Part One: A Preacher Walks Into a Saloon
Last Tuesday, a short man in a leather duster that could double as a circus tent walked into the Whateley Standard and absolutely rearranged someone’s face.
His name is Fleming. He’s a preacher now, though his resume suggests he’s spent more time covered in dirt than sitting in pews. Railway work. Failed snake oil sales. Cemetery night shifts. You know, the usual portfolio of a guy the Almighty apparently trusts with divine knuckles.
What happened next was the kind of afternoon that makes small towns nervous and sheriffs reach for the whiskey bottle.
When Talking Fails
Fleming’s first scene was textbook: a grizzly-sized drunk named Big Earl decided the bartender deserved throttling over a bad beer. Being contractually obligated by his “Heroic” flaw to interfere, Fleming attempted the peaceful approach. He grabbed Earl’s wrists, cracked a joke about horse piss connoisseurship, and tried to play the good neighbor.
Earl responded by being completely immune to wit and good intentions.
The prayer Fleming whispered for divine help? Never got signal. So he went with plan B: a Wild Attack that still gives me chills thinking about it. Fourteen damage straight to the skull. The guy got stuffed back into his chair like a sack of wet laundry, nose pointing toward three o’clock, completely unconscious. The bar went silent. Fleming just wiped his knuckles and ordered a sarsaparilla.
He had three more scenes ahead of him, and he was already a legend.
Part Two: The Boy in the Alley
Out on the street, a soot-covered kid named Pip grabbed Fleming’s coat. His father had drunk something called “Miracle Tonic” from a creep doctor named Albright. Now Pa was clinging to the rafters like a twisted spider, glowing green with Ghost Rock fever, and evaluating Pip for edibility.
This is where Fleming’s Heroic flaw stopped being a mechanical quirk and became the entire story.
What’s worth noting: Fleming actually failed his Fear check when he first saw the mutated Pa. Then he immediately spent a Benny to un-shake himself.
Because of course he did.
Then he blessed his fists, and when that worked, he launched into what can only be described as a Superman punch that sent the monster flying through a table.
The guy wasn’t trying to be a hero.
He just couldn’t do anything else.
Part Three: The Factory of No Good
The trail led exactly where bad trails lead in Deadlands: a Ghost Rock refinery built like someone asked, “What if hell had an assembly line?” Dr. Albright’s plan was simple and terrifying—Pip in a cage, descending toward a vat of bubbling acid. His father transformed into a medical experiment. A seven-foot monstrosity called a Patchwork Golem built from human meat and steam pipes blocking the stairs.
Fleming took a jagged metal shard to the shoulder from Albright’s gas pistol and didn’t stop moving. This is where Savage Worlds showed its teeth. Two Wounds means -2 to everything. That’s not “you’re slightly hurt and keep fighting.” That’s “every roll is now a gamble, and your shoulder screams every time you move.”
But here’s the thing about Fleming: he saw a mechanical crane hook hanging over the acid vat. While lesser characters would’ve charged the Golem and died, Fleming grabbed the hook and swung it like a 500-pound pendulum. The hook snagged the Golem’s brass pipes. One button press later, the thing was dangling in the air, flailing uselessly.
The path to Albright was clear.
Part Four: The Choice
In Albright’s control room, facing off against a man holding the lever that would drop Pip into acid, Fleming made the call. He stepped back. He dropped his hands. He told Albright to run and get out of his life.
And the Doctor believed him enough to walk out the back door into the darkness.
Because sometimes saving the kid matters more than catching the villain. That’s Deadlands in a nutshell—heroism comes with a price, and it’s usually not money.
The Numbers: How Fleming Survived
Here’s what made Fleming tick mechanically:
The Stat Block That Worked: Spirit d8 and Strength d8 gave him the willpower to fuel miracles and the muscle to back them up. The Martial Artist Edge meant his fists counted as weapons. In a world of gunfighters, he brought a punch to the gunfight and somehow won.
The Wound Spiral: That shoulder injury nearly broke him. Savage Worlds doesn’t give you a gentle HP reduction. You get slower, clumsier, desperate. By the end, every action was a gamble against his own injuries.
The Bennies: Three starting bennies and a system that lets you spend them to reroll or ignore consequences. Fleming used them exactly right—soaking the shotgun blast, fixing the grapple, and immediately removing Shaken status when it mattered most.
The Smite Consistency: Every time Fleming blessed his fists, it worked. That +2 damage turned him into a one-shot machine against most enemies. The Healing failed when he needed it most (welcome to faith-based magic), but Smite never let him down.
The Aftermath
Fleming walked out of that refinery with:
- Zero dollars (still broke)
- One wound that’ll keep nagging him for a few days
- A nemesis loose in the Wild West (Dr. Albright, officially wanted)
- A new friend in the Sheriff
- Pip and his father alive, though Pa’s recovery will be rough
The session taught us something important about Deadlands: it’s not a game where you rack up points and level up in a vacuum. It’s a game where every victory comes with complicated costs. Fleming saved the kid, but the villain escaped. He defeated a zombie horde, but his body paid for it.
He outsmarted a Golem, but he’s still bleeding.
What Worked (And What Didn’t)
The Mechanics: Savage Worlds is “swingy” by design. You see nat 20s and nat 1s in the same combat. That Ace on the Running die—rolling a 6 and then rerolling to get another 6—that wasn’t luck. That was the system doing exactly what it’s supposed to do: create cinematic moments where long odds sometimes pay off.
The Character: Fleming played perfectly as a direct, confrontational, deeply moral guy. The moment when he hummed a hymn while escaping jail? That’s not mechanical optimization. That’s character work.
The Weaknesses: A d4 Smarts means Fleming can’t ride horses, doesn’t know how to repair machinery, and fails every time he tries to use book learning. The player leaned into it instead of fighting it. Result: the story actually got better.
The Scary Part: If Fleming had fought the Golem head-on with those two Wounds, he would’ve died. The crane hook was the right answer to the puzzle, not because it was the only way, but because it was the clever way.
The Road Ahead
Fleming earned an Advance for completing the arc. The recommendations were solid: Nerves of Steel (ignore 1 point of Wound penalties) to make him tougher, or Fleet-Footed to make him faster. Either way, he’s got Dr. Albright out there somewhere, probably in a basement, probably sewing more limbs onto something even worse.
And the Weird West doesn’t forgive loose ends. When the paths cross again—and they will—Fleming will be ready.
Because that’s who he is now: not just a preacher, but a man who punches evil in the face while quoting scripture and doesn’t back down when the odds are brutal.
Welcome to Deadlands, Reverend.
