HEEST CLIFFHANGER!
The Dead Setters helped out their Leech’s vice contact, Father Yorren, who had his supplier disappear on him. He was pretty sure she’d have to be dead to miss a shipment? Either way, he needed the crew to find her corpse and get the location of her stash from her ghost before the Wardens zeroed in. If she wasn’t dead, then they were to get the stash from her and then make her dead. Yorren’s clients expect a certain timeliness to their transactions with the priest.
A group action for Gather Info resulted in a 1970s split-screen cop montage (“Can I use Skirmish to gather info?”*) and they learned the supplier, Lucia, was dropped off at the Hound’s physicker contact. She had been tortured and mortally wounded and she died at Melvir’s “clinic”. The Eels who likely did it likely dropped her off so maaaybe she wouldn’t die and haunt them? Or they already got the info they wanted? Were the Eels on their way to get Yorren’s stash?
The snag here was that someone stole Lucia’s body out from under Melvir’s nose a few hours before the PCs showed up. The Leech’s nemesis, Eckerd the corpse-thief, strikes again! The Hound tracked Eckerd to a tattoo parlor/tenement between Coalridge and Nightmarket where somebody had gotten the bright idea of mixing in leviathan blood with tattoo ink. No idea where that idea came from (thanks Bloodletters game!), but with a location and general idea of what the score was, the PCs picked an Assault plan, with the Cutter and cohort kicking in the door, the Hound on overwatch, and the Leech using spider oil to come in from the roof.
The only danger came from a few Grinders guarding the basement and one huge guy getting an arm tat. The Cutter grabbed the huge guy, carved off his tattoo, and punched him in the meat until he passed out. The Spider talked the other guys down after that.
Meanwhile, Eckerd burst out the back door with Lucia’s body slung over his shoulders – and was immediately gutshot by the Hound. He fell back inside, blood pouring from the hole in his armor. Then the Leech landed on him. A Desperate cripple-fight ensued but Deemo the Leech smashed a bottle of binding oil over Eckerd, holding him fast to the floor.
With the players’ Whisper out this week unabashedly watching his new Force Awakens blu-rey instead of gaming, interrogating the dead woman’s spirit fell to the Spider and the Leech. She used Life Essence and got a mixed success – Lucia returned to life, but her grevious wounds were too much for her to bear. Plus, the gang’s lookouts spotted the Spirit Wardens coming in.
With the Wardens on their way, Deemo had to make a Desperate Tinker roll to keep Lucia’s body together enough for her to talk (using bellows to work her lungs, that sort of thing) while the Spider made a Desperate Sway attempt to convince her to give up the location of her stash. The Eels had grabbed her, but she had lied to them. She wanted vengeance and it was all the Spider could do to coax out a partial clue (“it’s buried near my-“) before the Life Essence wore off and she died again.
For youse guys in the audience – have you used Spirit Wardens much? Anything you did with them that was cool or well-received by your players? I’ve been playing the Division so I’m mostly imagining them as steampunky Cleaners from that game, but I imagine they’re a little more ritualized than that maybe. More Warhammer?
#heestcomplete
*The answer was “Skirmish is fun but you’re not really going to get answers if you do that.”