Category: Blades in the Dark: Actual Play Reports

Corpathium in the Dark – Session 1

Hello! Last week we left off here: https://plus.google.com/112796249972253370374/posts/N4T993GX95U

Serrathio’s player couldn’t join us yesterday, so his character just hung around without doing much (not my ideal solution, but the other option was not playing, and it was worse). To balance things out I gave 4 stress points back to Kyu and Shi, as in our previous sessions they spent too much (still getting the hang of it). As this is our first score, I thought we all had to learn how to play so there was no point in being harsh.

So, to the story! As a Foghound was looking for Shi, the qeleng sneaked in the secondary tunnel and hid in the half-submerged section, cutting his leg on a sharp rock in his hurry (level 1 harm as a consequence of a partial success). On the other hand, deciding that hiding would be too hard, and surely not a definite solution, Kyu unsheated her thin blade, a rapier more or less, and advanced toward the closest Foghound, hoping to dazzle him with her superior skills (2 points in Finesse) and finally hit him with a pommel strike to the head, to knock him out. She just barely managed to dodge the harpoon the enemy shot her with (resisted a level 3 harm as a consequence of a failure) and, now that the other Foghound was too closing in, following the suggestion of her dark, otherwordly muse, unfurled her white and cyan wings and performed a blade dance to enthrall the smugglers.

(We decided Kyu has this particular power that she can use by focusing her innate magic on dancing. She can usually employ this in a much calmer setting, but this was an emergency. She accepted a Devil’s Bargain, where her muse modified her memories and making her favor the Weeping Lady faction, which she said she despised as they’re all “wretched beggars” and she’s a fashionable, high class artist. She rolled Attune from a Desperate position and earned a success!)

Before they could unsheathe their swords, the Foghounds were enthralled by Kyu’s dancing. Shi easily directed them toward the portcullis trap and literally sealed their lips with Binding Oil, surely gifting them with permanent scars, but that’s the fate of the defeated.

Kyu and Shi moved deeper in the subterranee, passing the sleeping quarters and the mess hall (small rooms, as there was a total of four smugglers in the complex), mostly ignoring a room where the floor, walls and ceiling were completely covered in a grey-green bioluminescent ooze, and finally reaching an underground cistern were the Foghounds had built a small pier. Two of them, one just a boy of 15 or 16, the other clearly of Ashian heritage, were loading a barge with craters and barrels.

(Ashians are a human race of people with darker skin and hair, wide, flat faces and almond eyes. They live in an empire ruled by a council of legendary women, worship a leviathan, only speak quoting their approved propaganda book and are at war with Corpathium since time immemorial. Some, ex prisoners or deserters, end up as refugee in the city. Most of this race is taken from Gene Wolfe’s masterpiece, The Book of the New Sun)

Deciding that having them flee the compound fearing it was close to collapsing, they started a strategy of sabotage and fake noises: Kyu mimicked the sound of rocks falling in the water, while Shi actually demolished part of the roof in a room close by. They succedeed in having the boy escape with the barge only partially loaded, but the ashian, which they later realized was the Foghound’s second in command, known as Bear, brashly went back in the compound, probably to get his other two underlings. Kyu and Shi leaded him in a chase, by keeping making noises that could conceivably be linked to an imminent collapse and hoping Bear would give up, but he stubbornly followed. In the end, they staged an ambush in the ooze room: Shi tried poisoning him with a paralyzing agent and a blowgun, but missed and was nearly skewered by the ashian’s cutlass, which he parried at the last instant with his lantern (Shi resisted a lvl 3 harm as a consequence of a risky failure). Kyu entered the fray, trying again to stun the enemy with a pommel strike, now aided by Shi that tried to distract him by throwing the sad pieces of his broken lantern, but Bear wouldn’t go down that easily (she only earned a partial success, and the consequence was limited effect).

To make the story short, Bear assaulted Shi, managing to throw him in the ooze and nearly smashing his skull on the floor (lvl 3 harm, a concussion he couldn’t resist anymore), and finally Kyu managed to hit him with a thrust to the arm and to hold him at sword point. Bear surrendered, and the score was completed!

In the aftermath, Shi and Kyu decided to keep the Foghounds prisoners, to use them as guinea pigs or to ransom them, They found a mysterious iron door in a dark section of the complex, a door they couldn’t open or dent for now.

They earned 4 coins (contraband goods taken from the Foghounds, mostly legal but stolen stuff), 3 reps (2 base, plus one as the enemy was 1 tier higher), 4 Heat (one was because of a Devil’s Bargain during the previous session) and a modicum of xp.

Their entanglement involved one of their contacts being picked by the Black Mantles for interrogation… Salia, an information broker who helped them in sizing up the Foghounds, was asked about this new gang, but she didn’t spill the bans and earned newfound respect from the crew (rolled a 6 on the fortune roll, so no extra heat).

Downtime for Kyu was indulging her vice (Luxury, so she had patrons offer her the best food and relax in the Wheel of Gold district, especially the lovely baths) and looking for an immoral doctor to recruit and cure Shi. This was a long term project, a four-segments clock that was easily filled (Shi has the Analyst skill). Quacker, a bird man, was added to the crew and tried to help Shi the best he could.

Shi indulged his vice (Weird) twice, but found no solace (recovered two stress total) in hanging with the Youngbloods, a gang of bored noble scions from the Sprawling Tower who love strange “pranks”, mostly when people are hurt or humiliated. Shi even spent good coin to guarantee the best chances and equipment for his “friends”, but he didn’t really relax and unwind (Shi spent his one coin to buy an extra downtime action). Finally, Quacker tried to ameliorate his concussion, but his final diagnosis is, he needs rest (only three out of for segments of his healing clock were filled).

Shi’s player decided to bring another character to our next session, in order for Shi to heal and recover his stress. This is a pity, but other than handwaving harm and stress, I can’t find another solution. How do you handle this kind of bad luck?

Now the crew (that still needs to be defined) has a lair, a new enemy (-2 status with the Foghounds, of course), a few long term projects to tackle (what’s the deal with the ooze room? And what about that door?), a war brewing in the Rookery of Van Moldus between the Pitch Eaters, the Vermintide and the Red Nails, and… well, we’ll see!

Thanks for reading! 🙂

Corpathium in the Dark – Session 0

Hello everyone! This is the report for our first session of Blades in the Dark! I GMed for my wife and two friends we played D&D with for years now. Our sessions are played though Roll20.

Setting is a modified version of Logan Knight’s Corpathium ( https://www.lastgaspgrimoire.com/in-corpathium/ ) enriched by pieces of Vornheim, Doskvol, Dark Souls, Kingdom Death, Planescape, Qelong, Midgard, Lovecraft, Book of the New Sun, Thief, Dishonored and so on. It’s a weird fantasy megacity (each district could hold one or two “normal-sized” cities) where you can find literally anything sooner or later. The setting will be developed ingame with the help of my players!

The party decided to focus on time theft, literally, as in they aim to steal other people’s time to use for their dark desires.

Cast

Kyu: Kyu is a bird woman, a young race of anthropomorphic birds (she’s similar to a bird of paradise), a burlesque dancer who found she could steal other people’s time through dancing: while they’re enthralled, they literally miss minutes of their life she can then use (to prolong her life, since bird men live very short lives). Oh, bird men (and women) cannot talk with their own word, they can only perfectly mimic noises and other people’s phrases. She’s a Coiner.

Shi Weilong: A qeleng (read: inhabitant of Qelong or the Plateau of Leng) human once married to a beautiful young woman. Together they decided to leave their boring farmer lives and take a ship to Corpathium, where he became a journalist and she an inventor focusing on time manipulation. One day, Shi’s wife simply disappeared, but her notebook kept getting filled with notes about her inventions and her travels outside time, so he decided to follow her tracks and build a “Timehouse” (a lighthouse for time… Cronofaro, in Italian, is better!) to let her come home. He of course needs a lot of “time”, borrowed or stolen from other, for his project. He is a Leech.

Serrathio: He is a serpent man, a member of the oldest of races, and he himself is millennia old. Serpent men as old as he hibernate for centuries at a time, and while they’re sleeping they rearrange their memories, to avoid cluttering their mind. They also have a whole book inscribed on their skin, that only with a special ivory lens you can read. Serrathio is a Spider.

Members of the party knew each other from before the game started (they still have to define exactly how) and met at the Burning Man tavern to pick the place that will become their Lair (they still have no Crew as I decided it was best to introduce things slowly). In the past weeks each found a couple of potential lairs, and they discussed which ones were more interesting: the skeleton of Ashtongue Inc., the biggest coal-based factory in Corpathium, nearly abandoned tens of years ago because of lack of profits (and because of too many work related incidents giving birth to lots of ghosts), or a section of the tunnels under the city, used centuries ago by a paranoid member of the Corvuscult to move troops stealthily and quickly though the city, or the subterraneans of Lord Scurlock’s manor, which lay mostly empty as the lord is dead and only his debt-ridden heirs live there?

Kyu danced for Quess, her gondolier friend, who told her Foghounds have a small base under the manor that they use for smuggling (city canals run under the manor somehow), and Serrathio learned from Salia, an information broker, that some of those smuggler go drink at a local pub.. while Kyu was enthralling the audience with her risqué dance, the snake was heard saying, casually close to a young Foghound, that Lord Scurlock’s manor would probably collapse soon because of water infiltration from the canal. So convincing was he (a critical) that the Foghound ran to warn his friends. Kyu’s action was an Assist action for Serrathio, who was making a Setup for their Engagement roll.

Here we started the Score: they decided they wanted to sabotage the Foghounds’ base to convince them again and definitely that they had to leave the place. The Engagement roll decreed they would start in a Desperate position, but since the Setup maneuver from Serrathio was a critical, we decided they’d start as Controlled.

Guided by Quess, they navigated the dark canals under the manor and found themselves at the entrance of the section the Foghounds claimed as their base: a couple of smugglers with rifles, illuminated by lanterns, ahead of a corridor with a pair of portcullises(?) they could quickly lower to trap intruders. Shi found another way around, a nearly submerged tunnel that let them get behind the smugglers. Here things started going downhill: Shi went back to the entrance, trying to lure the guards by sabotaging a portcullis, but was nearly noticed (he partially resisted the consequence of his failure and hid). To try and help him, Serrathio quickly peered through dimensions to see a couple of seconds in the future, to guide Kyu in her performance: she would mimic rocks falling to trick the guards in thinking the complex was collapsing. Unluckily, she wasn’t so convincing, so she had to quickly hide too as the guards split to check on both noises.

…and there’s where we stopped, as it was getting late! We’ll start from here next week to see how the party manages to earn their own lair!

I hope this was at least half as fun to read as it was to play! Thanks!