So last Sunday marked the start of playtesting for my Highbinders Crewsheet – Conniving Political Crooks. The crew is as followed:
Johnathan “Needle” Winters – A Akorosi Leech
Ryder “Viper” Irey – An Akorosi Hound with a pet snake
Mr. DeEnvy – A Tycherosi Cutter
Pejman Albrozad – An Iruvian Slide
Dr. Francinestein – An Dagger Islander Squint with a medium-sized Hull companion.
They chose Lady Slane of the Ministry of Preservation as their Sponsor, and gave her the Sly and Aloof qualities – they serve as an “unaffiliated” interest group for her and the Ministry; picked Mariana Sel, a magistrate as their contact; and chose Career Criminal (the stat booster for the Highbinders) as their starting ability, with Workshop and Highbinders Rigging as their starting upgrades.
To start them off I gave them a task from Lady Slane – there is a small interest group that started up with the intention of swaying the City Council into tightening restrictions on Ministry operations in Duskwall – particularly in the Barrowcleft and Dunslough. The Hound identified two members of the party and managed to track one to a secret meeting in Coalridge, where he observed money trading hands from The Lost, showing who’s payroll these people were on.
The Crew decided to crash the party, and Francine and Jonathan set up a trap in the factory where they were meeting that would electrocute to-death their enemies if need be. DeEnvy helped them avoid the consequence of being noticed by the factory boss. They settled on a Power-play Score and went in to crash the money exchange.
With Viper on a rooftop ready to snipe, and shooting between the legs of their targets at least once, and Francine’s Hull Valentine and DeEnvy providing physical intimidation, the rest of the Crew broke in on the meeting and had no real difficulty terrifying The Lost out of the equation permanently – they left without any real hassle, with Pejman Swaying them to leave behind one of the cases of money on their way out. Their contact in the interest group was also sent on his way, defeated, and unlikely to continue this activism. After collecting the briefcase the Crew was approached by factory security. They claimed to be inspectors, complained about the sorry state of the electrical safety – to prove their point, Francine electrocuted one of the guards to death with the trap they had set up. Convinced, the surviving guards left them be.
Lady Slane was pleased to hear that they put a damper on this group and paid them for their service.
Downtime went forth after that, with a moment of note being Albrozad working to establish his own little monopoly to give him additional Coin during downtime, and Francine putting on a scuba mask and crawling into a dark aquarium tank to sleep with a mysterious “Dave”.
The verdict at the end was that this hadn’t felt all that different from being hired as Bravos to do something. I’m inclined to agree, and while I don’t want to completely exclude a violent answer from the Highbinders (think brownshirt-style political terrorism) I intend to push the Crew in a direction closer to blackmail, embezzlement, or mudslinging next time.