The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Spider’s player was sick and the Hound’s player was seeing something called a Caravan Palace, so with a Cutter, Leech, and Whisper left, we agreed that tracking down Roric’s ghost to use for intel in an assault on Lyssa’s Crows was interesting enough to be done in “heist time”.

Why were the PCs so pissed at the Crows? They had a +1 status with them on paper, but several sessions ago Lyssa discovered the Dead Setters’ hidden lair’s location. She sent Belden (her second) and a small group in the lair to lean on the Setters. 8 Coin in 3 days. I grossly underestimated how affronted my players would be at this, and how little respect they would have for larger gangs. To their credit, they have bloodied far larger organizations, so it’s not unwarranted. The end result was Belden was captured, interrogated, and vivisected for information. The vivisection bit was a great Devil’s Bargain because it skewed a little too close to what the Leech did to indulge her vices, and it limited Belden’s usefulness. It’s just so hard to arrange a live subject, though. Wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.

Their grisly work done, Teatime the Whisper worked up a sort of Dresden-esque magical compass using Belden’s flayed skull and the gang set out into the seedier parts of Duskwall, running afoul of a few random encounters as they completed the “find Roric” clock.

What the players didn’t know was that I’d been keeping a clock for Roric since close to the start of the campaign. The formerly incorporeal Crow boss was now a vampire, and was gathering a small splinter cell of loyal Crows and new recruits. These guys caught the Setters off guard but with a friggin’ crit on a Sway check, Teatime made fast friends and the Dead Setters and Blackbirds (maybe? Not in love with the name yet) are well on their way to deposing Lyssa.

Fun tidbits:

1. My original idea for Roric’s current body was a female Red Sash guard the party tossed to hungry ghosts in the first heist. However, I kept going more and more piratical with my accent and I can’t shake the image of Roric as Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe he’ll get a slight retcon.

2. Maybe Lord Scurlock doesn’t like the idea of an “unauthorized” vampire running around his city? He’s a contact on Teatime’s sheet and I haven’t used him much. Might be fun to pit a contact against an ally.

3. Roric’s splinter cell has a Whisper with a pack of controlled attack dogs (inspired by a post on this community). Thank you, Nick Belleque!

4. We only had 3 players, which meant we got more spotlight time for everyone and hit all their XP triggers. Normally it’s harder to get those “belief/drive” XPs in heist time, but taking a page from Michael Yater’s games, I ended up asking a few more leading questions for each character to get some more flavor into the narrative.

#heestcomplete