Game 01a - In Search of Pancho Villa

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Game Run November 2002

In Search of Pancho VillaWe were in the US army in 1916 and were sent into Mexico to
track down a Bandit.

We were sent to a village that had been attacked and we
discovered that the Bandits had ransacked the town and captured
several women and a child.

We managed to track down their likely campsite and headed out to
find them. On the way we had to avoid a Mexican Army patrol.

Having found the campsite we discovered several dead bodies as
far as we could tell it was all of the bandits and the some of
the women but there was no sign of the child an a blood trail
leading into a box canyon.

Following the trail we discovered some Apache burial platforms.
Down in the canyon we say an old Man, one of the bandits tied up
and suffering from severe exposure and there was also a lean-to.

Whilst deciding what to do we were attacked by the supposedly
dead Apache's which proved to be a tough fight with some of our
guys getting hurt but Simon's Character did a sterling effort of
turning them to dust with his shotgun.

After defeating the Apache we were attacked by the old man who
threw some kind of spear at Dave's character and successfully
managed to turn him into a kebab.

Simon was then attacked by a large 12ft Snake who successfully
bit him at which point he quickly began to die.

We attacked the old man and manged to eventually kill him.

Investigating the canyon we discovered the missing Child and its
mother. We cut down the bandit and escorted everyone back out of
the valley. We took Simons character back with us to give him a
decent burial.
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The buglers' diary,

March 16th 1816

Heck of a mission we have just come back from, a sad one as we are carrying the Sarges body.

It started off like so many recent patrols, calm down the locals after bandits were causing trouble.  We had a greenhorn Lieutenant with us, he was supposed to be in charge but had never been out with a combat patrol before, luckily he knew which way round to sit on his horse - so not completely useless.  Though he let the Sarge make most of the decisions, luckily for us.

It took a couple a days to trot to the village, we came across some of our motorised infantry and a big Mex army patrol, but managed to get away from them.

When we got to the village there was a fair bit of damage, buildings burnt and a dozen or more graves, all locals.  The living were holed up in the church and Corporal cooky who speaks the lingo worked out what had happened, the bandits had gone the previous day and taken 5 women and a kid and loads of foodstuffs with them, we got onto their trail, which was good work from Running Wolf our Sioux scout as it was a day old.

After a day on the trail we saw a woman staggering towards us, it was one of the local woman taken by the banditos, she was muttering dead, dead (so cooky told us).  We carried on not quite expecting what to find.  Eventually came across the bandit camp which after careful scouting round showed all the bandits and most of the women and horses to be dead, this was pretty spooky as there were no signs of the attackers.

Further up the canyon were some Apache burial platforms, a trail from a woman led past them into the box canyon (Snakes Den), we were looking into the canyon when our scout sang out, he was being attacked.  I couldn't believe my eyes it was the dead apaches coming down from the platforms.  I was scared, I can tell you, we fired out rifles which took one out, but the others came on at us, we resorted to rifle butts which just seemed to bounce off them.

Sarge and the lieutenant then came into their own, every time the Sargeants shotgun boomed out one of these creatures turned to dust, the Lieutenant came striding into the thick of things with his sabre chopping them to pieces.  Some of our boys got fearful wounds including the Sarge, but he carried on when all the creatures were down to the edge of the canyon and started firing at an old Indian witchdoctor, then this massive snake reared up, it was the biggest rattler I have seen in my life, the sarge shot it but it got him in the leg, the snake slithered away and within a few minutes the sarge was dead, we tried to get the poison out of the wound but there was no chance.

The shaman wasn't dead and managed to throw a spear and nearly kill our Lieutenant, we continued firing until the Indian went down.  We found one of the banditos strung up in the canyon but still alive, also the Mex woman and child, who we took back to the village then back to camp.