Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

So yesterday was my birthday and I had a birthday miracle occur; I finally get to play in a game of Blades in the Dark! One of my players was brave enough to step up to the helm of running a game. I’m going to keep track of how he feels about being a brand new GM and how the system feels. He’s never ran anything before and my BitD campaign was the first time he’s ever played a tabletop game.

Without further ado, I am proud to present…

The Strangers: A Tale of Bravos

We all decided on doing a group of Bravos, as our new GM thought that’d be one of the easiest kinds of crew to run. I talked to the group and we decided we’d all start off as Tycherosi and create a group known as The Strangers (as it is said in Clerks II, “we’re taking it back”).

The cast of vicious scoundrels is as follows…

Poppla “Tom Ato” Anri – The crew’s Hound is a ten-year-old boy who was trained by the Unseen to be a killer. However, the obedience part of training didn’t stick and so he and his sister escaped their clutches, becoming deathland scavengers that hunted for treasures. A relic that they discovered interacted with their demonic blood and changed his sister into a demon. Using rushed and dangerous methods, he sealed her inside of himself and now seeks out an artifact to try and change her back…while she works to corrupt him. Covered in arcane tattoos that glow with power when he reaches into the Ghost Field, he is entwined with the element of Darkness.

Sethla “Smiles” Marax – The crew’s leader and cutter, Sethla was a soldier for a mercenary company known as the “Hellguard”. During a campaign to eradicate cultists from one of the Dagger Isles and sick with a terrible disease from the jungle, “Smiles” discovered an ancient and ruined temple dedicated to a Forgotten God known as The Conqueror. Confirming the stories that the Immortal Emperor had crushed the empire the Tycherosi had built, the God’s divine will sent the cutter back to Duskwall to forge an empire built on blood and violence. With black eyes and shark’s teeth, he is more than willing to spill blood to get what is his. (I’m super giddy to be playing a zealous Cutter. Hell, just playing at all lol)

Xia a.k.a. Miss Direction – The crew’s Slide, she was a former teacher of drama and the theatrical arts, she traveled across the world with her family instructing others in the arts. She wanted to help the world, try to alleviate the fear others have for their kind, but returned to find her family’s theater and conclave burned to the ground. The sole survivor, she became cold and now seeks to find vengeance for her family. Using her training, she sneaks in and plays the greatest cons, being the one who opens the gates for the more violent members of her crew to slip in and let loose. Aspected to Water, her eyes are black like Smiles but she has an ethereal, beautiful, almost mermaid-like appearance when she is not in disguise.

Vex “Tink” Bae – The crew’s Leech, she was an orphan after her parents were murdered and their crew was destroyed years ago. Taken in by a toymaker with underworld contacts, he taught her his trade and his unusual skillset. A friend of Papplo, the strange woman sees people as toys rather than living things. Everyone needs to be “fixed” and she is a surprisingly good physicker once you get past her strange bedside manner. Aligned with Fire, her skin is the color and texture of a burnt out piece of coal and flares with dying light when she moves. Her eyes burn like coals themselves.

Gnarls – The crew’s Spider, he was once an up & coming advocate that represented the company that most wouldn’t dare to; Tycherosi, mutated Skovlanders, haunted deathland scavengers, the works. He would use his connections and skills to free them of accusations and built up a solid reputation. However, he lost a major case that put away his client, a major supplier of Spark, away and has been on the run since as the man seeks to reclaim reparations from the entrepreneur. He earned the nickname of Gnarls thanks to the wooden texture of his skin and the ivy-like hair that grows upon him. It doesn’t help that a bird finds his head quite comfortable and home-like. He also has difficulty controlling his inflections, something that kept his rivals off-balanced.

The crew stays within an abandoned house nearby Strathmill House, the crew has gathered up territory nearby the Docks where they commit armed robberies; ambushing carriages and ransacking boats that drift too close. This has put them in against the Bluecoats (who were transporting dangerous criminals that the crew “liberated”) and the Cabbies (who were running scams in the territory that the Strangers have taken over). However, they also made decent steps with the Red Sashes, who view the strange group of Tycherosi as fellow foreigners in a strange city.

The Strangers have a simple goal; to take over all of Crow’s Foot and then all off Duskwall if they can. Subtlety be damned, they’ll show everyone that they should be ruled or they will rule over a mountain of corpses. Just remember, watch your step by Strathmill House, there are Strangers about…

Tales of the Veiled: Episode 6

Having returned from the Deathlands after successfully assassinating Tuhan, the crew kept their heads down low. There were two new recruits; Volette “Tick Tock” Daava who was the cousin of Tiros and Rafellos “Gizmo” Greenswood. The more experienced Cutter took these potential assassins under his wing to show him what a day was like out on the streets for the crew. And what a damn day it was…

Rook’s (Tiros) friend, Sawtooth, had them meet him in a secluded alleyway to warn them that the Bluecoats were looking for them and looking for them hard. It seems that the evidence that the crew had gathered previously was false and now a good number of Bluecoats were being sentenced soon enough to prison. Hoping to alleviate the problem between them and the Bluecoats, a meeting was established between the three assassins and the Bluecoats that hired them.

It was less of a meeting and more of an intimidation, as Cinda, Jol, Lewit, and Reyf all advanced on the assassins and made it damn clear that they were going to solve this issue for them or there would be bigger problems to deal with. An agreement was made to kidnap the magistrate’s only son and hold him for ransom until the Bluecoat charges were all dropped and they were cleared.

As the group returned back though, they encountered an unwelcome face that they had met before in the Deathlands. Made of living quicksilver and shifting cogs of an unknown metal; the demon known as Ixis revealed itself again and demanded there be “justice” for the slain Inspector. The group was able to calm it down enough that it would watch and see what they would do but it still held its demand; it would require their blood or the blood of the Bluecoats.

Stuck between either the dangerous and newly outfitted Bluecoats or the danger of a power and vicious demon, the crew decided that they would accept the consequences of pissing off the Bluecoats more and go after them. Using Tick Tock’s friendly connection with Grace, the group was then able to secure a key to infiltrate from the third floor and move down. A risky engagement left them trying to manuever through a crowded Watchtower during the Blinding Hour when a quiet fight broke out. Bad rolls led to bad resistance rolls, though few Bluecoats were even aware of what had happened and the group was able to slip downstairs and to the kitchen.

After flashing back to show they acquired a poison (a good Acquire Assets roll showed that they had secured Devil Root for the job), they intimidated the cooking crew and forced them into the freezer before poisoning the porridge and getting the Bluecoats to grab some as well. Unknown to them, the shifts changed and a good portion of Bluecoats came in for grub, unknowingly eating their doom.

The assassins escaped soon after, vanishing into the thick and dangerous fog, where they were soon contacted by Ixis again. The demon was impressed by their brutal methods of justice and offered to become a patron of theirs, letting the three bind him per the old sorceries. Infused with the excitement of having gained a demon’s power upon their side, the crew’s excitement dwindled when they realized that the Bluecoats marching into Six Towers for a manhunt for a dangerous outfit known as….The Veiled. War has come to the assassins and no one is sure who’ll be left standing…

The game was small but good, with only three of the five players able to actually make it. I can see why John suggests three to four players, as I was able to focus more on side roleplay and questions for the characters. This is my first war I’ve gotten to play through, especially a war with the Bluecoats, and I am excited to see how my players are going to end hostilities. I had suggested to them to make it “not cost-effective”; if you hurt them enough, they will eventually back off. I’ve also alerted them that heat is going to skyrocket now, as they try to do their work.