Well well well, after killing the Grinders off the PC’s have basically pissed in both the spirit warden’s and Inspector’s tea. I’ve had a lot of fun with the spec-ops vibe and hi-tech hulls that the Spirit wardens employ, but what to do with the Inspectors then?
The only inspector that i’ve had onscreen had a badass clockwork arm, so cyborgs maybe? Hordes of bluecoats? Was really sure they’d avoid killing her since I warned them that killing one inspector leads to more problems, so I hadn’t put terribly much thought into it. Cheers!
Sounds like it’s time to hit them where it hurts. The Inspectors have a peculiar focused power; they can touch anyone.
You hit them, and they take family members and put them in terrible isolation or agony.
Kill an inspector, and everywhere you get your vices gets a choice between turning on you or going out of business.
Slap a clock down with a character’s name on it, and when the inspectors fill it, then that character is taken into custody and trauma’d, only released on condition of serving as informant.
The inspectors advertise PC crew cooperation, and Heat flips to the fury of the criminal machine against the snitch crew.
Hitting the PC armor harder is not the answer. Slitting the moving parts you can’t cover up is how this game works. The Inspectors can be patient, if they choose to be, and the main reason the criminals of the city let them operate so viciously is because they’re surgical. If they leave you alone, you’re reluctant to get between them and the poor bastard of the week.
Who is now this PC crew.
This is what it’s like to be radioactive.
The Inspectors are your Sherlocks, your Poirots, your Colombos and your Marlowes and your Miss Marples.
The threat they pose is simple – they will find out. What you are doing, what your motivations are, and what you are planning to do to them… And when you move to face them, this is already part of their plan, and you are merely playing into their hands.
This might be difficult to represent if you always show ‘what the PCs see’, but, the culture at your table permitting, nothing’s really stopping you from briefly cutting to a scene of the Inspectors cracking a particular element behind one of your crew’s major operations.
When the Inspectors do need to make an on-stage appearance, I’d represent their superior insight and preparation with a kind of exhaustible NPC version of Flashbacks, and set up a small clock to track their ability to go “Ahah!” Make the clock public, it’d probably be too distressing otherwise.
Oh, and always offer a Devil’s Bargain if there’s an option for PCs doing a confession. But that’s just a given.
Ah ok, so basically I can use clocks to create new Entanglements? Ones that can’t be bribed out of? Just most of the entanglements are based on the Law coming down on them, and since they already have 3 Wanted levels is it ok to go all out on them with undefendable entanglements?
Sorry, a bit new to BitD’s faction stuff, thanks for the responses!
Clocks are a flexible tool that can involve all sorts of consequences. Ideally there should be ways the crew can act to push segments OFF the clock as well as watching time and the inexorable efforts of their foes put segments on.
With 3 (well earned, I assume) levels of Wanted, then yeah, the Establishment is about to roll its tank over them. Their choices are:
1. Find a way to shed some of that criminal history through stealth or misdirection or powerful friends disappearing complaints
2. Be crushed
3. Be pulled into the workings of the Establishment and forced to serve it until they can find a way to get free (off the books hit squad, criminal informants used as disposable and deniable operatives, used as scouts for the hole in the Mirror the spirit well accidentally tore, lab rats for dangerous new state-sanctioned Leech supersoldier experiments, spies deployed against a foreign city state with a “you better be good” bomb in their skeleton, etc.)