The Dark Confederacy is now essentially complete, but apparently Reverend Malachi Graves has decided that there is no such thing as having too many dubious characters hanging around. The latest additions are three Hired Guns, a Gravedigger, a Stitch Doctor and the gunslinger Eliza Stone. All three fit rather too comfortably alongside Quantrill, Bloody Bill, the Ragged Veterans and the assorted walking dead already serving the cause.

Ephraim Hodge, Gravedigger

Ephraim Hodge spent most of the war digging graves for Confederate soldiers, although exactly how many of his customers were dead before he started digging has always been a matter of some debate. After the surrender he drifted west, following battlefields, epidemics, mining disasters and gunfights with the quiet professionalism of a man who knew that sooner or later everyone required his services. He carries a shovel, a revolver and a tape for measuring bodies, although he rarely bothers with the last of these any more.

Hodge first encountered Reverend Malachi Graves when the Necromancer arrived at a cemetery where Ephraim was working and began undoing several hours of perfectly good burial. Most gravediggers would probably have objected. Ephraim merely negotiated a fee for putting the occupants back afterwards. Since then he has occasionally accompanied Graves and his Dark Confederates, partly for the money and partly because travelling with a Necromancer provides an unusually reliable source of repeat business. His principal complaint is that Graves keeps raising people whom Ephraim has already been paid to bury.

Doctor Thaddeus Vane, Stitch Doctor

Doctor Thaddeus Vane insists that he was once a properly trained surgeon, although nobody has yet discovered where he studied and Vane becomes remarkably vague whenever the subject arises. During the war he served with several Confederate field hospitals, where shortages of medicines, instruments and occasionally qualified medical personnel encouraged a distinctly experimental approach to surgery. Vane discovered that there was very little that could not be repaired with a needle, strong thread, whiskey and sufficient determination.

The end of the war did nothing to improve his methods. Moving west, Vane developed a profitable practice treating gunshot wounds without asking inconvenient questions about how they had been acquired. His patients have included gunfighters, outlaws, deserters and several individuals who were technically dead when they arrived. The last category eventually brought him to the attention of Reverend Graves. The two discovered a considerable professional overlap. Graves provides the supernatural means of getting a corpse moving again while Vane makes certain that all the important pieces remain attached.

Nobody in the posse particularly likes being treated by Doctor Vane. On the other hand, given the alternatives available in the Dark Confederacy, waking up with somebody else’s finger attached is generally considered a successful medical outcome.

Eliza Stone, Gunslinger

Then there is Eliza Stone, a gunslinger who requires considerably less introduction and considerably more caution. She has no particular loyalty to the Confederacy, dead or otherwise. Eliza works for money and has survived this long by understanding that principles are considerably less useful than ammunition when somebody is shooting at you.

Her reputation was made through a succession of gunfights that tended to leave Eliza standing and somebody else requiring the services of Ephraim Hodge. She is quick, thoroughly professional and apparently quite untroubled by the increasingly strange collection of corpses, fanatics and former Confederate killers surrounding Reverend Graves. In the world of Dracula’s America, perhaps that merely demonstrates a healthy ability to adapt.

Graves hired her because she is very good with a gun. Eliza accepted because his money was good and because a Necromancer accompanied by undead Confederate veterans discourages people from attempting to avoid payment. It is a purely professional relationship. At least that is what Eliza says.

So the Dark Confederacy now has its Gravedigger to dispose of the casualties, its Stitch Doctor to put them back together and Reverend Graves to raise them from the dead. Eliza Stone stands nearby with a loaded gun providing fresh material for all three.

It is difficult to imagine a more efficient organisation.