The Embers of the Wilderness

Inspired by and adapted from Red Dead Redemption.

In 1899, the wilderness era of North America was drawing to a close.

Railroad tracks cut through New Mexico's red deserts. Pinkerton detectives in black suits trampled the cowboys' legend of freedom, while bankers and railroad companies used their iron hooves to herd the last wilderness into civilization's cage. The campfires of the old era were about to burn out. Only a few embers remained, stubbornly smoldering in the wind.

Eli Cole, once the Raven Gang's crack shot, lost everything when his most trusted brother betrayed him. After the gang leader who had treated him like a son was killed on the frontier, Eli was framed as the traitor who had sold out his brothers. With a $5,000 bounty on his head, he spent five years on the run in the wilderness. When he intervened in Tumbleweed, he stumbled into an ambush targeting the traitors, only to fall into a vast trap laid by the Pinkertons.

After escaping the gunfire of Black Canyon, he unexpectedly encountered a group of outlaws hunted by the changing times, too. They were remnants of a gang left wandering after the Blackwater heist, Arthur Morgan struggling between ideals and betrayal, and John Marston doing everything he could to find his family a safe haven. Their common enemy and similar fates made them brothers who could trust one another with their lives.

Following the trail of revenge, Eli witnessed a gang's collapse and final days, a man's redemption amid illness and delusion, and a father and son struggling and carrying on through the tide of history. From the campfire at Horseshoe Overlook to the rainy nights of Saint Denis, from the family feud in Rhodes to the final falling-out atop the snowy mountain, and then the brief respite at Beecher's Hope, the story ultimately ends on the eve of the First World War with the sound of