Author: Zack Rust

Actual Play Report

The Devil’s Bargain Crew Saddles up at the start at War with their smuggling rivals, The Fog Hounds. Knowing that while at war, their enemy has been brought down to equal terms with them in terms of tier, they devise a plan to deal with the War. Silver-tongue decides that settling this through peaceful negotiation could work, so they set up a social plan to negotiate the terms while still keeping the territory that they had taken from the Fog Hounds. Once the plan is enacted, Silver is confronted with an opportunity. If he can take on Bear, a strong leader in the Fog Hounds, in a duel, then things can be square. If not, they give back the territory and peace can be established.

So the plan goes as such: Silver, Nightmare, and a hidden Pilgrim get onto the Fog Hound’s steam ship to witness this one-on-one duel at sea. What Bear doesn’t know is that Nightmare had taken a deal with The Lost Crown cult’s deity in order to curse Bear to falter during the fight. This comes at a cost as Nightmare is meddling in strange and powerful forces and a clock is started showing his influence on her. But the duel begins and despite not being a necessarily strong person, Silver manages to slide his rapier through the man’s chest while having the heavy armor he was wearing to become completely destroyed.

What the crew didn’t know was that Red Eyes, their resident sharpshooter, was sneaking up onto a building with deadly intent after the matter was settled. His telescope and rifle are aimed at Margette Vale, leader of the Fog hounds. A shot is fired and a bullet goes through her head with a devastating crit, allowing the loud shot not to hinder the sharpshooter from getting away, and leaving the crew to deal with the consequences. With just Goldie, the last leadership of the Fog Hounds, and a gang of their soldiers on the boat, swarm the two protagonists. Pilgrim leaps into view and takes out two thugs, but Silver goes down easily with his armor torn and lack of physical protection. Nightmare sees the chaos going on and attempts to calm everyone down by offering a bribe and making Goldie realize the position that he’s in as new leader. Despite the difficulty, Goldie settles and calls his men off, taking the bribe and agreeing to let The Devil’s Bargain Crew keep the turf taken, but at the cost of never dealing with them again. With that the crew leaves, wounded but in control.

The crew takes some time to attempt to relax and heal. Red eyes goes off to his vice purveyor, someone who captures people and releases them as hunting sport for others at a cost. Nightmare indulges in her own vice, drinking expensive wine, and learns more about her almost-boyfriend Stras the Vampire.

It’s at this time that Red Eyes and Pilgrim want to do a little side job on their own, potentially getting themselves personal coin. The job is fairly clean cut. The Wraiths aren’t too keen on a reporter that’s been snooping around their territory as of late. They want him dead and soon.

They track the man to Nightmarket in a drug den meant specifically for private clientele. Upon finding his door, they listen in and hear the reporter talking to a female voice. Lyssa, leader of The Crows, emerges out first and notices the two and attempts to scare them off by putting a gun to Pilgrim’s head. Pilgrim remains silent, but Red eyes hisses at her like a cat. After being fairly amused by this display, she backs off and promises that should she ever catch them snooping around her again, two bullets will be fired.

With that problem taken care of, Pilgrim gets a sense of where this reporter is and Ghost Veil’s partially through the wall, grabs the mans head, and slams it as hard as he can into the wall. With the target knocked out, the two sneak his body back to the base before interrogating him about what he knows before being killed. They get nothing out of him, so it’s a simple stab and they throw his body into the river. It’s at this point the two realize that they’d rather be assassins and sell most of their resources to switch their business over to being assassins.

GM Notes

So I’ve noticed that running a group larger than four is fairly difficult. It tends to devolve into lots of arguments about what they want to do. I don’t know if its the nature of the number or the fact that everyone is college aged. I’ve also notice that I have to really turn up the difficulty scale when a large group goes on a mission. They have a huge stress pool and many options for dealing with stuff.

Actual Play Report

The Legion of Iquanis returns once again to further their influence in society before beginning the real process to convert.

Knowing that contending with the Lampblacks would be near suicide, they let them keep the seized turf and press on by finding another area to claim. THey do find that there is a nearby Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh that could be taken. During a reconnaissance mission by Flick, the Tongue of Iguanis, he talks to a brother there. During a long an uncomfortable embrace, he manages to survey the area and spots the glimpse of a bronze mask mask through the crack of a door, leading into some sort of cellar under the church.

After letting Pockets, the Bite of Iguanis and Books, the Heart of Iguanis, they discuss how they can verify whether the church is actually a front for something being done by the Spirit Wardens. What does any group of religious maniacs do in this kind of situation? They murder an innocent of course.

Flick visits a Nightmarket bar to find someone and spots a tall and muscular woman who had already been drinking for some time. Flick’s social skills prove useful and he makes a display of affectionate force and convinces her to come “back to his place” with him. Once down an alley, they are met by a member of the crew. Pockets puts a dagger into her before she realizes what’s happening. Not one to go down easily, this woman tries to get one last blow in, only to be stopped by Pocket’s brute force. He stares the woman in the eyes and bites a chunk of flesh out of her neck, finishing her off.

The the tolling of the bell and the flight of a crow, the Legion sets a trap for a Spirit Warden. Books has been keeping an eye on the Church to see if a Spirit Warden comes out and gets his suspicions confirmed. Books compels a spirit to send a signal to his crew. The trap is set.

The Spirit warden arrives only to have Flick play the innocent, running away from the scene screaming about a dead body. Pockets and their gang of thugs spring into action and surround the Spirit Warden. Flick comes back reveals that all they want to know are the numbers of Wardens in the church and what the layout is. They extract the information from him easily and even manage to convince him to drop his mask, quit his job and never tell anyone what happened here – with the aid of a Spirit Contract made by Flick. Despite all of the risks, they succeed and soon infiltrate the Church with the aid of Books attuning to shut off the power cables that are going into the church.

What the Crew finds downstairs is an odd sight. Wires and electroplasmic arcs shoot everywhere and in the center of the room stands a glass pod with an embryonic creature growing inside. The Wardens are taken aback, but with the threats of breaking the experiment, they agree to clear out within the next few days.

The Legion successfully takes turf and puts themselves at -2 with the Spirit wardens. Flick has a plan though.

After recovering and working on the long term project of finishing the Holy Book of Iguanis, the Legion decides they want to at least show that they wanted to make some type of amends by doing a job as a favor to them. A warden tells them after to long discussion that they will accept if they go and put the Lost out of commission long enough for them to get some important work done in Dunslough. With the help of the recently released from Prsion, Stranger the spider, they find out exactly where they have a good amount of valuables stashed.

The job is simple enough. They sneak into a warehouse where they keep valuables in the early morning. Unfortunately it seems as if they keep their valuables in a glass terrarium filled with venomous snakes (Thanks BitD Heist Deck). The group skulks around and finds the two guards that are still unaware. They knock out one quickly and tie up the other and make him take the valuables out. Flick, not a fan of both the people of Dunslough and the poor in general, kills the sleeping one in a fit of sadistic rage while this is going on. The other guard attempts to scream for people outside to heard, only to be silenced by Books, who puts a black scale of Iguanis on his throat. his veins around the area go black and his speech is silenced. The takes the valuables and takes the last man back to their base for a ritual.

The ritual sacrifice involves Books writing the symbol of Iguanis in his own blood on both of their foreheads. Should the Bite of Iguanis be slain in this ritual, the title is passed onto the victor, their mind forever enslaved to serve Iguanis as the Bite.

With that job complete, they bring the Spirit Wardens to a -1, at the expense of the Lost. Gotta makes some enemies to make someone happy.

(As a side note. the The Black Scale Brandy they made last time has a label now.) See picture.