Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

TURF RETAINED!

The Dead Setters tricked the Reconciled into assaulting a fake spirit well and then hanged the Whisper’s contact in the Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good Caper.

Although you could also call this session the My God, It’s Full of Sixes Caper.

Our previous session ended with the gang getting frantic word that their Coalridge spirit well was under attack by organized ghosts, assisted/led by at least one living person. That made getting into this session pretty quick, since the situation was there and the players were reacting. I framed the score as a sort of “reverse score”, where the score was to protect turf, and the engagement roll wouldn’t be how well the enemy had planned to attack the spirit well initially, but how prepared they’d be against the Dead Setters’ inevitable response.

The plan? Deception. The method? Build a decoy spirit well.

So that worked pretty well (six). The attacking spirits and their handler, Flint (Teatime the Whisper’s rival) were completely flummoxed (a six on engagement), and while the ghosts had been getting the upper hand on the Dead Setters’ thugs, the arrival of the gang leaders quickly turned the tide (all sixes to command, ghost-punch, or banish the attackers).

Flint and his two hired whispers, Coil and Ruby, fled. They tried to cover their trail by dropping chokedust behind them but Deemo the Leech had downed quicksilver at the start of the battle. Now she gathered her will and commanded the remaining ghosts to capture those cowards. She critted, naturally, and we cut to basically this, if you swapped out the forest for a shitty basement:

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Although a Devil’s Bargain would end with Flint and his two cronies dead badly enough to ding the gang the +2 Heat for killing, they learned the following before “threatening to hang” turned into “hangings for real reals”:

1. They were attacked by the Reconciled.

2. The Reconciled are enemies with the Dimmer Sisters.

3. They have some loyal pawns/possessees within the Path of Echoes (important to the Hound, since she’s trying to become an adept).

4. They are led by (maybe) a quorum which is (maybe) led in turn by Tamar, the Last and First Empress of Skovland, sort-of survivor of the Cataclysm and first to discover the means to retain one’s mind as a ghost. Maybe. That was one of the few middle-of-the-road results they got.

5. They are at -1 faction status with the Reconciled now. 🙂

6. Level 2 harm is much worse than level 1 harm, but that Attune crit was pretty awesome so maybe drinking quicksilver was worth it?

7. Teatime has a Krull glaive he can control with the ghost field or something.

I think we’re where we want to be with the game now too. I feel comfortable enough with butchering John’s setting that we’re finally getting into the high supernatural stuff I think we wanted from the get-go*. There are two demons loose on the city, the current stable of foes and allies are the weirder ones, like the Reconciled, Dimmer Sisters, and Path of Echoes, and most every PC is equipped for ghostbusting.

*But I wanted to ease into things and get our feet wet with “regular” gangs. We’re past that now.

#heestcomplete

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HEEST COMPLETE!

The Dead Setters framed their Spider’s nemesis for demon summoning and illegal spirit chicanery in the Let’s Go To Prison Caper.

Richter, the Spider, already did a stint in Ironhook thanks to Jennah, his former partner/rookie when he was an Inspector. He had been working towards repaying the favor but needed something bad enough to get an actual for-real Inspector thrown into jail. The remnants of the Crows provided the ammunition when they inadvertently released Ahazu, a demon, from Lord Strangford’s family crypts. The Setters had arranged for the Inspectors to get there, not the Bluecoats.

The next piece of the puzzle was to get Jennah’s support structure out of the way. Several great gather info rolls and some legwork revealed that she had contacts within the Gray Cloaks (for underworld tipoffs) and a contact in the Skovlan Consulate (for political tipoffs). The gang didn’t want to hit her Gray Cloak contact, since the two gangs were friendly, so they shadowed Jennah and trailed her to a clandestine meeting with Skinner, her Skovlander contact. They were meeting at a power substation in Dunslough, a noisy, cramped, near-abandoned industrial nightmare of steam pipes and deadly, confusing machinery and catwalks. A 6 on engagement made this a perfect spot for an ambush.

Seriously guys, 6s on engagement rolls are pretty great. As a GM, I don’t really like seeing them but it’s not all about me, is it? 🙂

With the initiative and the high ground, the Dead Setters make quick work of both Skinner and his bodyguards and Jennah’s Inspectors, although I will say this fight resulted in the most harm I’ve ever dealt to the PCs, mainly because instead of gunshots and stabbings I was having them fall off catwalks and into exploding steam pipes and electrical conduits, trying to dish out different ideas for damage as well as separating them out fictionally.

In the end, they left Jennah alive but wounded, then hit her with this ghost-bait stuff the guys thought up previously. Spirits started in on the Inspector, and although her spiritbane charm would protect her, Jennah would be arrested for consorting with and trading spirits. The Bluecoats had a LTP for investigating her, and she had a LTP for blocking their investigation. However, without her contacts in place, and the extra evidence, AND a little push from Richter during downtime, Jennah was convicted, stripped of rank, and sent to Ironhook.

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Downtime saw Raven, the Hound, choose to keep on her LTP for learning the Path of Echoes’ secrets rather than Recover. That’s a bold way to earn that XP for having your trauma (obsessed) cause trouble!

Teatime the Whisper, during his LTP to worm his way back into high society’s good graces, had the misfortune to accidentally participate in a combination noble wedding/summoning ritual. Certain shady nobles thought it’d be a good idea to summon a demon under their control to take down Ahazu. They fucked up and got something called The Burned King, who promptly left the venue, clearly not under anyone’s control. This is my homage to Perdido Street Station, with the crazy attempts to stop the slakemoths.

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We ended the session with the gang getting word that their spirit well had been hit by an organized force of ghosts and one human intent on breaking through their lightning barriers. Retaliation is nigh.

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I think we’re finally getting to that point in a campaign where the players are driving most of it, and we’ve seen enough of their characters come forward that I can start pushing on their goals and personalities and setting up opposition there rather than just having a “gang of the week” moment. For example, Raven’s trying to get in good with the Path of Echoes. She’s chosen to frame her LTP “rise within the cult” as a series of assassinations against enemies of the Path. Our group’s Leech, Deemo, happens to have Malista, a priestess (not of the Path), as a contact. Deemo’s also got Father Yorren (Weeping Lady) as a vice purveyor. I’m toying with the idea that one of these could be Raven’s “final exam”.

#heestcomplete