Ghost Towns of the Certopsian
The Certopsian Plains, where the shadows of the distant clouds
creep long like black burn scars amongst the dry hills, silver sage brush,
waist high savannah grasses and dust bedeviled alkali flats. This clean, hot vastness obscures thousands of
years of tragedy and evil, marked only by grit scoured bones and the tumbled
petrified timbers of ancient homesteads. Sometimes these tragedies leak back into the present,
manifesting in the form of Ghost Towns, each a unique colony of supernatural
necromantic power. Ghost towns are
dreams of the past, and will loom from the shadows of dusk, suddenly revealed
in a gulch or behind the next ridge ready to succor weary travelers. The towns often appear plausible and are not
always hostile, but they are inherently dangerous and unnatural.
Upon encountering a Ghost Town, roll a secret reaction check
(with a bonus of 1) on a non-hostile roll the party may interact with town in
the normal manner (SEE PEACEFUL INTERACTION below), and may only discover that
it was a phantasm when they awake in the morning on the ground or begin to ask
too many questions. On a hostile roll the town appears normal until the party
reaches its center at which point the buildings themselves begin to stutter
between material and ghostly, aging rapidly with leering sagging widows and
yawning black doorways that pour out aggressive phantasms. (SEE COMBAT below)
Ghost Towns are incredibly dangerous, even to powerful
adventurers or large organized group, as a fully hostile and active Ghost Town
may attack with tens of weapon immune, life draining phantasms from all
directions. Towns may be defeated and
destroyed, but it is usually advisable to simply flee as the phantasms will
only pursue intruders a few hundred feet into the night.
