Actual Play Report

Actual Play Report

The group of Smugglers known as The Devil’s Bargain Crew emerge right after the events with The Legion. They’re holed up in a tower on the coast between Crow’s Foot and Charhollow, with a hidden water entrance to store their boat. Nightmare the whisper, Nero the cutter, Silvertongue the Slide, Pilgrim the lurk, and Red eyes the hound, are hired by a muscled man wearing oil stained coveralls to clean up the slaughtered remains of *The River Eels, whose killers are unknown.

Wanting to know a bit about what went on, SIlvertongue calls in his bartender friend Klyra to see if she knows anything about what had happened. After a friendly chat, she concedes that she knows of the gang and that they were in the pockets of a gang higher up on the food chain.

Most of the crew hops onto an old fishing boat used for smuggling and head their way towards the docks. Red eyes scouts the place out and gives a signal to the team via hunting pet that something is afoot. Just outside the deceased gang’s old hideout a small contingent of Red Sashes that are checking out the area. Silvertongue, knowing that their gangs are still on good terms, convince the leader of the small force that his gang was hired to clean up the area before the Bluecoats fully find out what had happened here.

When attempting to remove the bodies, a ghost begins to rise from the beheaded corpse of Horus Dirken, leader of The River Eels and it doesn’t take long before Nightmare jumps into action, trapping his soul in a spirit bottle, thinking she could sell him somewhere. With that taken care of, they quietly take the twelve bodies onto their boat and figure out they could hijack someone’s hagfish farm to dispose of the bodies. During the trip south to Coalridge, Red eyes notices an electroplasmic mist seeping from the cloth covering the pile of bodies and freaks out. Nightmare strains herself to save her crew from abandoning ship, allowing them to fight the ghosts.

Red eyes shows his real aptitude with his electroplasmic ammunition and begins putting down ghosts left and right, with the rest of the crew attempting to fight becoming possessed with spirit charms. Nightmare manages to snag another ghost as another causes Silvertongue, at the wheel, to slam into the dice of the canal and causing nearby pedestrians to notice the clamor. Soon enough, the ghosts are put down with everyone shaken but alive. They reach the hagfish farm, noticing that the exterior is guarded by a lightning wall. Nightmare and Pilgrim try to sneak their way to find the off switch only to find a guard in the nearby building. Pilgrim attempts to take him out quietly, only to find himself wrestling with the man on the floor. They struggle, but the lurk succeeds. With the barrier down, the crew unloads the bodies and hightails it out, making sure to turn the barrier back on.

With the crew back at their hideout, they realize that the person who offered the job was a Lampblack. Soon enough, they are headed to meet with Bazso Baz. The two gangs are already on bad terms, but the leader of the Lampblacks offers a choice: forfeit a portion of the pay and ally and promise to stay out of the war with the Red Sashes, leaving The Devil’s Bargain Crew on even terms with both crews, or take their pay and leave safely and risk being crushed under the Lampblacks’ boots. They choose the latter.

Rewards

2 rep

6 coin for a medium job

2 heat, kept relatively quiet.

Entanglements

Marlene, a friend of Nero, gets taken in by the Bluecoats for questioning but refuses to squeal.

Downtime

Nightmare spends time drinking the finest wine she can find with a vampire named Stras, indulging for both turns. Silvertongue spends a few turns working on making a mechanical gauntlet with a spring-loaded blade and finishes the 8 segment clock. Pilgrim and Nero work to acquire a healer known to consort with The Grey Cloaks, a group hostile to the crew. With her help, Pilgrim recovers from a hand burn caused by a misfired pistol during the gun fight. Nero then indulges in his vice by getting a “special tattoo” from the Bloodletters. Red Eyes goes out for personal training by hunting and killing a civilian in the dead of night, followed by indulging in a secret vice.

GM Notes

Running five people seems a bit much in terms of trying to focus on individual characters, so it quickly becomes more about the tensions that arise from that man people trying to assert power.