Midian, Kansas

Basic Information

Midian was a small oil boomtown located in Butler County, KS West of nearby El Dorado, Kansas. Abandoned circa 1920, until the mid-1990s all that remained visible of the original town was the old wrought iron arch that marked the entrance to the already relocated Midian cemetery. This arch was removed circa 1995 due to construction on nearby Highway 254 and the surrounding county roads. Today the town of Midian officially exists only in cyberspace, a ghost in the machine due to erroneous search engine entries such as the one referenced below. The former Midian town site is now considered to be part of rural Butler County and is under the legal jurisdiction of the Butler County Sheriff's Office.

Sources

Bibliography

1. Midian at Mapquest

2. Midian Archeological Investigation

Game and Story Use

• The town of Midian was so named because of its mystical connections to the Masonic Order of the Midian Shrine and the biblical Midian, fourth son of Abraham and founder of a kingdom known by the same name.
  • In the basement of one of the small farm houses near the former site of Midian, a truly ancient Midianite shrine, possessed of supernatural powers, rests, long since forgotten.
• The existence in cyberspace could lead to all sorts of hilarity, up to and including a literal ghost town (or at least a mythago town).
  • For added amusement, in a version of the Unmasqued World with the right metaphysics a real town might appear there and act as a gateway between the material world and cyberspace.
• Perhaps PCs are given an address in a town that appears not to exist in real life - maybe because it's been abandoned and bulldozed (as a pre-1920 address in Midian would have been), or because, Brigadoon style, for most of the time the town doesn't exist.
• Provides a good version of Tiz al-nabi for the US … not quite so much with the taboo, but certainly pretty good for the snipe-hunting.