Blood Red Roses

Unable to sustain business follwing the start of the War Out East, the craggy crew of the merchantman (some say pirate ship) Pinniped were disbanded in 1860 at the port of Orleans. Seeking continued adventure, some joined the Southern war effort while most others fell in with the criminal army of John Murel.

Murel's "army" consisted of two main elements, the Council (about 400 men), those who formed the strategies and made the decisions; and the Strikers (about 700 men), the henchmen who went about as actual parties to the crimes of Murel.

The Pinniped's crew was kept together as a company of strikers. They dubbed themselves the "Blood Red Roses" after the long-haul chanty sung on their ship.

The Blood Red Roses performed many tasks for Murel and the Council over the coming years. The War Out East came to an end, and the Council looked to the future of its enterprise.

One day, Orlean's police, backed up by troops of the military garrison, raided the Roses' base of operations. Some Roses were killed, some taken prisoner (and later hanged), though most escaped.

In the next few weeks, the rogue Roses discovered that Murel's Council occasionally would betray some of their own strikers to the authorities to stave off discovery of the larger operation. The Council had decided the Roses were of no more use in any of Murel's future operations, so turned them in. Captured strikers who turned informant were left unheard; many of the authorities were part of Murel's army- and all of them, members of the Council.

The Blood Red Roses vowed revenge, but they were also on the run. The main group of the Roses, about 50 men under the command of John Pinks and Billy Posies, took the trail to Hades County to go into hiding until the time was right to strike back. Unfortunate for them, their whereabouts were soon betrayed back in Orleans to Murel's Council. The Council decided the remaining Roses numbered too many to be left alone. They also feared sending strikers after other strikers may bring dissention in Murel's army. So the Council hired a few gunslingers and sent a sizeable force of men to hades County to hunt down the Blood Red Roses.

The Council first found a few members of the Roses in a saloon in Triple City. The men were dragged from the saloon and gunned down in cold blood. Roses commander John Pinks witnessed the grim execution from across the street in a hotel. He slipped out of town and gathered the remaining Roses throughout the county and began a cat-and-mouse game of skirmishes, ambushes and retaliations. The battles still occur, mostly among the Titan Mountains, though small skirmishes will fire up a town now and then.

The numbers of men left in both the Blood Red Roses and the Council are unknown; Each side sends for and receives a few reinforcements every few weeks. Hades County is ill-equipped to deal with the small war happening within its borders and has called on the Federal Dragoons for help. But the Dragoons have been unable to do anything since the bases of operations for the enemies are situated deep in the Titan Mountain range. So the battles continue to rage throughout Hades and the surrounding counties. The random posse gets formed, and a few three-way battles have resulted, but the Roses and Council are there to stay until one side has annihilated the other.

In Gutshot terms: The Blood Red Roses are like any other band of ruffians; they are natural brawlers, competent pistoliers, and almost always drunk. Their commanders, John Pinks and Billy Posies, prefer sobriety until their vengeance has been finally visited upon John Murel.

Pinks is armed with pistol and cutlass (treat as a saber). TN: 7 Specialties: Brawler, Contemplative, Hard to hit.

Posies is armed with a pistol, (single barrel) sawed-off shotgun and cutlass. TN: 7 Specialties: Brawler, Quick load, True grit.

Crewmen are randomly armed (determine before each battle). TN is randomly determined from 8 to 10. They also will randomly have one of the following specialties: Lucky, Brawler, Speedy, Hard to hit.