Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

Actual Play Report

The Legion, after taking care of The River Eels, go back to their lair to be joined with the third member of their group Books the whisper, a severosi old man who has the holy book of Iguanis that only he can read. Pockets and Flick are along with him when they realize that they don’t have a good way to keep their religious operation afloat financially? What does any (un)holy group do to get money for their needs? They attempt to make the finest brandy they can muster. After many rolls and tons of coin spent, they have the exquisite (tier two) brand called “Black Scale Brandy” after the scales of their lord and savior. It is at this mention that we noticed that those in the upper echelon of their church begin to grow scales wherever an injury heals. Ah yes, their lord is pleased.

The main issue is getting their brandy a chance to be reproduced, so they decide to pay Djera Maha, leader of The Hive. Knowing that just arranging a meeting with someone so high up the food chain would be tough, they eventually dig into enough information to arrange a meeting with her, except everything goes badly and the timing couldn’t be more horrible. She turns the tables, threatening to take their new product that was offered and merely copy it and sell it on their own. With the talents of their whisper’s summoned ghost, it slips in a nearby guard as a show of power that the crew can control what they want. Djera realizes that her initial view of them as low level scum wasn’t entirely true and decides to allow use of a distillery, with a tithe going to the Hive as a business deal.

The crew returns to their lair and celebrates, with Books beginning a project to transcribe the word of Iguanis for all the world to see.

Actual Play Report

The group of Smugglers known as The Devil’s Bargain Crew emerge right after the events with The Legion. They’re holed up in a tower on the coast between Crow’s Foot and Charhollow, with a hidden water entrance to store their boat. Nightmare the whisper, Nero the cutter, Silvertongue the Slide, Pilgrim the lurk, and Red eyes the hound, are hired by a muscled man wearing oil stained coveralls to clean up the slaughtered remains of *The River Eels, whose killers are unknown.

Wanting to know a bit about what went on, SIlvertongue calls in his bartender friend Klyra to see if she knows anything about what had happened. After a friendly chat, she concedes that she knows of the gang and that they were in the pockets of a gang higher up on the food chain.

Most of the crew hops onto an old fishing boat used for smuggling and head their way towards the docks. Red eyes scouts the place out and gives a signal to the team via hunting pet that something is afoot. Just outside the deceased gang’s old hideout a small contingent of Red Sashes that are checking out the area. Silvertongue, knowing that their gangs are still on good terms, convince the leader of the small force that his gang was hired to clean up the area before the Bluecoats fully find out what had happened here.

When attempting to remove the bodies, a ghost begins to rise from the beheaded corpse of Horus Dirken, leader of The River Eels and it doesn’t take long before Nightmare jumps into action, trapping his soul in a spirit bottle, thinking she could sell him somewhere. With that taken care of, they quietly take the twelve bodies onto their boat and figure out they could hijack someone’s hagfish farm to dispose of the bodies. During the trip south to Coalridge, Red eyes notices an electroplasmic mist seeping from the cloth covering the pile of bodies and freaks out. Nightmare strains herself to save her crew from abandoning ship, allowing them to fight the ghosts.

Red eyes shows his real aptitude with his electroplasmic ammunition and begins putting down ghosts left and right, with the rest of the crew attempting to fight becoming possessed with spirit charms. Nightmare manages to snag another ghost as another causes Silvertongue, at the wheel, to slam into the dice of the canal and causing nearby pedestrians to notice the clamor. Soon enough, the ghosts are put down with everyone shaken but alive. They reach the hagfish farm, noticing that the exterior is guarded by a lightning wall. Nightmare and Pilgrim try to sneak their way to find the off switch only to find a guard in the nearby building. Pilgrim attempts to take him out quietly, only to find himself wrestling with the man on the floor. They struggle, but the lurk succeeds. With the barrier down, the crew unloads the bodies and hightails it out, making sure to turn the barrier back on.

With the crew back at their hideout, they realize that the person who offered the job was a Lampblack. Soon enough, they are headed to meet with Bazso Baz. The two gangs are already on bad terms, but the leader of the Lampblacks offers a choice: forfeit a portion of the pay and ally and promise to stay out of the war with the Red Sashes, leaving The Devil’s Bargain Crew on even terms with both crews, or take their pay and leave safely and risk being crushed under the Lampblacks’ boots. They choose the latter.

Rewards

2 rep

6 coin for a medium job

2 heat, kept relatively quiet.

Entanglements

Marlene, a friend of Nero, gets taken in by the Bluecoats for questioning but refuses to squeal.

Downtime

Nightmare spends time drinking the finest wine she can find with a vampire named Stras, indulging for both turns. Silvertongue spends a few turns working on making a mechanical gauntlet with a spring-loaded blade and finishes the 8 segment clock. Pilgrim and Nero work to acquire a healer known to consort with The Grey Cloaks, a group hostile to the crew. With her help, Pilgrim recovers from a hand burn caused by a misfired pistol during the gun fight. Nero then indulges in his vice by getting a “special tattoo” from the Bloodletters. Red Eyes goes out for personal training by hunting and killing a civilian in the dead of night, followed by indulging in a secret vice.

GM Notes

Running five people seems a bit much in terms of trying to focus on individual characters, so it quickly becomes more about the tensions that arise from that man people trying to assert power.

Actual Play Report

The Cult known as The Legion emerges from the criminal underbelly under the command of their glorious deity Iguanas. While plotting under an abandoned Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh in Nightmarket, they receive their first vision from the physical incarnation of their Elder Iguana God. Convert….CONVERT it blasts into their minds as it disappears. In its cultists minds they get an image of men in wetsuits carrying what appears to be barrels of demon blood. The cultists know what they must do.

Flick the Slide and Pockets the Cutter set off to find out more about this group of people. The River Eels, a Tier 1 smuggling group, were working on sending their product upstream. The two and their group of Adepts, led by Penguin, attempt to gather information about the gang and their location.

Flick’s old friend Nyryx, a prostitute in The Docks, tells him of some regular clients that come in from time to time. It doesn’t take long for Legion to survey the area and find an occasional man waiting by the docks, only to walk away with a barrel from time to time. After tailing the man to his hideout, they decide that they’ll simply convert or kill the entire hideout.

The plan doesn’t go nearly as well as they expected, after bombing the front door, only to find the room empty, they are surrounded by Eels. Despite having the tables turned on them, The Legion fights back ferociously, losing a couple men and taking out just as many for an even score. The Eels realize that their opponent was tougher than they realized and regroup inside for a better advantage. The Legion comes in for a skirmish at another major disadvantage in tier and scale, only to have Pockets’s Savageness take out enough people to draw a one on one with their leader, Horus Dirken. Despite all of the setbacks, Pockets savagely slices the man’s head off and sticks it on the harpoon he attempted to attack with. Realizing that they have been beaten, the rest of The Eels back off, only to be converted to their dark lord’s Legion via a burning mark on their necks. The Eels’ are effectively wiped out.

Rewards

1 rep

New Turf on The Docks

4 Coin for a small score

5 heat generated for killing, standard exposure due to the explosion being muffled in a hidden location, and being on someone else’s turf.

Entanglements

Penguins, being one of the few acolytes to survive, gets taken in by the Bluecoats and squeals, despite his loyal nature. +2 Heat

Downtime

Both character had taken around seven stress, so both indulge in their vices twice, with Pockets overindulging and losing the man who supplies him with fresh human tongues to eat. He then spends a coin to attempt to reduce heat after such an overexposed score, intimidating two Bluecoats. Flick returns to these Bluecoats and explains that they need to keep their noses out of the shadows for their own safety, reducing their heat even further.