Here is an actual play from our first session last week.

Here is an actual play from our first session last week.

 We started off with character creation and ended up with Edlun the Slide, Bartholomew the Cutter, and Sven Lundvik Gunderson vund Serndivik AKA Skovi who was a Hunter. We then moved on to crew creation using the Thieves crew book to establish the Low Hangers. Creation time for crew and players took about an hour with some setting discussion thrown in as well. Pretty darn good for starting a new system.

We jumped straight into the action with a meeting with Amancio, their broker contact. Amancio runs an art gallery but acts a middle man between the underworld crews and the rich clients with too much class to deal directly with criminals. Amancio fed them a new job from Brynna Skyrkallan, the Duskwall diplomat of Skovlan. Apparently an inspector with a hatred for all Skovlanders, but especially the refugees in Duskwall, was setting up innocent Skovland immigrants and having them falsely convicted in order to get them off the streets. Brynna needed some kind of hard evidence to take to the Duskwall Council in order to protect her countrymen. Skovi, being a true blue blooded Skovlander was the first to agree to the job.

The crew’s first action was to discover how the Inspector was convicting these innocents. This was easily done by Skovi dropping some questions in the immigrant community. Apparently the Inspector was planting a terrible new drug on them in order to force arrests. The drug itself was known as Ash and was a derivative of the raw remains of a corpse after being cremated with Electroplasm. When consumed, Ash delivers an intense and addictive hallucination consisting of the strongest memories of the deceased. (Needless to say the Spirit Wardens will not tolerate anyone in possession of the substance.) Armed with this knowledge the crew was immediately ready to act; they wouldn’t just be providing the good Madam Skyrkallan with dirt on the Inspector, they would be eliminating the problem altogether. Edlun used his lady love, the woman of the night, Nyryx to lead them in the direction of an ambitious Bluecoat client of hers, Orlan, that may want to knock a fellow law enforcer out of the way to make room for his promotion. With the constable identified they set up a meet and Edlun let his Sway run wild while Bartholomew loomed hulking behind him to put a little intimidation into the deal. Edlun laid out the whole story of the Inspector and the drugs and let slip some details to make Orlan think that MAYBE he had something to do with a Spirit Warden investigation into the Ash trade. Now Orlan was under the impression he was dealing with something bigger than his current pay grade and  was sure if he helped out he would be justly rewarded. He decided to leave immediately to take the Inspector into custody, with the Ash in his flat as evidence of his corruption.

 Here we ran a short flashback scene in order to ensure there WAS Ash in the Inspector’s flat. Skovi and Bartholomew would break in through a window while Edlun tried to draw attention away by arguing with a food vendor across the street. The operation was successful and they were able to plant the drugs, but a passing Dock worker caught sight of them and demanded 1 coin to keep his mouth shut. Flashing forward to the present, Orlan and his squad kick in the door of the flat and arrest the outraged Inspector after finding a large stash of illicit drugs in his pillow. The Duskwall Daily Crier headlines the next day were a tell-all about the heroic Orlan who was promoted for his honorable duties arresting a corrupted official and ensuring justice reigns in Duskwall again. Needless to say Brynna was more than happy and the crew gained a little extra rep for going above and beyond. We did a quick run through Payoff, Entanglements and  downtime actions but saved most of it for later discussion.

All in all we played a little fast and loose with the rules since it was our first foray but tried to get a good baseline familiarity with the mechanics and it was a really good introduction to Blades in the Dark. One thing I am doing to help make the city seem a little more alive is sending out a “Word on the Street” and a “Duskwall Daily Crier” message between each session.

The word on the street is to keep the crew in the know on underworld events, such as the war in Crow’s Foot. This works well to communicate Faction Clock events that might become public. The Duskwall Daily Crier message serves as a means to communicate city-wide public events that the crew might be interested in. In this weeks case it was an electrorail car quarantine at the station after reports of plague on board. 

Last night we had our second session, so if there is any interest in the future capers of the Low Hangers I’ll write another synopsis to share.