These texts were originally published as part of Hunt's Scorched Earth, the live Event that ran from August 15th to October 7th, 2024. Are they fact, fiction, fable, or fallacy? We may never know for sure, but there's truth to every lie, and a lie to every truth. Read on, and decide for yourself.

Summary: The Researcher and Marshall Brewer arrive to Mammon's Gulch, Colorado, where they discover that another Incursion zone is active. An oil tycoon named Wyatt Preston shows them around and makes clear his intentions to provide them with the equipment and ammunition needed to help fight back against the Corruption. Meanwhile, local Trappers watch it all unfold from a distance, intent on protecting the precious land of Mammon's Gulch. Meanwhile, Hayalî presents a puppet show that tells the story of how Butcher's Cleaver and The Beekeeper came to Colorado in hopes of finding their place beside the Sculptor at last.

CHAPTER ONE: THE RESEARCHER

Harold Black arrives in Mammon's Gulch, along with the Hunt's oil tycoon Backer: Wyatt Preston.

Wax Cylinder Transcript
Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna
Recording Date 1896: Harold Black
Transcription Date 1899: Unknown

[Sound Annotation.] Labored breathing. Footsteps. Trills and rushes of a high mountain habitat.

HB: We've trekked in from the Northeast and made rest at a cascade of outcrops on the western side of Mammon's Gulch. The surrounding peaks are staggering, indifferent to our presence.

[Sound Annotation.] Train whistle fades in distance.

HB: Preston is boisterous. Stands at six foot three. He's dressed out of his fine clothes, perhaps hoping to fit in with us. Brewer and the others are not impressed, if raised eyebrows are any unit of measurement.

[Sound Annotation.] Birds set off.

HB: Clearly he's a novice, but it's worth noting that Preston can be quite endearing. He favors the use of a spyglass over any gun or blade, always on the lookout for something new to expose or discover.

[Sound Annotation.] Shambling, Screeching, Shots ring out.

HB: The Corruption here is in "full bloom," for lack of a better term.

[Sound Annotation.] Rifle set down. Notes scribbled.

HB: With the Incursion here still in its infancy, I wondered if some semblance of order and hierarchy might appear amongst the Corrupted. But this is not the case. They are all as disorganized and lobotomized as in the bayou.

HB: Despite their mindless, abominable presence, I feel myself being studied from beneath the trees.

[Sound Annotation.] Journal closed. A rock thrown, tumbling indifferently down a cliff.

HB: No, catalogued. Catalogued is the word. Just as a blind curator navigates the dense archives of a museum, and slips some small, dead thing into its perfect drawer.

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CHAPTER TWO: THE RESEARCHER

Incinerated remains of a survey camp welcome the new arrivals with ash and omens.

Colorado Investigation Log
Location: Mid-Gulch Saddle Depression

Day 2: Morning

We discovered a survey group's destroyed campsite.

It was in total disarray and mostly incinerated. Brass equipment intact. Salvaged the following surveyor logs:

Dale Guerard: PLSS Acreage Report

Day 1: Grahm switched us to the Solar Compass. Our prismatic is being thrown off by ore deposits along the western slope. The compass is heavy and hot in the sun—it burned Grahm's hand.

We're five degrees off true north on account of the magnetism. Will re-walk the links for accurate acreage in the morning.

Day 4: Melanie has her seismometer ready. The thing's acting up. Jumping like a cricket in a thunderstorm, is how she put it. Can't be on account of the ore, though. Strange.

Day 5: Grahm's dead. He measured out the acre with 255 chain links, then vanished in a sudden flash of heat that seemed to come out of nowhere. The leftover links he'd been carrying somehow heaped and fused to his skull. We buried him—it was the only thing we could think to do. What could have done that to Grahm?

Poor Melanie. Just last night, when we were laughing and drinking around the campfire, she said she'd never get married, especially to Grahm. So why's she sleeping all alone on that patch of scorched earth where we found his body?

Melanie L. R. Seismographic Readings

Reading 1-4: Criss cross scrambles

Recalibrated Reading 4-9: Looping circles

Re-Recalibrated Reading 10: The needle has written in cursive.

"Too late now. Too late now. Too late..."

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CHAPTER THREE: MARSHALL BREWER

Marshall Brewer picks up the trail of dangerous Hunters while navigating Preston's eccentricities.

Mammon's Gulch Field Report
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.

Preliminary Report:

Wyatt Preston adores the sound of his own drawling voice. He'd talk the ears off a barn door, if a barn door gave half a shit to listen.

He certainly adores his home in the peaks. He leaves gold coins on tree stumps, out of either superstition or respect.

The expedition to Colorado demonstrated Mr. Preston's resources beyond all else. Fine China on the train. Cigars from some country I can't pronounce proper. He had a massive leech in a gold cage as a pet. I wanted to ask how he managed that—if there was a caged Meathead in one of the cars—but it seemed rude somehow, in the same way it's rude to ask a magician his secrets.

The researcher called Harold Black joined us as well—Preston wouldn't leave until I tracked him down. I trust Harold's word, despite his indifference to justice and order. He confided to me that Mr. Preston is doggedly pursuing ways to end the Corruption. There is fresh hope in all this rot, supposedly. Preston says that he wants to outfit us like a proper army, cleanse this land proper. He says that when the threat passes, he'll show us the oil field he's so proud of.

It was only after we arrived at our destination that something became clear. High and mighty are the words we've swapped, pretending we dispelled the plague of New Orleans. But the truth is that we've just shoved it down one gutter, only for its head to pop out another. And with it has come leftover filth we failed to purge in the bayou, clinging to its heels: Demented Hunters are here, too.

This morning, a little group of them sent up hellfire that brushed sky.

I just hope that Preston understands what he's dealing with out here, understands how easily it could all fall to pieces.

Phoebe Brewer

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CHAPTER FOUR: SNARE

Snare tracks her new oppressors as a fire looms beyond the ridgetops.

"Journey to My Descendants"
Author: Snare
Handwritten Journal, 8 x 8 in.

Preston has brought lawdogs with him. They are promised wealth and station. When our adoptive father saw what had happened here, he called for aid. Only we came. But in the end, all it took was money. All it ever takes is money.

I have seen our enemy up close. I have seen the scars across Marshall Brewer's cheek in the center of my sights.

She and her troop were wise to cover their tracks, but they did so with the skill of a child hiding from a bear, leaving a trail of Grunts anywhere they went. Their killing is sloppy and savage.

Buckshot reminds me to tread careful. I can spit on their skills all I like, but it is their confidence we must track. The lawdogs do not need to be smart. They could kill us with a storm of bullets without a second thought.

There are many kinds of storms here now.

Come evening there was thunder, yet the sky remained clear. Dust and a strange glow rose over the low eastern range across the way.

Hell came upon us in an instant when the source of the ruckus finally came into view: a herd of horses, galloping, on fire. Flames flickered from their sunset hides, licked their heels. Their manes sparked in a way only death could see as pretty.

We cannot outrun this nightmarish Corruption, or the things it brings with it. Along with the presence of the law dogs, what options does that leave us?

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CHAPTER FIVE: THE RESEARCHER

Wax Cylinder: Harold Black witnesses all hell break loose in the Gulch.

Wax Cylinder Transcript
Phonogrammarchiv, Vienna
Recording Date 1896: Harold Black
Transcription Date 1899: Unknown

[Sound Annotation.] Great plumes of fire. Metal buckling and caving. (Or the spine of a mountain grinding on ore.)

HB: The oil field is burning. It was set ablaze just as we came upon it.

[Sound Annotation.] Roaring. Explosions and hot whistles through rock.

HB: Preston has sent off Brewer to the north. He thinks this could be the work of bandits or other such greedy, bitter minds.

[Sound Annotation.] A marathon of sprinting. Embers swirling. Grass crackles and burns as if stained with the blood of witches.

HB: A dozen Immolators have swarmed the oil field. The heat is too intense to see clearly, but they are in a circle. What is that they're...

[Sound Annotation.] Wax warped by heat. Unintelligible.

HB: Preston's oil burns differently. It seethes with the rage of things hidden in the earth, brought to light.

[Sound Annotation.] Tree collapses. Wax warped distortion. (When a tree falls, does it feel itself falling forever?)

HB: This heat. I do not think it's natural. It smells of things that should have never been touched by man. The odor contains the faintest traces of iron and ruined flesh when you stand downwind.

[Sound Annotation.] Long crackles of fire. An indistinct prayer is hidden in its flare.

HB: Some shadow has taken form here. I will abandon Preston and investigate it alone.

Let Brewer look after him.

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CHAPTER SIX: HAYALÎ

Curtains are set on fire as characters take the stage in Hayalî's puppet show.

Puppet Theatre Script: ACT 1
Found behind stage curtains, back-alley theater

Let me tell you a story.

Note: (Set curtain on fire to reveal the stage cloth.)

There once was a wandering puppeteer, a man of myths who crossed many seas. In his search for greater legends, this traveler found himself caught in a tale too peculiar and strange to not play a part in.

Note: (Puppets size up the audience.)

It all began when the traveler came across the corpses of three railmen and two strange characters getting dressed in their coal-stained clothes.

We shall call one, Pig.

The other, Bee.

Note: (The metallic click of guns cocking.)

Pig and Bee offered the traveler a deal: if he helped them achieve their goal, they would let him live. He gladly accepted and slithered into a dead man's trousers. He stained his eyes with soot and took on the speech of someone who tends the steam boiler on a locomotive.

Note: (Bring train prop in frame with flywheel and weights.)

And so, they set upon a train as a troupe of actors would a stage. They tended a ravenous and furious furnace in a nest of spinning iron and belching steam.

Note: (Fall to knees. Stoke imaginary furnace. Pray to the invisible rich.)

As the time passed, he discovered more and more about Bee and Pig. He learned that they were outcasts from a cult of delirium and murder. Worse still, they had been forsaken by the very thing they worshiped.

Note: (Raise mountain slowly, drop Corrupted fast.)

The train ventured over the type of barren lands where death itself forgets its name. They came upon the promised land: Colorado. There, a sickness had brought nightmares of the dead to life.

Note: (Puppets stare in awe at the sight that sprawls before them.)

Their faith had been rewarded, after all. They'd been given a second chance.

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CHAPTER SEVEN: MARSHALL BREWER

A tense standoff in Miner's Folly draws new lines in the Gulch for Marshall Brewer.

Mammon's Gulch Field Report
Single loose sheet, 8.5 x 11 in.

Warning: Those local Trappers know how to spring sharp iron around your waist. They know these slopes like we know a swamp.

***

After the oil field was set ablaze, Preston sent us with powder barrels to the northeast trestle bridge, wanting it blown up to cut off access to anyone who might want to come for what's his. We went through Miner's Folly. The sad assortment of dilapidated buildings were all cinders and smoke, freshly burnt.

Demented folks had themselves a bonfire, most probably.

Before we could make our way through, we were stopped by a pair of angry Trappers. We drew iron on each other, then I realized that the mountain man, Thomas Bridge, was with them. They saw that he knew me, seemed surprised we didn't want each other dead. It was enough to make them lower their rifles.

In the end, we came to a bit of an agreement: we'll stay out of these Trappers' more treasured territory, if they help us in the fight against the Corruption of this land. We went our separate ways, but I couldn't help but look over my shoulder on the way out—I didn't trust the female Trapper, could practically feel the sear of her death-wish glare on my back.

Once that was taken care of, we had the business of the tracks to finish out, Preston's orders. The explosion was quaint, but enough to send the rails crashing down.

Between the oil field and the town, Mammon's Gulch is falling. I can't say quite yet whether it's into our hands, or into the fires, but one thing is for certain:

Preston's money doesn't impress death, not even a little bit.

Phoebe Brewer

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Continue here to read Scorched Earth: Part Two.