Author: Sebastian Baker

I just ran my final session of an ongoing Blades campaign, before my friends and I all go off to different colleges (at least until next summer). So I figured now was a good time to share some highlights from the Spitting Toads, a band of Hawkers with a Subtle reputation:

* Stealing a shipment of exotic spices (ingredients for a new drug) from Gaddoc Rail Station, then escaping in a handcar and riding it all the way back to the rusted railcar in Charhollow that they use as a hideout.

* Blowing up the Nightshade Botanicals apothecary for competing with their business, then framing it on Penelope’s Prudent & Potent Potions to drive them out of business too and throw the Hive off their trail. On the way, they met a friendly member of the Wraiths. (They later bought the P4 building, renamed it The Toadstool, and now use it as a front.)

* Crashing a party thrown by Lord Strangford, where the Whisper fell in love with both his daughter and her fiance (needless to say, it didn’t go well), the Slide made friends with a gloomy maid who knows more than she’s telling, the Hound learned to play a whale-oil-powered theremin, and the Leech foiled an attempt on Strangford’s life.

* Smuggling a huge batch of psychoactives to a University professor and his electroplasmology class, then saving the day when their ghost-summoning experiment went awry. In this caper, we also learned that there’s a popular series of harlequin romance novels shipping the Hound with a certain Sentinel who’s made it her mission to capture him (the Whisper is but one of its many authors, under the same pen name).

* While most of the crew was out of town (they all overindulged their vices and decided to go on a cruise together), the Whisper and Lurk joined up with a new team to rob the Silver Stag Casino. They ended up filling it with ghosts and setting it on fire.

* After returning from their cruise, the Spitting Toads got involved with the war between the Red Sashes and the Lampblacks (the Lampblack’s leader is the Slide’s boyfriend). They started by taking out the apothecary who supplied the Red Sashes’ drugs, a paranoid University professor who believed all ghostly activity is a hoax perpetrated by the government.

* Breaking into the mansion of a magistrate who’d been too lenient with Red Sash defendants. While seeking blackmail material, they opened an attic where she’d been storing physical manifestations of nightmares extracted from her brain. The nightmares got loose, and the magistrate’s whole mansion needed to be electroplasmically incinerated by Spirit Wardens to stop them from escaping into the city.

* Taking over an eel farm that the Red Sashes used to dispose of bodies and conduct big sales. After blowing up the boats and part of the building, the crew all agreed that they should have a second reputation: Brutal. Later on, the thugs they hired to guard the eel farm were racist to some Skovlan customers and angered Ulf Ironborn, who came and complained to the Toads. In this caper, we learned an important bit of underworld code: If your hirelings go outside their orders, you’re not held responsible for their actions as long as you don’t try to protect them from repercussions. So the Toads gave Ulf permission to beat up their thugs.

* The Toads were contacted by a young Iruvian lady who claimed to be the rightful heir to the Red Sashes, who asked them to help her overthrow the current leader. They agreed, and went to an art museum to issue a challenge to a duel. While there, the Lurk pooped in the fountain (he has a tradition of doing that whenever he breaks into somewhere fancy enough to have a fountain, earning him the nickname “the Brown-Water Bandit”).

* Taking a break from the gang war to attend the wedding of the Hound’s old navy buddy to his Tycherosi bride. The Whisper continued their streak of being unlucky in love by winning the heart of one of the bride’s distant cousins: an angler-fish-like demon with a beautiful humanoid lure. Then, said Whisper also ran away from home (they’re still a teenager) after finding out that their ex-smuggler parents are accepting of many things, but draw the line at having intimate relations with demons.

* And in this last session, the Spitting Toads rigged the duel for control of the Red Sashes by sneaking into the current leader’s house and slipping a drug into her tea that made her unable to sleep. The Iruvian heiress won, and vowed to pull the Red Sashes out of the drug trade and back into the assassination business where they belong. Now all the Sashes’ old turf is ripe for the taking, by the Toads, the Lampblacks, or whoever else can claim it…

The bad news is, the Hound was almost caught by his Sentinel non-lover, who learned his identity in the process. Then some Bluecoats showed up at the Toadstool and arrested the Leech! (It’s his own fault for never bothering with a cover identity even when everyone else did.) My players are hoping to break him out of Ironhook over the winter holidays.

It’s been a lot of fun, and I really hope we get to play more.