So I just ran my very first session of blades in the dark. It went really well! We have a crew of arcane smugglers based in crows foot. It is just too players: my cousin is playing a severosi hound with a pet cassowary and my brother is playing a skovlander whisper with a drug addiction. I had a few questions. Smugglers start the game with a vehicle. Is that vehicle a cohort? I see that the first ability (which they did not take) lets them create a vehicle as a cohort but are all vehicles tested this way? Also, at the end of our first session (as an entanglement) the ghost of Roric appeared to the whisper and gave him a cryptic message to investigate Lyssa. The whisper successfully compelled the ghost to stay then used his lightning hook and spirit bottle to trap him. He rolled a critical. What are some ways that I can make this useful to the story? What can you do with a captured ghost?
So I just ran my very first session of blades in the dark.
So I just ran my very first session of blades in the dark.
Mechanically speaking, if a vehicle is listed as a cohort, it has a Quality rating equal to the gang’s Tier, that you can roll for to see how well it handles, etc. Otherwise, a vehicle is just a thing in the world. Treating a vehicle like a cohort makes them almost a character in their own right, like the Millennium Falcon.
There are several factions that trade in bottled ghosts. The Path of Echoes and the Dimmer Sisters are the two that spring immediately to mind.
“What? You have the ghost of Roric bottled? Yeah, sure. And I have a bridge I once sold the Lord Scurlock, but now you can have it for only 2 Coin. A real bargain, as good as new!”
Maybe the crew has some hard time explaining that it’s really Rory in the bottle. If they manage to convince a buyer, Lyssa should be curious, too about a ghost you claims to be her former boss, right?
It’s little bit like having the key witness against the drug cartell. Hot potato.
Unless you take Like Part of the Crew, the vehicle should not be a cohort, it’s just a thing they have.
Well, you can always interrogate captured ghosts. Or you could try getting them a body to possess and hope they’ll help you as a reward (good luck with that, but slightly better chances with a “fresh” ghost). If your Whisper has Compel, they can just let them out of the bottle and order them to possess someone and do an appropriate thing (just remember that the ghost will interpret the command according to its own messed-up desires). Or sell them to some interested party. Blackmail someone with the fact you could do one of the above things.