So it has been awhile since I last posted a play report here in the group, due to working and all that fun stuff in life. My latest game of BitD however has inspired me to getting back to doing these, for my own mindset and to share what I’ve been enjoying about the system now that I consider myself to be a more experienced storyteller.
I had decided that I wanted to run the game with more of a focus on the high-stakes, high dangers theme of the game. The oppressive is very oppressive, the crew is fighting an uphill battle every time that they go out into the world. The players decide to focus on making a crew of Bravos, all Tycherosi, specializing in Smash & Grabs, based in an abandoned eelery out in Dunslough. I choose to take the Riots of 867 as the starting situation of the world and the players align themselves with the Skovlanders in solidarity, seeing themselves as fellow outcasts from the world. Lastly, but not least, every one of my four players is a Cutter. I chuckle in glee.
The first job has the players climbing aboard the Nightbreaker, looking to steal unrefined leviathan blood from the ship’s hold since the riots have been holding it off from being able to successfully deliver its cargo. The first rolls do not go well, the players almost getting caught and are pulled into a skirmish with Lord Strangford’s elite marines that are ensuring the boat’s well-being. A few dead men are tossed into the dark, stormy waters below and they make their way downstairs. We end up having to call it there for then but pick up entering the large, creepy hold the next session.
One of my players are not able to attend, which leaves the exiled nobility as the main cast; Thorns (a beautiful, flowery Tycherosi with a mean streak), Havok (Looks like a starry night stood up and started moving), and Fangs (a terrible, lanky, toothy monstrosity that is part of a cannibal cult). Our last figure is Dirge, a worshipper of The Broken Sun and a former corsair.
The crew is chased downstairs, being tracked by the Marines, and I slowly begin filling out a “It Awakens” clock. The lights begin to flicker and dim, whispers are heard from the shadows. The crew reaches the leviathan blood vats but the marines get the hell out as “something” arrives. A woman’s voice begins to speak with them and tries to parley their lives in exchange for a favor. My crew, bless their hearts, tell the shadows to fuck off and finish their work. The demon, as it has been instructed, attacks.
I have to say at this point, I love the random generation tables. Creating summoned horrors and demons is an absolute joy. Through random rolls, we ended up with a monstrous demon whose affinity laid with darkness and what it craved was fear. I make this ink-like monster, with a faint lantern glow for a face within the darkness, as their enemy. Thorns, having Ghost Fighter, gets up in its grill and tries to throw down. Harms begin getting thrown out as it targets their sources of light and then impales members on spikes of living shadow. With only some of the siphoning containers filled, Havok books it to try and get out and takes rage essence in order to make sure he can escape and ignore the pain from his punctured knee. With too much stress, he does not resist the lovely side effects of that alchemical concoction. His cousin Thorns and sister Fangs make a desperate parley with the demon in return for their lives and the blood they’ve stolen. All the demon asks for is three favors from each of them, favors that will be done without question. If so, they will live. If they turn against it, she reminds them that their city is blanketed in darkness and she. will. find. them.
The injured group makes it upstairs where Havok is about to battle the group of marines that corner him when they make an offer; give us two canisters and you can go. It seemed that some of the crew’s enemy, Grace, heard about the job and wanted to make a little coin off of it as well. The group first has to incapacitate their frothing mad brother/cousin, which led to our first PvP as he couldn’t tell friend from foe. They manage to hold him down and with a flashback that makes them owe a favor to Conway, are able to knock him out with some slumber essence. The give one canister to the marines after threatening to all take their rage essence, and escape wounded, stressed, and one with a trauma.
The crew relieved stress, healed up with their relative Sawtooth, and watched as the man was brought in for questioning and got his arm broken for “resisting arrest”. There was some decent roleplay as Fangs hunted a target and consumed a man for That Which Hungers, Thorns dabbled in some arcane essences with the shifty vendor named Ojak, and Havok trained and prepared himself for the next job. The group looks to help out Conway eliminate some troubling evidence for him, all while the riots grow more dangerous as the Grinders and Ulf Ironborn use the funds they secured selling the blood to bolster themselves.
Next session has been one of my favorites, a little job that grew intense and ended with a badass battle against a superior opponent. The little favor gets much bigger than one expected it to be but that is how it goes in Blades in the Dark.
Great write up! Post more when you can.