Location

Coltgrave Junction

Created by Summon Worlds creator

Coltgrave Junction sprawls across a dusty crossroads where two major rail lines converge with the Old Merchant's Road, creating a vital trading hub that has grown prosperous and sinister in equal measure. For three decades, Sheriff Wendel Crove has maintained iron-fisted control over this frontier town, having methodically eliminated each of his predecessors to consolidate power—a rise he euphemistically refers to as "promotion." The courthouse perches atop the highest hill overlooking the settlement, and beside it stands a grotesque monument: a cottonwood tree, long since killed and drained of life, kept vertical only by the deep grooves worn into its remaining branches from countless ropes. Each spring, the impossibly dead tree bears small, black fruit the size of apples—leathery, organic, undeniably alive—which the deputies hastily bury before word spreads to passing travelers. The law enforcement here operates under a doctrine of absolute authority, with each badge forged from the melted brass casings of bullets the office deems "justified," and the current tally numbers eight hundred and seventy-two. A grim reputation clings to Coltgrave Junction: in the thirty-one years of Crove's tenure, not a single fugitive has ever escaped south from the town alive. The railroad brings commerce and strangers, yet few linger long once they sense the corruption that has calcified into the very foundation of local governance. Those who call Coltgrave Junction home do so out of necessity rather than choice, bound by economic dependence to a place where justice has become indistinguishable from murder.