A Groundskeeper Stomping Ground for the Hills of Bone and Whispers. Whew, that's a lot of links.
Trains in the Hills aren’t decommissioned to a scrapyard. Since they’re at least partially composed of mortared bones and melted flesh (how else do they self-navigate without the souls of the damned?), they must be ripped apart piece by piece and buried in a Locomotive Graveyard, far from the nearest rail lines, and a three-day funeral performed to keep them under the earth. It doesn’t always work, and sometimes, one can see train cars made from smog and crystal blood relentlessly chugging along the fog-choked tracks… Ghost Trains, kept running by the poor souls they’ve bonded to.
If you choose this Stomping Ground, you are no longer a Groundskeeper, and no longer look over a dungeon. You are instead a Conductor looking after a train. Instead of dungeon rooms, you roll for number of train cars, which must be stacked in linear order starting with a Hellfire Engine and ending with a Ghost Light Caboose.
BOONS
Mobile: You’ve fed the engine enough crushed bone meal to get the screaming wheels alit with hellfire once again. Instead of the gentle roll typical of Ghost Trains, your locomotive can race down the rusted rail lines at eye-watering speeds, so long as you keep feeding it the bones it needs.
Armed: Just in case, you’ve slapped some big, fuck-off guns to the side of your already intimidating train. Your train is outfitted with basic artillery. Choose a car to house the ammo cache and one (perhaps even the same) to house the actual guns.
Off-Roader: Your train, using a myriad of rotting arms it sprouts from its car beds, can crawl across open terrain in a most unsettling centipede-like manner. It scuttles at the pace of a human walking ponderously.
FAMILIAR FACES
Skeleton Crew. These bumbling skeletons, all missing various assorted limbs and bearing comically atavistic rotting organs, are all dressed in porter uniforms. If not given instruction by ticket-bearing guests, they all perform train “upkeep”, which usually involves repeating the same menial job ad nauseum (polishing two cups, one after the other, forever) or just exacerbating problems (putting out fires with the contents of the alcohol cabinet).
Cart Golem. This silver machine buzzes and whirs as it zooms through the residential cars looking for guests to deliver refreshments to. It bears a SUPPLY in its locked cabinet chest if it is placated with the appropriate password.
Sophia d’Regina Haverford Jeris. “Of the Terrin Jerisses, naturally. We want nothing to do with those uncultured Caldwell Jerisses, now do we?” This fussy noble passenger has not yet realized that she died a while ago, and is now a ghost. Unfortunately, she plans to make it everyone else’s problem. “Why can I not pick up this glass of wine I ordered? Can you dry it off again, it must still be too wet!”
Demonic Engineer. A column of angular bones scrimshawed with infernal sigils and infernally-edited passages of scriptures. The bones it molts are used to power the engine’s furnaces. However, for all the bones it donates, it asks for the equivalent back in fresh flesh, for what it calls personal reasons.
Ol’ MaTarkin. He’s still alive, you think? At the very least, he breathes, eats, drinks. He says he snuck onto one of the cars, and he’s an unemployed demolitionist. He looks, for the most part, like a dumpy old Dwarvish pauper. However, his eyes are a violent crimson, and his pickaxe is named DEFLOWER THEM CAVERNS, which definitely isn’t a great sign.
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