TURF RETAINED!
The Dead Setters tricked the Reconciled into assaulting a fake spirit well and then hanged the Whisper’s contact in the Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good Caper.
Although you could also call this session the My God, It’s Full of Sixes Caper.
Our previous session ended with the gang getting frantic word that their Coalridge spirit well was under attack by organized ghosts, assisted/led by at least one living person. That made getting into this session pretty quick, since the situation was there and the players were reacting. I framed the score as a sort of “reverse score”, where the score was to protect turf, and the engagement roll wouldn’t be how well the enemy had planned to attack the spirit well initially, but how prepared they’d be against the Dead Setters’ inevitable response.
The plan? Deception. The method? Build a decoy spirit well.
So that worked pretty well (six). The attacking spirits and their handler, Flint (Teatime the Whisper’s rival) were completely flummoxed (a six on engagement), and while the ghosts had been getting the upper hand on the Dead Setters’ thugs, the arrival of the gang leaders quickly turned the tide (all sixes to command, ghost-punch, or banish the attackers).
Flint and his two hired whispers, Coil and Ruby, fled. They tried to cover their trail by dropping chokedust behind them but Deemo the Leech had downed quicksilver at the start of the battle. Now she gathered her will and commanded the remaining ghosts to capture those cowards. She critted, naturally, and we cut to basically this, if you swapped out the forest for a shitty basement:
Although a Devil’s Bargain would end with Flint and his two cronies dead badly enough to ding the gang the +2 Heat for killing, they learned the following before “threatening to hang” turned into “hangings for real reals”:
1. They were attacked by the Reconciled.
2. The Reconciled are enemies with the Dimmer Sisters.
3. They have some loyal pawns/possessees within the Path of Echoes (important to the Hound, since she’s trying to become an adept).
4. They are led by (maybe) a quorum which is (maybe) led in turn by Tamar, the Last and First Empress of Skovland, sort-of survivor of the Cataclysm and first to discover the means to retain one’s mind as a ghost. Maybe. That was one of the few middle-of-the-road results they got.
5. They are at -1 faction status with the Reconciled now. 🙂
6. Level 2 harm is much worse than level 1 harm, but that Attune crit was pretty awesome so maybe drinking quicksilver was worth it?
7. Teatime has a Krull glaive he can control with the ghost field or something.
I think we’re where we want to be with the game now too. I feel comfortable enough with butchering John’s setting that we’re finally getting into the high supernatural stuff I think we wanted from the get-go*. There are two demons loose on the city, the current stable of foes and allies are the weirder ones, like the Reconciled, Dimmer Sisters, and Path of Echoes, and most every PC is equipped for ghostbusting.
*But I wanted to ease into things and get our feet wet with “regular” gangs. We’re past that now.
#heestcomplete
Nice! Sometimes the Devil looks after his own huh? I Love the idea of a gang of ghosts assaulting the PC’s turf. I may just have to steal that.