Issue 2

Last issue, I talked about my inspiration for a Serenity/Firefly setting using the Deadlands Reloaded Savage Worlds rules plus some PDFs. This issue Ill mix the Serenty Verse with the Deadlands setting. In no way should any reader expect a complete mixing of the two (as my knowledge of both is about a d6) without some parts missing from both.

the reckoners

Millions of years ago, in a galaxy far, far away ..., well, thats pretty much it. Millions of years ago, a race of aliens lived across the galaxy. They evolved through the years from a race of physical beings to nonphysical (kinda like the Vorlons from Babylon 5). And when it came to their own problems (and they had many), they did what every society doesthey lock them up. Thousands upon thousands of people, millions really, criminals, political prisoners, malcontents, the whole range of good to evil, with soup to nuts thrown in, were locked up. But how do you do that to advanced aliens with no physical form? You drop them into the Xth dimension and seal it off. Whatever the Xth dimension is, its not any one that human scientists are aware of but the lock did have a physical placeon Hera, in the Serenity Valley. When the first colonists reached Hera, they found some strange rock formations in the Serenity Valley. Some took this as signs that there were other life in the universe that moved on. Others scoffed and said the rocks were just rocks and we shouldnt bother with them. And the more sensitive avoided them, saying that they felt wrong in some ways that they rightly couldnt say. Years went by, some folk from the Core worlds came to study them, write a few papers, get a PhD or two, but after a while, the locals didnt pay much attention. Then the Unification War came and changed everything. Much like Gettysburg on Earth That Was, Serenity Valley was the end of the Independence side. But if the battle had been fought anywhere else, the Verse would be much the same. Instead, they fought and died in the Valley, and the bombs fell and men killed each other in bloody and unnatural conflict and one too many broke the seals and let them out!

issue 2 close the wall up with dead

Maybe it was a misled bomb or missile. Maybe enough had been killed in one spot or another that weakened the wall. However it happened, the locks were loosed and the aliens were released from the prison (but not completely from the Xth dimension) during the 4th week of the battle. They couldnt touch the physical world except through strong emotions, like fear and anger, and through the connection to life in the instant when the living just become dead. How long had they been trapped, and what tortures did they endure, to be thrust upon humanity during its most terrible of battles, when mankind was less than kind and at its worst? The most base of them fed on the battle, inciting frenzy into the combatants, driving some mad and many to despair. The battle raged on for three more weeks, even after most Independence commanders had given up. The last week was when the dead started to rise until they were finally killed again and again. These early undead didnt have much staying power, only lasting for a short while, an hour or two, maybe more. But as the battle wore on, the evil grew stronger. On the last day of battle, the Black Regiment was formed from the dead on both sides, took control of several Alliance and Independence spacecraft in a bloody slaughter and disappeared into the Verse to become the feared Reavers. The rest of them fled Hera when the seals failed, dispersing into the solar system like rain into an ocean. They spread out, finding places all over, with the best of them concentrating with good folk, like truebelieving preachers and honest men, and the middlin kind sticking with the thieves and gamblers. Some of these people became the Blessed. Some what folk call Hucksters. And then there are others, too. And now, seven years after the end of the Unification War, strange things are happening out in the Black. Space is vast and the Reckoners are wandering through it, with no great plan or thought, hitched to the wagon of Humanity, for good, as the Blessed, or for ill, as the Reavers. What will happen next is anyones guess. The rules changed during the Battle of Serenity Valley and mankind doesnt yet realize it, to their doom!