Blades in the Dark – Session 8 – The Crimson Snow
This week started (after some downtime activity) with an unexpected visitor – the ghost of Roric, former leader of the Crows. Roric expressed his desire to secure the aid of the gang in his attempt to get revenge on his murderer, Lyssa, current leader of the Crows, and re-establish his control over the gang. Having already unearthed how deeply held the loyalty to Roric possessed by many of the Crows was during their tavern takeover last week, the crew had little hesitation in agreeing that this plan could only help their own position in Crow’s Foot and would mean taking a serious threat to their gang out of the picture. Roric’s plan was to pull some strings with The Hive to have the vast majority of the Crows drawn away from Crow’s Nest, their headquarters. Lyssa’s recent paranoid fear of ghosts (seemingly completely justified) meant she would remain in the fortified and warded tower, with a few of her most loyal people. The Snow would then gain access to the tower, deal with the guards and capture Lyssa alive, delivering her to a secure location where Roric planned to “deal with her” himself.
The plan seemed solid, but on observing the tower, the crew realised that gaining access would not be easy. Hadius took to shadowing a member of the Crows named Brick, a fairly low level thug, who invited for a drink with Hadius, under the influence let slip all manner of information about himself and gave Hadius good opportunity to learn to mimic his speech and mannerisms. A couple of day’s later, the Score was on, Hadius having donned a fairly convincing “Brick” disguise sauntered up to the Crow’s Nest and knocked on the door, as Banks and Ves looked on from the edge of the street. Unfortunately, the disguise proved to be moot as Brick was the one to answer the door. Thinking on his feet, Hadius managed to somehow persuade Brick that, as an early birthday surprise, Hadius had come (in costume) to bring him a gift. Brick unbolted the door, eager to lay his hands on the gift, only to be greeted with a faceful of scorpions, a particular phobia of Brick’s that Hadius had uncovered. Brick in pain and terror slunk back from the door, and Hadius stepped inside.
The four other guards at the entrance to the tower, shocked, struggled to grasp what was happening, as Hadius, speaking very quickly and convincingly informed them of a prank gone awry, and that “he was a professional”. Ves and Banks then charged into the room, attempting to fuel the deception, the guards still stunned and unsure what to do followed Banks order to assist Hadius in getting the scorpions under control. A few stings, a broken nose and a bunch of wayward scorpions later, the guards fled, and Hadius escorted a traumatized Brick outside, before shutting and bolting the door.
Now inside, they regained their composure and quickly made their way up the floors of the tower, until they arrived at a large storeroom and infirmary about halfway up. Here they made the mistake of tripping a gas trap, which left the crew dazed as Lyssa, Bell and two more gang members jumped down to dispatch the intruders. Banks attempted to intimidate them into backing down, but found himself full of shot from Bell’s blunderbuss. All three of them were wounded in the blast and a wounded and stressed Hadius whipped out a flask of fire oil (procured from Bazro Baz earlier) and attempted to start a fire in the middle of the store room. Unfortunately one of the guards realized his intention, and rushed him, leaving the flask to shatter at Hadius feet, starting a moderate fire in the room. Vestine then (remembering a spark bomb obtained in preparation for the Score) hurled the device into the centre of the room, dazing Lyssa and her guards, hopefully evening out the odds of victory/survival in the looming bloodshed.
Gm’s Notes – This was a weird one. A combination of a really bad engagement roll, subsequent sixes and some really weird ideas meant the confrontation with the guards went very strangely. But the tide quickly turned upon tripping the gas trap and being peppered with shot. I was getting worried the mission would be another easy one, but sure enough, things went downhill fast! I decided to handle the Lyssa confrontation with a pair of clocks to overcome her and her guards defenses and exploit their vulnerability to give the confrontation more weight. They managed to make a few ticks toward overcoming their defenses (via starting a fire and the spark-bomb) before we finished for the week. Although I only then realised how badly injured many of them were, not only from this session but persistent niggles from earlier sessions. I’m now slightly concerned that they won’t all make it out alive… My plan is to give them the initiative next week and see how things go, at the very least, the confrontation is coming off as fairly epic, and however it plays out, it’ll certainly be memorable!