Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 18 (June 1 2016)

Constance instructs Kamali to go put her hand in Clermont’s cookie jar again, in order to gather more information on the Skovlan refugees. Shade will attempt to infiltrate the militant Skovlan community.

Constance sends a message to Karstas to set up a meeting (we stipulated that he had left instructions to send a messenger crow anywhere, and simply include his name in the message, and it will reach him). They meet at the Leaky Bucket. Karstas wants to hire the crew to steal an artifact from the Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh, a statue that is the mate of the one he bought from Fitz (his exact words are that the two “fit together”). Karstas cannot himself enter the church, for reasons he won’t say (but everyone can guess). Gears takes a Devil’s Bargain to make a Study roll to look over the contract, and enlists Constance’s aid by reading several clauses out loud. They find a loophole that Karstas put in regarding not being able to back out of the arrangement, but decide not to close it. They have a reputation to maintain, after all.

Constance is about to go see Prichard, but there’s a giant explosion. Gears can immediately tell that it’s the coal warehouse. Constance and Gears rush in to try and rescue any survivors. I gave them a 6-segment clock to for the rescue, and there were several other clocks that would advance automatically at regular intervals. One of these was for the building to collapse, and the others were for the arrival of the fire brigade, the Bluecoats, and the crematorium’s corpse cart. Gears uses Survey to search for anyone who’s alive, while Constance uses Wreck to smash anything that’s in her way to get at people who have been trapped behind debris. Most of the rescues are suffering from smoke inhalation, but at least one of them, Brock, has had the presence of mind to tie a wet cloth over his nose and mouth. Constance learns from him that Baszo and Prichard are not in the building, and Brock makes a beeline for the 2nd floor office to retrieve Baszo’s daughter Aleira. Constance helps herself to the cash in the now exposed vault (8 Coin). There is also one more unconscious gang member here, but Yanth Agog instructs her to leave him to die in the building. Brock and Gears get Aleira out of the office just before the 2nd floor structure collapses. At Gears’ request, Constance manages to drag one of the dead bodies out for later dissection.

Gloves goes to the Church of the Ecstacy of the Flesh and speaks to one of the acolytes, who is happy to give him a tour of their rather impressive art collection. The statue in question is not on display, but Gloves gets a good idea of the layout of the place, including several promising points of entry for an infiltration. He also can make a fairly good guess as to where the statue is being kept.

Kamali goes to Clermont’s safe. She botches the forgery attempt, and so doesn’t take any Coin, but instead concentrates on copying important bits out of Clermont’s notes. She learns the name of the prime suspect of the Skovlan Refugee uprising (Maldor Williamsen), and that the Consulate also suspects that they are planning something in retaliation, but are currently hanging back to observe.

Notes:

Everything involving the coal warehouse on fire was completely 100% improvised. All I started with was “you hear a huge boom from across town, and the ground shakes slightly.”

There was some amusement to be had when we realized that Gears’ player was considering taking a Devil’s Bargain while dealing with a devil’s bargain. The upshot is that Karstas has taken a personal interest in Gears, as he is fascinated by Gears’ completely logical and scientific mindset and world view.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 17 (May 25 2016)

Aftermath for The Sash Stash Crash & Smash:

The Payout is 10 Coin worth of Trance Powder, but no actual cash. Heat is high, it was a fairly standard job, but killing was involved. For Entanglements, they had a choice (because of Slippery) of Demonic Notice or Flipped. They went with the former.

Downtimes:

Constance, Boots, and Gloves all dedicate actions to reducing the crew’s Heat, eventually managing to reduce it from 7 to 1.

Gloves follows upon the property owners in The Drop, and tracks down the last of the holdouts to a pub called the Old Rasp. He strikes up a conversation regarding the ongoing war, hinting that a fair amount of cheap real estate is likely to become available in the near future (most probably in Lampblacks territory). That gets them talking amongst themselves. This completes the crew’s project clock for gentrifying the area around The Drop. Mechanically, this raises the Quality of their Hunting Grounds by 1. They will start seeing the results of this in short order.

Constance goes to Six Towers to meet with Basran. He’s happy to see her, as business has been good lately. He’s able to buy 7 of the 10 Coin worth of Trance Powder, and the crew gets +2 Coin due to Basran being their luxury fence (technically, the job they pulled was a robbery, and not a burglary, but I ruled that it applies since we’ve established Trance Powder as a high-end drug). The resulting 9 Coin for very long immediately starts getting spent on extra actions.

Kamali goes to The Veil to indulge her Vice. Rolan allows her to do so (she is a paying customer after all), but insists she allow the Veil’s personal physician look at the bullet wound in Kamali’s shoulder. Kamali is exceedingly reluctant to allow anyone to touch her, even another woman, but eventually agrees when Rolan points out exactly how bad it will become if Kamali allows the wound to fester. The operation takes place while Kamali is unconscious, and she wakes up to find her shoulder bandaged, the bullet sitting in a glass of whiskey on the table, and some very detailed instructions on keeping the dressings clean. She also meets Alice, the woman whom Rolan has entrusted with the care of the workers at The Veil (healing clock has started). Kamali is extremely uncomfortable interacting with someone that she knows has touched her, especially while unconscious, but the doctor picks up on this, and quickly excuses herself.

Shade trains Prowess, and goes to visit Setarra. She mentions that Karstas was looking for him (or more accurately, his associate, “the tall one”). Shade makes a joke about a threeway, and Setarra warns him that he doesn’t want to go there. Shade reminds her that he doesn’t like to take no for an answer.

Kamali works with Shade to examine the information gained from Clermont’s safe. What they end up with at the end of it is a list of names of people loosely connected to Skovlan (mostly refugees), and an emergent pattern seems to indicate that the refugees are gearing up for a major offensive somewhere in the city, spurred into action by various racially motivated assaults.

Boots goes gambling, and overindulges. He gets lost for a bit, and will likely have an interesting story to tell when he resurfaces.

Constance calls a meeting. Kamali and Shade present their findings. The crew decides that they will need to go after another Claim. Going by the map, Informants is the next one up, if they want to claim Drug Dens at some point.

Notes:

There was a question of earning Rep if they did a job against a faction, but no one knew it was them. The answer to this is that the crew is reporting everything to The Crows (and giving them their cut), so that’s when the Rep is awarded. If the crew ever decides to pull a job without reporting it, they won’t earn the Rep (and if Lyssa finds out after the fact, they’ll have much bigger problems with worry about).

#dontmesswiththedolls