#hexplore24
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Next Month, On FishRPG...
The mighty Random Table of Genres hath spoken with a natural 20, which means February's theme will be underwater related. And with the change of theme also comes another change:
Now that school has started back for me, I've realized that the level of detail I've been putting into my entries needs more time than I'm able to provide after accounting for all the research and paper writing that grad school entails. While school is in session for future months, I'll scale back a bit and focus on a smaller element each day like an individual encounter or a notable feature instead of doing an entire hex each day.
Thanks for understanding!
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Image credit is "Underwater Booty" by Sergey Zabelin.
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2023 State of the Mackerel
Hello fine internet people! The blog portion of my main account has been dormant for quite some time, and I've been wanting to put something here to give the few people who are following me an update. I've also wanted to change a few things on here, so with the end of the year upon us, I wanted to put forward something to help provide some clarity about the blog's past, present, and future.
The Past: Noteworthy Life Events
Since my last official post on here on August of 2021, obviously at least a few notable things have happened in the intervening two years. Here is a quick rundown of the highlights, presented as fake headlines:
Fish Davidson gets over by a minivan and yells swear words
"Guess I'll go back to school," says local internet weirdo
Studies indicate minor promotion at work leads to corresponding minor improvements in life satisfaction
Combining a bunch of words, Fish Davidson writes a book
Yep, tabletop gaming is a thing and it's not going away
Fish Davidson learns to make two sounds at once
Okay, so now that I've hopefully piqued your interest, here's a little bit more detail about each of those items. In November of 2021, I was walking across the street at a crosswalk and was hit by a minivan. The driver wasn't going very fast, but it was enough to break three bones (including my tailbone) and put me on crutches for a while and I needed special orthopedic pillows for my butt for about 18 months. I'm mostly back to normal now, but it was a long road.
The next big thing was that I went back to grad school in an online program. I've been a student for about a year now, and I'm about halfway through the program. Whatever intermittent dreams I would have and wanted to write about have been shoved aside to make time for the seemingly endless papers of graduate work. It's stressful, but I'm glad to be back in school.
Part of the reason for going back to school is because I got a minor promotion at work. Predictably, it came with more responsibilities, but it also came with a little bit more money. I'm going back to school to learn more about things that are related to my job, but also to leverage it into another potential pay raise.
Now we get to the personal creative pursuits of the recent past. I wrote a novel called Power Frank about a superhero whose only power is that he can open any jar. And he has to leverage that power to both overcome family dysfunction and save his desert hometown from being destroyed by malevolent hogs. I'm starting the querying process for agents and hope to have it published eventually!
I also finished up my multi-year Dungeons and Dragons campaign, Shits and Giggles that ran from level 1 to level 20. Several smaller (much smaller) campaigns happened after that. Then Wizards of the Coast did some stupid stuff with their Open Gaming License, and now I've redirected the bulk of my gaming money to provide support for smaller independent creators and lesser known systems. I've really gotten into several OSR systems like Shadowdark, Basic Fantasy, and (if you count these as OSR) Cairn and Knave. Other non-fantasy systems that I'm currently really digging into are Orbital Blues and Mothership. Granted, I don't currently run those games for people yet, but I do like reading the books and seeing different approaches to solving certain mechanical problems. I've also been creating a bunch of random tables for things.
The last important creative pursuit is that of Tuvan throat singing. Tuva is a region in the geographic center of Asia that is known for a style of singing that allows the singer to produce multiple notes simultaneously. I've been fascinated by it for decades and tried off and on to learn it, but this summer I finally made progress and am finally learning how to do it. It takes a lot of practice and making weird sounds, much to the chagrin of my (very patient and supportive) wife.
The Present and Future: Lumped Together For Expediency
I want to write a dream journal and that's what this blog was primarily conceived for. Unfortunately, my dream output has been incredibly fickle and the other demands on my time (professional and academic) make it difficult to report or even remember dreams. Does that mean I'm closing up this blog? Nope! I'm still on tumblr almost every day. But if I'm not able to reliably post dreams on here, what should happen to this blog?
That's the question I've been wrestling with for the past few months. What should I do? Since fishdavidson is my primary blog and I can't easily swap over to a new primary blog to archive my content, I've decided to pivot a little bit. Even outside of tumblr, I use Fish Davidson as my basically my brand (obligatory shoutout to the 1-800 contacts commercial).
So it makes sense to keep using Fish Davidson for personal promotion and creative pursuits. I'm not going to be deleting or moving any of my old posts, but new posts will be relatively rare and limited to mostly things that I create.
However, tumblr lets me create a bajillion different sideblogs for my various interests. I've got several different blogs, all geared toward different interests. Future dream journal entries, if and when they happen, will be published to fishdreams instead of here. Other posts and reblogs will be spread across my various sideblogs. So without further ado, here are
My Various Sideblogs and What They're For
fishdreams - dream journal stuff
fishcrap - various reblogs and anything that I find interesting but outside of the scope of my various side blogs
fishability - for disability awareness stuff
fishrpg - this will be where I post a lot of tabletop RPG stuff. I'm planning on participating in Hexplore24, which is a tiny daily challenge for RPG creation that starts in January.
tuvafish - stuff about throat singing (and maybe even some of my practice sessions) will go here as I find stuff to post (currently empty)
brownstonarmy - probably won't be updated, but if you want to read a novel-length account of the entire Shits and Giggles campaign, here you go!
Thank you all for being such cool people on tumblr, have a great holiday season and new year, and I hope we stay friends on here.
-Fish
#fishdavidson#update#tuva#dungeons and dragons#5e#branding#sideblogs#disability#school#dreams#dream journal#hexplore24
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2024-04-29: The Ghost of Casey Jones (Encounter)
Casey Jones was a white railroad engineer on the Illinois Central line who died in a train crash in 1900 and was immortalized in a folk ballad composed by his Black friend, Wallace Saunders. Jones was known for being extremely punctual with his arrival times and also for his peculiar way he operated the engine whistle so that everyone knew when he was coming down the tracks. On the night of the crash, Casey had to fill in after another engineer called in sick and make up 75 minutes on an overnight passenger route from Memphis, Tennessee to Canton, Mississippi. On this fateful trip, he was using the powerful Engine No. 382, which had the nickname of "Cannonball" because of how fast it could go. The crash happened near Vaughn, Mississippi, where three other trains were out on track trying to reposition. Casey Jones was the only fatality of the wreck, which would have been much worse had Jones not tried to stop the train up until the very end. All these years later, the ghost of Casey Jones is said to haunt the rails of the Illinois Central.
Ghost of Casey Jones Encounters (1d6)
A long, lilting whistle races down an empty section of track, coming from nowhere in particular, followed by a huge gust of wind strong enough to knock down anyone standing close to the tracks.
The twisted wreck of Engine No. 382 is entangled with the rear cars of another freight train. A man lies on the ground, waking up from unconsciousness after a head injury. He identifies himself as Simeon "Sim" Webb, the fireman aboard the crashed passenger train. Curiously, the train appears to be completely empty and Sim doesn't seem too bothered by the wreck. He'll stick around until sunrise, and accompany the party if they decide to investigate the wreckage, but both Sim and the train disappears at sunrise.
A train trundles down the tracks, appearing slightly translucent during the day and glowing a ghostly blue at night. The engineer waves at the party and blows the whistle in the signature style of Casey Jones.
While crossing a railroad track, the crossing signs activate and a random party member gets stuck to the track. A slow-moving engine soon appears, heading straight for the person on the track. The engineer jumps from the train and runs toward the party member, tackling them out of the way of the train before running back to the engine and yelling at the party to stay off the track.
Standing on the railroad tracks is a horrendously burned man in a train engineer's outfit clutching a broken air-brake lever from a train. He looks at the party and says "I saved 'em all in that crash. Won't be needing this any more." He tosses the broken lever on the ground and fades away.
Brakes squeal as Engine No. 382 tries to stop on an empty section of track. The train shakes and shudders with the effort, and suddenly the engine begins to crumple and catch fire as though it hit an invisible wall. The train continues to travel into the invisible wall, its cars smashing together into a crumpled heap that is only the size of single rail car. Eventually it explodes into a pile of charred shards of metal that fade out of existence within 10 minutes.
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youtube
Coming This May On FishRPG...
Yeah, buddy, we gonna have PIRATES! And the PDF of Sundered Isles just came out, so I'm gonna be using those sweet random tables in conjunction with my own creations to make cool things happen. Since the big draw of generators in Sundered Isles is creating islands for exploring, I've created the outline of a big sea and left some blank spaces for my islands.
HOIST THE COLORS, LADS AND LASSES! IT'S TIME TO SAIL TO THE HORIZON!
#hexplore24#fishdavidson#dungeons and dragons#hexcrawl#5e#pirates#pirates of the caribbean#potc#genre#Youtube
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2024-04-28: Rootworkers (Faction)
NOTE: There is a lot of history to unpack here and unfortunately a lot of it is written by white people (one of my sources is Robert Palmer's "Deep Blues" book). Some of the terms used here may not be in favor for contemporary practitioners of the religion, and although I am using the words that were from the vernacular of 1934 in an attempt to preserve verisimilitude, I also understand that some words may need to change to reflect contemporary opinions. Also, I am an outsider to this practice and I will admit that there is a possibility that I have used words incorrectly or not adequately conveyed the proper nuance or respect for certain practices; so if you practice rootwork and see a way that I can improve the authenticity and sensitivity of this section, please let me know!
The rootworkers practice a collection of spiritual practices that are a melding of African beliefs, former southern slave beliefs, indigenous botany, and Abrahamic religions. Sometimes this practice was known as Hoodoo. In order to practice it, though, one must be born into it by ancestral gifts that are passed down through the generations.
Rootwork involves the practice of one or more of the following gifts: herbalism, mediumship, and divination/augury. The gifts of rootwork are used for healing and advice, not for revenge, retaliation, or malicious purposes. Some people with the gift do engage in such frowned-upon practices, though the Rootworkers disavow anyone who claims to conduct such acts.
Many Christians feared the Rootworkers or called them devil worshippers, but nearly all of them respected the rootworkers gifts in private. One exception is the Sons of Lee, many of whom hold many bigoted beliefs about race, and often antagonize Rootworkers any chance they get.
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2024-04-27: Dockery Farms (Town)
Dockery Farms (sometimes called Dockery Plantation, but usually just simply “Dockery”) was founded in 1895 by Will Dockery. It’s located just inside the western edge of Sunflower County and about 2,000 tenant laborers grow cotton on its 28,000 acres. Though Will Dockery didn’t much care for the music of his tenants and shared many of the prevailing beliefs of white men of the era, he had a reputation as one of the fairest men around when it came to wages. Pay at Dockery was consistently higher than at the other farms in the area, which in turn attracted many laborers.
However, the pay was usually made in company scrip that was only accepted at Dockery. Scrip could be exchanged for cash, but almost never at face value. Payday happened once a month and was known as “Furnishing Day,” and saw thousands of people lined up outside the commissary to collect their pay. There are grumblings about the unfairness of being paid in scrip, but any legislation that might stop the use of script is still a few years away (the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938).
Points of Interest
Cotton Gin
Housed in a barn-sized building with corrugated metal siding, the cotton gin is a roaring monster of wheels, belts, and teeth. Few people who deal with the gin regularly manage avoid losing at least part of a finger during their years of tenure there. It’s a machine to be respected and feared. The ginning process spits out fine clouds of cotton lint that settle on the sweaty skin of the workers, leaving them looking like fuzzy ghosts by the end of their shift. Without the gin, the money doesn’t come to Dockery; and without money, there is no Dockery.
Big Lou’s
Big Lou owns a house just past the one-lane bridge over the Sunflower River. On Furnishing Day (always a Saturday), the bluesmen pay Big Lou to move all the furniture out of his house and set up mirrors and oil lamps so they can perform. While this was happening, the bluesmen would play music for the captive audience of people waiting in line. Although the musical performances while waiting in line were free, the best and most popular music was saved for Big Lou’s house, and you had to pay a toll to cross the one-lane bridge to Big Lou’s house. The toll was split among the musicians who performed that night.
Pea Vine Station
Rail was the best way to get cotton shipped around the country, and cotton farms that weren’t located near big rail lines had to make their own branches. Officially known as the Kimball Lake Branch, nobody calls it by that name. It’s just the Pea Vine, named for its indirect and circuitous route that resembled the unfurling vines of a pea plant. The station in Dockery runs southwest to Boyle, a community about 2 miles south of Cleveland, to connect the Yazoo & Mississippi Valley Company tracks to the Illinois Central. The Pea Vine runs twice a day, making a round trip each time, and functions as a convenient way to reach the entertainment options of Cleveland.
Trulight Baptist Church
Pronounced like “True Light,” this is an all-Black church with a graveyard where many of the laborers would end up being buried. The church was first established in 1906, and the graveyard holds the remains of Annie and Bill Patton (the parents of legendary bluesman Charlie “Charley” Patton).
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2024-04-26: Creeping Kudzu (Encounter)
Kudzu is a fast-growing vine that was imported into the southern US for erosion control and it spread so rapidly that it earned the nickname "the vine that ate the South." While it's not quite as indestructible as the legends might indicate, kudzu is still a pernicious invader. Because it grows so quickly, it can often completely cover trees, houses, and other structures in a relatively short amount of time.
While most kudzu is merely an annoyance that needs to be watched, this encounter is for the legendary and malevolent version of the vine. Because there is kudzu in this game that is merely set dressing and also different kudzu that is animate and malevolent, make clear to the players how wary they need to be of kudzu when it appears. Otherwise you might end up with players that completely avoid areas with any amount of kudzu, or run at every patch of vines with gasoline and a lighter.
Photo credit by nataliemaynor
Creeping Kudzu Encounters (1d6)
Tendrils of vine rustle threateningly. The kudzu remains rooted to one spot; if the players approach, the first person to walk more than a few feet into the vines will fall into a concealed pit.
Sturdy rope-like vines grab a car and begins disassembling it. Each turn the kudzu spends disassembling the car, it gains two heavy pieces of metal that it can use as bludgeoning weapons or throw at people.
A lone shack is covered in kudzu. When the shack is not being actively watched, it creeps slowly toward the party until it gets close and drags someone into the house. The kudzu covering the shack tries to crush its prey to death, and siding of the house provides some solid defense to attacks that do not target the vines inside the house (which also risks hurting the captured prey).
Multiple vines separate and surround the party, attempting to capture the party by lashing out with a large number of individually weak attacks.
Undulating vines of kudzu stand straight up as the party approaches, tangling together to form a vaguely humanoid shape. The kudzu man is physically slow, but strong, and will pursue the party.
An animal is stuck in the kudzu, growing frightened as the kudzu overtakes it. If the party does nothing, the animal will be consumed within 10 minutes and the kudzu will revert to being regular kudzu again for up to a week until it needs to hunt again.
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2024-04-24: Scott (Town)
Unlike most of the other populated places listed in this project, Scott is an unincorporated area and population statistics aren't available for Scott by itself. To be fair, there isn't much in Scott except for the Alluvial Cotton and Timber Company* and a post office. However, the such a description undersells just how prevalent the Alluvial Cotton and Timber Company was in the area. Scott, Mississippi, is a company town through and through, and everything that happened in Scott only happened with the company's blessing.
Points of Interest
Alluvial Cotton and Timber Company Headquarters
The headquarters were originally located in Memphis, Tennessee, but relocated a few years back after the flood of 1927 destroyed crops in the Delta and displaced thousands of workers. After brushing up against the threat of bankruptcy in 1931, the company's leader, Oscar Goodbar Johnson, leveraged his political prowess to become the head of the Agricultural Adjustments Administration established during the New Deal. The program helped boost agricultural prices while reducing surplus and helped build a stronghold for Cotton Barons.
Company Store
Anything you need for agricultural work can be found at the company store. The prices for food, as well as supplies like seed and livestock are a little high, but tolerable. Other goods are either not available at the store or are prohibitively expensive. Because of all the traffic through the store, it's the best place to get information.
The Fields
Land is the biggest commodity for the Alluvial Cotton and Timber Company, with about 9,000 acres under active cultivation. Most of the land was subdivided among the Black tenant farmers that lived in the area, averaging about 6-8 acres of land per person. Some of that land, though, is reserved for corporate growth trials. Only authorized people are allowed in the trial fields, which are separated from the public by a wire fence.
The cotton in the trial fields seems to grow so much better than in the rest of the fields, even during the bad years. People who work fields near the trial plots report hearing unusual sounds at night during the planting season. And they report that there are things buried in those fields because of the unusual series of holes that pop up in the fields before getting filled in a few days later.
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*It's a fake name since the real company headquartered there still exists and I don't want to get sued.
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2024-04-24: The Walking Tree (Encounter)
One folktale in the South concerns trees that walk, often to come to the aid of indigenous people and slaves. Sometimes the trees were planted specifically to serve as protectors, other times they are animated by spirits of nature, and still other times they are regular trees where a vengeful ghost has taken up residence after a life was taken at the tree. The most common tree species that walk in the Delta are magnolia, cypress, and certain types of oak.
Walking Tree Encounters (1d6)
A tree is slowly and steadily stalking an NPC. If the tree catches the NPC, it will scoop them up and lift the person up to the very top of the tree and drop them to the ground. If the person doesn't die, the tree will pick the person up and repeat the process.
Several people are gathered around a tree attempting to hang a captive. The tree begins fighting back to stop the hanging, though there is a 50% chance that the tree attacks everyone in the vicinity.
Though the tree is not walking, its limbs are swatting at a bird or deer that is bothering the tree.
A group of people wielding axes and two-person crosscut saws attempt to cut down an old-growth tree for lumber when the tree starts fighting back.
As the party passes near a tree, it shakes its branches and showers the party with seeds. If the party takes some of the seeds, plants them somewhere else, and returns to the tree that showered the party, the players will be rewarded with a boon of some kind from the tree.
For reasons unknown, a walking tree has taken issue with the party and begins to attack them with its limbs. It will pursue the party for up to a mile.
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Although this particular story is from the neighboring state of Alabama instead of the Mississippi Delta, the story of the Click-Bok Tree by Lester Thomas is a relatively representative tale.
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2024-04-23: Greenville (Town)
The port city of Greenville is located in Washington county and is its county seat. It was ravaged by the levee breaks in the flood of 1927 and is mostly back on solid footing but there are still signs of rebuilding in the area. As of the 1930 census, there were almost 15,000 people living there.
Point of Interest
Little Italy
In the southern portion of Greenville is an enclave with a thriving Italian population. Many Italians came to the Delta to work on farms, and would unfortunately arrive in debt because the plantation owners would pay for the transportation costs of relocating immigrants to the Delta. Despite this unfair and exploitative system, many Italians managed to save up enough money to repay their debt and buy their own land and establish businesses. Restaurants and grocery stores are a major fixture of Little Italy.
Radio Station WKFI
This is a AM radio station that was originally licensed under the Federal Radio Commission and stopped officially broadcasting in 1934. Little is known about this radio station, but broadcasts are still going out at irregular intervals. The station is presumably locked up and unoccupied, but people are continuing to report hearing the station's call sign and unexplained sounds when tuned into the old station's band. The Federal Radio Commission has been investigating, but no findings have been released. Men in suits from Washington say that there's nothing to be alarmed about.
Weekly Democrat-Times Newspaper Building
Greenville's current newspaper has been in its current incarnation since 1917, though it's existed in slightly different names and publishing cadences all the way back to 1868 with the Democrat Times. It's the largest newspaper in the area and has the most resources for journalism, but it's effectively a whites-only newspaper. The Newshawks at the Mound Bayou Demonstrator are often in the area getting news from the Pullman Porters to bring news from up North to the Blacks still living in the Jim Crow south.
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2024-04-22: Levee Camps (Settlement)
Someone had to build the system of levees and other structures that keep the lower Mississippi River in check. Those people were mostly Blacks, immigrants, or convicts and they were stationed in camps to work on the levees when the river was at its lowest. Levee season was generally in the fall and early winter. Levee camps were not limited to the Mississippi River; they were also located on the river's tributaries.
The camps were run by contractors that tended to have white supremacist beliefs and often identified with the Sons of Lee faction. The contractors used their power to exploit the camp workers, and encouraged activities prostitution, gambling, and drinking in the camp to justify paying the workers less than full wages and force them into taking out payday loans at steep interest rates. Living conditions were often substandard, even more so for Black workers who were often forced to live in close proximity to the mules that powered the earth-packing machinery.
Newshawks have slowly begun infiltrating the levee camps to expose the harsh conditions there, and have prompted the NAACP to begin pressuring the US Senate to hold hearings. The camps are still a pretty lawless place, though.
To generate a levee camp for your game, roll a set of 7 polyhedral dice and compare them to the tables below:
Levee Camp Random Tables
Camp Appearance (1d4)
A collection of tents and muddy gravel footpaths surrounding a livestock pen
Shoddy dorms and threadbare tents with duckboard paths winding through the camp
Decent dorms on one side of the camp give way to older dorms in the middle and a collection of tents next to the livestock pens at the other.
Gravel paths lead to the commissary in the center of camp, while the the leaky dorms are only reachable by a pockmarked trail of footprints in the thick mud.
Who Are The Workers? (1d6)
Blacks and convicts
Blacks and immigrants from several nations
Chinese and Blacks
Chinese and convicts
Mexican and convicts
Immigrants of multiple nations
What Is The Camp Working On This Week? (1d8)
Raising the levee height
Maintaining or constructing spillways
Removing trees from the levee
Adjusting the grade of the levee slope
Repairing a hole or low spot in the levee
Constructing a new section of levee
Reinforcing the earth on the river side of the levee
Dredging a channel in a river
What's Happening Right Now? (1d10)
An official from the Corps of Engineers is visiting
Someone's getting beaten by the contractor for an infraction of some kind
Everyone is settling in for a meal break
Work songs carry on the wind as the workers move in unison
An intense round of gambling is taking place
The commissary is being restocked
Several workers are loudly arguing, which quickly devolves into a fight
The contractor has singled out a particular worker for a humiliation
One of the mules is refusing to work and a group of people are trying to coax it into working again
Work has stopped briefly because a worker got injured and is in the process of being patched up.
The Biggest Problem In Camp Right Now Is... (1d10)
Mosquito-borne illness
Venereal disease outbreak
Payday is late
Accommodations have somehow gotten worse
Poor-quality liquor
No "ladies of the evening"
Liquor supply has stopped
Food has gotten terrible
A mule has escaped/died
Increased prices at the commissary
Who is the contractor in charge? (1d10)
These are completely fictitious people, so feel free to adjust them to fit your camp
Charlie Hudson - Lean man with brown hair starting to go gray, keeps a revolver holstered at his hip.
Herbert Vaughn - With a thick neck with an even thicker mustache, the only thing thin about him is his temper.
Jimmy Rhodes - On the young side for a camp contractor, he's got big ears, brown hair, and something to prove.
Walter Doyle - Missing part of his right ring finger, he's not the meanest cuss around, but he'll be the last one standing in a fight.
Roger Blackburn - Bald and bulky, his meaty fists are his preferred tools for keeping order.
Edgar Jackson - His red hair and beard make people think he's Irish, but saying that to his face is a quick way to get stabbed.
Archie Hendricks - Scrawny with curly brown hair, he's far stronger than his frame implies.
Mack Blair - Yells as loud as a train whistle, and his constant insults cut far deeper than any knife can go.
Patrick Morgan - Demanding and focused on the details, his pocketwatch tells who needs to be punished for falling behind.
Frank Page - Always drunk and ornery, he carries a shotgun loaded with birdshot to keep order in camp.
Everett Howell - The tallest man in camp, his clothes are special-made the next county over. Mess up his clothes and he'll mess up your face.
George Fletcher - An old man with a stooped back and a cane, he uses the cane for beatings more often than he uses it for walking.
Rumors In Camp (1d20)
Someone in the camp is a spy/reporter.
The circus is coming to the area soon.
There's a card cheat and everyone knows who it is but no one can prove anything.
The contractor is skimming from the wages (more so than usual).
One of the root workers in the area is a fraud.
A gambling boat moored nearby is going to be departing soon.
A new gambling boat is about to moor in the area in a few days.
There's a popular woman of the evening that you should stay away from because she's got some sort of disease.
A recent radio broadcast left some people hearing things that weren't there.
The contractor in charge murdered someone and dumped the body in the mud
The Bootleggers have changed up the codes they use to discreetly transport liquor.
Some of the Cotton Barons are using sharecroppers who can't pay their debts as fertilizer.
The Sons of Lee were overheard plotting something, probably a lynching.
A root worker in the next county over knows a ritual that lets you see beyond this world.
A granny in town can tell your fortune, but she only sees the bad things and they always come true.
A train is coming soon carrying someone or something very valuable.
Weird sounds are coming from the river at night.
The contractor is doing something that could be used to blackmail him, but no one's been able to catch it on film.
Prohibition-minded folks are getting ready to stage a bootleg liquor disposal operation soon, so guard what you have.
Something was uncovered in the earth nearby that should have stayed buried.
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2024-04-21: Crop Dusters (Encounter)
The Delta is home to a unique method of crop maintenance: the crop duster. Originally created as Huff-Daland Dusters in Monroe, Louisiana in March of 1925, they are aircraft that fly low to the ground and disperse chemicals on the crops like pesticides and fungicides. Because of the flat land and few power lines, the Delta was an ideal training area for crop duster pilots. Heathman, Mississippi, home of Heathman Plantation, paid a rate of 35 cents per acre to spray 1,800 acres in the early days of crop dusting.
Possible Crop Duster Encounters (1d6)
Identifiable from a distance by a plume of smoke rising into the sky, a crop duster has recently crashed. There's a 1 in 6 chance that the wreck is on fire when the party reaches it, and a 50% chance that noxious chemicals hang in the air to make approaching the wreck difficult without a makeshift air filter like a shirt or bandana.
A crop duster flies overhead and accidentally unleashes its chemicals on the party. If the chemicals are not washed off soon, contaminated characters will become disoriented and have trouble breathing.
A pilot in training decides to "buzz" the party by flying low to the ground and hoping to get a terrified reaction out of the party. The plane is low enough that the party can get the identifying numbers of the tail, and can track the airfield down if they are diligent in their search.
One of the crop dusting pilots from a local airfield ran out of fuel and had to make an emergency landing. The pilot is currently walking away from the plane to go find help.
Still in the early days of their training, a new pilot has lost control of the aircraft and is about to crash into a power line. The plane is tangled in the still-live power lines which trapped the pilot inside an electrified cocoon.
In the distance, a crop duster flies low across a field and sprays strong-smelling pesticide on the crops underneath before pulling up and readying to make another pass on the field.
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2024-04-20: Mound Bayou (Town)
Mound Bayou has the distinction of being one of the first all-Black municipalities in the US. It was established in the spring of 1887 by Isaiah T Montgomery and several other former slaves from another all-Black town called Davis Bend. The town has a population in 1934 of about 800. Mound Bayou provided a safe place for Black people to exist in the Jim Crow south, but its appeal is steadily waning as more Black people opt to join the Great Migration and set out for the north for a fresh start.
Despite the dwindling population, Mound Bayou still has enough people to provide safety in numbers. Racial hate groups and other bigoted white people know better than to step foot in Mound Bayou. Benjamin Green Crime is the current mayor, and even during the worst parts of the Great Depression, he managed to keep crime in the town so low that the jail closed a few years prior in 1929
Photo by Russell Lee, Courtesy U.S. Library of Congress (LC-USF33- 011969-M5)
Points of Interest
Mound Bayou Land and Investment Co
Although the Bank of Mound Bayou arrived in the area first, the Mound Bayou Land and Investment Company was founded shortly thereafter in 1906 by Charles Banks and the company served an arguably more vital purpose than the bank. Many of the Black landowners in the area had mortgages on their properties by white-owned banks that had various degrees of unfairness baked into the terms. The MB Land & Investment Co was a Black-owned and operated institution that would pay off the unfair loans and replace them with fair mortgages issued by the company so that Black landowners could keep their properties for the long-term. Naturally, there was some pushback about this arrangement from the Sons of Lee and the Cotton Barons, both of whom had a vested interest in seeing Black farms fail. Unfortunately, the collapsing cotton prices are pushing the company toward insolvency.
Sawmill
Although much of the Delta was already cleared of timberland, Mound Bayou was situated on a cypress forest that was left intact because how dense the growth was and the only way to start clearing it was by hatchet or machete. The sawmill provides lumber and jobs to the town, and was one of the last operating sawmills in the area.
The Demonstrator Newspaper Office
Nearly every town has its own newspaper, and Mound Bayou was no different. However, Mound Bayou's paper, The Demonstrator, was made by and for Blacks during a time where it was illegal to teach Black people how to typeset. The reporters and staff of The Demonstrator are some of the best around, having honed their craft when the deck was stacked against them.
Unfortunately a fire destroyed much of downtown Mound Bayou a few years ago in 1926, including the office of The Demonstrator. The paper rebuilt, but its circulation levels are now a shell of its former self and the paper is operating on a shoestring budget.
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The book Beacon Lights of Race (PDF) has a passage about the Land and Investment Company on page 208. Also, here's a cool PDF I found about Mound Bayou's history produced by the Delta Center that has a bunch more information about the town as a whole if you'd like to check it out.
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2024-04-19: Newshawks (Faction)
After the sensationalist yellow journalism that was blamed for America's involvement in the Spanish-American War at the end of the last century, the journalism industry gradually became more respectable and focused on facts. The people who make up the Newshawks are driven to find the truth, no matter how deep it's buried. Most are affiliated with a local newspaper, though some work for radio stations.
In addition to finding out the truth on their own, many Newshawks have networks of sources and informants to help corroborate stories. The truth is often unflattering, and most other factions are wary of engaging with the Newshawks unless there is a clear benefit to such a partnership.
At this point in Mississippi's history, it's technically illegal for Black people to be trained as typesetters for newspapers. Despite this, the all-Black town of Mound Bayou has its own newspaper and dedicated reporting team.
Even though the Newshawks as a whole are motivated by their search for and publication of the truth, there is a wide variety of angles in which the truth appears. Many Newshawks have an affinity for a certain faction outside their own, though this affinity can be either supportive or antagonistic. For example, a Newshawk could try to help warn Bootleggers of upcoming law enforcement action just as easily as publishing the identities of Bootleggers or the locations of their stills.
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2024-04-18: Cleveland (Town)
Cleveland is the second county seat of Bolivar County and has a population of about 3,500 after the 1930 census. It has gone through many different names before settling on Cleveland in 1886: Fontaine (1884), Coleman or Coleman's Station (1885), and Sims (also 1885).
Points of Interest
Courthouse
The remodeled courthouse in Cleveland is a year newer (1924) than the one in Rosedale (1923), which the residents of Cleveland like to bring up as as example of why their courthouse is better run than the one in Rosedale. The courthouse has on its property a towering monument to the Confederate dead in the Civil War that was erected in 1908, and is a popular organizing spot for the Sons of Lee and other people who fought on the losing side in that war.
Delta State Teacher's College
Established at the same time as the courthouse remodel, Delta State Teacher's College was built in 1924. As an unofficial condition of the college being established in Cleveland, a rowdy saloon at the railroad tracks in the center of town was forced to be shuttered. Technically alcohol was prohibited in Mississippi well before national Prohibition was in effect, but the saloon still operated openly, much to the chagrin of the temperance movement.
Cotton Row/Virgin Lane
Two racially and culturally distinct streets existed side by side in downtown Cleveland. Both were situated along the Illinois Central railroad track that ran through the center of town, though they were on opposite sides of the track. Cotton Row was on the western side of the track, and was where the cotton merchants bought, traded, and shipped cotton. It was wealthy, white, and a stronghold for the Cotton Barons.
On the eastern side of the track was Sharpe Avenue, which was also a predominantly white and featured several shops. But the rear side of the buildings on Sharpe Ave were home to Black and immigrant businesses in a district called Virgin Lane in an ironic nod to the less-than-proper activities that occurred in some of the establishments. Virgin Lane is a popular destination for blues musicians and other Entertainers because many juke joints are located there. The buildings of Virgin Lane are close-packed and the roads are unpaved more often than not, but unlike Cotton Row next door, Virgin Lane is a melting pot of people.
Klingman Chevrolet
Klingman Chevrolet is an auto dealer that sells quality cars at reasonable prices. The business was started in the early 1920s by the Klingmans, a Jewish family. Business was good until the Great Depression hit. Now the business is hanging on by a thread and only a month or two away from shuttering.
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2024-04-17: The Entertainers (Faction)
More diverse than the other factions active in the Delta, the Entertainers are focused on the entertainment industry, but its individual members pursue a wide variety of (often conflicting) goals. The majority of the Entertainers are bluesmen who travel the area seeking fame and recognition. Some Entertainers are looking for ways to bend the population to their will through a combination of artistic ability and supernatural augmentation.
There are two organizations exist in the area that Entertainers tend to coalesce around.
Saenger Amusement Company
The Saenger Amusement Company is a relatively straightforward business based out of Louisiana that seeks to build and operate motion picture theaters. They've expanded into a dozen states and are trying to gain a foothold in the Delta. Watching films in the theater provides a taste of life outside the Delta and grants a temporary reprieve from the concerns of the Great Depression. The only magic the Saenger Amusement Company uses is "movie magic," so whatever supernatural events happen in their Delta theaters is not caused by them. They are focused on running a business, and have a rich network of contacts with film executives and blossoming Hollywood stars.
Paramount Records
Where the Saenger Amusement Company is rising, Paramount Records is cratering. It was already in a precarious position before the Great Depression started, and the next few years were less than kind to the company. The company had a wide catalog of content by Black artists that were known as Race Records that were largely assembled by Ink Williams, but the combination of economic depression and the rise of the radio which didn't give Black musicians airplay all but eliminated jobs for bluesmen. Paramount Records used to send scouts to the Delta to find new acts, but hasn't officially recorded any new musicians since 1932.
Unofficially though... a few people with a vested interest in preserving the Blues turned are overtly relying on supernatural assistance to bring the record label back from the brink. Among these people are musicians and at least one former scout who still roams the area. Maybe they're just working to prolong the inevitable, but they're slowly growing in influence (though not in the financial sense). Only time will tell what happens to Paramount Records.
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