I was thinking about the Dimmer Sisters on the train this morning and wrote this, riffing off the details my players came up with. Duskwall’s a fun place to create in. 🙂
I was thinking about the Dimmer Sisters on the train this morning and wrote this, riffing off the details my players…
I was thinking about the Dimmer Sisters on the train this morning and wrote this, riffing off the details my players…
This is great!
Thanks! I’m really pleased to hear that. 😀 Would you mind if I shared it outside Tavern Keeper/this community?
Sure, go ahead!
Fantastic!
Nice writing!
Thanks!
To me, prostitution union feels too nice and avoids potential stories/conflicts (though one may argue those conflicts and stories for him/her are wrong and must be avoided). Medicine bit feels somewhat too nice as well, as if it is silly to even trust someone else
I’m curious what you mean by ‘too nice’.
Just to follow up on the medicine thing, it’s actually based on what was going on in medicine in western Europe during the Industrial Revolution (which is what Blades is roughly analogous to). There was this huge push to have science take over medicine and care, but it was done by pushing out anyone who wasn’t part of the upper class and male, and a lot of the ideas they had were anywhere from nonsensical to downright lethal. This was especially true when it came to obstetrics and women in general, as they basically must threw out and even criminalized knowledge built up over generations simply because it didn’t come from Science.
So, for Duskwall, it made sense to me that a coven of witches would become the stewards of that ‘folk’ wisdom and, for a fee, protect people like midwives and butchers (who actually understood how the body works and were interested in actually saving people) against the rich shits who want to establish Medicine as a profitable, prestigious business and think hysteria is a real thing.
As for the prostitution angle, my intention wasn’t to simply place any stories or conflicts involving the sex trade out of bounds. You could certainly argue that as I described the Sisters’ influence in the city is overstated, but there’s always a gap between how things are perceived and how they really are. Also, it makes sense to me that an organization as feared as the Sisters would be able to trade on that cachet to make connections and apply leverage above their station. You’ll note I didn’t suggest the Sisters control the sex trade in Duskwall, just that they see cases of flagrant abuse or predation come to a bad end.
So it’s not that Duskwall in my vision is free of Jack the Ripper, it’s that after the first few murders they found most of him hanging from a lamp post.
For me ‘too nice’ means ‘too one-sided’ and ‘too happy-ending-easy-working’. Your sisters sound like legitimately good girls in a setting which for me looked like there’re no explicitly good guys or girls. Prostitute unions sound so good no one will work for other groups – and doubly so because sisters will fight you then. So where’s conflict? E.g. in Firefly Guild of Companions works because they’re only elite women, and even so it felt somewhat optimistic, but it was in line with the show in general. ‘Heart of Gold’ worked because it was implied that this happy arangement was exception, not a rule. If we remove brothels and pimps, we remove stories to be told about them.
“So it’s not that Duskwall in my vision is free of Jack the Ripper, it’s that after the first few murders they found most of him hanging from a lamp post.”
1) it means that PCs are not the heroes who will fight Jack the Ripper, NPC Sisters will. Which is wrong, because they’re not the focus of stories.
2) it means that effectively they control trade. When organization can see ‘cases of abuse come to bad end’ they effectively control others by saying ‘do what we say or we will kill you’ and having means to do so. Even moreso if they can matter-of-factly fight off major threat like Jack the Ripper.
Same thing about medicine – if only the sisters and their ‘folk wisdom’ is right then it’s one-sided! if scientific medicine is stupid and does not work, then why it is there in the first place? To placate the need for explanations? I believe more in a middle ground, when some things Doctors can do, which Folk stuff cannot or will not, and vice versa. This allows you to have both groups as legitimate parts of the story.
Guns_n_Droids Eh, I see what you’re saying, but I do not agree that it’s too nice to be useful.
Part of the vulnerability of this game is that it is so intensely relational. Consider how the tone of the Dimmer Sisters’ presence changes when an ally abuses a sex worker and now needs protection from them. Or, if the crew is hired to rip off one of their treasuries and gets on their bad side.
If you have a moralistic stance, consider the fun to be had if a group shuts down a brothel and offers the workers legitimate jobs, and the Dimmer Sisters apply themselves to pull the workers back into the trade.
Or the Sisters are responsible for wiping out a group of uncooperative blue coats, and official Whispers of the state are now working on bringing them down, and the heat is unbearable for smaller operators like your gang.
As for the medicine angle, the new medicine works well enough for the wealthy. And the Dimmer sisters prey on the vulnerable and increase their influence by gathering power in exchange for their services; power that wrecks lives as their human tools are used and discarded.
I think it’s a legit Duskwall approach. Of course, you can do something else with them in your Duskwall.
In mine, there are two sisters, and they are named Mary Kate and Ashley. They like warpstone fueled explosives. Your mileage may vary. =)
If I had written an article about the Bluecoats and said they enforce the law across the city and punish the wicked, would you read that as me saying there’s no crime in Duskwall? Of course not. Same with my version of the Sisters. Just because this is what they aim to do doesn’t mean they’re in complete control.
The reason I like this angle is that it brings a focus to the tension between old ways and new, and gives that tension some teeth. On one side you have electroshock and lobotomies and live vivisection and the belief that rich people don’t need to wash their hands against poultices and midwifery and folk wisdom, layered with class struggle and state-sponsored violence. But that’s also the tension between rationality and superstition. And in that tension is where stories come in.
I specifically involved the Sisters in the sex trade because I’m tired of stories that depend on grinding oppression. To me, a world where horror can be visited both up and down the ladder is much more interesting than just punching down. Plus, with the addition of industrial fantasy and ghosts there’s so many cool stories. A rampaging Hungry Horror killing every man over six feet with red hair because a revenge summoning wasn’t specific enough and now the players have to either find a way to banish the horror or find the real target and feed him to it, for example, is way more exciting than using murdered sex workers as a prop to make a villain scary.
Basically, what I’m saying is that saying the oppressed can fight back, even asymmetrically, doesn’t make a world ‘nice’, it just means that no-one is safe, not even behind the buttresses of wealth and power.
Also, to follow on to the notion that empowering factions that aren’t traditionally given power kills stories or takrs away play, one of the things that most appeals to me about this setting and settings like it is that the players are not and should not be be the only actors in world. This isn’t Skyrim where the world stands still waiting to be seen, everyone has agency and agendas and we.play to see how those conflict with the players’.
To follow on.from my Jack the Ripper example. Imagine the players have a noble contact, and she comes to them to ask them to investigate the death of her friend, who was found hanging by his.intestines from a lamp post. On the surface it looks like a murder and robbery, but as.they dig they get tangled up in some depraved rich man’s cult with human sacrifice and spirit possession that they’ll be lucky just to escape from.
Sounds like fun to me.
(Please excuse my horrible thumb typing)
Agreed on all counts, Malcolm.
Andrew Shields Malcolm Wilson I see that I’ve read it more like ‘Word of God says Sisters are legitimately stronger and nicer then anyone’, and this was in fact closer to a ‘pamphlet’, which is by definition exaggerating reality a bit. In this sense I fully agree that Sister’s stance as holders of the old knowledge and sponsors of the ‘nicer side’ of sexual trade can work and will make setting richer.
Yeah, that’s a good way to put it. I was trying more to be evocative than prescriptive. 🙂