Author: Donogh McCarthy

The Orphans continue their war against the Billhooks, building up their reputation with the local community in Charhollow. They become entangled in the affairs of Lord Scurlock…

A unique session in our campaign – pretty much all downtime and entanglements after a long-running score the previous session.

Really hitting roleplaying vices and long-term projects hard.

(also, getting Fiends meant that they bumped back up the tier that they lost by going to war the previous session, but that was kind of cool too, and totally fitting their reputation and actions!)

A war erupts with a powerful and fearsome enemy. Devious plans and brutal allies are on the Orphans side, but will it be enough? Have they bitten off more than they can chew?

TLDR: Shit is talked. Crits are rolled!

A side trip to Sunfall to secure a supply of spirits for their hungry God sees the Orphans find new challenges in Iruvia.

Some nice exploration of elements we hadn’t really worried about before, as well as the return of one of our character’s old friends

Had a nice session of Blades on Friday. Instead of leaving the rival cult Hand of Sorrow sweat it, or get embroiled in the ward politics as a newly Tier 1 crew, the Orphans decided to follow up by taking the Hand of Sorrow’s lair as a Sanctuary claim.

This was the first two-pronged plan I’d run and instead of running them in parallel, I did them entirely separately, not rolling the engagement for part ii until part i was complete.

Went pretty well like that, with a few flashbacks to fill in the necessary details of the plan. An exquisite spirit cage acquired as a temporary asset and a critical in part i’s engagement meant things went swimmingly for them; at least until the devil showed up to fight them for the sanctuary…

A heist by the Orphans against another cult of a forgotten god. This one was great on a ‘barf forth apocalyptica’ level; helped out massively by the random tables of Devils, which brought out ‘The Hand of Sorrow’, with a summoned horror ‘Coil of Thorns’ coming out of their main artefact.

When I rolled ‘The Lady of Thorns’ for the cult which the Orphans blamed for the theft.

Couldn’t have cherry picked those better!

So, the Orphans go to war with the Eels.

From a GMing point of view, a ‘6’ on the engagement roll for the ambush means that I had to resist some primal GMing urge to throw a curve-ball at them > I had to give them what they rolled! 🙂

Also, this is probably the first time we’ve dived deep into roleplaying for downtime actions; possibly because we had plenty of time, but also because we’re starting to know these characters and the world better now.

All in all, as I use the rules more, I’m getting comfortable enough with the complexity to dip into them as required/desired