I had a second session for my (still!) unnamed Cult crew this weekend, and in this session we learned not just a lot about what this cult is really up to, but we actually learned quite a bit about Duskwall as well. I’m going to start off with a list of things this group has added to the setting.
– There is a precursor species to the leviathan, which is a horse-sized squid monster called a Devilfish. Their blood has similar qualities to leviathan blood, but is several orders of magnitude less potent.
– There are exactly 23 leviathans at any given moment. Whenever a leviathan dies, a devilfish begins metamorphosis to take its place. Leviathans never stop growing, so there are a few that are very old, enormous, notorious and practically immortal.
– Charhollow used to be a district devoted to establishments of learning, but at some point the schools were closed and turned into factories for refining leviathan blood. The name comes from the toxic black dust expelled from the refineries which coats everything in the district, giving it a burned look.
– Everyone in Charhollow works at the refineries and they’re all slowly dying from exposure to the toxic dust. Among the symptoms are purple veins in the neck and chest area. The darker the veins, the closer the person is to death. Because of the color, the disease has been nicknamed “The Royal Sickness”.
– During the refining process, the blood is super heated in autoclaves that are pumped by hand (I have no idea how refining things actually works). The phrase “pumping the clave” is slang for something that is incredibly stupid and dangerous.
– A whisper can use electroplasm to fill a hollow with enough intelligence to follow simple instructions, and are often used as slave labor if a job requires very little thinking. This practice is legal, but heavily looked down upon.
– Ghost essence is an important component when tinkering clockwork and alchemical items. Want to make a putty that can be inserted into a lock and expand in such a way that it unlocks? You’re going to need the ghost essence of a master thief.
I was really happy that my group was so interested in creating this shared world. Their goal as a cult is to find a way to refine devilfish blood to be a substitute for Leviathan blood, to prevent the slaughter of these sacred creatures (as well as make a ton of coin). Some of the cult members are fanatics and some are just in it for the cash. To that end, their first score was to hit a leviathan blood refinery in order to gather up reagents and equipment needed to start the long term project to distill a more potent devilfish blood.
The crew disguised themselves as workers at a refinery, managed to score some punch cards from a corpse thief contact and entered the building. Using flashbacks in various ways they managed to find the vault where the reagents were kept and secure a key. At some point they rolled a critical and discovered that the empty barrels would be removed from the premises for dumping, and if they could get some full barrels switched into the empty pile they could likely just rob the delivery carriage, so they wouldn’t have to try and sneak out several barrels of reagent.
While they were in the building half of the crew went into the offices looking for shipping records, purchase orders and other business-y stuff that they assumed would come in handy when either trying to emulate the business or sabotage it. While in the offices they managed to run afoul of the plant foreman who was also a vampire. Fortunately the Whisper found that the barrels were all being loaded/unloaded by programmed hollows, which she overrode with instructions to start a riot. In the ensuing chaos, most of the party managed to escape unscathed with their mission accomplished. The whisper however was cornered by the vampire and tried to use a ghost door to escape. A partial success let her escape, but she was possessed by her rival, the demon Setarra, who was waiting for her in the ghost realm. In trying to resist the possession she took a trauma and is now haunted.
I’m really impressed by this group of relative newbies and how they’re taking to the system and the setting. I still haven’t introduced all the mechanics yet (I think I’ll introduce the engagement roll, and effect in the next session), but they’re all having a great time. Even the RPG veterans really appreciate the freedom they’re allowed by the system. When I mentioned all the different settings the game is being expanded into, they were already thinking about new crews to play in space or as pirates.
I mean… I just… THIS IS THE BEST
I’d run around whooping if I wasn’t sick in my deathbed.
Thanks John, I’m glad you liked it.
A couple of us we’re talking today and we’re considering retconing the bit about hollows. We kind of like the idea of hollows being used as weapons against whispers because they lack spirits. So a different method of control would be In order to control a hollow you need to possess its heart. You can write orders on the heart using electroplasmic ink. It would be cool to have a heist in order to steal a bunch of hollow hearts. It would also be cool to have a bad guy who fights using hollows. He would be covered in hearts and could quickly write on them in combat.
It might not actually require a retcon though, perhaps this technology will be created to combat the cult if they keep hijacking the bad guy’s hollows.