Author: Galen Pejeau

And part 2 of the Rail Jack Historia. The one on the left is what I imagine most jacks stump through the job on. The one on the right seems like it might belong to the more badass crews on the newer lines. Me, I like the look of the old suits, fighting ghosts seems like trench warfare, or fighting fires.

Finally finished up my little run of “Tales of the Rail Jacks,” quite fun to see how those earlier rules led to the Blades set we all have now. To finish up we ran a sort of end credits bit, with players talking about the history of the Rail Jacks, from the early poor brave fools to the modern crew with all of their fancy Leviathan Oil powered tech. Set the whole thing to “The Lyre of Orpheus” by Nick Cave. Thank you again for turning quite a few gamers into storytellers John.

I drew up a few sketches for that credits sequence. Esoteric stuff to talk of the history of imaginary train-riding ghostbusters, but it’s a fun challenge to try and make working stiffs in environment suits into sympathetic characters. Hope this isn’t too far out of this Group’s remit.

Here’s part one, the early Jacks.

High time that another prop showed up here. Doskvol seems a touch more old world than say, Dunwall or Karnaca, so I’ve been trying to keep the angularity of Arkane’s design, but less accent on the fascist brutality. The result in gun design might be something like a breach loading single shot pistol with a crossbow style trigger.

TL:DR? sailing ships AND industrial.

Hellfire, leave this group alone for a week and you people explode with the posting. I can’t keep up enough to lurk, let alone comment. Here’s what may be the last of our vignettes from “Tales of the Rail Jacks.” Things don’t often end well for protagonists in Doskvol.

Monday Prop-Drop!

The Spirit Mask this time, something a bit mummy, a bit reminiscent of the walls of Ironhook, where so many of the poor ghosts in our game sprang from.

Session 2 of ?? on Tales from the Ghost Lines. Like before, I like to imagine these as photos on the wall at the Rail Jack bar. Still not sure about ghosts, but I liked the feel of this fellow.

Turns out to be ironic that this is the prop I drop this week, Seeing as how we’re all shouting our appreciation for the book becoming a reality.

Guess it’s better the Bluecoats never hear about it.

Good work J.H & co! Looking forward to many nights in Doskvol smog!

I’m stoked that we’re almost to the final book, and it seems to be catching. Looks like we may be returning to Doskvol to play a short series of vignettes about those Rail Jacks. Players want it to be a bit more “True Tales of the Line Bulls” sort of thing, and who am I to deny them?

Nobody, that’s who.

Here’s a little title card for the kickoff called “downtime.”

Props!

Not my favorite, but you go on the Heist with the art you have, not the art you wished for. With the ghosts in Blades being made of electroplasm, I thought it might be fun to have the Spiritbane Charm be a grounding wire, no spirit would enjoy having its essence drained away into the earth through some Cutter’s hobnails.

Credit where due, I got the idea from Tim Powers’ “Anubis Gates.”

Ghosts. Ghosts are hard in this universe. If I were directing “Blades” as a TV series, I’d try to keep ghosts off camera as often as possible to build up the mood.

Once you see a clearly unreal blob of electroplasm flying around, it might not produce the desired sense of horror.

I’ve been trying a bit of watercolor work to get my take on ghosts mishappen enough, what do you all think? Is this the right track?

Should ghosts just stay in your imagination where they’ve room to be whatever you fear?