So, our protracted love affair with Blades in the Dark is coming to a close after almost twenty weeks after many dark, dirty, rough…adventures, a dizzying number of playsets and a delicious amount of misery. It was a doomed love, in the end, as you might imagine. In case this was unclear, I had a terrific time playtesting this game from the start and I thoroughly intend to make the finish just as terrific.
Getting to said finish! Our last few sessions (that I’m sorry I did not tell you all about) have indicated that there is revolution brewing in Duskwall. At the forefront are two figures, Ulf Ironborn and the Trotsky to his Stalin, Brynna Skyrkallan. Both have very similar and familiar objectives, at least, as far as they claim: lead a worker’s rebellion and seize the means of production from the bourgeois imperialists yadda yadda yadda. But to the outside observer, Ulf is a vicious brute and Brynna is a sensible diplomat.
Last week, the group was hired to steal an item from the cellar of the Canal Dockers’ meeting house, where they were discussing the revolutionary idea of forming a union and also who to throw that union behind. As the group quickly discovered, they were behind Ulf Ironborn, who a player volunteered with a Devil’s Bargain to show up, discover one of Brynna’s spies, snap his neck and then turn on our Spider. So the Spider Ghost Contracted him. If he let him go, he would bring him Brynna’s head within 7 days. Ulf agreed.
Cut to this week and after some investigation which lead to discovering the Grinders were repairing a decrepit Leviathan Hunter ship, that Brynna was going on some secret voyage outside of the city. One that she said “would change the city forever”. Only after they agreed to join on the trip (the only eventuality that would lead to her volunteering to go to Ulf Ironborn and “bring her head”) did she tell them the plan.
She, together with a former Leviathan Hunter-Whisper and 100 gallons of Whisper blood (provided by Lord Scurlock who was tagging along on board as an “interested observer”) intended to go out into the sea, cause a mutiny on a Leviathan Hunter ship, recruit them to her cause, go further out into the sea, perform a ritual to bind a Leviathan, then go back to Duskwall with it, sink Whitecrown, in her own words, “exterminate the nobility” and then return the city to the hands of the workers.
The conversations that took place this week were brilliant. There was much discussion about the nature and consequence of revolution, and much avoiding the subject of Brynna being a hypocrite in trying to pretend she was somehow “better” than Ulf.
I am really excited to find out how this all plays out! I love it when a campaign comes to a close like this and you really feel like you can do anything.
But I’m curious, for those Smugglers out there and really anyone who has done multiple Scores while on the move, any tips for handling Downtime?