“What’s Skovland like?”

“What’s Skovland like?”

“I don’t know, what is it like?”

The Dead Setters evade the wrath of Lord Strangleford and the Imperial Navy by running to Skovland in the Non Extradition Country Caper.

In the I’m on a Boat Caper, the gang hijacked Strangford’s newest, largest, most advanced leviathan hunting vessel ever built, the Colossus. Although the score was over, the crew couldn’t just putter over to the Eels’ old waterway access and park the ship. They had just broached 3 Wanted stars, and the Navy was after them.

Could they fight and board the warship? Maybe, if the navy was there to board them (they weren’t). But they did owe Ulf Ironborn a favor from several sessions ago (smuggling his family out of Skovland), and Skovland was somewhere that was not Duskwall.

And so, with several references to Red Seas Under Red Skies, the Dead Setters steamed for Skovland and the cold, white north.

We had a strange downtime – being on a ship meant some downtime actions wouldn’t necessarily be available, but everyone found ways to indulge their vice, whether it was nicking the lion’s share of luxuries from the officers’ quarters or gambling with their cohort of Rovers in the hold.

We also weren’t on a score, but we had some opportunities for action rolls as Raven the Hound used her hunting raven to Survey for a cove or similar to stash the Colossus while the Setters headed overland to Lockport. Everyone fought off posession attempts, because we assumed the non-city areas of Skovland were deathlands just like Akoros.

They arrived mostly none the worse for wear, and we started making up Skovland as we went. Rook the Cutter was from Skovland, and aggravated everyone with how majestic and historic the motherland was. It wasn’t, really – I used the phrase “in the shadow of former greatness”, and we generally agreed it was about 80/20 Russian to Viking. Great orthodox-style ornate architecture, but long-looted and stripped by the occupying imperial military. Bases of toppled statues. Street urchins. Ramshackle wagons. Elevated train lines. Very industrial but in a black-lung, run-down kind of way. We also fleshed out the Skovland Refugees faction a bit, and added some mafiya-type characterization to them so they’d deserve their Tier IV rating.

Richter the Spider tried to gather information on Ulf Ironborn’s family by visiting a sauna and chatting up the people there. With a 1, the people turned out to be imperial officers, and the basic gist was that Ulf’s family were prisoners of the state, being used to lure him back for a quick death.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to plan a score for next time.

Bird Rentals -> Burt Reynolds -> Raven’s player wouldn’t let me retcon her raven into a firebird. 🙁

#heestcomplete