Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports – Page 61

Gotta Love this game.

You just can’t see it coming.

My guys have just delivered Lyssa to the Inspectors, all banged up and in a box.

They now have an agro Ghost on stick as they wove a Spirit Anchor into the head of a mop and swiped it through him. My Spider is not happy, the other guys were supposed to get rid of the Ghost while he was off at the Opera, not bind it to a stick.

To top it all off, they have just agreed to supply burnt (one of the guys is a Leech with Pyro issues), ghostless (this is where the ghost on a stick comes as he hates other Ghosts and destroys them) corpses to a Demon as a revenue stream on the side.

Looks like other GM’s players are just as creative as mine.

Gonna be playing in a game soon and can’t wait to see how our story pans out.

Inspector Lomond no more. Possession plus political connections apparently are enough to end someone’s career.

Inspector Lomond no more. Possession plus political connections apparently are enough to end someone’s career.

Actual play with Adrienne Mueller, Eric Fattig, and Karen Twelves.

http://www.seannittner.com/actual-play-inspector-lomond-no-more-8302016/

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 33 (September 07 2016)

Continuing to get the Moon’s Daughter up and running:

Shade works on finding people who are disreputable enough to work as drug dealers, but not so disreputable that they are a business liability. He has a list of people in mind. I throw down two clocks, one for filling the positions the Dolls need (completing it gets the back room properly staffed), and the other for the list of potential applicants (every failure is a tick that depletes the list). Each is 6 segments. Unfortunately, his first three attempts are strikeouts:

* (3 on Hunt roll) The first, a Severosi named Matteo, is incredibly twitchy. Shade Attunes, and gets all manner of red flags from the guy’s demeanor, especially when drugs are mentioned.

* (1 on Hunt roll) The second, a Skovlan named Frans, turned up dead a couple of days ago, and had already been carted off to the crematorium. When it comes out that Frans had made the mistake of picking a fight with someone who vastly outmatched him and was also incredibly tall , it’s decided by all the players that it was Constance.

* (2 on Hunt roll) The third, a tough-as-nails local named Irene, had reportedly had enough of living hand to mouth every day, and went off and joined the the Imperial Army.

~~—————————————————————————————————————~~

Constance goes to speak with Mordis in Nightmarket. She buys a dodgy stick & a meat pie, and explains the situation. They make a deal for Mordis to supply Blue Cloud in quantity, and Constance will get the usual wholesale discount. Constance mentions also wanting to sell other product. Mordis says he doesn’t deal in Bloodneedle for personal reasons, but he knows someone who can supply Dream Smoke, and he will will provide an introduction, explaining that his acquaintance is a bit nervous, and if Constance attempts to approach him on her own she’s likely to get an axe thrown at her head. The next time Kamali heads through Nightmarket, Mordis informs her that the introduction has been made, and gives her an address to pass on to Constance.

~~—————————————————————————————————————~~

Constance and Gears go to visit Gloves in Ironhook. They attempt to smuggle in a dagger, but it’s found. Constance is able to bribe the guard to give it to Gloves along with the care package they’ve brought him (containing food and other items). They meet with Gloves, who looks a little worse for wear. Gloves asks for Dream Smoke to boost his popularity, and tells Constance about Hook, who had been terrorizing him a bit before Tavrul stepped in. Constance brings him up to speed on current events on the outside. When Gloves heads back to his cell, he finds the care package with the dagger tucked inside.

~~—————————————————————————————————————~~

Shade gets frustrated with his lack of progress , and goes to get help from Setarra. He tells her his troubles, and she tells him to recite the rest of the names on his list as she brushes her hand against his cheek. She is able to find them easily (now he’s rolling two dice on Hunt).

* (4 on Hunt roll) First they find the next guy on Shade’s list, a gutter rat named Andreas, in a flophouse in Nightmarket. He’s perhaps a touch happier to see Shade than he really should be, and keeps looking over his shoulder. When pressed about it, it comes out that two Severosi legbreakers are under the impression that he stole 4 Coin from them (the fact that it happens to be true seems to be beside the point). He reveals that he still has the cash, but is dismayed at the thought of having to give it up. When Saul di Renzo and Basaba Centanni show up, Shade negotiates with them, and gets them to agree to not break Andreas’ fingers if he gives back the money, and Shade takes responsibility for him. They frog-march Andreas back to his hidey-hole to retrieve the cash, and he promises to show up the next day at the Leaky Bucket. Shade tells the legbreakers that Constance is working on opening a boxing club soon. They give him their card (“di Renzo & Centanni – Protection”).

* (6 on Hunt roll) Then they track down Muhammad and Samir, two Iruvian brothers. Shade explains the situation, and they are happy with the prospect of coming to work at the Moon’s Daughter.

Now they’ve exhausted Shade’s list, and are only halfway to getting the personnel they need. Fortunately, Setarra knows some people who should be reliable.

* (Another 6 on Hunt roll) They head to the rooftops in Charterhall, where they find Luther and Ezra, two shadows currently casing a building across the street. The burglars are startled that someone was able to sneak up on them, but bow respectfully when they see Setarra. Shade gives them the offer, and they defer to Setarra. She says it’s alright, and they agree, and will meet Constance at the Bucket in the morning.

* (2 on Hunt roll) They head to Charterhall to a tavern (Cat & Cradle), Setarra heads straight into the back room, only to find no one there. She is confused for a moment, before she heads to the corner and overturns a barrel to discover a dead body stuffed inside, apparently the man she was expecting to come and talk to. She is barely able to contain her anger, and quietly asks Shade to go and lock the front door. Manners Maketh Man, indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HWYLFizhjHs

Notes:

I dropped a few subtle hints regarding the extent of Setarra’s powers and abilities that I’m quite pleased with.

#dontmesswiththedolls

https://www.twitch.tv/rpglory

https://www.twitch.tv/rpglory

Started listening to Friends at the Table playing the game and its great and is great demonstration of the rules.

Started listening to Friends at the Table playing the game and its great and is great demonstration of the rules. Make me want to play it even more!

The Lurk of #theHulls gets lost overindulging on their vice.

The Lurk of #theHulls gets lost overindulging on their vice. Picking the Cutter, the player notes on the Cutter sheet the contacts Grace (an extortionist) and Mercy (a cold killer), which triggers this epic background pitch:

___________________________

When the gates failed, and the known world was thrust into darkness, it could be argued that no archetypal legacy suffered more than that of the knightly orders. The secular military remained, the criminal underworld blossomed like never before, and the collective bodies of natural and supernatural knowledge became the keystones of sanity amid the chaos. The Paladins, however, were strong in sentiment, rooted in tradition, and completely lacking in common sense. The poor, shining twits sacrificed themselves faster than it took the spirit world to realise they’d even existed. In the millennia since, most of them have become no more than ancestral mascots for a certain grasping type of family, who enjoy styling themselves as “Sir So and So, of Such and Such’s line”, but whose knightly virtues fall slightly short of the common tax clerk’s.

One such individual in contemporary Doskvol was “Sir” Hubertus Myebrow, scion of the dwindling Order of the Weeping Rose. As you might expect, Myebrow was iron-grey of hair and full of moustache, however, his resemblance to the Paladins of yore ended there. He was a narrow-shouldered, bandy-legged, pot-bellied buffoon whose only achievements, by the old knightly measure, were to marry a woman far above his station and to subsequently sire three remarkable daughters. Being the token religious sort, he would shrilly proclaim that each daughter bear the name of a virtue he held nominally dear. The first born was Grace. Willowy, ethereal and highly intelligent, Grace learned how to use her looks and poise to command the attention of others from a very young age. She would grow to use this to thrive in a world of petty tyrants like her father. Next, there was Honour, who had the misfortune to have been born with a large frame, a dour expression and a temper that, while slow to burn, would strike white hot when it did. Naturally, her lot in life was to be the loyal dog to Grace’s scheming cat. Finally, there was Mercy, whose birth cost the life of the girls’ mother. Beautiful, brilliant and fragile, Mercy was actually the product of an unholy union between Lady Myebrow and a daemon, whose vicious attentions were brought upon by the secret dealings of Sir Hubertus with a supremely powerful occult society. Never one to accept blame when it could be avoided with bluster and cruelty, Myebrow chose to publicly blame the infant Mercy for her mother’s death. In private, he would routinely pretend to lock her in a cell within the family keep, using her madness as the excuse. In these “asylum” periods, isolated from her sisters and the wider world, Mercy was trained to become a pawn of her father’s nefarious benefactors. Sweet, mad Mercy became a daemonic assassin.

Years went by and the elder sisters received their educations too. Grace, ever the favourite, was taught the arts of statehood and intrigue by an esteemed, shrewd and indebted cousin of high birth. In the absence of a son, and because she was not Grace, Honour was reluctantly given the right to learn the science of the battlefield under the Order’s master at arms. She was just shy of her seventeenth birthday when she was sent to war, and her father never shed a tear. Her record in tournaments and mock melee had been astounding, and Myebrow saw little value in a daughter whose talents weren’t those of the stateroom, ballroom or bedchamber. Perhaps she could die gloriously in battle instead.

The war lasted a long time, but Honour lasted longer. When she finally returned home, she was even more heavily muscled, hideously scarred, and sported the giant claymore of a Skovlan chieftain. To this day no-one knows how she got it, but there are plenty of educated guesses. Upon arriving at the keep, she was shocked to learn of her father’s death at the hands of some supremely powerful occult society. What’s more, Grace said, the assassin was their twisted, hateful little sister Mercy. She had been in cahoots with the blaggards the whole time.

Honour’s temper kicked in. The first thing she did was to forego the name her father had given her. She’d adhered to its knightly implications for as long as she’d been aware of herself. Even in her darkest hour, in the icy north with the bloodwind howling and the beasts gnashing, she’d repeated her name like a mantra against the cold. She’d lived up to it the way she’d been taught that their ancestors would have, and it had kept her alive and whole. Now her father was gone, and along with him, dare she admit it, the burden of proving herself to him. She experienced the desire for vengeance for the first time, and she experienced elation as she was able to give into desire. She named herself after that other virtue called Justice.

Grace ably took over her father’s businesses and trebled his assets within five years. She became one of the scariest crime bosses in Doskvol, feared by nobles, peasants and scoundrels alike. Justice went on the warpath, and together they eventually tore the empire of their father’s shady enemies apart. At the heart of it, they found Mercy. Alone, confused and terrified, Mercy babbled in tongues only a Whisper could decipher. Justice insisted they bring her home for questioning before ending her life. A Whisper was hired, and eventually Mercy’s speech was restored and the truth discovered. Their father had made a deal with evil people, had got their mother raped and killed, and had condemned the product of that union, their baby sister, into becoming one of the Cabal’s tools. Grace, enamoured of her newfound (and hard won) power, still wanted to kill Mercy in the name of the family. Justice wanted to spare Mercy, and burn everything else down.

The subsequent war between Grace and Justice was bloody. The end result is that the Myebrow family and all its holdings are gone. Grace is alive, but is a pale reflection of what she once was, and now uses her opportunistic skills to survive as the consort and unofficial consiglieri of another prominent crime boss. Her memory is long however, and her hit-list is short. Mercy has disappeared into the shadows. Rumour has it that she has become a cold-blooded killer for hire, whose only social connection is the sister who remained loyal to her.

That sister, the hulking, scarred woman with the barbarian chieftain’s claymore, she has found work too. She’s a Cutter now, and she’s changed her name one last time. She now answers to the name Truth.

Actual play from 2 sessions at a game day last Saturday. The Red Sashes just couldn’t catch a break. =)

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/blades-in-the-dark-two-sessions/

https://fictivefantasies.wordpress.com/2016/09/15/blades-in-the-dark-two-sessions

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 32 (August 30 2016)

Kamali goes through the ledger, and comes up with the following assets that are now available:

* The Moon’s Daughter

* A hagfish farm, located in Coalridge

* Various local establishments that serve as drug dens

* A warehouse, located in the Docks

* Contact in the City Records Office in Charterhall

* Contacts in the Path of Echoes

* Contacts in the Cabbies

* Blackmail victim among the Inspectors

It’s been made known to them that there is a limited amount of time to grab what they can, and they will not be able to get everything. Mechanically, there’s a clock in the background, and every tick of that clock is something else on the list getting snatched up by someone else. The most likely candidates for competition are the Gondoliers, known enemies of the Sashes, and almost certainly watching the goings on in Crow’s Foot with interest. Constance decides to go after the City Records contact and the Moon’s Daughter first.

Kamali and Gears head to Charterhall to speak with Mylera’s former contact there, a mid-level clerk named Edmund Bain (who remembers Gears from his previous excursion there, procuring the information on the sewers underneath the Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh). He explains that Mylera kept him on retainer so they would have regular access to records and maps that were not normally accessible by the public. After some tense negotiation, it is agreed that they will continue the agreement he had with the Sashes, with some adjustments:

* Edmund’s retainer fee of 1 Coin a month previously paid by the Sashes will be increased to 2.

* Kamali attempts to include an exclusivity clause, which Bain alters to stipulate that while he is free to sell information to all comers, he will not sell any particular bit of information to more than one buyer (so if the Dolls come looking for floor plans to a particular place, he will not subsequently loan them out to any other gang and thus facilitate competition).

Bain attempts to couch his counter-offer in terms of protection for the Dolls from unwanted competition, but Gears interprets it as a veiled threat of eventually selling them out, and mentions Constance and her propensity for throwing people off the tops of buildings. Bain is appropriately cowed.

Kamali is caught pickpocketing Edmund’s keys, but he is rattled enough by Gears that he allows her to take whichever ones she wants, provided she will bring them back. She borrows the keys to the Brightstone and Whitecrown archive rooms, with the promise that she will not remove any materials from the rooms, but merely make copies of whatever information she needs.

Meanwhile, Constance, Boots, and Shade set about claiming the Moon’s Daughter.

Boots spends the day rounding up the former staff of the restaurant, who have mostly all found work somewhere else while the place was closed.

* Rafiq, the Manager: Found working as a waiter at another Iruvian restaurant over in Silkshore. Very eager to get back to his old job, as his current one was quite a step down.

* Bahir, the Cook: Found getting drunk at a tavern in Nightmarket. Boots and Rafiq walk him back to the restaurant and let him sleep it off in the back room.

* Paolo and Emilio, Waiters: These two Severosi brothers are found working at a tavern in Charhollow. The bartender doesn’t want to let them leave, but Boots manages to convince him by way of drawing his pistols.

* Azeema, the Hostess: Found at The Veil (as a client). Rolan Volaris is of course very protective of the privacy and confidentiality of the Veil’s clientele, but agrees to relay a message to Azeema.

The staff assembles back at the restaurant and works most of the night to get it ready to open again the next day. In the morning, Azeema arrives, along with several girls who comprised the cleaning staff. The result is that the Moon’s Daughter is officially open for business by lunchtime (the front half, anyway).

The next two steps of the plan are a bit more complex. First, they need to line up suppliers for the special menu (which Constance will work on), and they need to staff the back room (which has been delegated to Shade).

Constance also has a mind to turn the warehouse into her new boxing club.

Notes:

I built the list of assets mainly from the Assassins claim map along with the Sashes’ known allies in the QS, plus a couple of other items I thought would be interesting.

For each Downtime phase the crew does, they’re going to lose one more thing on the list. If they keep splitting up, they can maximize what they get and keep ahead of the curve. It’s also possible (indeed, likely) that after everything is said and done, they’ll attempt to take the other stuff by pulling regular jobs against their new competition.

#dontmesswiththedolls

http://www.twitch.tv/RPGlory

http://www.twitch.tv/RPGlory