Prophet's Crusade

As with many of their European counterparts whose exploits were fictionalized by men as famous as Doyle and Haggard, most of these American stalwarts worked their storied careers without ever crossing each other’s paths. One singular exception to this rule congregated around Adam Prophet, though their experiences would remain generally unknown to the world at large until AEGIS agents stumbled across Prophet’s journal in the first years of the 21st century. Lured out of semi-retirement by a mysterious patron in the late 1880s to hunt the notorious globetrotting criminal Doktor Raub, Prophet encountered other illustrious adventurers who, for various reasons of their own, saw fit to join him in the hunt.

Structure

Adam Prophet

Adam Prophet was one of the most famous of the Wild West’s heroes, though his fame at this time is the merest fraction of the scrutiny he will receive after his passing and the rise to fame of his son "Doc" Prophet, the Man of Marble. Far better known in the two decades after the Civil War was his alter ego—the Pale Ranger. Resurrected by the shaman Broken Crow after Prophet’s murder, he would spend years fighting the good fight from beneath a bone-white mask, using trickery and theatrics to convince his many enemies they fought a ghost instead of a man. Eventually, age worked its own magic, and as the years weighed down on him, Prophet put away his mask, though neither his morals nor his courage went into the darkness with his paraphernalia. He ended his semi-retirement to hunt Doktor Raub, leading to the formation of Prophet's Crusade.

Emily Swift

Once overshadowed by her more famous cousins in the Reade branch of the family, Emily Swift was blessed with her family’s singular trait—an intellect decades ahead of her time. She was already pursuing Raub for his murder of one of her friends when she and Adam met up, and she would always afterwards tell Prophet that he joined her crusade.

Garret Gaunt

Garret Gaunt was one of the fastest guns in the West and would likely have come to as ignoble an end as many others of his ilk if he hadn’t come into possession of the cursed six-shooters “Hellfire” and “Brimstone.” Doomed to wander the Earth redeeming the dark powers of his weapons in Heaven’s cause, as his legend goes, he too lost friends to Raub’s brutal touch and added the good Doktor’s name to the tally of monsters he must destroy before he could free himself from his burden.

Oberon Peake

Oberon Peake, Fourth Earl of Tembroke, never fit in anywhere he attempted to stay, so it is little surprise he now makes nowhere his home. Found as an infant left abandoned on the estates of his adopted father, Peake grew into a fae presence, his outlandish taste in dress matched by his scandalous behavior and only outdone by his piercing mind and talents for the preternatural. Trained in deduction by Baker Street’s most famous resident, he accompanies Prophet not for reasons of moral outrage, but rather in an egotist’s attempt to prove himself the better of his teacher, who reluctantly declined Prophet’s invitation. Still, Peake proved himself an invaluable—if sometimes aggravating—member of the team, his keen insights helping to lead them in the right direction and escape some fiendish traps to which they might have otherwise fallen prey.

Rostov

Silent reflection of Peake’s vibrant presence, the ursine Cossack who insists on using the name Rostov, which his companions know to be an alias, also acts out of an interest other than justice. The Russian is a hunter to his core and apparently knows no greater pleasure; however, his travels and adventures have left him with little on this Earth that he has not already hunted…and he now seeks to use his “trademark” tartar war bow to bring down Raub, who has thus far met Rostov’s every hope of being the most dangerous of game. Together, this small but accomplished group spent several years chasing the Doktor around the globe, finding time to thwart the dangers presented by the devilish master of the Si-Fan assassin’s cult, finish off the mad Sikh raised from his grave by foul Thuggee magic, destroying his terrible submersible presumably once and for all, and indulge so many other obstacles and “diversions” that have led them as far as the Carpathian Alps and the Arctic circle.

Type

Adventuring Party