Editing Deadlands (section)

== Setting ==
The Deadlands setting is a "[[Weird West]]" genre game, set in 1876 USA in that lost generation after the American Civil War. History is the same up until an event during the war called "the Reckoning". This occurred in July of 1863 when a bunch of durty Injuns, lead by a Sioux medicine man calling himself Raven, started up some mumbo-jumbo rain-dance to get rid of all the palefaces from Europe. They appealed to otherworldly spirits that called themselves "Reckoners," who thought it was a real nice 'n purty little land you got there, y'all don't mind iffen we move in? Y'all won't mind what we make this place nicer for us and ours, 'cause we like our home a little more [[Grimdark|haunted and hellish]]? Shure yew won't, mighty nice of y'all to invite us.

The '''Reckoners''' are [[Chaos|fueled by darker emotions such as hate, dread, grief, frustration and especially fear]]. They can use this to make the local area more like their home, twisting trees into claws, altering mesas to look like towering ogres, and even making the sunshine dimmer. This makes the people who live there creeped out, which gives them more fuel to make the area more hellish to their tastes. With enough fear/hate/dread they can animate the dead or drive madmen into violent rampages, escalating the spiral of fear. Their ultimate goal is to raise the levels of unrest and fear worldwide to allow them to bodily step over into our world and take over.

The '''Civil War''' did not end in 1865, due to the influences of the Reckoners -- most notably when the dead at the Battle of Gettysburg rose and attacked the living of both armies -- so the nation is divided into the Republic and Confederate states, with disputed territories between. '''Federal Marshals''' from the North and '''Texas Rangers''' from the South try to deal with the eldritch horrors while hoping to keep them a secret from the general public, lest widespread panic give the Reckoners an opportunity to make things even worse. The Confederacy abolished slavery in 1865 in order to relieve its manpower shortage by getting the freed slaves to fight (this is based on [http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/03/general-cleburnes-radical-plan/?_r=0/ actual proposals] made by Confederate generals).

The otherworldly influences have made it easier for other spirits, called '''Manitou''', to be dominated or negotiated with by shamans or magicians for power. These spirits may also possess the recently dead to either resurrect them into the '''[[Harrowed]]''', walking dead under either the dead man's will or that of the Manitou. The Reckoners have also taught some men new sciences that can work in places made more like their home, sometimes fueled by an enigmatic ore known as '''ghost rock''' that burns hotter and longer than coal, giving some mad science flavour to your wild west so you can play an Artemus Gordon character if you want.

The setting is very well known for being unique and fleshed out, but it's also infamous for the setting's metaplot and, particularly, the obnoxious Official DMPC characters who drive that metaplot, like Stone, the unbeatable uber-evil Harrowed whose job is literally "wiping out all heroes so the Reckoners ultimately succeed".