Author: Scott Macmillan

Oblique Angles, Session 2: Who Was That Tricorn Hatted Man, Anyway?

We had two new players join us this game – Moray (Cutter) and Banshee (Lurk).

Downtime Actions

– New Clock – Electroplasmic Battery – 2/8 – Vale is creating an Electroplasmic Battery. When complete, he’ll be able to draw on it for his ghost field work.

– Vale, while (over) indulging his gambling vice, was accosted by the Bluecoats while in a back-alley near his gambling hall. Unfortunately, they caught him trying to pay off his gambling debts by conducting some sort of magical ritual for one of the other gamblers. Vale is no longer welcome at his old gambling establishment.

— New Clock – Persona Grata – 0/6 – When filled, Vale is welcome again at the Lady Dusk’s Dusk Manor club, his usual gambling hall.

— New Clock – Persona Sold Out – 0/6 – When filled, Lady Dusk has sold Vale out and shared what secrets she knows of him.

Free Play

The demon Setarra visited Vale, and told him of a brewing conflict between the Dimmer Sisters and Lord Scurlock. So far it consists of feints and moves in the shadows.

The crew also hear a number of other rumors:

– The riots have ended – the Bluecoats eventually managed to put a stop to them. – The leader of the rioters, a sailor named Koln, managed to escape. His whereabouts are unknown.

– The Bluecoats have come out of the riots with reduced authority (their hold on Tier III went from Strong to Weak)

– There is a gang war in Crow’s Foot.

— The Crows, the top-dog gang there, recently had their leader murdered – by their second in command

— While she consolidates her control of the gang, the gangs that owe fealty to them – the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes are warring

– The Lampblacks, after the encounter they had with the Angles in session 1, are gathering information on the Angles. Nothing too aggressive… yet.

– There have been a number of reports of weird singing down at the docks. It seems to defy normal classification in a number of ways – it changes in direction, tone, lyrics, and in other manners from minute to minute.

Banshee and Vale looked into the singing – Banshee by sneaking around the docks, and Vale by taking a ghost field survey of the area (while looking for a new gambling hall). Banshee confirmed what the rumors had said – the songs changed often, both in direction and in composition. Vale’s survey of the ghost field helped him realize the singers were skilled whisperers that were trying out various kinds of rituals, experimenting to find the right one. All the rituals were trying to call some terrestrial (non-ghost field) person or thing to come here.

The crew also found a letter in one of its dropboxes; these letters usually only came from established clients, but this one was from an unknown sender. The letter’s author proposed that the Angles do a job for them. The job was to enter Old Scurlock Manner (near their home in Six Towers) and retrieve an object. They said it would pay well. If they were interested, they should meet to seal the deal at midnight at the docks.

Weaver (with Moray trailing as a bodyguard) went to meet the mystery correspondent, and found them down a dark alley at the docks. The person in question appeared to be a male in a long overcoat and antiquated tricorn hat. They had a shuttered lantern with them. When Weaver tried to use the lantern to see who he was dealing with, the figure used what seemed to be magic to snuff the lantern entirely.

The soon-to-be-client wanted to engage the Angles to remove the Rituals of Scurlock the First from the crypts beneath the mansion. They told Weaver that the book was warded in some fashion, but that they could handle it. The job needed to be completed by 3am the next day. When Weaver asked if there were other things to be worried about, the figure just shrugged. The money offered was excellent (8 coin), so Weaver accepted the job. Weaver detected no lies in the things their client was saying.

There was some consternation amongst the crew when Weaver returned – Vale (and others) felt sure that their new client was none other than the current Lord Scurlock himself, and that in doing the job they’d be playing into the hands of his enemy. In the end, they all agreed that they should do the job either way – once they had the tome, they’d be in a position to either deliver it or thwart their new client, as they saw fit.

Before approaching the manor, Vale went to Charterhall to do research on Scurlock the First. He found in his research that the first Lord Scurlock was known to be a necromancer and sorcerer of the first order. He was put to death at the command of the Immortal Emperor (forever may he live!). The execution included Scurlock’s head being cut from his body, possibly the whole thing being chopped up into further pieces, and at least some portions of him being incinerated. Accounts varied somewhat.

As soon as the research was done, the Angles went into Old Scurlock Manner. Using the high-quality set of maps they had of the city’s underground, they made their way to an underground maintenance entrance to the estate’s catacombs. Banshee was able to masterfully work the huge, rusted door open – but then stepped on a pressure plate of some sort. Thankfully, Snake was able to disarm the trap by peeling up the surrounding cobblestones and wedging Moray’s crowbar into the mechanism.

Once inside the catacombs, the Angles came to a large room with two passages leading outwards. Vale attuned to the ghost field to see which way they should go – one way had a lot of ghost field activity. The other, though, had some sort of strange ghost field lacking bubble in it. Thinking this to be the ward on the book, the Angles decided to take that passage.

As they started to move, however, they realized that they’d been noticed – dozens of rats with glowing red eyes came out all around the room, and then began to attack. Lead by Banshee, the crew managed to get across the room without getting caught. The possessed rats began to pull themselves up into some sort of amalgamated monstrous form – but then got hit by a thrown vial of fire oil from Snake. The mass of rats was consumed in a sickly green flame and came apart.

In their haste to get past the rats, though, the crew ended up bursting into the room at the end of the hall. Happily, this was their goal – in the room was the sarcophagus of Scurlock the First, along with the warded chest. There was also, however, a Spirit Warden – the implacable servants of the empire that made sure all ghosts went to their rests. From behind its rune-enscribed brass mask, the Spirit Warden asked what they were doing there.

Weaver thought quickly back to Vale’s library trip – which he’d tagged along on – and remembered what he had read about the Spirit Wardens and this tomb. The Wardens were there solely to guard the sarcophagus. (It also happened that Weaver saw and was affected by a strange picture in that same book; in what way, though, he does not know.)

Weaver quickly told the Spirit Warden that they were interested only in the warded chest. After some thought, the Warden said they could proceed.

Vale accessed the ghost field to examine the chest, and realized that the ward could be broken by releasing or pushing a spirit into it – that would collapse the ward. He and Banshee then went to capture one.

Banshee used her skill from back in the Dagger Isles as a Ghost Lure to bring the ghost towards Vale, who would capture it. Unexpectedly, Banshee found herself being chased by two ghosts. While Vale expertly captured one ghost in a spirit bottle, Banshee (screaming as she went) led the other one back into the burial chamber. Luckily for Banshee, Moray was ready. Pulling out her cold-iron maul, she obliterated the spirit with two forceful swings. Vale was then able to use the captured ghost to disrupt the ward, and the Angles quickly left with the book.

Once they arrived back at their base, there was some discussion about what to do. Should the team deliver this tome to a customer they felt sure was Vale’s vampiric foe? In the end, they decided to deliver the tome – to not do so was to invite death, a ruined professional reputation, or both. They did, however, make two etchings of the book’s bronze pages before doing so.

Vale (with Banshee’s help) also made a close study of the book in order to be able to recognize its ghost field signature in the future. This turned out to be very tricky business – the book had come awake in some fashion, and was interacting with and causing disturbances in the ghost field in its vicinity. Vale, who was both lucky and skillful, managed to learn what he wanted without getting ensnared by the book’s energies. (New Clock – Understanding the rituals of Scurlock the First – 2/8) In doing so, he gained some understanding of the book itself. While a person could learn the rituals by reading the etchings, the book itself was integral to enacting any of them; it was an artifact unto itself. Vale also learned that all the rituals in the book enacted some kind of attunement.

At three in the morning, Weaver (again with Moray looking out for him) brought the book back to their client, down by the docks. Weaver tried to get extra money for the job, as a concession to the extra dangers they had encountered. The client agreed that they had earned additional compensation – but only on the condition that Weaver would at some point in the future do a favor for them. Weaver agreed.

The Oblique Angles: Session One

Character Creation

This weekend I ran character gen and a first session for some of the folks from my bi-weekly gaming group. I’m extremely fortunate to have a super solid group of folks for this – we’ve known each other for almost 20 years now, all of them are practiced roleplayers and most are also practiced GMs. The session was a big hit, and I will likely slot it into our off-weeks as a regular thing!

Our crew consists of:

– Vale – the Whisper. Vale is a Tychorosi with six fingers on each hand. During the Unity Wars, he served as Whisper for a unit in Skovland… at some point he went missing. Somehow in his past he became wrapped up in the tug of war between Lord Scurlock and Setarra (he managed to blindly pick Scurlock as his rival and Setarra as his ally).

– Snake – the Leech. Severosi. HIs clan dedicated itself to preserving medical knowledge after the cataclysm. When his clan was wiped out, he was adopted by Rail Jacks, and spent a portion of his previous life guarding the rails as one.

– Weaver – the Slide. Akorosi. Weaver was a barrister, well known for his dramatic style. In one fateful case, he purposefully didn’t defend someone as well as he should have… and there were repercussions.

– Agerine – the Spider. Iruvian. An exiled scientist, forced to leave over his dangerous experiments. In his past life as an academic studying civil engineering and energy, it’s rumored he managed to set off a volcano. If you ask Agerine the truth of this, he just shrugs.

– Gentile – the Hound. Akorosi. The 9th son of the current Lord Strangford. Gentile is currently 7th in line to the title. The two spots he jumped? No one could tie him to those accidents but… he’s not welcome around the family anymore.

Together, they make up the Oblique Angles, a crew of Shadows with a reputation for the weird. They took Ghost Echoes as their first (and signature) playbook power – the high concept is that they’re spies with one foot firmly in the supernatural world.

For a base, they are working out of an old Strangford manse in Six Towers. They specialize in espionage, and their hunting grounds are in Charterhall. The area they are working is under the control of the Imperial Army; their presence and activities are condoned by Imperial Intelligence because they’re considered useful – their abilities with the ghost field mean they can do things others can’t.

To start, they’re at a -1 with Lord Scurlock, a +1 with the Dimmer Sisters, a +2 with the Imperial Army, and (with their agreement) a -2 with a faction unknown to them.

The Setup

To set up the first score, we used Sean Nittner’s excellent Duskwall Riots of 847 pdf. After talking things over, the crew decided that the conscripted leviathan hunter crews were the ones rioting (Gentile knew Kolin from his time spent on the same ship; he’d actually dragged Kolin out of a bad situation in a brothel at one point, as well), and that the cause had been the arrest of a Charterhall academic, a student that (it was rumored) had dug up some legal references invalidating the practice of press ganging.

As we talked about what score this might actually set up, one of the players had an idea: what if the Oblique Angles had, at the behest of Imperial Intelligence, let it be known she’d been taken? And what if she were actually an Imperial agent? And what if the score was to free this “student” from wherever the Bluecoats had taken her and get her to the organizers of the Unchained, the faction pushing to end press ganging? This would serve two aims from the Imperial Army’s perspective: make the Bluecoats look bad, and help aim or defuse the Unchained. The Unchained could be a long term threat to the flow of electroplasm, and so a riot or two in exchange for a stronger hold over them was quite worthwhile.

Everyone thought this was a great idea. And so, still in Free Time, a couple people did some info gathering to figure out where the Bluecoats had stashed our student, Carissa Basran. Weaver, the Slide, donned a disguise as a Bluecoat messenger and went seeking their crew’s contact in the Bluecoats, Laroze. Weaver found her, but his situation was complicated when a Bluecoat officer grabbed him and told him to hand over whatever message he had. Weaver managed to confuse at the officer well enough with some rapid-fire nonsense that they lost their patience; instead of forcing Weaver to hand over a message he didn’t actually have, he instead yanked Weaver’s (fake) badge off his uniform and stalked off, muttering about how he’d deal with this idiot later. (A complication that may come up in a future session…)

As Laroze heard Weaver’s request, she paused… and then a bead of sweat ran down the side of her face as she realized what was being asked. But she gave Weaver the info – Basran was being held in Ironhook Prison.

(Side note – I didn’t actually play Ironhook as a Tier IV; it didn’t even occur to me until much later. The retcon is that they were operating at Tier II because of the riots; this will be reflected in the crew’s rep gain for the score.)

With that, the score could begin!

The Score

The approach and the detail were almost trivially easy – the Oblique Angles would come in using their Ghost Echoes power to find a ghost door, and unlock it with Vale’s ghost key. Once past that door, we began the score with Vale needing to disarm a warded door. With that, they were into an old unused sub-level of Ironhook Prison.

They made it up a level to where they needed to be – now they just needed to get one cell block over. Sadly, the entrance to the next cell block was guarded by a group of four Bluecoats. After some hemming and hawing, plus some helpful info from the GM, the Angles headed the other way – towards the laundry. With a quick flashback by Agerine, they came to the conveniently abandoned laundry facility. Agerine dropped off his bottle of whiskey as payment, and the crew quickly donned prison uniforms and grabbed laundry carts. With those, they were easily able to bluff their way past the guards.

Once in the correct cell block, the team had to somehow get Carissa Basran out of her cell and into a cart without attracting attention to that fact. Several people attempted to either block lines of sight or attract the inmates’ attention – most of these failed and/or cause complications. When a Bluecoat guard got close enough to try to stop them, Gentile quickly chloraformed them and dumped them into a cart. As Snake got Basran’s cell open, the rest of the guards at the far end of the block came running. The team then switched to Plan B. Or rather, as Vale put it, Plan F.

Vale quickly raised a viscous fog, and several of the other team members helpfully started screaming about how the death fog was going to kill them all (it turns you inside out!). Agerine threw a lantern into one of the unoccupied laundry carts and shoved it on down the hallway. Under cover of the chaos, the team ran back the way they’d come.

Weaver took the lead, and fell through the door into the arms of the Bluecoats guarding that section, choking and screaming about the death fog. The Bluecoats grabbed him, shook him, and demanded to know what was going on. Weaver then blew his trance dust into their faces. It was at such a close distance, though, that it caught him as well. Happily, though, the rest of the crew threw him into a laundry cart and Snake administered an antidote while they ran.

Once they exited Ironhook, our scoundrels made their way back towards the drop-off; they needed to bring Carissa to a Unchained safe house in Crow’s Foot. One of their main assets is a very complete set of maps of the various underground byways of the city – they were able to stay below ground most of the way and to avoid trouble as they went.

But as they closed in on the tunnel exit they needed, a lamp lit up in the darkness ahead of them. Much to everyone’s chagrin, it was Bazso Baz – and his Lampblacks had them surrounded. Bazso wondered idly (but cheerfully) what they were doing on his turf, and who the cloaked figure with them was. When asked how they could get by, he said they could hand over Weaver (apparently he and Bazso have some bad history – perhaps he represended Bazso in court once?). When asked what he’d do with Weaver, he smiled and said, “I’m going to put a bullet in his head, of course.”

After a quick flashback to his earlier discussion with the team’s contact in Imperial Intelligence, Agerine warned Bazso: “I don’t think you want to mess with us. Not with our friends coming up behind you.” Bazso laughed – but then had to duck a sword coming in from behind. A larger force of Red Sashes had snuck up behind the Lampblacks and was now cutting a swath through them.

Bazso made a dash for it past the players. Weaver did his best to put a bullet in Bazso as he went, but Bazso was too fast for him.

As the Red Sashes chased the Lampblacks south into Crow’s Foot, the Angles were clear to finish their delivery. When they dropped Carissa off, the confused members of the Unchained asked, “Who the hell are you?”

“We’re the Oblique Angles,” Gentile said with a grin. And then they were gone.

—

(Please pardon my lack of proofreading this post – I wanted to get it done and up before any more time had passed.)

Well, THAT was a hell of a thing. Overall, everything went super well.

I was taken sideways to realize I had a crew of Shadows working out of the center of government – what the heck gang works that turf, for them to pay up into? Once I settled on the Imperial Army, everything quickly settled into place.

I absolutely loved how we ended up tweaking the Riots score to make sense for our crew. That is a great jumping off point, Sean Nittner!

I’m now going to start running this game for my folks every other Tuesday – everyone had a great time. Thanks for an awesome game, John Harper and everyone else involved!