of the Betrayer. Time will tell if there are any unintended consequences of isolating the town by psionic ritual and trapping a malevolent Grave Mind entity into a psi-tech prison in the center of town…
As the death tolls are counted, and the dust clears of battle, a suddenly victorious army presents an interesting dilemma — what purpose does the most powerful military force in the Lone Star serve in a post-Board society? Every power in the region has watched in rapt attention as the rightful government of the area was disposed by force, and many wonder if they are next. How do soldiers return to a humbler life free of the stress of the battlefield? Without a constant stream of war supplies and payment, who will stay loyal to Bravado, who will be disbanded and returned home, and who will decide to leverage their strength for their own personal profit?
A soldier clad in the colors of the Mustang Loyalists delivered a message to Bravado from the one and only GENERAL MUSTANG early on Sunday morning. The Loyalists have broken from the former Oxkiller Alliance, and ordered the Bravado Rebellion Army to respect their boundaries in the wake of the Battle of Essex. The inhabitants of the fortified wreck at the edge of town in the Exclusion Zone have declared their own independence, and renamed the radioactive city to the BASTION OF NEW DAWN, or more simply, Bastion. They have offered Bravado a truce, and chance at a new asset they call the Liberum Radicalis. Who are the Wells Society and the Servants of the Undying, and what might this mean for the future? I’m sure we will find out in October…

The future is bright and promising, but our story isn’t done yet. We hope you will join us in September as we start our next season, as we conclude our finale story with THE FALL OF THE SAN SABA BOARD, but we had a special announcement for October that might be a bit important too…

Downfall 2024

On Sunday of our last event, we revealed a project we’ve been working on for a few months now during our closing announcements. The next National event will be hosted by DR:TX!

We will be hosting the first ever Dystopia Rising Live full-weekend playtest, using the brand new rules of the 4th edition of our game system. While this won’t be the launch of the new edition of the rules across the network, this will be your first chance to experience the world of Dystopia Rising with the DR Live rules in person. This will be a FOUR-DAY National Event, featuring the new rule set, and we will be inviting the entire network to attend. You’ll be able to buy up to 10 XP for your characters, access new and exciting resources from the new edition, and help us stress test the new rules with new threats, new blueprints, new skills, and more.

Tickets will go on sale this summer, and we hope that you are excited for this BRAND-NEW experience!

We have SO much more information to come, so make sure you stay tuned through our social media channels on Facebook, Instagram, and Discord, and you can check out https://www.idratherbeinbravo.com/downfall to keep in touch with our mailing list.

The Summer Break and You!

As I wrap up this last blog post of the season, I want to say a final thank you to our team of Storytellers, Guides, Admins, and volunteers. Each summer, we lovingly fire our entire staff to give folks the permission to step away from the stress of helping us operate our game. It would be impossible to produce Dystopia Rising Texas without the assistance of our wonderful volunteers, and we are thankful that they were willing to give their time and energy to help make this something special.

It’s a lot of work to produce our content for DR:TX, and we take a SUMMER BREAK from the treadmill of content creation and blog posts to relax, recharge, and come back ready for new stories, new thrills, and a brand new season. I’m not going to be writing weekly blog posts over the summer, but I might occasionally pop back up with some cool content for our upcoming season. Please be patient with emails and such as we recharge, and we’ll be back before you know it.

We will have the staff applications up for our new Season 6 team on May 23rd, so pay attention to our Discord, Facebook, and social media pages for more information. Once we’ve had a few weeks to rest, we will start sifting through our applications to build the best damn team we can for Season 6, and you should hear more from us in June.