Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 40 (November 03 2016)

Shade and Boots sit on their Stray prisoners until Constance arrives. She dismisses Boots, telling him to send a message to Inspector Woll, and have him meet them at the quarry. Shade helps set up a spooky atmosphere in which to question the prisoners.

Constance heads over to the neighboring room across the hall, bangs on the door, and offers some money to the occupants (a young couple engaged in some very personal business) to vacate the premises. Upon seeing the cash, they retreat forthwith, pausing only to hastily put enough of their clothes back on to make a dignified exit.

Constance questions the prisoners separately at first, then all together, telling them that one of them will go free, and the other two will go to Ironhook. The three give up Ellsworth almost immediately, but when it becomes clear to the two larger prisoners, Vladimir and Abdur, that the smallest of the three, Willy, had managed to answer first, they turn on him and toss him out the window. Because fuck him.

Constance has Shade go retrieve Inspector Woll as the crematorium bell tolls, and the ravens are seen circling overhead. Shade brings Woll in to see the remaining two prisoners, and he takes charge of the situation. Vladimir all but confesses to killing Willy. This is good enough for Woll, and he asks Constance to go to the nearest watch station and bring the Bluecoats. Thoroughly bemused by the thought of actively aiding the law, she does so.

Downtime:

Payoff: Constance got 3 Coin off Ulstano. She paid 1 to the Gondolier.

Heat: 2. Willie was killed, but the Inspector got a confession out of Vladimir, so it doesn’t come back on the Dolls.

Constance: Reduces Heat by using Command to threaten everyone in the flophouse to keep their mouths shut. She also reduces Stress, going up to the roof of the factory to listen for the Voice of Yanth Agog. He appears, as usual, as a shadow just barely visible out of the corner of her eye over her shoulder. He tells her that she has been following His instructions well, and she is to be rewarded. He tells her to turn around and look at Him. When she does, the world explodes into a cacophony of light, sound, and sensation, that lasts either an eternity or a fraction of a second, depending on your point of view. Before she can claw her own eyes out, the experience ends, and she finds herself in a wholly unfamiliar location. It’s a city, but not like any she’s ever seen.

Kamali: Trains playbook and reduces stress.

Shade: Finishes the ghost manifest ritual, and picks up Quellyn to investigate Sebjorn. After a successful Attune roll, they find his trail, and it leads to an apparently unclaimed Spirit Well in Charhollow. Jezelle, who had been covertly following them, is transfixed by the sight of the thing, and despite Quellyn’s warnings (and prompted by Shade’s urging), steps forward into the spirit well. The last thing Shade hears of Quellyn screaming “Do something!” before everything explodes. [Note: Shade still has one downtime action left.]

Gears: Reduces stress, and starts a project to build a carriage (and gets halfway).

Epilogue:

It turns out that Constance didn’t travel all that far after all. The unfamiliar location she’s found herself is on the roof of one of the more opulent manor houses in Whitecrown. Finding no convenient way down to the ground, which is easily ten stories below her, she pries up some roof tiles and knocks a hole in the ceiling underneath to get into one of the attics. From there she makes her way down to the front entrance. All the while, anyone she comes across, servant and guard alike, is frozen to the spot at the sight of her, seemingly in abject terror. She makes it out onto the street unmolested, and begins the long walk home. Across Bowmore Bridge, through Brightstone and the Docks, the reactions of terror from passersby continue all the way back to Crow’s Foot, and even when she enters the Bucket.

Turns out she’s been missing for three days, and her Lampblack cohort have been busy whipping themselves up into a frenzy, convinced that someone had actually managed to kidnap her, and are just about ready to go out and start rampaging to find her. With her newly purchased Glorious Visage veteran advance, she shocks them into submission (and in the process completes the project to remove their Wild trait).

Notes:

A side plot session, to be sure, but no small amount of personal drama going on, and Constance’s Forgotten Gods arc comes to a head. The reaction from Constance’s player when I said “Turn around” was well worth the wait.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 39 (November 02 2016)

A Brief Interlude:

Constance assembles the Lampblacks and has Boots brief them on Ulstano’s description and suspected location. After talking privately with Prichard, Constance gets the idea to wait until after Ulstano’s friend has delivered his cash and he makes a break for it. That way they also get paid.

The Lampblacks stake out the area along Bell St, which is their former territory, so they know it very well. They and Constance are able to corner Ulstano and his friend at the end of the street by the canal. They scare off the friend and tie up Ulstano. Just at that moment there’s a Bluecoat patrol coming up the block, so Prichard gets them off the street and into the cellar of a nearby tenement building. Constance sends one of the Lampblacks to go hire a gondola, and send a message to The Lost.

The crew meets with Col Adams and Sgt Lynch to hand off Ulstano. Constance makes sure Adams sees her pay off the gondolier to forget he ever saw any of them. The Lost are from Coalridge, so Constance hits them up for information on the Strays. Adams is able to give her reliable information on where they are likely to be found. Constance judges this, along with the cash they got from Ulstano, to be fair compensation. The gondolier drops her off at the Temple, and takes The Lost back to wherever they want, with Ulstano in tow. Constance notices that the Temple is looking a little forsaken, so she hangs a doll part on the front door with a bit of string to let everyone know it’s still claimed.

Kidnapping for Fun and Profit:

The Strays (Tier I) are a culturally diverse lot, based in Coalridge, with a number of different concerns, but are known mainly for being fairly mercenary, doing various odd jobs for other larger gangs. They are in fact much like the Dolls in this respect.

Shade and Kamali head off to Coalridge. Along the way, Shade attunes to try and find Virgil, his ex-Bluecoat ghost contact. It takes a little longer than usual, but he eventually finds Virgil in Charterhall, in the middle of an errand. Shade and Kamali accompany Virgil to deliver a small wooden box to a fellow ghost, learning a bit more about ghostly abilities than they did before. Apparently, Virgil’s “sense of self” is still very strong, and this is both a weakness (he has to deliberately concentrate in order to be able to pass through walls and other solid objects) as well as a strength (he is easily able to manipulate physical objects, such as unlocking a door for them once he’s inside the building). After this, Virgil follows them to Coalridge.

Their detour in Charterhall gives Boots enough time to catch up with them and deliver the information from Col Adams. The Strays tend to hang out at the Red Lamp, a pub located in Brickston, the most densely populated section of the city (the streets are so narrow and the buildings so close together that carts won’t even fit between most of them). After renting a room for the night in a local flophouse to serve as a temporary hideout, Shade, Kamali, Boots, and Virgil stake out the Red Lamp and manage to locate all three of the individuals detailed in the report and follow them back to where they call home.

They grab the first gang member, Willie, in his flophouse apartment with no problems. Kamali shoots him with a drugged crossbow bolt and knocks him out, and Boots ties him up and carries him back to their temporary hideout.

The second, Vladimir, lives in what is actually a fairly upscale townhouse, relatively speaking. There’s even a guard on the front door. However, Kamali goes in via an upstairs window, and surprises him just as he’s coming out of the bathroom.

The third, Abdur, ends up being a bit of trouble. Kamali ends up spooking him just as he’s coming out of his room above a takeout Iruvian place. A chase ensues. He attempts to get back to his friends at the Red Lamp, but Shade, Boots, and Virgil are able to steer him in the right direction while Kamali gets ahead of everyone and sets up an ambush. In the end, the team is able to work together to bring him down. Once he’s tied up, they drag him back to where his two friends are still lying unconscious. Kamali takes off to inform Constance that she has some interrogations to conduct.

Notes:

Shade has some ideas of how to better utilize Virgil’s particular talents. The primary obstacle to all this is that Virgil still has a strong sense of duty and honor (he was after all, killed for being an honest cop).

Boots’ player is no longer available, so for now we’re treating Boots and Gloves as Expert Cohorts, each with a Quality of 2.

#dontmesswiththedolls