Blood On Silk: Episode 3 – The First Big Deal

Blood On Silk: Episode 3 – The First Big Deal

The Dusters (as the group now calls themselves) was able to hear about an influential dilettante noble who was coming down to the slums in search of the “next new thing”. Seeing an opportunity to make a large amount of coin (something they need after the expenses of recovering from the last job.)

The group, hearing from Thaddeus the Spider’s contact of the opportunity, did what they could to learn about this nobleman. A connoisseur of life-infused foods, the group uses this knowledge to send a “recommendation” of a location through the contact, using that as the “social connection” to try and build themselves up. I made an error here originally, having them set in a brothel and having them try to figure out how to change things. I realized that the group should be the ones to recommend the place, not an NPC.

The group learns that they will be having a discussion with the nobleman in a nice seafood restaurant in Silkshore, built with Dagger Isle thematics to it. There they were to meet him with two other representatives from two other gangs; The Billhooks and the Red Runners. With their rival arriving there, the group gathered info the best they could to see who was going to be bringing what to the table.

They learned that not only were the Red Runners coming but Narcus Haig, the leader of the group, was going to be there with his second in command. As for the Billhooks, they were just shipping in Black Lotus but not a large amount of it. What they did seem to be bringing in, however, is weaponry. Lots of weaponry.

The meeting began and the group got a 6 for their engagement roll. The meeting was going swimmingly and Thaddeus began knocking away Sway and Consort rolls. Using a flashback, they had taken the blood rock that had been stolen from their last job and gave it to addicts and corralled them to the location where the meeting was going down. Atiya was beside him as a guard and as an assistant, since the Cutter was missing this session, while the Hound and the Lurk kept eyes outside and helped rile up the crowd.

Narcus was able to sway the very petty noble’s attention from the fiasco outside, something that the Spider didn’t try to desist. However, their drug (having the upgrade “The Good Stuff”) went magnificently well upon the servant the noble fed it to. Pendragyn was convinced to buy their supply…which led to the next issue.

The Billhooks who attended, had rigged these acrid smoke bombs in their jacket and had released them as they showed their real intention; they were here to kidnap the nobleman for a fine ransom! The Spider flashbacked again, this time having smuggled in gas masks (just in case). Outside, two armored coaches arrive filled with Billhooks who begin to close in on the building. Lagertha the Lurk sneaks off towards the back of the large restaurant, trying to find another way in. Torvald the Hound begins laying down suppression upon the group but starts taking negative quickly. The player decided to focus on healing rather than stress reduction and came into the score with 7 stress! It would be a lesson for him to learn, for certain, as he was eventually caught up with after taking out the Billhook’s gunners. After trying to set an explosive, failing, and then trying to run away, failing again, he was cut down and beaten upon in one of the alleyways and left to die in the filth.

The others didn’t have a much better time either, as critical rolls came up as ones and twos. Thaddeus tried to give a mask to one of the noble’s guards, but the complication was that the Billhook broke the visor, meaning it was half as efficient. Atiya the Whisper tried to get the nobleman out of there and ended up in a tug of war with the Billhooks, who kept getting advantage back and then losing it again.Lagertha kills the Billhook getaway driver that arrives in the back of the establishment after falling into the water with them.

The group fights hard and long, the Spider being taken out by stress to ensure that the group knows the best route to escape from the establishment. The Lurk is taken out by stress assisting the Whisper who tries to use attunement to destroy the electroplasmic generator in the back (we made it possible in the fiction, it is just never a safe plan to fall back on since dealing with lightning is bad) and the Lurk had a flashback of setting up some security with their Bluecoat allies to come in and get them out of the hurt. The group succeeded at saving Pendragyn, the bratty noble, and all the credit went to them.

As their reward, they earned 9 coin and 5 reputation. It would’ve been 10 coin but bribes had to be paid to the muck rakers who pounced on the story of a noble being caught in the clutches of scoundrels. The group is beaten up pretty terribly at the moment but they definitely have a crew upgrade (which they’re thinking of acquiring a physicker) with and likely will be having upgrades as well. I’ll be writing my Love Letter to my Cutter as soon as he writes back to me about it.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the session. It was a difficult one, with a twist, but it paid well and that should help the group quite a bit. They haven’t made bad decisions, they have just had awful rolls to deal with. Next session I have them going for will be something more…subtle. The Lurk has been getting hammered a lot because she is getting in fights when she isn’t meant to be and I can tell the player is getting frustrated. I did roll the rumor that a Leviathan Hunter ship has arrived with no crew alive and a demon on board.

A question for you all though, if you’re interested. How do you guys handle healing and acquiring assets? None of my people have easy connections to a healer and the one that dead was not around, I think, so I couldn’t confirm it. It is super difficult to do, it seems, at Tier 0, and very punishing.