Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 54

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 42 (November 22 2016)

Kamali forges some written orders from Ellsworth to an unspecified party to hit the Strays’ HQ. Gears drops them in a conspicuous spot in Strays territory, where he knows they’ll find them.

Engagement roll is 6. Everything goes as planned. The Strays are on edge due to what they found, and have all assembled in their hideout.

Constance, Shade, and Boots head into the apothecary, while the Lampblacks stay outside to keep anyone else from coming in. The shop owner sees what’s about to happen, and with minimal coaxing from Constance, decides he’s overdue for a vacation. They head downstairs and Constance kicks the door in. The Strays are ready for them. There are six of them, three in front with clubs, and two in back guarding the leader, who is armed with a crossbow. Constance wades in and starts swinging. She didn’t bring the anchor, as it’s close quarters, and she’s not actually trying to kill anyone. She gets some good hits in, and takes a couple of knocks in return, before deciding to bowl through to first rank to get to the leader. Upon seeing this, he raises the crossbow. Constance grabs one of the bodyguards and throws him into the leader’s line of fire just as the crossbow goes off. The poor guy gets a crossbow bolt in the back as he tumbles into the leader, sending them both to the ground in a tangle of limbs. Shade manages to stay out of the front ranks’ reach for the time being. Boots hangs back with two pistols at the ready.

Gears, Kamali, and Gloves traverse the sewers, and find the side passage that leads up to the Strays’ back door. Gears doesn’t want to use anything noisy like explosives on the door, and he knows he can’t pick the lock after Kamali jammed it. Instead he applies some acid to the door itself, around the area where the lock is mounted. It takes a few minutes, but by the time they hear the front door team getting busy, the acid has done enough damage that Gears is able to kick the door open, the lock clattering to the ground. They make a beeline for the vault door, which is no match for Kamali. Opening the vault, they set about cleaning it out, transferring everything they can carry to Gears’ cart down in the main tunnel. On the way out, Kamali drops the remaining blackmail material halfway down the stairs, and fires a single shot from a Derringer-type holdout pistol.

Upon hearing the signal, Constance is able to down the other bodyguard and disengage, but Shade isn’t so lucky. Boots comes to the rescue and hits each of the remaining front-rankers. The shots aren’t fatal, but they’re enough to distract the thugs long enough for Boots to help Shade retreat while Constance drags one of the shelves from the shop and topples it down the stairs to block the doorway, at least temporarily. The crew makes their escape while the Strays are picking themselves up and trying to figure out what the hell just happened.

Aftermath:

Rep: 1

Coin: 8, -1 for the tithe to the Crows, +8 from the Drug Dens and the Gambling Dens

Heat: 3. They managed to not kill anyone, but it was not exactly a quiet job, and the Strays qualify as a well-connected target.

Entanglement: None

Downtime:

Constance starts by reducing Heat (and manages to clear it all), Heals, and Reduces Stress. Yanth Agog appears, and directs her to go back to Coalridge to find Ellie, the pregnant woman she saved from being trampled by a runaway cart back in Session 20. Constance finds her exactly where she was told she would, and escorts her back to her home, where it is evident that the baby will not wait any longer. Constance assists in delivering a baby boy. Ellie tells Constance that her husband can’t know about Yanth Agog, but she knows that someday He will come for the child. Constance looks into the child’s eyes, and just for a moment, sees something ancient and alien staring back.

Kamali trains Playbook, and Gathers Info on the Skovlanders by going back to Clermont’s safe. The situation is continuing to escalate, and Clermont is evidently not happy that his orders continue to be “observe and don’t intervene”. The Grinders have retaliated very recently, and several of the refugees that Shade was acquainted with have been killed.

Shade reduces Stress, and Heals. He also spends a Coin to cast a Ritual.

Gears works on the carriage (completing the project), and starts a new project to mount the cannon on the carriage (and gets 4 ticks).

Notes:

Nice basic heist. I made good on my promise to myself to start hammering them with Harm, and the job felt appropriately dangerous as a result. I made it clear at the beginning of the fight that the Strays were not out to kill them outright just yet, as they certainly wanted to know exactly who was stupid enough to try and mess with them in their own hideout. Once Constance dropped the first guy however, they realized what was at stake, and the leader immediately went for his crossbow.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Siren Queen’s End!

The cult known as the Queen’s Hand, serving their enigmatic deity “The Siren Queen”, have previously pulled off two heists: one stealing an enchanted paintbrush from the Ink Rakes, and the other breaking Edlun “Sweetheart” Marroden out of Ironhook prison. Now, the Siren Queen has a new request.

The Queen needs one final ingredient for their ritual; a nightmare made manifest. They are to kidnap a specific individual, and bring him back to their sanctum. In there the Siren Queen will infest his mind with visions of her entering the world, and the crew will extract this vision from him, in physical form. Then, using the vison as an ink, Edlun will paint a portal to another realm, which the Siren Queen will use as a gateway to enter our world.

Before the heist could get underway, though, one of the crew, Cyrene the Whisper, received a letter from a friend; Lord Scurlock. Scurlock requested an urgent meeting with Cyrene, and she accepted. At this meeting, Cyrene discovered the secret behind the Siren Queen; she was no deity, she was merely a demon, and a particularly violent one at that. 140-some odd years ago, she had attempted to instigate a war between Akoros and Tycheros. In order to prevent this war, Scurlock had sealed her away in an alternate reality. In the time since, Scurlock had discovered a way to kill her permanently. Giving an enchanted knife to Cyrene, Scurlock instructed her to summon the Siren Queen, and then to drive the dagger through her heart.

Cyrene was taken aback by this, but she and Scurlock had somewhat of a history. She trusted her vampiric friend. And so she would take his advice. She would complete the ritual, and then stab the Siren Queen. But first, they still needed their victim.

Lord-Warden Elerius is somewhat of an enigmatic man. Hidden from public life, what little is known about him the crew gathered from a book he wrote detailing the daily life of a Spirit Warden. He gives very little details about himself in that book, so the information the crew had to go on was sparse. They knew the Lord-Warden would be making an appearance at a masquerade party, and that was their best opportunity to strike.

The theme for the party was exotic animals. Our crew went in; Cyrene in a costume reminiscent of a Spiritseeker Crow, Phaya as an Iruvian Pit Snake, and Zachnefain as a Deep Shark. Through narrowing down targets based on the information they had, they had found their target. A man who was light on his feet in the ballroom, dressed as a Courser Bat. Zachnefain used his charms to pull him away from the ballroom, and over to the lounge area.

In the lounge, Zach and the Lord-Warden hit it off. Zach went to get a drink and Phaya, our Leech, slipped some Trance Powder into his wine. Zach brought the drink back to Elerius, and in a few moments he was out like a light. Feigning that they were the Lord-Warden’s friend, they claimed to be bringing him back home to get some rest, and with that they were out.

The mission was not yet done, though. With them back in the lair, the Siren Queen cast her spell on Lord-Warden Elerius’ mind. Visions of the Siren Queen and her cult taking over the city entered his brain, and with some Whisper magic and Leech alchemy, a swirling silver vapor came out. They had their ‘ink’, now they just needed to let the artist do his work.

Edlun worked for three days on his masterpiece. He did not sleep, he did not eat, he didn’t even blink; such was the frenzy of artistic mania he was thrown into. When Edlun was done, the ritual was set to be finished.

Edlun’s painting was of an underwater landscape. It looked almost lifelike. In fact, viewers of the painting would swear that the fish in it moved when you looked out of the corner of their eyes. For our crew, the lifelike quality became all too real when a figure in the landscape stepped out of the canvas, and into reality.

Standing at about seven and a half feet tall, with pale blue skin and glowing yellow eyes, the Siren Queen was a sight to behold. Her teeth were like that of an angler fish; far too long to fit in her mouth. The pupils of her eyes were slits, more accustomed to the depths of the ocean than to our air. She was radiant and she was monstrous.

The first thing she noticed was Cyrene, holding a demonbane charm. The Siren Queen merely scoffed, and said that she planned to save the cult to be the last to die to her vengeance, but if this is how Cyrene wanted to repay her, then she supposed the cult would have to be the first. She lunged.

Cyrene deftly raised the dagger Lord Scurlock had bestowed upon her. With a counter-attack, she severed one of the Siren Queen’s four arms. (It was only then they noticed she had more than two.)

More enraged at this disobedience than harmed by the loss of a limb, the Siren Queen raged on, striking at all of the crew in equal measure. She managed to choke one member, Zachnefain, into unconsciousness, and nearly to death, before the other two managed to get her down.

With the Siren Queen on the ground, Cyrene took her chance. With a swift puncture, the dagger found the Queen’s heart. With a last utterance of “Insolent whelps…” the Queen was dead. The cult was left without a deity, badly injured, and one of them traumatized. But they very well may have saved the city.

What the crew will do next remains to be seen, though news has it that Lord Scurlock may be hiring some new underlings to acquire relics for him. Perhaps our crew, already indebted to the Vampiric Lord, and already experienced in asset recovery, shall find work with him.

In which the Shepherds go from 0 heat to going up a wanted level in a single “stealth” mission.

https://youallmeetinatavern.wordpress.com/2016/12/05/the-good-shepherds-session-4/

My 20-something players are figuring out what type of crew they want for the mega-campaign.

My 20-something players are figuring out what type of crew they want for the mega-campaign. We’re going to use ranked-choice voting to make the decision. Here’s the progress so far:

Just thought I would voice the opinion that I like the change to Resilient.

Just thought I would voice the opinion that I like the change to Resilient. Also, I noted the recovery example on p.21 references this ability and the example does not reflect the recent change

Actual Play Report

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.

#CopperheadCounty AP: The Best Brands Hijack

#CopperheadCounty AP: The Best Brands Hijack

This is the continuing tale of my playtest game of Copperhead County, my modern-southern-criminal Blades hack. If you want to read the entire saga up to this point:

https://plus.google.com/u/0/+JasonEley/posts/PcYiYuWjSud

If you want to read more about the hack:

Playbooks: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKYBKmPes3HQXV0RExOUnhwUkE

(special thanks to Adam Schwaninger for letting me use his files to make these PDFs!)

Factions/some setting: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0BxKYBKmPes3HX1h2dmJ3TXdrOEk

This was a somewhat uncharacteristic adventure for our Hellraisers: they didn’t piss anyone off and they didn’t blow anything up. They merely worked together and got a nice payday with little Heat. If only the life of crime could always be so simple…

After the crew’s last adventure, ransacking a gun workshop run by the Heathens MC, we discussed a few different things they could do next, and they decided to make a move into stolen goods. I’d had an idea in mind for a while and was ready to go: their mechanic contact set them up to meet Rich Sturges, a shady pawn shop owner, at a Triple B’s restaurant (the B’s stand for Buffalo, BBQ, and Beer: maybe I should trademark this idea) in a new shopping center in the city suburbs. Rich was looking for a crew of criminals to break into the shopping center’s Best Brands, a big-box electronics retailer, and make off with all the iPhones, iPads, and HDTVs they could carry. Then he’d fence the goods through his store, kick up to the Mob, and everyone would have a nice payday. If they got along, maybe he’d work with them again as their Pawn Fence.

The PCs took him up on the offer and set about gathering info on the store. Haddie the Hazard asked around and learned the Best Brands delivery truck arrived early Tuesday mornings, while Jesse the Marker scoped out the shopping center and noted that, with a nearby movie theater bustling with the summer blockbuster season, they couldn’t count on the area being quiet at night. So rather than heisting the store directly, and dealing with security guards, cameras, and civilians, they decided to hijack the delivery truck before it reached the store. They set up a stakeout in the center’s 24-hour Zip Burger (tier 2, a regional burger chain based in the county) the next Tuesday morning and observed the truck’s approach and delivery, confident they could pinpoint the truck in the wild next time.

Flash to the next week, when the plan came together: the crew’s Gang of Soldiers, led by their lieutenant Cole, would take a crew van and set up on the highway, alerting the crew to the truck’s approach. Meanwhile, Marvin the Heavy and Willem the Cleaner would take Jesse’s car, an old sedan that could pass for an unmarked police car, and approach the truck on the highway, using a storebought siren to force it to pull over into a weigh station. Jesse, Haddie, and Camila the Wheeler would wait in the weigh station, ready to unload the truck once the driver was dealt with. With a strong ‘fake police car’ detail, I gave them a 4d Engagement roll, and they 6ed it.

They successfully pulled over the truck, and I created two clocks: Notice, to measure the danger of their weigh station hijacking being noticed by passing vehicles, and Suspicion, to measure the truck driver’s suspicion that Marvin, a towering man wearing a bulletproof vest, was not a real cop. Marvin ordered the driver out of the truck while Willem tried to sneak around to the back; unfortunately, the driver spotted him, and his suspicion grew that a weedy junkie in a hoodie was not actually the cop’s partner. The driver came out, and tried to hand Marvin a $50, explaining that he was making an important delivery to the city, and his friends wouldn’t be happy with the delay. No dice with Marvin, who tried to yell the driver down, but the driver’s Suspicion clock filled and he got right back in Marvin’s face. So, Marvin punched his lights out. Feeling bad about hurting a civilian, Marvin then decided to take some Cash out of his own pocket and slip it into the driver’s, showing there were no hard feelings (one of their reputations is for being For The People).

With the truck secured, the crew then had a long argument about whether to take the truck into the mountains and unload it, or whether to find a road off of the highway and do it: the difference being that the mountains would offer seclusion from notice, but with the danger of crashing the truck; while staying along the highway would be safer for the truck, but more dangerous for them. They ultimately took it into the mountains and worked very hard and took a lot of stress to safely park the truck on a dirt road, then worked together with their Gang to unload the merchandise into their vans. During the offload, Willem dropped a box, and out spilled a blizzard of packing peanuts and a flurry of white powder. It seemed that when the truck driver said he had an important delivery to make, he wasn’t kidding. Camila gave the matter a quick consideration and determined the hidden cocaine was meant for the Mountain Mafia (tier 4, the old-guard county mob, the most powerful criminal faction in the area). Wisely deciding not to antagonize the Mob, they decided to have Rich, who had some connections with them, return the cocaine with their apologies.

A simple, low-key truck hijacking gave the crew a nice bundle of Cash and very little Heat. But the glow didn’t last long, because their post-score Entanglement rolled Show of Force: a negative-status faction makes a play against them. Checking their faction statuses, I decided to tie this into the events of their last adventure, along with a faction I’d been hoping to position as a villain this season.

Camila got a call from Jensen Allbright, the Californian transplant they’re allied with against the Heathens MC (see last job), that his own shipment of gunsmith machinery had been attacked by the Copperhead Patriots (tier 2, an extremist militia with very bad opinions). It seemed they would either need to give up Jensen’s gun trade, which he had agreed to pay them a percentage of, to the Patriots, or step up and go to war… and they chose war. They’d better watch out next time: as cathartic as it may be to beat on those stars-and-bars-waving militiamen, the Patriots can more than match them gun-for-gun and explosion-for-explosion…

The Shepherds claimed their first piece of turf Sunday night, and got their first wanted level in the process.

The Shepherds claimed their first piece of turf Sunday night, and got their first wanted level in the process. We also find out how much being at war sucks as the lack of free downtime drained our coffers.

https://youallmeetinatavern.wordpress.com/2016/11/28/the-good-shepherds-session-3/

I got inspired to dress my Actual Play report up into a first person account.

I got inspired to dress my Actual Play report up into a first person account. From the personal journal of Emeline Skelkellan, I present the account of our first session.

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B02fJy_SUU84VGxiS2hyRDJvYzg/view?usp=sharing

Session Two of “The Queen’s Hand”

The cult known as The Queen’s Hand had tended to their wounds and indulged in their vices. They realized that if they were to keep on being successful, they would need to hire some muscle. Enter Zachnefain, a Tycherosi Hound with a penchant for gunplay. While the Queen’s Hand had run into trouble in gunfights in the past, with “Zach” at their side, heists should go much smoother.

And so The Queen’s Hand struck again, this time in the district of Dunslough. The Siren Queen has given a new order; they are to break a convict out of Ironhook prison. The target is Edlun “Sweetheart” Maroden, who is currently serving life for killing his wife, cutting out her heart, and eating it. The crew began their planning.

Since disguising themselves worked so well last time, they decided to make this their temporary Modus Operandi, and set about obtaining three prison uniforms. They found a guardsman on-the-outs, one Wester Morrison, at a local bar in Charhollow. They don’t exactly pay well at Ironhook, and so Wester was more than eager to take a coin or two and some fine whiskey. They set up a dead drop, where Wester would leave some uniforms for them.

When Phaya, our Iruvian Leech, went to pick up the uniforms she ran into a complication: an urchin child, with a letter addressed to her from an enigmatic “E.A.” The letter instructed her to come, alone and unarmed, to Whitecrown. When Phaya followed the instructions in the letter, she found herself inside the Iruvian Consulate, in a dark room with Elstera Avrathi.

In there, Elstera offered a side-job for Phaya. Phaya would receive a substantial sum of money, and all she would have to do in return was free a prisoner named “Andris” from Ironhook. The Iruvian diplomat explained that Andris was an important “asset” to Iruvia and since Phaya was already going to be in the prison, the Consulate would look favorably upon acquiring that asset. Phaya agreed.

So the crew walked right through the front door of Ironhook, dressed in their uniforms, posing as newcomers to the job. They knew that their main target, Edlun was in solitary and that their second, Andris, was in General Population. They split up. Zachnefain went to GenPop, to try to track down Andris, while Phaya and Cyrene went off in the direction of Solitary.

Through some skillful persuasion, Cyrene and Phaya managed to convince the guards in Solitary that a fight had broken out elsewhere, and some more experienced guards were needed. The guards took off, but they would be back soon. The two set off, checking each of the cells for someone who matched the description they had of Edlun.

Meanwhile, Zach found that Andris had been sent to work in The Mire, sifting through dirt and mud for precious gems and metals. Zach, being the Hound that he is, managed to track down Andris quickly. Andris figured that the Consulate had sent someone to get him, and had the perfect cover for their escape. The prisoner picked up a sizable rock, hurled it at a nearby guard, and instigated a riot.

Cyrene and Phaya found the murderous cannibal they had been sent to find. Phaya set off small explosive devices on the locks for each of the solitary cells, and let the prisoners escape. Ironhook was in total chaos, and in this chaos they resolved to escape.

And they did so fabulously (One player rolled 3 dice at one point and all of them were 6’s.) In all the commotion, Cyrene, Phaya, and Zachnefain, with their escapees Edlun and Andris, managed to get out of the prison with minimal damage. A few people had taken a swing at Zach, but he managed to shrug it off. They had Edlun, they handed Andris off to the Iruvians (who said they would be in touch soon), and with that the Queen’s Hand had pulled off their second big heist in the name of The Siren Queen.