Author: Pierce Jones

Hello there everyone! Been awhile since I last posted but I am all moved in here in San Antonio and have been loving the change. We have two games set up here after a cursory look into Cults but found that it didn’t fit.

My Sunday game, which so far doesn’t have a name, has just finished up character creation, crew creation, and we did a bit of character development since a lot of the players are new to gaming in general. I’m pretty excited about the group that we have assembled and the stories we can potentially have from it.

Our first character is Tiros Daavas, a Skovlan Cutter who served as a soldier within a prestigious strike force before the war’s end. He forged his papers to enlist early, following his big brother’s footsteps in the war. Honorable and with a built-in sense of camaraderie, he has headed to the Dusk to try and track down his brother who went missing during the war. He isn’t an innocent man though, having sacrificed one his squad-mates to survive the Unity War and had been involved with other missions that were less than legal or honorable. This has led to him being caught in clutches of Grace, the extortionist, who uses his crimes as leverage to get him to do what she wants while also saying that she has information about his brother that she’ll divulge…when he deserves it.

Next is Arvos Morrisson, the only Duskwall native within this beginning band of Assassins, is the Akoros Spider. A normal boy within Crow’s Foot, his life was changed when he was hidden away by his family and bore witness to a terrible occult ritual that butchered his family. Sent to Strathmill House, he served as a courier and eventually found his way into the life of an information broker. He serves as the main connection for the Assassins, having brought them all together in order to eventually ascertain who killed his family and exact terrible vengeance. An anarchist at heart, he hopes to make those who support the status quo burn one day. He is pursued by Jeren, an archivist within the Bluecoats who is the Sherlock to his Moriarty. A professional rivalry has sprung between the two men, one that could’ve been a friendship if it wasn’t for them playing on opposite sides.

Our group’s Slide is a young woman by the name of Sagira “Vixen” Ghrey, an immigrant from Iruvia who found herself enamored with a local thug and folk hero by the name of Baszo Baz. Helping him to secure his place of leadership within the Lampblacks, Vixen toyed around with his greatest competition and led him astray. The ploy was a success and Baz’s rival, Harker, was sent to Ironhook for life after being framed for murdering an Iruvian diplomat who had ties with the Red Sashes. Little do either of them know though that Harker has been making the most of his time, creating his own network of thugs and scoundrels within Ironhook. He hasn’t forgotten who has put him there and he’ll have his day soon enough…

Our last member is a Tycherosi by the name of Adric Kross, a self-taught Whisper with an eye of vengeance for his friend’s sake. His friend, another Tycherosi named Nyrix, both learned the art of the Whisper with each other’s help. Drunk on their newfound skill, the duo summoned and bound a demon by the name of Setarra. Asking for ways to greater power, Setarra led them on a dark path and eventually betrayed them both which led to Nyrix’s death and Adric barely surviving but able to protect his friend’s body and spirit. With Adric’s help, Nyrix has grown into a competently powerful spirit and the two seek out ways to destroy or re-bind Setarra for their own ends.

Another member of the group, a Hound, is still waiting to be made but the group decided on playing a group of Assassins that lurk within an abandoned cistern underneath Six Towers. Professional, calm, and willing to take nearly any work, the group is aligned oddly enough with the Spirit Wardens. After meeting with and working for an “open-minded” Warden by the name of Exeter, they have entered into mutual partnership; the crew gains to powerful influence of one of the city’s major factions and the power that a Spirit Warden wields while Exeter has his own personal scalpels with which to cut away obstacles in his way and enemies with too much power or influence for the Spirit Wardens to fight.

Little does the crew know that this powerful ally also comes with a dangerous enemy. The few targets they have killed for Exeter, innocuous as they seem, have been members of the Unseen. And the Unseen will not have any threats stand in their way of taking control of Duskwall.

Specializing in sending brutal, violent messages and operating within the prestigious section of Charterhall known as Clerk Street, this ragtag band of Assassins has their work cut out of them. Only one way to go though; forward…day by day…one body at a time.

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With the last character generation I did, which was a Cult, I was a little too hands off of it and it led to characters not really meshing and the Cult addition feeling very tagged on. So for this one, I went about things in different orders and also was a lot more active in suggestions and ideas that I had and bounced them off the players.

Instead of making characters first and then the crew, I went in reverse and made the crew and then the characters. I think it helped people decide better on what kind of characters that they wanted to be and making the Crew helped mold the smaller details together more.

We’re all using the PDF still and I made sure to make players answer the questions that their playbooks and what the crew playbook asks. We also used the 10 minute character background process, which led to some of the excellent story hooks and goals that the players now have. Here is the link if anyone is interested.

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?91813-10-Minute-Background

I’m excited to use this process again come this Saturday, when my roommates and I will be restarting the group and seeing how things go. Sunday will be the next session of this game, where the Assassins will be aiming to kill off a Junior Inspector who has been poking his head too much into the business of the Bluecoats.

Blood on Silk: Episode 4 – Father

So I started a new job recently which has cut into my free time, so the last two episodes have been rolled together into one mega-episode filled with suspense, guilt, and a character death.

The Dusters, having sold their first real major deal, sat back in the luxury of coin and comfort. Yet the ambitious crew of hawkers were not content with their initial earnings and looked to capitalize on their good fortune so far. Nearby their ruined lair within Six Towers, the crew learned of a good area to hide their stash and use to secure their goods and hold onto excess. The rumors were that a group of masked thieves known as The Wraiths were using it as a staging ground between their heists, keeping their goods there before being sold to a buyer. Spying on the place, Lagertha the Lurk noticed that there were two ways in; a sewer entrance that required a boat or somewhere inside of a cottage.

Deciding to enter in through the cottage, the group would infiltrate through there and try to pass by undetected. The Dusters, used to their incredible fortune, took the riskiest route and suffered their first Desperate engagement. The camera focused inside the cottage, where are sophisticated trapdoor was set up and ready. Using a strange, clockwork design, the trapdoor had to be aligned right. However, arcane sigils were marked on the outside and trying to disable the trap incorrectly would cause the sigils to explode. With the help from Atiya the Whisper, the crew’s Lurk was able to align the trapdoor correctly but not without activating a second ward, one that sent a ping through the ghost field and awoke something down below.

The group descended into the sewers below, led by Torvald and his trusty Kritter named Runt. They passed through a labyrinth of sewers passages and newly created tunnels and artificial blockages. The passing was slow and plodding, even with Thaddeus the Spider’s blueprints. The group also heard this awful bell chiming throughout, a bell that resonated somehow wrong within their ears. They tried to avoid it at all cost.

Torvald, trying to rush them through and as quickly as possible, ended up activating a little trap that cracked a ceramic plate. The bells went silent before this awful screech filled the air, like nails against chalkboard. Speeding around a corner came this living, shattered crystal that glowed with a dark purple. Within its shards, millions of eyes looked over everything. The group encountered their first Summoned Horror.

The whole crew resisted their instincts to run in terror. The Whisper began to focus on trying to disrupt the strange, awful thing while the Spider aided her with ritual components and secondary functions. The Hound, Torvald, produced this incredibly thick blanket to try and catch the now fragmented, screaming colony of jagged, fine crystals. The Lurk, now being Reckless, would produce a firebomb and try to set the whole thing on fire!

What followed was a series of great rolls and bad rolls. Atiya was able to sense that the creature was bound to some artifact and that link helped sustain the horror. She also weakened its bond, trying to disrupt it. The others rolled terribly, with Torvald rolling a 3 and Lagertha pushing herself to Trauma and rolling two 1’s. It was decided that it made sense for Lagertha to die, as thousands of sharp, tiny knives sliced through her body as if she were nothing. Resisting the terrible result, Torvald caught what he could and tossed the blanket onto the horde rather than have his chest torn open by sentient, sharp shards.

Flashing back to his preparations, Thaddeus drew out a flash bomb and threw it at the Horror, hoping to blind it. The firebomb’s heat and flames caused it to explode too soon, blinding everyone. The group luckily rolled well to hear each other and escaped the Horror, maneuvering around it as it hunted them.

The group made their way down to the actual docking area, where a meeting was going down between the Circle of Flame and the Wraiths. It was also here that Celene the Sentinel, the Hound’s former lover who was spurned when he slept with another woman. Rather than give her a chance, he drew his weapons and went to try and take her out. They all rolled well to hear the overheard conversation, but no one rolled a six so no one noticed the soft breathing nearby the door. As the group moved forward, Thaddeus trying to stop Torvald from shooting, a knife appeared around Atiya’s neck and the group entered a hostage situation.

Caught by a master thief and a member of the Wraiths, the man threatened them and led them off down to the meeting. The scholar, a professor named Vaben, was irritated at their presence. The two members of the Wraiths, Fox and Crescent, led the situation quite handily. The former wore a simple, black fox mask and had a smaller, more feminine build, while the other had a mask designed after the three moons that occasionally appear but all of them crescent. He was a stockier, broader man but very professional.

Thaddeus wasn’t sure what he could do to change the situation around and then I remembered to roll for their benefit for having “The Good Stuff”. While they couldn’t tell whether or not the Wraiths were addicts, the professor was. Using a flashback, Thaddeus had conspired with the professor to do a betrayal after the fact in order to secure a large amount of Dust. The man was willing to if the group could keep them distracted enough for him to secure the items they wanted. The tables had suddenly turned and the Wraiths were unknowingly in a trap. Torvald tried to hit on his ex and suffered a painful cut to the top of his foot from the skilled woman.

However, Thaddeus was unable to keep the ruse up long enough to keep them distracted and Crescent and Fox tried to escape. Blowing out the black flame on this strange, red candle, crystals began to rise out of it as the horror was summoned. Thaddeus hid with Atiya, trying to help her further as the woman sought to break the connection between it and the artifact that she learned was sustaining it. Torvald produced a bomb vest with a deadman’s switch on his person. Trying to intimidate the Wraiths into helping, he didn’t realize that they had basically let the horror of the leash and were just trying to escape.

Their allies ran in terror, escaping on the boat as they did what they could. Torvald successfully tracked them despite the best use of their tricks, skill, and gear and caught them as they tried to escape via a hatch. Taking the jacket off, he threw the bomb at them hoping to blow up their escape and hopefully them. Crescent, seeing the threat coming, closed the door on his ally, caught the bomb, and tried to run back! Torvald was caught in the concussive force as the bomb exploded, killing Crescent instantly and sending Torvald crashing through the boxes nearby. I think this was a poignant moment, the players were not expected a moment of honor on part of an NPC protecting another NPC. It was interesting seeing their moment of regret, even the guy who threw the bomb was a bit touched.

Atiya, after accepting a Devil’s Bargain that she would be noticed by something when she tried to break the connection, rolled the session’s only critical success. She severed the connection, which originated from a large manor house somewhere in Crow’s Foot. Before she could react though, something pulled her down in the canal and into a sea of darkness. All light faded excepted for the lights below that seemed to glow so brightly now. Large and terrible things swam near her now, things large enough that their very movements buffeted her back and forth. Yet all stilled as a massive eye that was impossibly large opened and stared down upon her. It spoke in a terrible voice, one that reverberated in her mine like a shout off of the mountain.

“You are mine. I have chosen you.”

Then something grabbed her arm and it burned terribly before dragging her down into the dark

She awoke from her stupor at that moment and watched as the Summoned Horror faded into grey dust, the candle crystallizing and breaking apart. Upon her arm, her tattoos were erased and now there was a scar of these tentacle suckers upon her skin.

The score was a success but it cost the crew one of their founding members and likely had ruined relations with another crew for a long, long time.

The crew secured their art objects, selling them off for a nice sum. Their heat was relatively low, even with a death, and the engagement was nice and easy with a small bribe to the Bluecoats to go and release one of their friends.

Torvald, on yet another pilgrimage to worship the King On Bended Knee, got lost in a psychedelic state and disappeared due to overindulgence. Atiya consorted with dark spirits, learning what she can about the strange being she met. She learned only one thing; a name. The Father of the Abyss. Thaddeus worked harder on trying to make a connection with Peter Pendragyn, setting up a friendly connection with the nobleman. He also took care of his stress, drinking and celebrating with the social elite. A new Cutter looks to join the Dusters, an Ex-Bluecoat with something to prove and the support of the group’s contact Laroze. The group paid the coin and rose in Tier, now settling into Tier 1 status.

Overall, I was really happy with this session. I did a little forcing with the master thief but Torvald has a tendency to push everything to combat if left unchecked and I wanted a bit of a different ending for this one. We had humor throughout it, we had a moment of actual connection with an NPC (that was threatening them. I’m glad they liked him for the time they met him), and I was able to really let the flashback system shine by changing a situation where they had none of the cards into one where they had most of them. Killing the PC felt right for the situation and I think the players are testing me somewhat. They are constantly pushing for desperate situations and I have been too lenient up to this point. Now though, now I’ll beat them up if the fiction supports it.

As for other things happening in the campaign; Lyessa is dead after being assassinated by an unknown criminal. Crow’s Foot is in a panic and the whole place is going to hell. War is coming though, as their enemies the Graycloaks begin to get close to settling all of Six Towers. All that will be left in their way will be the Dusters themselves. We’ll see how long it takes before something finally goes down. Luckily, they just got a group of thugs just in time for such an occasion!

Knives, Guts, & Coins: Episode 3 – It All Goes Up In Flames!

Where we left our enterprising group of Bravos was Nakura the Spider, Cyrus the Leech, and Nyrys the Hound are up upon the third floor of a five-story building, down below being the Nothing & More. Under fire from Red Sashes, the group tries to cut a hole in the ceiling to provide a sniper position to attack the enemy Whisper fighting below.

Elo the Whisper, with their two thugs Aldo (because I like the name too much not to use it) and Coil, fight the Red Sashes and try to deal with the ghost of the dead Blacklamp that has been controlled by the man, Myre Vale.

In the back, Tumnas the Slide gets ready to set ablaze the feet of merchants, nobles, and others who come to the Red Sashes for their fix rather than work with the Blacklamps. Arranging them in a manner to best use the oil he had, he douses the inebriated’s feet and sets fire to them. A flashback to get assistance from the Leech, he sets them ablaze and a giant panic ensues as patrons rush out of the back screaming with their feet and legs on fire.

In the front, Elo engages Myre and the gangs connect. He breaks off to fight the ghost, drawing his fine lightning hook and striking hard at it as it threatens to rip him apart. Good dice rolls all around keep him from taking major harm, though his focus on the ghost rather than the material threats leaves the crew’s thugs open to retaliation from the Red Sashes, causing them to take a level of harm as the experienced swordsmen punish the two brave and loyal men armed with clubs and a hook on a chain.

Up above, in the midst of a terrible storm, the three crew members rally against the Red Sashes that are trying to close in on them. Drawing both of her pistols, Nyrys unloads a hail of gunfire, forcing the Red Sashes to take cover even as a few of them are gunned down. Naruka flashes back to meeting a group of alchemists throughout Crow’s Foot to assemble these flashbombs and then meeting with street urchins to have them already secured within the structure to detonate right then! The Sway roll comes up as a complete success, the bombs exploding and dazzling/stunning the enemy for the Hound to take down.

Unfortunately, Cyrus’s Tinker roll goes poorly and he cuts an important girder. Two clocks start up; one being that they open a hole on the floor and the other being that the floor just opens up and everyone falls in as the roof collapses. It is at this time, hoping to give the team up above more time, Elo challenges Myre to a duel hoping the man’s brash nature will work in his advantage. The player rolls a 6 on his sole die after pushing himself and Myre calls off the ghost’s attack, willing to engage this man in a duel to the death.

Tumnas, still in disguise and hidden, has made his way into the back of the building looking for riches to take and steal. Two guards are busy loading up a carriage with Black Lotus, hoping to get the goods out before they’re spotted. Quietly, the Slide cuts the one man’s throat before he can make a sound while investigating a strange noise he heard. With another 6 on the Sway roll, he convinces the man still by the carriage that he is his friend and says that he is okay. The guard, disarmed, doesn’t expect the knife in his heart when he hears footsteps behind him. He may have heard the knife being drawn if it wasn’t for one of the flaming guest running in screaming, crashing and tipping into an open crate of Black Lotus and setting it ablaze.

Realizing there was quite a bit of coin loaded into the cart, Tumnas decided to grab what he could and get the hell out of there. Of course, a plume of Black Lotus smoke was drifting into the air and presented a…problem. I had the joy of writing down a clock called “Sooooo High”. He tried to load up more into the carriage but wasn’t very good at it. Climbing upon the carriage, he then tried to get the goats moving and utterly failed at it. Gasping in frustration, he unwittingly inhaled a large and heavy dose of Black Lotus and immediately began to suffer the effect.

Riding alongside Queen Elisbeth the Third, he took the royal sash and crashed it upon the royal turtles pulling the boat in order to evade the Nightmare Men that were chasing after them. In truth, he stabbed one of the goats in the ass and the carriage ran out into the streets, passing by Bluecloaks and citizens alike. High on Black Lotus, hallucinating, and exposed to the elements of the terrible storm crashing through, Tumnas left the scene with a hell of a ride.

Upstairs, Cyrus took a breath and brought out his fine cutting torch. With Naruka’s help and a deep breath, he carved an impressive hole that was so perfect that the metal plating didn’t fall but just hung there, not alerting the enemy to their presence. Nyrys set up a shot, just as the duel began against Elo and Myre.

Myre presented himself, ready to duel, but Elo was not the honorable man. With a quick flashback of him talking to the thugs to help out if it looked like he was losing, Elo was able to sneak a strike in on the man when Coil caught him in the back of the head with the blunt side of the hook. With this act of dishonor, the Red Sashes fought without mercy. Aldo and Coil were both pushed back, desperately trying to defend themselves, as Myre descended upon Elo. The two fought as Nyrys set up the shot, ready to take down Myre.

The shot rang out just as Myre was able to catch advantage on the Elo, beating the Whisper unconscious (who gained a Trauma). The shot went through his shoulder and, as part of the Devil’s Bargain, the enemy Whisper ordered his ghost to kill! The lights up above exploded as the angry ghost descended upon them, eager to take their lives. Naruka ran away in a blind panic, Nyrys froze up, and only Cyrys had the mental faculties to try and fight back. With a single shot of the electroplasmic bullet, wrapping his arms around the smaller Hound, he aimed and fired. The bullet destroyed the already wounded ghost, knocking out power as well.

Wanting to avenge Elo, Nyrys set up her shot to try to take out the escaping Whisper. High on stress but still pushing, accepting a Devil Bargain, and opening herself up to gunfire, the two met gazes and the two exchanged gunfire. Nyrys’s shot missed by a hair and Myre’s shot nailed her in the shoulder. The Red Sashes retreated, as the growing fires were getting out of control.

The three active members swept in using their burglary gear, moving through the burning building to try and find additional funding. A safe was discovered containing international bonds from the Iruvian Consulate. Stealing them, the group escaped with their ill-gotten goods as the Nothing & More went up in flames.

Downtime went very well, the group healing themselves, training, and the Whisper beginning a long-term project to recruit a group of Rovers to assist him in search the Deathlands for rare ingredients to make his strange device. Stress was lowered, the group earned 8 coin for themselves and helped bolster the badly beaten Blacklamps, but they earned a very large amount of heat (9 heat!). A few players seemed irritated at that but I made sure to remind them that they could take actions to lower it and that, as Bravos, they would likely be accruing it more than other crews. Subtlety is not their strongest point.

While drinking with Cyrys, however, Nyrys was caught by a group of Bluecoats who took her to their Watch HQ for a not-so-friendly interrogation. She tried to plea with the group, offering one coin for now and another three later, but Sargent Klaus and his henchman, Henry, were not kind. Taking her coin, they beat her again and again but she refused to talk and did not break until they finally released her. Cyrys, feeling guilty for not being aware enough to protect his friend, took her out for drinking on his tab as an apology. The crew celebrated their first real victory and prepared themselves to go to war. Tumnas however, disappeared after going out for a night of gambling and hasn’t been seen since… (huzzah for overindulgence!)

Overall, the session was excellent. My Devil’s Bargains need more work but I’m getting better at telegraphing the danger and giving people ideas of what the consequences could be. Originally, I thought I was being too hard on my Monday group but I’ve realized that it was more that they have been pushing themselves really hard. Both my groups are players used to games like Exalted and Pathfinder and most of them are embracing the whole “fall in love with trouble, go big” mentality. I’m looking forward to this Monday now since I feel that the system is more and more comfortable every time I play it.

Next week, we’ll see what these daring Bravos do next!

Blood On Silk: Episode 3 – The First Big Deal

The Dusters (as the group now calls themselves) was able to hear about an influential dilettante noble who was coming down to the slums in search of the “next new thing”. Seeing an opportunity to make a large amount of coin (something they need after the expenses of recovering from the last job.)

The group, hearing from Thaddeus the Spider’s contact of the opportunity, did what they could to learn about this nobleman. A connoisseur of life-infused foods, the group uses this knowledge to send a “recommendation” of a location through the contact, using that as the “social connection” to try and build themselves up. I made an error here originally, having them set in a brothel and having them try to figure out how to change things. I realized that the group should be the ones to recommend the place, not an NPC.

The group learns that they will be having a discussion with the nobleman in a nice seafood restaurant in Silkshore, built with Dagger Isle thematics to it. There they were to meet him with two other representatives from two other gangs; The Billhooks and the Red Runners. With their rival arriving there, the group gathered info the best they could to see who was going to be bringing what to the table.

They learned that not only were the Red Runners coming but Narcus Haig, the leader of the group, was going to be there with his second in command. As for the Billhooks, they were just shipping in Black Lotus but not a large amount of it. What they did seem to be bringing in, however, is weaponry. Lots of weaponry.

The meeting began and the group got a 6 for their engagement roll. The meeting was going swimmingly and Thaddeus began knocking away Sway and Consort rolls. Using a flashback, they had taken the blood rock that had been stolen from their last job and gave it to addicts and corralled them to the location where the meeting was going down. Atiya was beside him as a guard and as an assistant, since the Cutter was missing this session, while the Hound and the Lurk kept eyes outside and helped rile up the crowd.

Narcus was able to sway the very petty noble’s attention from the fiasco outside, something that the Spider didn’t try to desist. However, their drug (having the upgrade “The Good Stuff”) went magnificently well upon the servant the noble fed it to. Pendragyn was convinced to buy their supply…which led to the next issue.

The Billhooks who attended, had rigged these acrid smoke bombs in their jacket and had released them as they showed their real intention; they were here to kidnap the nobleman for a fine ransom! The Spider flashbacked again, this time having smuggled in gas masks (just in case). Outside, two armored coaches arrive filled with Billhooks who begin to close in on the building. Lagertha the Lurk sneaks off towards the back of the large restaurant, trying to find another way in. Torvald the Hound begins laying down suppression upon the group but starts taking negative quickly. The player decided to focus on healing rather than stress reduction and came into the score with 7 stress! It would be a lesson for him to learn, for certain, as he was eventually caught up with after taking out the Billhook’s gunners. After trying to set an explosive, failing, and then trying to run away, failing again, he was cut down and beaten upon in one of the alleyways and left to die in the filth.

The others didn’t have a much better time either, as critical rolls came up as ones and twos. Thaddeus tried to give a mask to one of the noble’s guards, but the complication was that the Billhook broke the visor, meaning it was half as efficient. Atiya the Whisper tried to get the nobleman out of there and ended up in a tug of war with the Billhooks, who kept getting advantage back and then losing it again.Lagertha kills the Billhook getaway driver that arrives in the back of the establishment after falling into the water with them.

The group fights hard and long, the Spider being taken out by stress to ensure that the group knows the best route to escape from the establishment. The Lurk is taken out by stress assisting the Whisper who tries to use attunement to destroy the electroplasmic generator in the back (we made it possible in the fiction, it is just never a safe plan to fall back on since dealing with lightning is bad) and the Lurk had a flashback of setting up some security with their Bluecoat allies to come in and get them out of the hurt. The group succeeded at saving Pendragyn, the bratty noble, and all the credit went to them.

As their reward, they earned 9 coin and 5 reputation. It would’ve been 10 coin but bribes had to be paid to the muck rakers who pounced on the story of a noble being caught in the clutches of scoundrels. The group is beaten up pretty terribly at the moment but they definitely have a crew upgrade (which they’re thinking of acquiring a physicker) with and likely will be having upgrades as well. I’ll be writing my Love Letter to my Cutter as soon as he writes back to me about it.

Overall, I was pretty happy with the session. It was a difficult one, with a twist, but it paid well and that should help the group quite a bit. They haven’t made bad decisions, they have just had awful rolls to deal with. Next session I have them going for will be something more…subtle. The Lurk has been getting hammered a lot because she is getting in fights when she isn’t meant to be and I can tell the player is getting frustrated. I did roll the rumor that a Leviathan Hunter ship has arrived with no crew alive and a demon on board.

A question for you all though, if you’re interested. How do you guys handle healing and acquiring assets? None of my people have easy connections to a healer and the one that dead was not around, I think, so I couldn’t confirm it. It is super difficult to do, it seems, at Tier 0, and very punishing.

Knives, Guts, & Coins: Episode 2: The Nothing & More

The Crew:

– Tumnas Withers – Tycherosi Slide

– Elo Powell – Tycherosi Whisper

– Cyrus Watson – Tycherosi Leech

– Izaya “Naruka” Orihara – Akorosi Spider

– Nyrys Eageran – Akorosi Hound

So the Bravos group, still unnamed, started their tale within the worn down coal warehouse of the Lampblacks. The place was poorly manned, the gang having suffered terrible losses in their war so far. Henner, the heavy hitter of the group, had been gunned down in an ambush only a week ago. The Bravos, with the slide being a good friend of Bazso, had been contacted with an offer to be the wall against the hungry Red Sashes.

Welcoming them in, the group was offered the job to go and make a strike against the Red Sashes to get them off of the outskirts of his HQ. One of their vice dens, a brothel known as “The Nothing & More”, was poorly staffed now and would be an excellent target for the group to strike against.

With the Slide being friends with the gang, the Bravos eagerly accepted (albeit with the Leech being hesitant for only 1/4.of the coin of whatever is there). We immediately switched to planning phase.

Truthfully, this took longer than I wanted. I have come to realize I really need to stress the importance of flashbacks. It’ll save us a lot of time and wandering around and I’ve come to accept that I will have to offer more suggestions for players to latch onto before they grow comfortable in taking the initiative on it.

The group gathered information fairly well though, learning a layout of the place and, with a critical success, Tumnas learned that the owner wasn’t just a skilled duelist but was a Whisper who claimed the souls of the men he killed. After considering the possibilities, the group decided on letting Elo kick open the front door with their thugs in tow, Tumnas would be hidden amongst the enemy, while the others would try to burn a hole in through the rooftop to get a solid aim on the enemy.

The night was raining hard while the more quieter elements of the plan moved into position, waiting for their distraction. Thunder and lightning was all around as the echoes of those who died flicker in and out of the reality. The whisper, with his small group behind him, kicked open the front doors, drew a blade, and went after the first Red Sash in front of him. A fight began to break out, giving Tumnas a chance to sneak into the “private” dens to try and punish those that were there and make Red Sash territory feel dangerous.

Naruka, Cyrus, and Nyrys moved on top into a successful position to begin cutting a hole. However, a watchout caught sight of them and the enemy began to converge upon them. We ended with the owner, a man named Myre Vale, emerging and summoning his ghost to attack.

This was a test of using all the random generators like street, building, people, I even rolled for what the shrine outside of the brothel was dedicated to. It was very good and I think added a lot to the immersion, I especially like that there is enough there to grasp the attention of players with things like smell, sights, and sounds. Over all, an excellent learning experience.

Blood on Silk: Episode 2 – The Assault

The game kicked into high-gear with an assault on the Red Runner’s drug den, aiming to make a spectacle for the Hive to see and be impressed with. The group decided to attack from above, using a bomb to blow open the roof the building before charging down and fighting the Lieutenant here, Ezra the Claw.

The roof exploded and the darkness of Duskvol was made brilliantly bright for a moment by the red, almost firework like explosion of the bomb that Thaddeus the Spider had found for them. Torvald the Hound and Ashton the Cutter both scared the bejeezus out of the guards up top and rushed downwards to get help. Lagatha the Lurk tossed a quick blade at one of the retreating men, taking a Devil’s Bargain that he was someone “important”.

The group descended into the drug den and began kicking ass all the way down. Reaching a barred door, Torvald tries to smash it down but rolls terribly. His glaive crashes into it, leaving a hole before an answering blunderbuss rebukes him. They can hear the old, rough voice of the Tycherosi woman known as “Ezra The Claw” shout “Which one of you bastards hurt my boy!?”

The bomb had knocked out the power in this area and the group was very excited to see if the ghost downstairs would finally attack (I kept rolling fortune dice for it but alas, it never worked). Lagatha snuck through the blunderbuss hole, disappearing from the enemy’s electroplasmic lanterns before they could attack. A large skirmish happened between the groups, one that eventually entered darkness when Atiya the Whisper was able to pull on the lantern’s energy and turn everything into darkness.

The end result was the Lurk who successfully ambushed Ezra being the first person to suffer Trauma and get thrown out the window by her. He decided to suffer being Reckless now, though he is considering playing a Leech instead of his current character.

The group succeeded on killing Ezra, kicking out the Red Runners, and increasing their territory. The rival gang hasn’t gone to war yet but they have one more segment left before things will hit the fan. The job was decidedly loud & chaotic but not wild, giving them a base of +4 heat. There was an additional 3 heat added on, one for the murder and the other for a complication from earlier.

The group had their entanglement rolled and the option that was rolled on both dice (since they’re Tier 0) is an arrest. This intrigues me because the group has a -2 with the Inspectors already, so I’m going to make their rival Inspector who will be a thorn in their side coming for an arrest. XP was handed out since some had to get home and we’ll be picking up with downtime right when people get back.

Overall, not a bad session. I feel I could’ve put more work into the drug den and made it come to life better but my group was very hard to rein in and have them decide on a single plan. They also have some bad habits of trying to control other players’ actions but I put my heel down on that pretty quickly.

Downtime was super quick and easy to get through and help people do. That took much less time for others to think about and I liked how natural it felt to move from one event towards the others. The score will still take awhile to get things figured out (they’re now in sandbox mode, so I hope they’re ready and willing to get their feet wet) but downtime should be relatively quick.

Knives, Guts, & Coin – A Bravos’ Tale

So, I was insane and decided “Well, I’m already running the brand new session so why don’t we run another one for other folks!”. So I started a game on Thursday and it went much smoother now that I’m used to it and much quicker since I did some “Executive GM Decision-Making” (it is a trademark).

Originally, when we got to who gets pissed and who gets irritated from upgrades to the lair and what have you, I let the players decide. My players, how I still love them though, are terrible about reading up on the setting and things break down quickly and then they want to hear every option. This time, I just told them who was mad, who wasn’t, and let them decide how they wanted to handle it. It went far smoother doing that.

So in this game, we have three players who weren’t involved with the 1st character generation and two players who’re very new to tabletop gaming in general. What we ended up with was…

A Tycherosi Slide who was a former carnie/con-man who venerates an old Forgotten God. Taking the “Cloak & Dagger” setup, he is an expert in makeup and surprise attacks.

A Tycherosi Whisper, a former student at Charterhall who has been dallying into strange and mysterious forces. Taking “Strange Methods”, he has learned how to create a wand capable of creating electroplasmic-lightning capable of destroying ghosts, spirits, and harming even demons. He is looking into the history of his people, trying to learn why the Tycherosi bear the marks that they do. His friend, Setarra the Demon (who I decided hungers for knowledge), gave him this formula as the “first step” of learning his heritage. This makes the Whisper both excited and uneasy.

We have an Akoros Hound who was once as simple laborer working in the eeleries who just wanted more. He learned the trade of a bounty hunter but was blacklisted when his bounty was assasinated before he could hand them into the Bluecoats.

There is another Akoros, this one playing the Spider. She changed her playbook from Slide to Spider near the end of the session so I haven’t had as much time to flush out her character’s ideas. She was an info broker that got burned pretty bad, sold out a drug dealer who came back and hit her hard enough that she has to start over.

Lastly, we have our Leech. He was going to be a Tycherosi but decided not to when he heard there were other Tycherosi in the party. His character’s goal is to find a way to achieve true immortality, not the hollow existence that Hulls and Vampires survive in. He believes it can be found from the blood of the Leviathans, even in the leftover slag.

That makes up our crew of scoundrels. We moved onward to crew generation and that is when things got great. People were looking through the crew sheets and they decided to ask me which ones I liked. The only one not available was Hawkers (since I’m already running Hawkers at the moment) so I told them that my personal favorite was Bravos. I enjoyed the very “Gangs of New York” feel and it was one of the crews I felt resonated strongly with the game’s themes. To my surprise, they all agreed as well and decided to be a group of Bravos. I think only one of them actually had Skirmish so the group wisely decided upon “Dangerous” as their special ability.

They decided that they were going to specialize in Crow’s Foot, staying in a series of stacked railcars that were once tenement buildings after the initial Leviathan attack and had been left there ever since. They decided the heart of Crow’s Foot would be their stomping grounds and they specialized in Extortion, being a group of ruthless gangsters looking for coin any way possible. I voted that the group would’ve pissed off the Bluecoats that use that area for their own extortion racket. To my surprise, the group paid the coin to maintain a neutral relationship with them and carried on.

We did their upgrades, Bravo’s Rigging and Workshop, and I decided that the group received help from the Lampblacks (the Slide used to work marks with Bazso back in the day) to get their rigging all sorted. They attacked a small, independent smuggler who was bringing a slew of supplies and things for themselves. What they didn’t know was that was meant to go to the Dimmer Sisters, who know hold a very serious grudge (the group spent their coin to ensure that the Lampblacks were good friends with them).

As for their contact, they decided on Lutes the tavern owner. I decided to get a little frisky with the situation and had them become better friends with the Crows (who they pay up to) since the guy was a former Crow before he went straight sailing. However, they took a hit with the Leviathan Hunters, since Lutes was part of some “ordeal” that occurred offshore. I gave the group the option of +2/-2 and they eagerly took it. That meant the Crows thought big of them when a group of well-armed thugs showed up at Lutes’s business and the crew kicked them out. What they didn’t know was that group of thugs was a vice-captain and a handful of sailors, so their relation to the Hunters has dropped hard.

I’m going to be running them through the starting situation in the book with the War in Crow’s Foot. I think I’ll have them take the drug den raid first and do some initial fortune rolls to see how things are currently going in the war.

Blood on Silk: Episode 1: New Arrivals

So we finally had game tonight and my poor players just couldn’t seem to get a good roll for the life of them.

I updated their sheets to v.8.1 and got everything situated. We talked about how they met, how they were recruited, everything like that. They did a little more creation, coming up with the look of their drug at least. It is this pearl-colored bouillon cube with an almost rainbow iridescence to it. You can shave it onto your food, mix it in with hot tea, or suck on it like a gumball. Eating it is the only way to imbibe it…for now. At higher tiers, they’ll have better possibilities.

The group met Djera, the leader of the Hive who represented herself as “just an associate” of it, at a warehouse at the docks after receiving an invitation to arrive. Despite everyone trying really good ways to learn more about her, the highest roll was a 2. During the interaction with her, the highest one was a 3. Needless to say, the group was over their heads and easily played along to her tune throughout their conversation.

Impressed by their ability to move so effectively, she saw an opportunity to try and recruit them so she could apply pressure on the Crows by striking at the gangs that made them the most money. Wanting to see how they acted, she hired them to assault a Red Runner outpost in Silkshore that they used for a gambling den as well as a drug workshop. I rolled the building table to find out what businesses were there and the 1st floor was a ruin, the 2nd and 3rd were a gambling den, the 4th as a workshop ran by some neutral engineer, and the 5th floor was their drug den. It worked really well and gave a good idea of what was going on.

The group accepted her offer of 3 coin and began to gather information the best they can. The Lurk tried to sneak in and consort with the gamblers and gangers and just ended up not being able to do so. Another 3 was rolled. The Spider tried to find out what other toes they would step on by really messing with the Red Runners and got a 5 finally. I gave him limited effect and said that they owed money towards a gang in Crow’s Foot, but who he wasn’t sure.

The Cutter decided to kidnap a guy and question him about the location, getting a 6 on his prowl. He was able to learn that the place was locked tightly thanks to some good locks they had and their main lieutenant, named Ezra the Claw, was the one who had the keys. Her two second-in-commands, Vinz and Drogo, also had keys to the 5th floor. There was also a laundry shaft through the building to the 1st floor but it was dangerous to go there. Getting that information required a Devil’s Bargain, where the goon slipped out of his hold and yelled for help. Resisting that, the Cutter gave him a swift kick into the canal and escaped nice and cleanly.

Intrigued by the news that there was something in the basement, our Whisper sneaked in and investigated what could be there. A murder victim, stabbed and left to die in a fire that ruined that floor, rose to the occasion. Again I used the random tables and I came up with this destructive spirit. Electroplasmic electricity arced off of his burning, ghostly body and he demanded that she explain why she reached for him. She tried to convince him to attack the people up above but he told her that they had the place warded against his intrusion, all while he continued to stalk her.

The ghost offered a deal that if she carried him in via possession, he’d attack them with all his wrath. Rather than trust the mildly insane and dangerous ghost, she opted to try and escape. She got out with mild burns on her leg when he almost caught her but was caught out by a large crowd on the street. She convinced the Runners that interrogated her that she was “just trying to get a hit in some privacy” but talk would spread of the strange woman who met the ghost below and that netted the group a + 1 to Heat.

The group started to try and do their planning but they got wrapped up in old habits and it was getting late. People were trying to find the best plan rather than taking a plan and going with it. I was able to corral the cats that were my players into at least settling on an Assault plan and moving from there. Over the week, they’ll send me messages with questions for me to think about.

I’m expecting this, knowing my players, to become and wonderful shit show with plenty of heat, bodies, and a fierce reputation. They are an Ambitious group of Hawkers, after all. I’m going to instill a “No Phones At The Table” rule because people were getting too drawn into their mobile devices and not joining into ideas and discussions.

Overall though, it was a fun first session. It was neat to basically not roll any dice and just narrate what happens. I really look forward to what shenanigans they pull next.