Joe B.

some places and people in Socorro

Note to the Referee on Statistics:

Statistics are intended for the 2nd edition of Boot Hill, but, by dint of being written in natural language, are readily interpretable for any system. NPC stats are formatted as below:
Speed / Gun Accuracy / Throwing Accuracy / Bravery / Strength / Shootouts Survived

From the Great Western Port to Pueblo Socorro

You're promised work in Socorro, farthest point on the inland frontier. Weeks down the Great Eastern Road, your boots eat hundreds of miles of clay. You surpass the thronging hectares of pasture, breach the burnt and mangled fringe of cleared lands, and enter into El Verde Viejo, where piñon closes in from all sides.

The work is at the sawmill of Sr. Tuquillo, on the Chiquito's west bank, Socorro Oeste. If you see a fire, leave it: los Vaqueros are retainers of the Magistrate and they are doing important work.

Los Vaqueros

Socorro is descended from the plateau, beside where the Rio Chiquito has scrivened out a long canyon.

Before you reach it, perched at the lip, there are several cleared hectares. The uncomfortable shuffle of too many cows in a small field. Horses, bluebottles, and the medium that interfaces them. This is the camp of Los Vaqueros, and the Thrice Hand.

Clearing Schedule
Each week, a square adjoining the Thrice Hand is set alight. Throw 2D6. On a match, the clearing burn is uncontrolled. The number rolled indicates how many extra squares are razed.

On double sixes (six squares burned), townspeople storm the Thrice Hand.

The Thrice Hand

Plank. Flat roof with battlements for shooters. Corn liquor and fried veal. Not one of these motherfuckers can play piano.

MONO | Fast / Below Average / Average / Brave / Average / 1
Card dealer, missing a ring finger. Will sell ASNA's debt to you for a card from the deck of the late, great Socorroan gambler, FREDI CORCHADO. He lived next to a bar on the west bank.

ASNA | Slow / Above Average / Average / Foolhardy / V. Strong / 0
Cheerful even though she owes MONO 100 pesos, her horse is lost in the woods, her sister is missing, and her boots are cracked beyond repair. These burdens are stacked intricately. To remove one would force her to acknowledge, despair, and suffer an explosive mental collapse.

RITA | Quick / Fair / Below Average / V. Brave / Frail / 2
Always stirring a pot of coffee. When she was thirteen her dad joined Los Vaqueros and she came with. He died on their first outing. She is chasing after him.

Owes DOMINC for losing a cow, and is terrified(of torture, not of death). If you clear it, she'll tell you PUMA's secret, as well as her plan(she mumbles about it in her sleep).

DOMINC | Average / Good / V. Good / Average / Strong / 3
Don't fuck with this guy, leave him to his cattle. He only comes in to sleep and even then not every night. The prize cow, Sasha(named for his late mother) is lavished with bowls of beer and nuts and pampered until her day arrives, after which a new Sasha is named. DOMINC's Sasha Stew is sought-after.

RITA lost one of his cows; he dangles revenge over her like a black cloud. Will sell you her life if you return a missing cow. The letter C is their brand.

CHANCHO | Below Average / Fair / Fair / Above Average / Hardy / 2
Blind drunk under the Corn Moon, he crossed paths with ROSA HUBERTO. Her sleepwalking face full of blue light struck him sober like a drift of alpine snow. He walked her, half-awake, back to the edge of Socorro, while she whispered strange things about her mother, and trees, and the dreams of both. He listened, rapt, all the while.

He won't allow her to come to harm. He's killed his bosses before, if that's what it comes to; it's as easy as pulling the trigger.

PUMA | Lightning / Fair / Excellent / Fearless / Average / 5
Leader and camp surgeon -- fought MONO and amputated the resulting injury in the same night. Dreams nightly that she is encased in a live tree, so tightly imprisoned it is impossible to breathe. Pays RITA to watch her all night and clamp a hand over her mouth when she awakens screaming.

PUMA's plan: El Cabildo catches fire. As the Socorroans run, they find more fire closing in from beyond. Funnelling up the Great Eastern Road, they are greeted by shooters who gun them down like bison, letting the flames take their bodies.

All she needs is an inside man.

Pueblo Socorro

The first thing anyone will tell you is that Sr. TUQUILLO's mill went up in flames a year ago, along with half the town. There's only one mill left, and it belongs to the HUBERTO family.

Pueblo Socorro smells like a snuffed candle. Last year's fire left a dark bleed on the river's western reaches. It seeps east, to where the Río Chiquito scoops an axe wound from the plateau.

What once was the west side of Socorro became a charcoal slope dotted with the hunched, blackened corpses of buildings. Quickly it sprouted a colony of bone-white, yellow-haired aspens. They shimble their yellowness in the face of green piñon needles, their neighbours.

The East side was shielded by the Río. By the grace of God one sawmill was left intact. The surviving population clings to it like a log adrift.

Out-of-towners are clocked by the lack of scar tissue on their palms, arms, faces. You can see evidence of fire literally everywhere but no one talks about it.

Bank

Relocated from El Oeste. A new fireproof safe, weighing five hundred pounds, locked behind an iron door. Los Hubertos have the only open account; 1,000 pesos promised in weekly instalments to the workers.

BERTU | Average / Average / Poor / Cowardly / Average / 0
The original banker's bereaved brother. He owes many townspeople their savings, which he promises emptily to retrieve from El Oeste's rubble-buried, aspen-choked depths.

La Bruja

DAVID SR. forgets to open the shutters most days. Clientele navigate by memory, or sit by the low shelf of glimming coals in spite of day's heat. A half-built hell of brass pipes consumes the wall. 'Davito's organ', they tell you, as if that explains it. The plans are ash. It will never be finished, and produces only a tortured screech.

DAVID SR. | Slow / Poor / Fair / V. Brave / Frail / 0
His son lived over the Rio. He came out of retirement to keep the bar going. If a mob ever marches on the Thrice Hand, he'll be up front.

ROSA Y ALVARO HUBERTO | V. Fast / Average / Average / Brave / Average / 0
Quick, slight. The twins take turns busking, one on guitar while the other sits on the porch taking air & light. Saving for shoes and a fast horse.

At night they sleepwalk, lost in strange dreams of their dead mother MARIA calling to them from the heart of the Aspens across the river. ROSA hasn't told a soul about her solemn, somnambulant, half-remembered encounter with a hulking boar of a man (CHANCHO). She's not sure why.

El Cabildo

The sinking of these black timbers turned mills on a river into a township. The floor is five feet below ground level, while its A-frame eaves soar high and dusty. The cellars are deep and cold.

No prisoners escaped the old jail taken by flame. These ones are all new:

HERMES | Slow / Dead Eye / Poor / Fearless / Frail / 10
The old man has no family and doesn't talk to no one, so he's the Alcalde. Tends sunflowers, feeds sparrows, and settles disputes when called upon. Often at random and without listening to the details of the case. It's a fine system to fall back on when a problem can't be solved by itself. With the arrival of EL REGIDOR he is largely ignored.

EL CORREGIDOR | Average / V. Good / Fair / Above Average / Sickly / 1
Left leg paralysed from fungus in a barrel of City wine. EL REGIDOR is back after a year away. His task: to decide what the Socorroans are guilty of, charge them, and ultimately evict them. The clearings must continue.

His quarters are filled with cracked mirrors and love letters to his past self, able-bodied and vigorous. He will do anything to not feel weak.

Huberto Mill

Itinerant workers cross the yard in all hours of daylight, kept to the metronomic creak of the waterwheel, harried and withdrawn. The sawn timbers smell strong; anyone with a nose can tell you were at the mill until the next day.

PAZ | Quick / Average / Below Average / Average / Average / 0
Fire belies his true fear: not of death, nor pain, but of the loss of total control, which he must always have.

A week after the fire, PAZ nearly broke his back erecting a shrine for his departed wife MARIA. It's been swallowed up by the Aspens. He wants nothing more than to find it again and bring flowers.

Will sell you the debt of HÉCTOR the gun-seller if you can tamper with los Vaqueros' operations without incriminating him.

BENJAMIN | Slow / Below Average / Average / Coward / Sickly / 1
Since the death of his beloved daughter in law, his only wish is to have one night of uninterrupted, restful sleep.

If you bring him peace, he will sell you his son DAVID's life-debt.

DAVID | Average / V. Good / Good / Above Average / Sturdy / 1
Years ago, he left. He returned after the fire to help out; compelled by a debt to his father, BENJAMIN, that he might never be able to repay.

Galeria

Stout and dark structure with a mezzanine upper floor. The shopkeepers' pipes fill the air with medicinal smoke.

HÉCTOR | Slow / Excellent / Average / Cowardly / Above Average / 0
Gunsmith and unparalleled target-shooter. A slow and methodical man who was never taken aim anything that moves, and never will. Pink rubbery skin in webs up to the elbows, where his hands dipped and plucked his son from the boiling Rio. Raul died 4 days later, buried in a closed casket in El Inocente. HÉCTOR visits twice a week.

Owes PAZ 400 pesos.

DULCITA | Average / Poor / Crack Shot / Cowardly / Average / 0
She loves horses very much. Just one left; a mare, JUANITA-FLOR, kept company by six fleabitten asses. She will sell you EL CAPITAN's debt in return for a breeding stallion.

DULCITA is the region's undisputed horseshoe-tossing champion. She will put up to 40 pesos on a game, and likely rinse your ass.

EL CAPITAN | Fast / Fair / Poor / V. Brave / Average / 5
Leader of a small troupe attached to EL REGIDOR. Sallow around the eyes. Seems unable to keep mud and soot off of his neat green uniform, and overspends on laundry services to keep himself presentable.

He owes DULCITA 368 pesos for horses, named PALMA, JAVIER, and POLLO. All three fell sick after their first excursion into the Aspens, and were shot in the neck. His men refused to eat them; they burned.