With the body pulled from the river now shrouded and carried to the mission, the question shifts from what happened to who will do anything about it. Sister Margaret leans on her war-time medical experience to examine the stranger, narrowing down how long she’s been dead and confirming one unsettling detail: this is no weathered drifter or camp follower, but a woman of clear means whose absence should matter to someone. While Father Nos prepares to see to the burial, Margaret quietly holds back what she’s learned about similar wounds elsewhere in the camp and turns to Buckman’s occult tome for answers—finding mostly pompous rambling, half-mad “wisdom,” and just enough disturbing ritual detail to keep her uneasy.
Bjorn and Gregory ride into town, determined to treat the river death like more than just another frontier misfortune. At the Silver Dollar they confront Herman Brewster, the man who helped secure their land and seems to know everyone worth knowing in Missouri Crossing. Under Bjorn’s steady pressure, Herman’s reaction to the news of a dead woman is far more telling than his words, drawing unwanted attention from Henry, the saloon’s watchful proprietor and local power. By the time they leave, the message is clear: in a town with no real lawmen, asking the wrong questions about the wrong dead woman can make you just as many enemies as allies.
Call of Cthulhu – Down Darker Trails: Missouri Crossing is a Western horror campaign set in 1867, using the Down Darker Trails supplement for Call of Cthulhu 7th Edition. The story follows the founding generations of Missouri Crossing, a rough camp town in what will one day become Bismarck, North Dakota—decades before the events of The Ultimate Evil. As immigrants, veterans, and drifters stake their claim on a cold, contested landscape, they must navigate community, lawlessness, prejudice, and the brutal realities of frontier life. Against this backdrop of manifest destiny, “northern horror” takes shape: long distances, bitter weather, scarce resources, and the creeping realization that some things lurking beyond the firelight are far worse than bandits or hunger.
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