Author: Mark Griffin

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.

So this past Friday I took a second group into Duskwall for their first mission. This group consisted of 2 players who had some experience with Pathfinder and Dungeon World and 2 players who have 0 tabletop RPG experience. I was able to draw in these two new players by describing the setting, because they are huge fans of victorian steampunk and firefly and I focused on those elements of the setting. All in all the session was a rousing success, and all the players were gushing afterwards. That may have been partly because they had amazing luck throughout the session. Over the course of 3 hours there were 4 partial successes, a half dozen crits, only 1 fail and the rest complete successes. I’ve never seen rolls quite like it. Fortunately the fail was at a very dramatic moment and gave the end of the score some nice tension.

So now I have an unnamed cult that worship the leviathans set loose in Duskwall. Currently they are Boulder the Cutter, Shiv the Lurk, Tumbler and Leech and Wraith the Whisper. They took a job working for Bazso because they are pretending to be an ordinary gang that takes on odd jobs until they grow in power. Also they’re hoping that the Lampblacks will eventually support them in their goals of ridding the city of electroplasm since the Lampblacks were once a powerful non criminal guild before leviathan blood was readily available in the city. 

Baszo gave them a strange artifact that looked like a Palentir and told them to hide it in Mylera’s office at the red sash headquarters. They chose an infiltration plan and decided to sneak in through a backdoor in an alley. Flashback to Shiv’s locksmith friend Frake who installed the locks at the Red Sash compound and critically succeed a consort roll. Frake gives them a master key to the whole compound, but because of a devils bargain he requests the PCs steal a valuable sword called Crimson Moon from the Red Sash Armory. They enter through the kitchen and make quick work of two guards with help of the Lurk’s  silence potion and ability to phase through walls, and the cutter’s fine heavy spiked mace (who he calls Mr. Prickles). The Leech flashes back to when he created an alchemical agent that will completely dissolve the bodies so they don’t have to waste time hiding them. Another flashback to intimidating Petra the city clerk into giving them the blueprints for this building on record in city hall. They discover that there is a heavily fortified basement floor, and decide that’s likely where the office and the armory would be. Another flashback to the Leech’s Psychonaut friend who spends several days in an adjacent building mentally observing the building, trying to discover how many guards they could expect, and where they usually are. The psychonaut informs them that at least a dozen novices tend to sleep in the barracks on the second floor, while 5 guards patrol the ground floor, and a variable # of guards are in the basement. All of the basement guards have the minds of cold hard killers. 

At this point the Wraith the Whisper asks what a ghost key does. I tell her they open ghost doors and then I ask her to tell me what a ghost door is. She decides ghost doors can be used as shortcuts throughout the city by entering the ghost realm. This is always dangerous because ghosts don’t suffer humans lightly in their realm, but it’s extremely dangerous if you don’t already know the locations of both doors. She also decided that ghost doors form over the bodies of the dead, to allow their passage to the ghost realm. The more horrific the death, the longer the door exists. Luckily they just created a couple of doors right by the exit, and they had plans to create more in the basement soon.

The evade the guards on the first floor and enter the basement. Two guards obliviously play cards in one room, and the Whisper notices that two doors have ghostly wards on them. She attempts to attune to them and discovers they doors require passwords to open or they will unleash a psychic attack on anyone nearby. She suffers a minor psychic attack during the probe, but using her resolve she shields her mind and takes a little stress. They decide to open one of the doors without the password, and the Whisper will try to contain the blast with her mind. She does manage to contain the blast, but it makes enough noise to rouse the guards. Three critical rolls later one guard has his head caved in, the other has a broken spine and will never walk again, and they have obtained the password to the second door. The artifact is hidden, and the sword is retrieved along with about 2 coin worth of silver.

To escape the decide to set off an alarm bring all the guards to the basement and use a ghost door to slip out the back unnoticed. The Whisper leads a group action to attune to the ghost door they just created, and all the other members take a devils bargain for the extra die. The Leech sees his brother on the other side and discovers that his death was not, in fact, an accident like he originally believed. The Cutter sees the ghosts of everyone he killed tonight and they will haunt his dreams during the next downtime, he’ll take -1d to vice rolls because of the nightmares. The lurk will be possessed by a spirit that has been watching him for sometime, the next time he tries to walk through walls with ghost veil he may lose control of his actions for a brief time. With that they have 5 dice to roll in a desperate position (don’t mess around with ghost doors man), and they roll 5 ones. I was so happy to see the first failure of the night (after 2 hours) that I jumped up and shouted. They enter the ghost realm with the whisper describes in detail, but then the spirits of the dead Red Sashes kick them out and shut all the ghost doors in the building permanently. In addition a psychic attack hits everyone in the building, waking up all its inhabitants as an alarm goes off in the basement. Needless to say a very intense chase ensued as the gang only barely made it out alive, thanks to a timely flashback where the Leech created a small portable shield that could deflect bullets, but only for about 30 seconds. Fortunately that was enough, and the group made it out alive, mostly unharmed and significantly richer.