Here is a write-up of session two of the Low Hangers from last Wednesday!

Here is a write-up of session two of the Low Hangers from last Wednesday!

Our game began with resolving previous session downtime activities. Bartholomew used his connections with some urchins from a Weeping Lady orphanage to spy around the Gaddoc Rail Station where a terminal is under Bluecoat quarantine after an Electrorail pulled in with a car full of passengers sick with a Slumber Plague outbreak. One child finds a service tunnel and sees that the Bluecoats are not delivering the aid brought by the Weeping Lady to the affected train passengers, instead they are waiting for them to die. There is also a Spirit Warden present who has set up wards and an anchor to cordon the souls on the rail car. The boy leaves the station but not before he notices a trio of Whispers slipping into the same service shaft he used. He listens as much as he can without being caught and determines that this is a new crew of spirit traders that are going to attempt to nab these souls for themselves before the Spirit Warden can dispose of them all.

The crew meets up with their broker Amancio and gets word of a new job that came down from some powerful folks, a job with absolutely no room for mistakes. In the cellar of the Mansion of the Duke de Mondallet in Six Towers Ward there is a safe that contains heirloom jewels and a large book. The book is very important to the client, but the crew can have the jewels. The job comes with info; the house is very heavily guarded and warded but there is a ball to be held and it is the perfect opportunity to strike. 

The plan chosen is deception and they will walk right in the front door. Edlun dresses in his finest formal-wear with Bart and Skovi disguised as his servants. The first flashback is to their newly promoted “friend’s” office, Inspector Orlan. The Crew asks if he might know of anything that could defeat wards. Orlan, still thinking they might be involved with the Spirit Wardens somehow, provides a spiritbane charm that looks like a silver ingot with baby teeth imbedded in it at strange angles and a small vial of electroplasm. Bart will carry them. Back at the front door, the butler asks for an invitation. A Flashback to Edlun’s mysterious (to the other players) background easily obtains an invitation, “Earl Birch Rowan, the butler announces as he gestures Edlun into the ball. At this point we queued up Oceans 11 montage music and cut to a flashback of the crew looking at stolen blueprints of the house to determine the cellar location. Edlun begins schmoozing near the buffet and  Bart and Skovi go down into the cellar to locate the safe. Unfortunately they don’t see a safe, just a lot of wine casks. Their poking around draws the attention of the maitre dis who asks what they are doing. Skovi rolled to resist consequences and the maitre dis turns from them with a scowl as a more pressing matter is announced to him back up stairs. The boys finally find a hidden door behind a wine rack that leads to descending stairs. Down below, in a large damp labyrinth of vaults and crates, they stumble onto a watchman’s body with the back of his skull freshly crushed in. Someone else is clearly down here with them. They locate the safe rather easily and Bart goes to work with his wrecking tools. Skovi covers him and hears a strange series of noises down the hall. Upon peeking around the corner he sees a faint glow and moves cautiously to investigate. Suddenly he is violently tackled by a snarling black eyed half rotten man that moves almost too fast to see. Luckily the thing broke Skovi’s lantern when it landed on top of him. It burned his arm, but caused the beast to fall back in fear just long enough for Skovi to draw and fire both his fine pistols, killing it immediately. As he returns, Bart is finishing up with the safe, “Skovi why are you making so much noise? This is a robbery!” Bart opens the safe door and gasps as his spiritbane charm becomes impossibly cold to the touch, he also notices the vial of electroplasm is now empty. Shrug, “I guess that’s that.” Inside the safe are the jewels as promised, and a large, old, finely bound tome entitled “On the Study and Practice of Spirit Manipulation”. At this point the duo decides to investigate and they discover the glow from earlier is coming from a sewer tunnel beyond a smashed in wall, probably where the thing came from. Suddenly they hear footsteps so they duck into the sewer tunnel and prepare to fight. “Skoooooooovi?” They hear Edlun drunkenly calling out for them. Bart manhandles him into the tunnel and they make their way down the tunnel until it lets out in a canal very near where they just so happened to have left their boat. Another successful job by the Low Hangers!

During downtime Skovi overindulges in his lust for isolation and wanders off into the Deadlands. His bounty-hunter friend Casta gets worried and goes looking for him but gets picked up by the Bluecoats on her way out of the city. Luckily she doesn’t spill anything of value to the boys in blue before they release her but Skovi definitely owes her one. Bartholomew heads back to Gaddoc Station to see if there has been any more moves by the new gang of spirit freaks. Meanwhile, Edlan overindulges in some of his finest wines. He goes off the deep end into a morose fit and wanders into the streets. No one has seen him since, but he gets that way when he’s in his moods. 

Definitely still getting the hang of the rules but it is beginning to be much more intuitive. I feel the rules are very good at contributing to immersion, unlike a great deal of rpg’s where they get in the way. Can’t wait until this weeks session!