Crossfire Trail Opening Credits

Opening Credits: Crossfire Trail

(( GM note: Due to technical difficulties, there's no mp3 today. GM has to read this live. Next episode should be better! ))

Definitely not the voice of Barry Campbell:

Some folks claim that an especially long day
of especially tough work
brings a soul closer to the reality behind reality.

That's why so many orders of monks or paladins keep those long, solitary vigils: a mind that moves beyond its comfortable state will perceive the world differently. You can KNOW things in this altered state that you can't rightly grasp on a fresh morning.

Take this deep night in the withering grasslands:

You head east and south and east some more.
Your common sense knows you are moving toward the eventual dawn.
But that's the daylight world, the real world.
Here under the sharp stars, the brick-red sickle moon,
it feels more like you aim yourself toward the heart of night's deepest pit.

Your horses plod along carefully in the night. One hoof put down too quickly in the pitch dark could get it killed, and its rider too.

Hear that wind a-blowin'?

It may be rattling the grass, the scrubby bushes ... but it does not smell like a breeze carried over farm crops or through sheltering trees. It smells like heat. Baked clay. That tired moment when you look to your bedroll before you turn away.

Duty calls.

I'm sure you all remember that Tarntaise Farm had a few dogs sprawled on the farmhouse porch this afternoon. Sedate old things. That did not sound to ME like the warning of a guard on strangers' approach. Dog sounds weary, like it's making just enough token effort to admit that it remembers its duty. One of the Mollies snorts acknowledgement. Job done.

Hear them crickets?

Are you really sure that's what they are?

Rowtag does not sound so certain.

Off atop one of the distant hills, one of Rowtag's wild cousins answers back. Rowtag shifts unhappily atop Bruthazmus's backpack.

In daylight, the old, worn farmhouse was charming. Loved over long use. Now it has an aura of sorrow. The night-silhouetted scarecrows droop against the night sky. The black shapes of the farmhouse and the barn are blots on the landscape.

Good thing some of you got the ability to see in low light.

Y'all got some investigatin' to do!

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Starring:

• Bruthazmus and the SNAFU Guild!
• Townsfolk of Purgatory Gulch!
  
• The missing mayor!
  
• The weary padre!
  
• The angry schoolmarm!
  
• The absent inventor!
  
• A captured blacksmith!
  
not to mention
• Local farm hands!
• Assorted ranch hands!
• Trouble on the Hoof!
• Blood-sucking Cabbages!
• Stagecoach Team
  
• Suka Threewood
  
• Chooly Greatwatcher
  
and their important passenger from the Freecities League

• Assessor Scorpion Hillbough!
  
Plus special appearance by:
• The Naiad of Arjory Pond!

Remember to keep an eye peeled for signs of

Two Dangerous Outsiders

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Time to let the GM know that you are ready to start the reel!