Burns & Branding

They heat the iron until it hums orange and lay it on with a craftsman's patience. The burn goes to the third degree by design, this was never torture that wanted answers, it wanted a signature, and now you wear it.

• A branded mark, permanent by design, placed where your tormentor chose
• Burn dressed daily with honey and lard under linen for 7 days
• Fever-watch: infection in a burn this deep kills in 1899
• /me flinches when anything, even cloth, comes near the mark

Recovery 6+ weeks to scar over with carbolic washes and daily dressing; untreated it festers into fever and delirium inside a week.·Doctor, urgently

The poker comes off the coals and finds the sole of your bare foot. It's a scream you'll hear in your own ears for weeks, and the wound is hidden where no one will ever see it, but you'll walk on the memory every single day.

• Cannot bear weight on that foot for 5 days, crutch, cane, or hopping
• Foot bandaged and boot won't fit; a slipper or bare sock in public
• /me eases weight onto the foot and yanks it back up, hissing

Recovery 2-4 weeks off the foot with clean dressings; walk on it early and it cracks open and festers.·Doctor required

They open your fingers one by one and lay the hot iron across your palm. The hand closes around the pain and won't open right for weeks, and it's your gun hand, which was of course the point.

• No use of your gun hand for 7 days, no shooting, gripping, or dealing cards
• Hand wrapped in a boxing-glove of bandages, useless and obvious
• Fingers curl involuntarily around the burn; stretching them out is agony

Recovery 3-4 weeks of dressings before the hand grips again; without a doctor's care the scarring tightens the palm.·Doctor required

Scalding coffee, poured slow from a height, patient as rain. The scald blisters wide across your chest and shoulder, one great weeping sheet of it, and your shirt will not touch skin without your knees buckling.

• Cannot wear anything but the loosest cloth over the scald for 5 days
• Blisters weep through dressings; changed twice daily
• Sleeping only on your back or not at all for 4 days

Recovery 3 weeks under lard-and-linen dressings with a doctor; untreated blisters break, sour, and start a fever arc.·Doctor required

They open a shallow cut and grind gunpowder into it with a thumb, slow, watching your face the whole time. The wound heals, but the black speckle stays under the skin, a tattoo you never asked for.

• A permanent blue-black speckled mark where the powder settled, every bathhouse notices
• Wound scrubbed with carbolic and dressed for 3 days
• Burns and itches maddeningly as it heals

Recovery Skin closes in a week with a good scrubbing; the powder mark under it is yours for life.·Doctor required

One cigar burn at a time, unhurried, each one a coin-sized circle of fire that hurts far past its size. They've made a little constellation up your forearm, a pattern any doctor in the territory will recognize for exactly what it is.

• Half a dozen coin-sized burns in a deliberate row up one arm
• Sleeves stick to the burns; keep them dressed for 4 days
• /me rolls a sleeve back down quickly when eyes linger on the small round scars

Recovery 2-3 weeks to heal into pale round scars; picked or dirty, each one can sour separately.·Doctor required

The pot was fresh off the stove when it emptied across your forearm. The skin comes up in blisters from wrist to elbow, and everything you do today involves that arm more than you ever realized.

• Forearm blistered and bandaged; no lifting or leaning on it for 3 days
• Sleeve rolled back or cut away, hiding it isn't an option
• Cold water is the only mercy, and only for a moment

Recovery 10-14 days if the blisters stay whole under clean linen; broken and dirty, add a week and a fever risk.·Doctor required

You wrenched sideways as the brand came down and it caught you at an angle, a glancing kiss instead of the full signature. The burn is real and rageful, but the mark is a smear, no man will ever read a name in it.

• An angry raised burn streak, dressed for 4 days
• A permanent smudged scar, but a smear, not a legible brand
• /me shifts away from anyone who moves too fast near their burned side

Recovery 2-3 weeks to a smooth smeared scar with care; without it, a raised and jagged one.·Doctor required

A single cigar pressed to the back of your shoulder, held one breath too long. It's a coin-sized blister with a temper twice its size, and it will find every shirt seam you own for a week.

• A coin-sized burn blister that snags on every seam for 4 days
• Hurts absurdly out of proportion, flinch when clapped on the shoulder

Recovery Heals in 10 days to a small round scar; keep it clean and it stays a story, not a sickness.·Doctor advised

They warm the flat of a knife in the lamp and press it to your collarbone, not searing, but close. It leaves a welted red stripe like a fresh iron burn from a careless laundress, and it throbs with your pulse until dawn.

• A blade-flat welt burn at the collarbone, visible above most shirts for a week
• Throbs with your heartbeat the first night; sleep comes hard
• /me tugs their collar up over the red stripe out of habit

Recovery A week to fade with a daily dab of lard; no scar unless you scratch it.·Doctor advised

The coffee was a threat that slipped, or so they claimed. Either way it splashed across your hands, and both are speckle-burned red, tight and shiny, complaining at every fist you try to make.

• Both hands red and tender; gripping tools or reins is a wince for 3 days
• Wearing gloves hurts, not wearing them looks strange

Recovery Settles in 5-7 days; butter is a folk remedy that mostly wastes butter.·Doctor advised

A pinch of salt, ground into a shallow cut with a slow circling thumb. The wound is nothing; the memory of that particular fire is something. It sings for days every time you sweat.

• The cut re-lights every time you sweat for 3 days
• A shallow cut dressed once and healing clean
• You flinch at the sight of a salt cellar, and you're not proud of it

Recovery Cut heals in 5 days; the lesson lingers longer.·Doctor advised

They dragged the lamp flame close enough to do its work on the side of your head. Half an eyebrow and a patch of hair went up in a stink of burning feathers, and the skin beneath glows tender pink.

• Half an eyebrow gone and a singed patch of hair, comments guaranteed for weeks
• Tender scalded skin; the hat brim rubs it wrong for 3 days
• /me smells faintly of burnt hair no matter how they scrub

Recovery Skin calms in a week; the eyebrow takes a month to grow back and everyone will watch it happen.·Doctor advised

The cigar touched down and you jerked hard enough that it skipped off the skin. A small burn, barely blistered, but your heart is still going like a telegraph key an hour later.

• A small burn mark, dressed with a strip of cloth for 2 days
• Jumpy around lit cigars for a while, and who could blame you

Recovery Healed in 4-5 days; the mark fades to nothing.·No doctor needed

The kettle spout hissed steam across your knuckles as a preview of coming attractions. One knuckle blistered small and white, the kind of burn a cook picks up on any given Tuesday.

• A blistered knuckle that objects to fists and door handles for 2 days
• Nothing a bit of cool water and patience won't settle

Recovery 3-4 days and it's gone without a trace.·No doctor needed

The poker passed close enough to paint a red streak up your forearm without ever quite landing. It stings like a sunburn with ambition, and the hair along its path is crisped to nothing.

• A first-degree burn streak, red and sunburn-sore for 2 days
• A bald red stripe through your arm hair, mildly ridiculous

Recovery Settles in 3 days; the arm hair takes longer than the skin.·No doctor needed

They spent the hour describing what the iron would do and only touched you once, a half-second graze that reddened a patch on your shoulder. Your imagination did nine-tenths of their work for them.

• A red patch that fades in 2 days
• The smell of hot iron will straighten your spine for a week

Recovery Skin is fine by the day after tomorrow; nerves take a little longer.·No doctor needed

The iron came down and your heavy coat sleeve took the worst of the heat. There's a scorched brown iron-shape burned into the wool and only a warm pink patch on the arm beneath it.

• A branded coat sleeve, the mark landed on wool, not you
• Warm pink skin under it, gone by morning

Recovery Nothing to heal; the coat, sadly, is scarred for life.·No doctor needed

They talked too long and the iron sulked back toward black. When it finally touched down, it was a hot press, not a searing one, a pink kiss of a mark that will be gone before your fear is.

• A faint pink mark that fades in 2-3 days
• You watched the whole thing and flinch at glowing stove doors now

Recovery Faded by week's end without so much as a blister.·No doctor needed

You twist at the last half-second and the iron slams down onto your gunbelt, searing its whole signature deep into the leather with a hiss and a curl of smoke. They branded you, all right, you'll wear their mark on your belt for years, and tell the story every time someone asks.

• Their brand burned crisp into your gunbelt leather, the finest trophy in the county
• A warm patch of skin under the belt, gone by suppertime
• /me thumbs the brand scorched into their gunbelt and smiles slow

Recovery You need nothing; the belt is improved, if anything.·No doctor needed