The Dark Confederacy has never been particularly fussy about the men who answer its call. Courage is useful, loyalty even more so, while a clean conscience is probably a positive disadvantage. Among the latest veterans to drift into the company are three men whose reputations were made during the Civil War, when each performed deeds that earned him the title of hero. Time, defeat and several years spent in the company of things that should have remained buried have done little to improve any of them.

Captain Silas “Long Shot” Mercer — Rifle
Silas Mercer earned his reputation during the last desperate months of the war, when the Confederate cavalry was increasingly expected to accomplish miracles with tired horses, empty stomachs and ammunition that seemed to exist largely in quartermasters’ reports. During a confused Union attack on a supply column, Mercer found himself cut off with half a dozen wounded men and only a handful of soldiers still capable of fighting. Rather than abandon them, he took up position overlooking a narrow bridge and began picking off anyone attempting to cross.

Captain Silas

For nearly an hour Mercer kept the Federals convinced that a much larger Confederate force held the far bank. By the time they finally pushed across, the wounded had been carried clear and Mercer was already disappearing into the woods. By the following morning the story had improved considerably, and within a month Mercer had supposedly held the bridge single handed against an entire Union regiment. Mercer has never made much effort to correct the account.

Defeat did not sit comfortably with him. He returned home to discover the family farm ruined, his brothers dead and the world remarkably uninterested in the sacrifices of Captain Silas Mercer. He became a hunter, occasional gunman and professional teller of increasingly magnificent stories about the war, although enough witnesses survived to confirm that beneath the boasting there really had been a remarkably brave officer and an exceptionally good shot.

When Reverend Malachi Graves began gathering old soldiers to the Dark Confederacy, Mercer joined without hesitation. He still wears the remains of his officer’s coat and carries his rifle with almost religious devotion, claiming that the South has merely been waiting for men with sufficient patience to resume the argument.

Corporal Elijah “Old Smoke” Ransom — Musket
Elijah Ransom never wanted promotion and regarded becoming a corporal as an unfortunate consequence of surviving longer than the men around him. A Tennessee mountain boy, he had grown up hunting with an old musket long before anyone thought to put him into uniform. While other soldiers complained about their weapons, Ransom treated his battered musket like an old friend and claimed that anything worth shooting was worth waiting for.

Elijah Ransom

His reputation was secured during a retreat when he remained behind with a handful of stragglers to cover the withdrawal of his regiment. Ammunition was running short and Federal troops were advancing through thick woodland towards a ford crowded with retreating Confederates. Ransom moved from tree to tree, firing slowly and deliberately, then disappearing into the smoke before reloading and firing again from somewhere else. His companions did the same, creating the impression that an entire Confederate company still occupied the woods.

The deception bought enough time for the regiment to escape. Ransom was the last man across the ford, still carrying the same musket, although the stock had been cracked and the barrel blackened by powder. Someone later suggested he deserved a medal. Ransom replied that he would rather have some dry socks.

After the war he returned to the mountains and became increasingly solitary. Somewhere during those years he began claiming that dead soldiers sometimes followed him through the trees. Nobody paid much attention until he started naming men buried hundreds of miles away and describing conversations known only to their surviving comrades.

Reverend Malachi Graves recognised something useful in Ransom immediately. The old corporal now marches with the Ragged Veterans, still carrying his battered musket and occasionally speaking quietly to companions nobody else can see. When asked how he knows where an enemy is hiding, Ransom merely shrugs and says that somebody usually tells him.

Sergeant Gideon “Gatepost” Harlan — Shotgun
Gideon Harlan became a Confederate hero almost entirely by refusing to move. During a vicious little engagement largely forgotten by everyone except the men unfortunate enough to have participated in it, Harlan and the survivors of his company were ordered to hold a crossroads while the regiment withdrew. Ammunition disappeared rapidly, officers disappeared even faster, and eventually Harlan found himself commanding a handful of frightened men behind a shattered fence.

When the final Federal attack came, Harlan waited until the enemy was almost on top of them before rising with a captured double barrelled shotgun and leading a counterattack that drove them back long enough for his men to escape. Someone later asked why he had stayed when retreat would probably have saved him a great deal of trouble. Harlan answered that nobody had told him he was allowed to leave.

The story followed him for the remainder of the war, earning him the nickname “Gatepost,” because once Gideon Harlan had been planted somewhere it apparently required artillery to shift him. Harlan survived the war, although civilisation proved considerably more dangerous. He worked as a railway guard, deputy sheriff, bounty hunter and occasional hired muscle before discovering that his particular talents were welcomed by the Dark Confederacy. He asks remarkably few questions about Reverend Malachi Graves, the zombies or the other unnatural things accompanying the posse. After four years of war Harlan concluded that officers were capable of ordering almost anything, so a preacher raising dead soldiers merely represents a slight extension of established military practice. He still carries his battered double barrelled shotgun, rarely speaks and remains exactly where he is told until somebody gives him a convincing reason to move.

Together Mercer, Ransom and Harlan represent three different remnants of the old Confederate Army. Mercer remembers its glory rather better than it deserves, Ransom remembers the dead rather better than he would like, and Harlan simply remembers his orders. Alongside Quantrill, Bloody Bill, Reverend Malachi Graves and the other Ragged Veterans, they make the Dark Confederacy look less like a military formation and increasingly like the sort of veterans’ reunion that sensible people would cross several states to avoid.