A Deadlands: The Weird West Session Recap
The Preacher Who Solves Problems With His Fists
Reverend Fleming stands at a stocky 5’6″ in his comically oversized leather duster—a man who brings new meaning to the phrase “the hands of God.” The kind of preacher who believes the Lord helps those who help themselves, preferably with their fists, and occasionally with high explosives.
The session picked up in the worst possible position. Fleming had just let Dr. Albright—mad scientist, child poisoner, all-around villain—escape into the night. Sheriff Aemon was decidedly unimpressed.
“Tell me you didn’t let a man who poisons children just… walk away, Fleming.”
Fleming tried explaining while nursing his wounded shoulder. “Well, Sheriff, if I did that, me and the boy won’t be here hearing your talk.”
The Sheriff wasn’t buying it. “That’s a nice sentiment, Preacher. But sentiment doesn’t stop a man like Albright. You traded a wolf for a lamb. Now the wolf is free to find a new flock.”
It stung because it was true.
The Healing and the Revelation
After a miserable trudge back to Gomorra, Fleming found himself in Doc Goldhat’s surgery—a man who literally wears a tin pot on his head “to keep the government rays out.” As the Doc prepared to stitch up the rusted metal wound, Fleming made a choice.
“Trust the Lord,” he said, “and the whiskey.”
Fleming didn’t actually know the Healing prayer. But in a moment of desperate, improvised faith, he knocked back the rotgut whiskey, clamped his hand over the bloody mess, and muttered half-scripture, half-demand. Heat flooded his shoulder—not the fever heat of infection, but clean, searing warmth.
When he pulled his hand away, the hole was gone. Only a jagged white scar remained.
Doc Goldhat slowly put down his needle. “I… see. I’ll still charge you for the whiskey.”
But the real gut-punch came at dawn. Young Pip, the boy Fleming had rescued, was waiting on the church steps with devastating news: Albright had fled to Shan Fan on the midnight train. And worse—he’d taken Pip’s twin sister Lily two days earlier, claiming he could cure her consumption with “science.”
“She’s my twin, Mister. You saved me. But she’s all alone with him.”
Fleming’s jaw tightened. He was going to Shan Fan.
The Train Job
Getting to Shan Fan meant catching a ride on the only available transport: a Ghost Rock Hauler leaving in an hour. Not a passenger train—an industrial freight hauler. The Station Master gave Fleming a knowing look: “If you were to slip into the caboose while the guards are on break… well, I ain’t paid enough to stop a man of the cloth.”
Fleming’s attempt at stealth was… less than successful. His duster snagged on a nail with a loud RIP, followed by his boot kicking an oil can across the rail yard. Three guards turned toward him, one raising a shotgun.
The train whistle blew. The wheels began to grind.
Fleming ran.
He lunged for the caboose ladder as buckshot tore through the collar of his duster, missing his skin by inches. With a grunt of exertion (and perhaps a very short, very unholy word), he hauled himself aboard as the train cleared the yard.
Things Found in a Freight Car
The train ride revealed some concerning cargo. After sucker-punching a Triad Enforcer and taking literally everything he had (including his clothes), Fleming discovered:
- Crates of dried fish (the smell was offensive to his sensibilities)
- One large lead-lined crate with a rhythmic heartbeat sound
The Enforcer, when interrogated at gunpoint while naked and bound, broke immediately: “It’s a Jiangshi! A Hopping Vampire! But modified. Dr. Albright put a Ghost Rock pump in its chest. It eats fear now!”
Fleming decided some mysteries were best left unopened. He gagged the Enforcer and moved forward through the train, toward the private cars where Albright—and hopefully Lily—would be.
The Confrontation
Fleming pressed his ear to the polished wood door of the private parlor car. Inside, he heard everything: a high-pitched, rattling wheeze. A girl’s voice, weak and pained. “Please… Doctor… it burns.”
Albright’s voice, calm and clinical. “The burning means the impurities are leaving, Lily. The Ghost Rock vapor kills the bacteria.”
And the heavy, metallic clank of someone in powered armor. A bodyguard.
Fleming knocked gently on the door—knock, knock—and pushed it open.
The scene inside was a tableau of mad science. Lily was strapped to a vertical operating table, her mouth covered by a brass respirator mask connected to a hissing green tank. The armored guard stood next to her, his steam-powered exoskeleton hissing as he turned. Dr. Albright looked up from adjusting a valve, annoyed.
Then he saw what Fleming was holding.
Three sticks of dynamite, sweating nitroglycerin in the warmth of the carriage. And the barrel of a revolver resting right against the fuse.
“Evening,” Fleming said, stepping onto the Persian rug.
Albright froze. His eyes darted from Fleming’s face to the sweating explosives. The man was a scientist, and his calculations told him that a religious zealot with nothing to lose was holding enough explosive to vaporize the entire car.
Fleming cleared his throat and let scripture roll off his tongue like thunder: “But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up.”
He cocked the hammer. Click.
“Now, Doctor, would you like to discuss the thermal properties of nitroglycerin in an enclosed space, or would you like to unstrap the girl?”
The train lurched around a bend. Fleming wobbled. The gun wobbled against the dynamite.
Albright slowly raised his hands, the scalpel dropping to the rug. “Easy, Mr. Fleming. Let’s be rational. The nitro in those sticks is unstable. If you pull that trigger, or if the train hits a bump, we all vaporize. Including the child.”
He signaled the armored guard to stand down. “You want the girl? Take her. But be warned—she is mid-treatment. Without the Ghost Rock vapor, her lungs will fail within the hour. She needs my science to survive.”
Fleming’s eyes narrowed. “Can you fix her within the hour, with NO shenanigans, with NO repercussions or strings attached? If not, so help me God, I pull the trigger.”
Albright looked at the dynamite. He looked at the gauge on the girl’s tank dropping into the red. He looked at his armored guard, calculating the odds of intercepting the blast.
The odds were zero.
“Fine!” Albright snapped, his composure cracking. “Put the fire away, you lunatic. I can’t operate if my hands are shaking!”
The Cure
For forty-five agonizing minutes, Fleming stood by the door with his gun trained on the dynamite, watching Albright work. The armored guard watched Fleming, his gatling arm spinning idly every time the train hit a bump.
Albright mixed chemicals with terrifying speed. Smoke rose from his beaker—purple, smelling of ozone. He drew the liquid into a massive hypodermic needle.
“If this works,” Albright said, wiping sweat from his lip, “it will neutralize the infection. If it fails… well, you’ll likely blow us up anyway.”
He plunged the needle into Lily’s chest.
The girl gasped. Her back arched off the table. Her eyes flew open—solid black for a split second, then fading back to normal, terrified hazel. She coughed violently, expelling thick black sludge onto the Persian rug where it hissed and smoked.
Then she took a breath. A deep, clean breath. No wheeze. No rattle.
“It is done,” Albright said, stepping back. “The corruption is purged. She is weak, but she is human. And she is cured.”
He looked at Fleming, his face pale. “Now. We are arriving. Please… disarm the explosive.”
The train began to screech as it entered Shan Fan. Through the velvet curtains, Fleming saw the lights of the city—paper lanterns glowing red and gold in the fog.
Albright gestured toward the window. “My associates will be waiting on the platform. Warlord Kang does not like late deliveries. If we walk out there together, they will kill you.”
Fleming grabbed Lily and hopped off the other side when the train crawled to a halt. “We have an agreement, Doctor.”
He was a man of his word, after all.
The Spider Massacre
Fleming found sanctuary at the Mission of St. Dismas, where Father Liu took in both him and the recovering Lily. But getting back to Gomorra would require joining a caravan—and earning passage as a guard.
The job interview was simple. Fleming walked up to the toughest-looking applicant—a six-foot-five brute with an anchor tattoo and a massive wooden club—and started quoting scripture.
“Blessed be the Lord my strength, which teacheth my hands to war, and my fingers to FIGHT!”
One uppercut later, the giant was face-first in the dirt. Captain “Iron” Vance, the caravan master with a prosthetic iron jaw, grinned.
“You got a heavy hand, Preacher. Deal. Fifteen dollars a day. The girl rides in the Red Wagon with me. You ride shotgun up top.”
That night, as the caravan circled up at Dead Man’s Drop, Fleming noticed something wrong. The Ghost Steel cargo in the Red Wagon was humming, vibrating with spiritual energy. And it was reacting to something out in the dark.
Then he saw them on the ridge: Clockwork Tarantulas. Brass spiders the size of ponies, each sporting a gatling gun mounted on its thorax. Four of them, scuttling down the cliffs toward the sleeping camp.
Fleming whispered to Lily to lock herself in the wagon and warn the Captain. Then he crept up the ridge in the darkness.
The lead spider never saw him coming. Fleming clamped his hand onto its brass railing and drove his fist into the glowing boiler. The regulator valve ripped clean out. Superheated steam screamed from the wound as the machine collapsed, dead metal.
The silence of the night shattered. The other three spiders swiveled their gatling guns toward him.
Below, Captain Vance roared: “CONTACT! RIDGE LINE! OPEN FIRE!”
The battle was chaos. Fleming grabbed the wrecked spider and shoved it downhill like a bowling ball, where it slammed into another automaton and sent both tumbling off the cliff. A third spider managed to shoot him, but his leather duster absorbed the worst of it.
Then everything changed. Fleming drew the Joker—fate’s way of saying it was his moment.
The last spider charged him, its brass legs pumping, steam hissing from its joints. Fleming didn’t dodge. He didn’t block.
He jumped.
His boots connected with the spider’s faceplate in a flying dropkick that would make saints weep. The impact caved in the brass, shattered gears, and launched the machine backward. It tumbled end-over-end down the slope until it crashed into a heap of smoking junk at the bottom of the ravine.
Fleming landed on his feet, dust swirling around him.
Captain Vance looked at the spot where a flying priest had just dropkicked a one-ton robot off a cliff. “I guess you’re worth the fifteen dollars.”
The Gala Infiltration
Three days later, the caravan reached Gomorra. Fleming returned Lily and Pip to safety with Sheriff Aemon, locking them in the jail’s safest cell. Then he set his sights on Dr. Albright, who was hosting a celebration at the Grand Hotel.
The problems were numerous:
- No invitation
- Looked like he’d crawled through a mineshaft
- Completely broke after spending his last $130 on a double-barrel shotgun, a boilerplate vest, Greek Fire grenade, and ammunition
Fleming surveyed the hotel from the shadows. The kitchen entrance had a tired, resentful maid smoking by the door. He tried his “Man of God” routine.
She looked at the bulge of his shotgun under his coat. “Save it, Father. You look like you’re here to bury someone, not bless them. Kitchen’s strictly staff. Unless you got five dollars.”
Fleming was broke. He reached into his coat and pulled out a stick of dynamite instead, offering it like a bouquet of flowers.
The maid stared at the explosive. She looked at the drudgery of the kitchen behind her. She looked at the scars on her hands.
A slow, wicked smile touched her lips. She snatched the dynamite, tucked it deep into her apron pocket, and held the door open.
“Just give ’em hell.”
Room 301
Navigating the chaos of the kitchen, Fleming made it to the third floor. Outside Room 301 sat a Triad guard reading a penny dreadful, hatchet on his lap.
Fleming stepped into view and racked both hammers of his shotgun. Click-clack.
“Son, you can die for twelve dollars a week, or you can go smoke a cigarette downstairs. Your choice.”
The soldier looked at the hatchet—a piece of wood and iron. He looked at the twelve-gauge cannons pointed at his chest. He carefully placed the hatchet down, stood up with hands raised, and backed away down the hall. Once he hit the corner, he sprinted for the stairs.
Fleming kicked the door off its hinges. Inside: Albright’s armored guard with a gatling gun arm, and a desk covered in papers—including a black leather ledger.
“Judgement is here.”
The shotgun roared. Buckshot slammed into the guard’s chest plate. Sparks flew. The 300-pound brute flew backward through a vanity mirror, oil and blood leaking from a crack in his armor.
Fleming grabbed the ledger—proof of kidnapping, experimentation, and corruption. Every crime documented in Albright’s own hand.
But guards were coming up the stairs. He couldn’t go down.
So he went up.
The Great Escape
Fleming went out the window, up the drainpipe, and onto the roof. The weight of the boilerplate vest threatened to drag him down, but adrenaline carried him over the parapet just as the hotel room door burst open below and pistol shots rang out.
On the roof, he heard a hatch opening. Flashlight beams cut through the smoke. They were coming up after him.
Fleming slid into the shadows behind a rusted water tower, cracked the breach of his shotgun, and loaded a fresh shell.
A head popped up through the hatch—a hired gun with a bowler hat and repeater pistol. He scanned the roof, not looking behind the tower.
“I don’t see him. I think he jumped—”
The shotgun blast sent him tumbling backward down the stairwell, bowling over the men climbing up behind him.
Fleming turned to the edge. He needed to cross to the next building, but the jump was too far in his heavy vest. Instead, he grabbed the bundle of telegraph cables connecting the hotel to the bank.
But first, he pulled out the Greek Fire grenade. He struck a match and lit the rag stuffed in the neck.
“I am come to send fire on the earth,” he muttered, “and what will I, if it be already kindled?”
He dropped the flask down the hatch.
FWOOM.
A pillar of emerald flame erupted from below, roaring like a dragon. Screams turned from anger to panic. The Grand Hotel was now a very large candle.
Fleming swung out onto the telegraph wires, hanging upside down, hand-over-hand. Halfway across, one of the support brackets sheared off. The line dropped. He lost his grip—
—and caught a secondary guide wire at the last second, slamming shoulder-first into the brick wall of the bank. But he didn’t fall.
Behind him, the hotel’s roof blazed with green fire against the night sky.
The Silver Bullet
Fleming burst into the Sheriff’s office with the evidence. Aemon read the ledger, then pointed outside. Dr. Albright was marching toward them with six Triad enforcers and the Mayor.
“They’re coming for the book. And the girl,” Aemon said, racking his shotgun.
“You come with us, Aemon,” Fleming said. “I can’t lose a friend in this hellhole.”
The Sheriff looked at his badge, spat on the floor, and tore it off his chest. “You’re a pain in my ass, Fleming. Let’s go.”
They fled through the back door with the children, stole horses from the stable, and rode hard for the rail depot. The brass key Fleming had looted from Albright’s guard opened a private hangar marked AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.
Inside sat the “Silver Bullet”—a prototype high-speed locomotive with no cargo cars, just pure Ghost Rock engine. A streamlined silver cabin with a cowcatcher spiked with jagged steel, built for one thing: outrunning death.
“I know this engine,” Aemon shouted, boosting Pip into the cabin. “It runs hot! It needs two minutes to build pressure!”
“We don’t have two minutes!”
Headlights cut through the rail yard fog. Albright’s black stagecoach thundered toward them, flanked by four riders.
Aemon jumped into the engineer’s seat and started throwing levers. Steam blasted from the release valves. Fleming stood on the rear platform, shotgun in hand, as Lily and Pip huddled on the cabin floor.
The train began to move—slowly. Chug… chug… chug… A man on a horse could easily overtake them.
Two riders galloped toward the locomotive. Fleming struck a match and lit another stick of dynamite. He counted to two and hurled it into the darkness.
The explosion sent up a geyser of dirt and rocks. One horse reared, throwing its rider. But a Triad Enforcer with a scarred eye spurred his mount through the smoke and leaped.
THUD.
He caught the iron railing, hanging off the back of the train three feet from Fleming, pulling a machete from his belt.
Further back, Dr. Albright leaned out of the stagecoach with a strange glowing pistol. ZAP! A beam of concentrated green energy sizzled past Fleming’s ear.
“FULL PRESSURE!” Aemon screamed. “HOLD ON!”
The Silver Bullet kicked like a mule. The acceleration was brutal.
The Enforcer raised his machete to strike. Fleming drove his boot straight into the man’s chest. The air left the enforcer’s lungs as his grip failed. At fifty miles per hour, he was ripped away from the train and tumbled into the gravel ballast.
One last green energy bolt struck the rear railing, melting iron into slag. But the stagecoach was already shrinking in the distance. Within seconds, Albright’s lights were just pinpricks in the gloom.
Then they were gone.
Fleming slid down the wall of the cabin, sitting next to Lily and Pip as they thundered through the desert night. Lily buried her face in his coat. Aemon looked back from the engineer’s seat, his teeth white against the coal dust.
“Well, Fleming, you burned down the hotel, stole the Mayor’s evidence, kidnapped the ‘subject,’ and stole a prototype locomotive.”
He grinned. “I’d say that’s a good day’s work.”
The Ballad Continues
Fleming didn’t just survive Gomorra. He beat it. With the black ledger pressed against his chest, two rescued children at his side, an ex-sheriff at the throttle, and a stolen prototype train screaming through the Weird West, the Reverend had become something more than a simple preacher.
He’d become a legend.
Dr. Albright was behind them, but the mad scientist was powerful and wouldn’t stop hunting. The ledger was a weapon, but only if they could get it to the right people—perhaps the Texas Rangers, or a newspaper brave enough to print the truth.
The rails stretched ahead toward the Great Maze and the City of Lost Angels, carrying a short preacher in an oversized duster, a man who solved problems with scripture, scarred knuckles, and the occasional stick of dynamite.
As Fleming himself would say, quoting 2 Peter: “The day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat.”
And so, apparently, does Greek Fire. 🔥
Next time on “The Ballad of Reverend Fleming”: The Ghost Line, where our heroes learn what happens when you’re Public Enemy #1 in the Weird West…
