Tag: 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

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 16 (May 15 2016)

The Sash Stash Crash & Smash:

The crew decides to hit the Moon’s Daughter and pin it on the Lampblacks. Shade suggests hitting them where their supply of Trance Powder is stored. Constance reasons that the main stash would be somewhere other than the restaurant. She considers asking Lyssa to call in the Bluecoats on the Sashes. Boots confirms that the Sashes don’t currently have any protection agreement in place with the Bluecoats.

Constance decides that someone will enter the restaurant and arrange for a large purchase, one that they will not be able to fill with what they have on hand. Boots will follow the Sashes’ man to the location of their stash. Once the product is delivered to the Moon’s Daughter, the Bluecoats, who will have already been tipped off, will raid the restaurant to provide a diversion. Boots will then inform the Lampblacks of the location of the stash, who will of course hit it, and the Dolls will receive a cut of what is taken.

Boots volunteers to assist the Lampblacks in their raid, as does Kamali. Shade is reluctant to be seen making a direct move against Mylera, but he says he knows of a way to lend aid.

Constance wants Gloves to make the buy, and allow himself to get arrested along with the Sashes. Gloves asks for hazard pay, but Constance is not amused.

Constance goes to see Lyssa, who was aware of the Sashes’ drug operation, but not that the Moon’s Daughter was one of the distribution venues. Because she’s miffed at the Sashes for apparently holding out on her, Lyssa agrees to arrange for the intervention of the Bluecoats, as well as protection and an expedited release for Gloves, should he be caught up in the raid. Lyssa also resolves to speak to Mylera personally regarding the matter, and thanks Constance for bringing it to her attention (Faction status goes up to +2 with the Crows).

I ran this as two linked jobs running more or less concurrently, and the crew split up again so most everyone will be able to take advantage of the Downtimes afterward.

Part 1:

Engagement roll for the first one is not great (3). Gloves goes to the Moon’s Daughter, speaks to the maitre d’, asks for the special, and is ushered into the back room, where Branon Avrathi is waiting to deal. Gloves names a quantity that he expects will be more than what the Sashes have on hand, to prompt them to pay a visit to their stash. However, he underestimates how much the Sashes keeping on hand when Branon produces the requested amount with no fuss. This is good news for Gloves, who will not be around for the Bluecoat raid, but bad news for Boots, who now has a harder time tracking the Sashes’ bagman, now that they don’t know when he will go to re-up. Eventually, however, he does, and while Boots is able to keep up, he is spotted just as the man is going into the building where the stash is being kept.

Constance meets with Prichard and Lady Drake. Prichard acknowledges that Baszo is being reckless, and that he has tried to dissuade him from this war, but Baszo holds Mylera responsible for the death of his wife. Constance recommends that Baszo be removed from the equation, sooner rather than later, and makes her intentions to take over the Lampblacks known. Prichard says that he and Baszo have been close friends for many years, but admits that an overabundance of sentiment is what got them in the current situation.

Constance also informs Prichard of the location of the stash, and recommends hitting it while the Sashes and the Bluecoats are distracted. She gives them a time (around noon the next day) and a place (about two blocks from the antique store where the drugs are being kept). The Lampblacks will assault the place, assisted by Boots, Shade, and Kamali.

Part 2:

The next day, Shade performs a ritual that will swap his appearance with another, grabbing a random passerby from the street. Kamali and Boots were warned of this beforehand, but are still nonetheless startled to see a complete stranger approach them for the job. The Lampblacks are late, by nearly half an hour, and look as though they’ve already been in a scuffle. There are five of them, two of which are Coil and Vale from the Bell & Birch (now demoted to footsoldiers), but they don’t recognize Kamali.

Shade performs his cloak of invisibility ritual, and envelopes himself and the Lampblacks in the Ghost Field so they can approach the front of the antique store unseen. In the process, the Lampblacks and Shade all take Level 1 Harm in the form of mild frostbite (no Resistance roll, and even if I did permit it, Shade was now at 8 Stress). Meanwhile, Kamali is in the alley by the back door, setting a tripwire before climbing up on a perch, and Boots is on the roof of the building across the street, with a good view of the alley and the back door.

Shade drops the cloak as the Lampblacks rush the front door of the shop. His Stress is dangerously high, so he decides to back off. Kamali and Boots hear the commotion in the shop, and the back door flies open. Three Sashes emerge, the first hitting the tripwire and falling flat on his face. The second tumbles over his buddy into the alley, while the third manages to parkour his way over the both of them and begins sprinting down the alley to get help. There are now two clocks: The Survivors (6 segments) of the fight inside, who are running to go get reinforcements, and They’re Getting Away! (4 segments), which is the countdown.

Kamali drops down and stabs the first Sash in the back and attempts to attack the second, but he has gotten his footing and now whirls to face her (2 segments filled). Boots takes a shot at the third, and hits him right between the eyes. The bullet exits his skull, ricochets off the brick wall of the alley, and wings the second (3 more segments filled, bringing it to 5).

The problem is that Kamali is not nearly as effective in a straight fight, and the dice seem to agree with this assessment. She narrowly avoids serious Harm on more than one instance, but the Stress is slowly piling up. There’s only so long she can keep this up. Boots has the choice of taking the time to reload his rifle, or make a Desperate shot with a pistol. He decides to go with the latter, and gets a 5. The result is that the remaining Sash trades swings with Kamali for a bit, then Boots hit him right in the back of the neck, his throat explodes, and Kamali is hit in the shoulder (Level 3 Harm reduced to 2 by a Resistance roll).

Three remaining Lampblacks emerge from the shop to see Shade arrive and use his electroplasm to dissolve the three bodies in the alley. Unfortunately he doesn’t have enough for the four bodies inside (two of which are Lampblacks). They grab the stash and make a run for it. Kamali refuses to let anyone touch her, and manages to limp home on her own with a bullet in her shoulder.

Notes:

A couple of house rules: First of all, I’ve decided as a matter of principle, I’m not going to try and squeeze in Downtimes at the end of a session any more. It encourages everyone to kind of rush through it before they scatter for the evening. Instead, they can take the time until next session to decide what they’re going to do, and it allows me to zoom in on certain actions if it’s necessary, especially indulging Vices, which too often get relegated to “Okay, you take off 3 Stress”. I want to see more of what actually happens when they’re doing this stuff (and there are opportunities for more story there). So next session we’ll see Payoff (I informally promised them 10 Coin worth for this job at the end of this session), Heat (this will be a noisy one), Entanglement, and Downtimes.

Second, I clarified (for our group) the difference between Resistance rolls being able to lessen or mitigate incoming Harm, and being able to eliminate it entirely. The two examples with Kamali above illustrate it quite well. The first time she was actively dodging a melee attack, so it was kind of an all or nothing deal. The second time, it was an incoming bullet. The best she could hope for is to weather the hit.

I had to make a choice at some point as to whether or not the Sashes’ business at the Moon’s Daughter was known to Lyssa or not. Either one would have been equally interesting to me, so I let a die decide (even/odds). If it had been, the conversation with Constance and Lyssa would have gone very differently, with Lyssa demanding some form of compensation for the loss of income from their cut of the Sashes’ drug trade.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 15 (May 9 2016)

We spend some time detailing what it looks like when Kamali and Gloves indulge her particular Vices. Kamali rents a private room at The Veil and gets comfortable with the Blue Cloud and a glass of blackberry wine, while Gloves inspects his wardrobe and decides he needs some new neckwear, and heads to Dunridge & Sons, spending more on a cravat, a jabot, and an ascot than most would spend on an entire suit. We already know what it looks like when Shade indulges his Vice.

The crew discusses the results of the Turner 302 Job. Constance is in favor of Kamali’s plan to use Clermont as a periodic supply of cash. Shade is of the opinion that the crew is not in a position to be able to effectively take advantage of the political information directly, and is looking to sell it to someone who can. Constance is reluctant to give it up so easily, and wants the group to study the information and report back to her before making a decision on it. This is hampered by the fact that most of the group cannot read Skovlan.

Constance discusses her intention to hit the Red Sashes, and frame the Lampblacks for it. This will hopefully cause the Sashes to be in a more emotional state when they strike out at the Lampblacks, and as a result they will be on less certain footing. It is Constance’s hope that the two gangs will end up wiping each other out, leaving only the Crows and the Dolls.

Marlane brings a note delivered to her by Lade Drake, informing that she has a meeting with Prichard at 8pm the following evening. She will bring Boots, as he is currently the only one who knows anything of her plan.

The crew gathers info on what the Sashes are up to:

Constance goes to see Merrill Brime at the Hooded Fox, but he is currently in hiding due to the Sashes coming around recently (with possibly ill intent). Constance talks to the bartender Booker, convinces him she’s not with the Sashes, and arranges a meeting with Merrill, who is hiding out in a nearby tenement building. He talks about some friends of his who have been approached by the Sashes, and the only thing they all have in common that he can think of is that they all were at the Bell & Birch recently. He also details what he knows of the Sashes’ drug business. Their primary sources of income are Trance Powder and Dream Smoke, two fairly high-end drugs. They deal them out of several reputable establishments in Crows Foot (a couple of restaurants, a massage parlor, and a bookmaker who takes bets on the dog races in Coalridge). Constance offers him sanctuary.

Gloves heads to The Moon’s Daughter, purported to be the best source of authentic Iruvian cuisine outside of the Iruvian Quarter in Silkshore (and some might even go so far as to say it’s the best source of Iruvian cuisine outside of Iruvia itself). Mylera and some of her underlings happen to be dining there at the time, and she invites Gloves to join their table. She thanks him for the list of names from the Bell & Birch, informing him that some of them have been useful, while others were deemed dangerous, and at least one is being targeted for assassination. Conversation amongst the underlings turns to dealing with the Lampblacks. It’s agreed that while they have been doing well in the small altercations that have been occurring of late, they need to do something decisive, and soon. Gloves also learns how to inform the staff of the Moon’s Daughter that he is in the market for Trance Powder.

Shade visits the Path of Echoes and sells the occupied spirit bottle (4 Coin). Then he hangs around near the Temple to see if he can find the ghost of a dead Sash. He ends up summoning a ghost named Kelyr, and after a brief battle of wills, gets some useful information. The Sashes’ drug business is run by Branon Avrathi, whose father is a high-ranking member of the Iruvian Consulate. The Sashes and the Consulate enjoy a working relationship. Shade shows Kelyr the spirit hook to let him know who’s in charge, but then asks what Kelyr wants in return for keeping quiet about their exchange. Kelyr reveals that he is unable to possess anyone, and is jealous of ghosts that can. He wants to learn Nyryx’s secret.

Notes:

I was very happy to have the opportunity to drop some fairly big bits of information on the players this time around. I’ve been trying very hard to present a world that reacts to the players’ actions, and show them that everything they do creates ripples in the rest of the world.

I also love it when two or more characters attempt to gather information on something from different angles, and I can give each of them different pieces of the puzzle.

I’ve also made it a point that every time Shade interacts with a ghost, I build up a little more of the mythology surrounding them. Also, he’s had a very easy time of it, but all that’s going to come back on him soon.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 14 (May 1 2016)

The Turner 302 Job:

Edward Clermont has boasted that his new safe, a top of the line Turner 302, is invincible. Kamali has decided to accept the challenge.

The crew gets a 5 on the Engagement roll. Kamali and Shade get inside the house with no incident, while Gloves keeps watch outside. The maid is nowhere to be seen, due to the butler deciding he needs to take a more direct role in his niece’s care, and so the basement is clear. However, Clermont does have an unexpected visitor from the Skovlan Consulate, who shows up right when Kamali is about to get to work on the safe. He is demanding information from the papers in the safe, in relation to a recent incident involving Ulf Ironborn (the words “arson” and “terrorism” are mentioned).

The Turner 302 is a 6′ by 4′ free-standing safe, made of a combination of solid iron and steel, painted a tasteful dark forest green with the company name and model number in elegant gold lettering on the door. There are three combination locks, and several glass plates inside designed to shatter if someone attempts to drill into it or open it by force, dropping secondary bolts into place, rendering the entire thing inoperable until it’s brought back to the manufacturer to reset. I rule that opening the safe is (for Kamali) a single 8 segment clock. More on this in the Notes.

Kamali commences work on opening the safe using Finesse, as her plan involves not damaging the safe in any way, or in fact leaving any evidence that it had been opened at all (in contrast with someone like Constance, who would not think twice about using Wreck to simply force the door open, or even just try to knock a hole in the side with a sledgehammer). I rule that Kamali’s position here would be Risky, but having acquired and studied the blueprints allows her to bump it back up to Controlled. In the first recorded instance (in our group) of a player using the fill-in line at the bottom of the Gear list, Kamali produces the stethoscope that she has thoughtfully decided to bring along in order to assist in hearing the turn of the tumblers.

As Kamali is working on the safe, Shade is on lookout at the door to the room, listening to the commotion coming from upstairs. He realizes it’s only a matter of time before Clermont and his guest come downstairs (this is a 4 segment countdown clock). Before too long Kamali gets through all three tumblers, and the safe is open, revealing (as the ghost said) a leather binder stuffed with papers, and a very large amount of Coin. She and Shade manage to copy important information from the papers (an additional 6 segment clock which they make short work of using Group actions), close the safe again, and get into a good hiding spot before Clermont and his visitor come down to the basement to retrieve the papers from the safe (a wooden bench hastily laid across the door buys them some time). Once Clermont is gone, Kamali easily opens the safe again, now that she has the combination.

I offer them the choice:

A. Shade’s Plan: Take the whole stack of cash now (10 Coin) and earn 1 XP for reinforcing their Reputation for being daring (for cracking the Turner 302), or

B. Kamali’s Plan: Only take an inconspicuous amount (2 Coin), and have the option of coming back on a regular basis to skim off of Clermont’s petty cash fund, and that will result in 2 XP for being extra daring. One detail is that eventually the money taken will be missed (and there is now an ongoing 4 segment clock for that, but if they can pull off a job to infiltrate and doctor Clermont’s ledgers, that will reset the clock).

In the end, Shade agrees to go with Kamali’s plan. There is some speculation that both Boots and Gloves will object to this plan, for completely different reasons. Boots will think it’s a bad idea for the group to press their luck, and Gloves will just complain that he didn’t get paid.

Downtime actions for the Turner 302 Job:

* The crew earns enough Rep to go up to Tier 1 (Hooray!).

* Kamali, Shade, and Gloves all reduce Stress.

* Kamali trains Prowess, and spends a Coin to a project to make Frake a friend.

* Gloves talks to the remaining property owners in The Drop, advancing the gentrification project (1 segment left). There is some idle talk about renaming the neighborhood to make it sound more upscale, and “Drop Heights” was jokingly suggested.

* Shade spends some time with Nyryx, completing the project to make them a friend.

Downtime actions for The Unmarked Crate Job (session 12, but happening simultaneously with this job):

* Gears and Constance both work more on clearing the factory floor, which opens the way for a smaller clock to set up living space.

* Gears works on an addition to Constance’s anchor (a spring-loaded launch tube for a crossbow bolt), so she has a bit of a surprise for any enemy with whom she hasn’t yet closed into melee range.

* Constance and Boots reduce stress.

* Boots spends an action healing, which clears up his broken nose.

* Constance spends a Coin to reduce Heat.

Notes:

It was always Kamali’s plan to completely ghost this whole job. She very deliberately set things up in such a way that there would be no evidence that anyone had ever been there, much less robbed the place. The fact that the Turner 302’s reputation as uncrackable remains intact is also valuable, as does the as yet unspecified diplomatic information copied from the papers in the safe. We’ll see what that leads to in future sessions.

Following on from my notes on the previous session, I hit upon something that I don’t believe is specifically mentioned in the Quickstart, but everyone running the game should keep in mind: The consequence It Takes More Time should be used specifically in conjunction with some kind of countdown clock. Otherwise, it lacks bite and ends up being a cop out. In this particular session, I used it with the Unexpected Visitor clock. By judicious use of It Takes More Time and Reduced Effect to exert some control over how quickly each the opposing clocks were filling up, I was able to keep the tension ratcheted up quite nicely during the job.

Also, during this job, there was some question as to how the Turner 302’s legendary difficulty was being modeled in the game. I said that the short answer is that there are several factors at work to represent that.

As the GM, I have several dials that I can utilize to tune the difficulty of an obstacle: The number of segments on a clock, the possibility of multiple linked clocks, opposing clocks, the position of the roll.

Cracking the safe was a single 8 segment clock. However, I said that this was specifically for Kamali, and specifically for the method she used for opening it. Kamali has been presented in the fiction as a talented safe-cracker, among other things. If someone else had approached this particular task who had not been characterized as such (Boots, for example), the mechanics would look much different (perhaps a separate clock for each of the three tumblers).

There’s also the not insignificant point that the Turner Security Company is very likely overstating their ingenuity and innovative design in order to sell a product. Doesn’t mean it’s true (as Kamali has proven).

One additional note: I ran this 1 day after the previous session. This is the first game I’ve ever run where it doesn’t cause me stress (see what I did there). I could probably run this several times a week without a fuss if my schedule permitted it, I have so many ideas for what’s happening next.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 13 (April 30 2016)

Gloves and Kamali, left to their own devices, decide to go get some real food, and head to the Iruvian quarter in Silkshore. Over kebabs and a hookah, Gloves expounds on his family history at length; his father was a Court Philosopher, whose job was to be a sounding board of sorts, one of many advisors to the Sultan. Kamali, for obvious reasons, gives very little information about her background.

Shade is in a bookstore in Silkshore with Setarra. She is arguing with the shopkeeper over the price of a particular book when Shade notices Gloves and Kamali walking past outside. Setarra greets Gloves respectfully in Iruvian (“A thousand blessings upon your House”), but Kamali keeps her distance, and once Shade and Setarra excuse themselves, spits on the ground.

The next morning, Shade finds himself at a loose end, so he and Gloves and Kamali nose around for various rumors. They find the following:

* Edward Clermont boasts that his new safe (a Turner 302) is invincible.

* The Path of Echoes are willing to pay top coin for inhabited spirit bottles, no questions asked.

* There is a new drug called Lure made from leviathan blood that turns people into demons.

* The Ministry of Transport is taking over the Gondoliers

Kamali decides that cracking the safe is an opportunity too wonderful to pass up, so she takes Gloves and Shade to meet Frake, a locksmith who has a shop in Nightmarket. Frake is a dwarf who is very skilled at his trade. He knows about the Turner 302, a new model of safe from the Turner Security Company, that has a reputation of being uncrackable due to several new advances. He doesn’t have one in stock yet, but he does have the blueprints for it. He loans them to Kamali in exchange for the usual price: a game of chess, which she loses. He critiques her performance afterward, saying that she plays too defensively. “Chess is a game about armies advancing on one another on a battlefield, not about withstanding a siege.”

That evening, the crew sets about gathering information on Clermont’s townhouse, located in Six Towers. Shade attunes to the ghost field, and discovers the bum he killed way back when has been following him around this whole time. They make a deal; if the ghost goes in and scopes out the house, and in return Shade is supposed to end his suffering by dissipating him. The ghost holds up his end of the bargain (learning the location of the safe and the fact that it contains lots of cash and some papers), but when the time comes for Shade to do his part, instead of keeping his word and discorporating the ghost, Shade uses his spirit hook and stuffs him in a bottle. And thus we are reminded (much like in Sons of Anarchy and Peaky Blinders), the PCs may be the protagonists, but they are not nice people, and they are NOT the heroes.

Gloves hangs out near the side door to Clermont’s house, and seduces his maid. After some clever conversation and no small amount of flattery, they adjourn to the maid’s bedroom in the basement of the townhouse.

Later, Kamali sneaks into Clermont’s house, gets the layout and scopes out whatever’s valuable, but doesn’t take anything. She learns that Clermont works for the Skovlan Consulate.

Shortly after Kamali leaves, Gloves is still in bed with the maid when her uncle, Clermont’s butler, knocks on the door demanding to know why she hasn’t been about her duties around the house. There is some tense conversation while Gloves hides in the wardrobe, but it isn’t long before the butler becomes suspicious, barges in, and proceeds to search the room. Finding Gloves in the wardrobe, he orders his niece to go call the Bluecoats, and plans to detain Gloves in the sitting room (aided by a hastily grabbed fire poker) until they arrive. After about half an hour, when it becomes obvious that the Bluecoats aren’t coming, the butler is left in the unfortunate position of not being able to do anything about it himself without letting Gloves out of his sight (Gloves graciously offers to go summon the Bluecoats himself, but the butler is not amused). He ponders simply shooting Gloves, but decides that will cause more problems than it would solve, so in the end, he lets Gloves go, warning him that he will kill Gloves if he sees him near the house again.

Notes:

This was originally intended to be a fill-in session with just Gloves and Kamali, as Shade’s player would be out, but he was available at the last minute, so it was the whole group after all, and we got to see the B Team doing a side job away from the rest of the group.

Also, that last scene with Gloves and the butler actually happened at the beginning of Session 14, after a discussion regarding 4/5 results. The roll for Gloves to seduce the maid was a 5, and it was pointed out that I didn’t really inflict any kind of consequence on him for that roll at the time. I have resolved to take 4 & 5 results as opportunities to make things more interesting.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 12 (April 26 2016)

Downtime after the Luxury Fence Claim:

Boots gets his broken nose treated and goes to play cards for a while.

Constance works on clearing out the machinery from the factory, and trains Prowess.

Gears helps Constance with clearing out the machinery and goes to spy on the Docks. In the late afternoon he sees a ship crew bring an unmarked crate off the ship and into Ferros’ warehouse as surreptitiously as possible.

The Unmarked Crate Job:

There is a particular warehouse in The Docks, controlled by the Seaside Dockers. The crates that come in and out of this warehouse are all marked with a series of 10 digit tracking numbers. However, recently a crate came into the warehouse with no visible markings on it. This has piqued the crew’s curiosity.

Gears gathers info by visiting an old friend named Milos, an ex-docker who retired with a bad back. Milos explains the numbering system. Certain pairs of digits denote what shipping company is moving it, its port of origin, the destination port, and other miscellaneous information. Once a crate is brought into the city, the local warehouse has the corresponding paperwork to inform its final destination within the city, and whether it’s to be delivered or picked up.

Boots watches the warehouse while walking Valter, keeping track of the comings and goings, and notes some consistency to the pattern of numbers, as well as when and how they are updated or removed as the crates move through the warehouse (crates are frequently reused, and the old numbers are just painted over). He also collects samples of fur from the goats used to pull the delivery carts and stores them for later use in tracking.

Constance and Marlane go to The Black Tree, a pub in the Docks where Ferros’ dockworkers hang out. They pick a fight with the dockworkers, and injure a number of them enough that they will miss work. The next day Constance watches the tenement building where some of the injured workers live, and sees the shift supervisor Frost come to check on the workers who have failed to show up to work. She ambushes him and ties him up, questioning him about his home address and correctly guessing that he has a wife. She visits his wife (and infant son) at home, and strong-arms Frost into giving up his paperwork. She brings it back to the crew, and they locate the line indicating when the unlabeled crate is to be delivered (day after next) and where (Shade, passing through, recognizes the address as belonging to Lord Scurlock). Gears forges a change of address to have it delivered to The Hive, and Kamali returns the papers to Frost’s wife.

A day and a half later, Boots is walking Valter near the warehouse again when the crate is loaded onto a delivery cart. When he sees which goats are being used to pull the cart, he has Valter track by scent, and sure enough, the cart goes to the warehouse owned by The Hive. Boots arrives just as the cart is leaving, and finds Corville & Lady Casslyn in the entryway with the crate. He informs them who it belongs to and how it arrived there, and she immediately has Corville get a carriage ready so she can deliver it personally to Lord Scurlock. She thanks Boots, and informs him that this certainly fulfills their obligation, and pending Lord Scurlock’s reaction to the Dockers, she will release Basran from his contract.

Notes:

There was some nifty foreshadowing of the force of nature that is Lord Scurlock. The mere mention of his name was enough to make a senior lieutenant of the Hive extremely nervous.

Another house rule we instituted was that I am allowing the crew to gain certain upgrades through the completion of long term projects, rather than XP and crew playbook advances, since those have been coming fairly slowly. The first item on their agenda is Quarters, so the first project is to clear out all the machinery from the factory floor, and divide that space up until smaller rooms.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 11 (April 21 2016)

The Luxury Fence Claim:

Kamali goes to meet with Rolan to set up the meeting with her supplier. Rolan gives her an address in Nightmarket and writes a letter of introduction. Kamali meets with Mordis, a mysterious Severosi with a number of business concerns. Kamali gives him the letter, and he leads her to his office, where they negotiate the volume and price of purchase. Kamali arranges for half the shipment of Blue Cloud to be delivered to Basran that same night (paying 3 Coin in the process), and the other half when it becomes available in two weeks’ time (at which point the other 3 Coin will be due).

The next day, a valet named Corville arrives at the Leaky Bucket to inform the crew that Lady Casslyn of the Hive would like to meet with them. Constance, Gears, and Boots go to meet with Lady Casslyn. After a shaky start, Constance manages to intimidate Casslyn, and they agree that the Dolls will do one job in return for letting Basran go. The Hive presents itself as a legitimate business concern, and prefers to have other organizations do its dirty work. They have kept out of narcotics as a rule, and allowing Basran to deal in them could be potentially damaging to their legal status. In order to buy out Basran’s contract, the Dolls will need to perform a service for the Hive. They can do this by sending a message to the Dockers, one that they will recognize as coming from the Hive, but will not be obvious to outsiders. Their foreman is a man called Farros. Pending the successful completion of the job for the Hive, the Dolls have secured the services of Basran as their Luxury Fence.

Tomas shows up at the Leaky Bucket with two messenger crows in cages, as well as instructions on how to train them. Gear sets about building a rookery on the roof.

Notes:

I decided a couple of sessions ago that the Crows have one legitimate business: a messenger service. Maybe we’ve been watching too much Game of Thrones. They way it works is simple. There is a particular breed of bird called Messenger Crows, about the size of doves, with matte black feathers (in contrast to the Deathseeker Ravens, which are about twice as large, and their feathers have an oily sheen), that have a homing ability similar to Carrier Pigeons. Organizations (or less frequently, individuals) that have a contract with The Crows will have several birds trained specifically to fly between The Crows’ clock tower in Crows Foot, and a destination of the client’s choosing. Thus, the clock tower becomes the hub of a city-wide communications network. A crows flies in to the tower bearing a message, the container is transferred to a bird bound for the listed destination, and the original bird is sent back with an acknowledgement that the message is being relayed. The Crows never ever EVER open or interfere with the messages in any way. No. not ever. That would be wrong. To even suggest that this might happen is to invite Lyssa’s wrath. Now, this does put them in competition with the Cyphers, doesn’t it? Won’t that be interesting?

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 10 (April 13 2016)

Downtime actions for the Bell & Birch Job:

The crew begins Phase 2 of their plan to gentrify The Drop:

* Constance starts going around to the abandoned buildings in the area and kicking out the squatters.

* Shade goes to the non-abandoned buildings and talks to the owners. The recent breakout of war between the Sashes and the Lampblacks helps foster the idea that now might be a good time to sell.

Constance and Boots go to meet with Lady Drake. Constance informs her of the ongoing war, her prediction that the Red Sashes will win, and of her intentions to absorb the remnants of the Lampblacks. Lady Drake mentions that the root of the conflict is a personal grudge between Baszo and Mylera. She agrees to Constance’s proposal for continuing the arrangement that she had with the Lampblacks, should the conflict resolve in the manner everyone expects. She also agrees to set up a meeting between the Dolls and Prichard, Baszo’s 2nd in command, who by all accounts is a fairly reasonable individual.

The crew decides to poach a fence. Boots knows a luxury fence named Basran from the card table at Spogg’s; he currently works exclusively with the Hive.

Boots and Gloves go to Spoggs, and get into a game with Basran. Boots steers the conversation towards business, and it comes out that Basran is unhappy with the fact that The Hive doesn’t deal in narcotics. Boots presses the matter, and Basran lets slip that he’s looking for Blue Cloud (morphine), but in the process makes everyone nervous (and suspect that Boots is an undercover Bluecoat).

Kamali’s Vice is Blue Cloud, so she goes to Rolan Volaris in Nightmarket to talk about setting up a meeting with Rolan’s supplier. Rolan asks for three Coin as a finder’s fee. Kamali brings this to the group, Constance sends Gloves to negotiate, and he manages to talk Rolan down to 1 Coin and a favor.

Meanwhile, Gregor goes to visit Stazia, an old friend who runs an apothecary. Stazia says he doesn’t have any Blue Cloud on hand, but if Gregor can bring him some raw material, he can prepare some. However, the size of his shop limits the amount he can produce at any given time. The group decides that this would make for a good long term project sometime in the future (they have their eye on the Drug Dens claim).

Notes:

We refined the rules for multiple characters a bit. Players can play multiple characters as necessary during a session, but only one character gets a downtime cycle per player, per job. A way around this is to split the group and do multiple jobs simultaneously. We’ll see this happen later on.

Some background on Blue Cloud. It’s basically morphine, and it comes from a particular breed of flower that grows in The Dagger Isles known as the Royal Poppy, due to the deep purple color of the petals. The latex extracted from the seed pod is a sky blue in color, and this is where the name comes from (even though the color mostly fades once the substance is processed into the drug).

We have yet to see Kamali properly indulge her Vice in-game, but when she does, it’s a highly ritualized affair. The syringe she uses is of a fairly ornate steampunk-inspired design, a delicate glass tube encased in lots of intricate brass filigree, with very fine replaceable needles made of an obscure steel alloy that’s resistant to rust and corrosion.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 09 (April 11 2016)

Late at night, Boots encounters someone entering the doll factory via the roof entrance. It turns out to be Gregor, the last remaining employee of the Cinder Street Doll Company.

A little about Gregor (nicknamed Gears): Once upon a time, he had been employed as an inventor and mechanic, maintaining the machinery for the assembly lines in the doll factory. When the company went out of business, he stuck around and made the factory his own private workshop. After all the doors and windows on the ground floor were bricked up, he devised ways of getting in and out of the building via the roof (that the crew have since been using). Eventually, he was hauled off Strathmill Asylum, supposedly for conducting “unnatural experiments” (he claims the charges were falsified). After five years, he’s been released, and has decided to come home.

Boots’ efforts to eliminate the intruder are thwarted by Valter, who takes an immediate liking to him (he’s familiar, because even after five years, his scent is all over the building). Gears meets with the rest of the crew. Shade takes an immediate dislike to him, which will only increase with familiarity (they’re competing for workshop space, and have wildly differing views on the nature of science, the supernatural, and the inner workings of the world). However, Constance sees potential in having a Leech around, and Kamali tests his skills with a broken pocketwatch (which he fixes with little effort) and a large padlock (which he opens with even less), so he is welcomed into the crew in a probationary capacity.

[Gears is being played by the same player as Shade.]

The Bell & Birch Job:

Shade sneaks into Tocker’s flat while she’s out and steals her stash of leviathan blood, leaving a note detailing where to meet to get it back. From a window in the building across the street he observes her coming home and proceeding to tear her bedroom apart in rage when she realizes what’s happened. Shade borrows a Spiritbane charm from Constance and meets up with Nyryx, currently possessing Skannon, the bartender from the Leaky Bucket, in case some muscle is needed.

Tocker, not thinking straight, shows up for the meeting with Shade, demanding he return her property with all the conviction of a junkie. But she hasn’t realized that he’s led her into a blind alley with no escape. Nyryx grabs her and immobilizes her with a powerful armlock. The Spiritbane charm around Shade’s neck interferes with Tocker’s ability to de-possess the woman and escape. and Shade brings out his spirit hook, a device I ruled works like one of those poles with a loop on the end that Animal Control uses for rabid animals, except here the loop is not physical material, but electroplasm. Shade manages to get the loop around Tocker’s neck despite her attempts to break free of Nyryx’s grasp. With a sharp yank, Shade pulls Tocker’s spirit out of the young woman’s body, which immediately goes limp. Shade then wrestles the protesting ghost into the spirit bottle that he had resting open on the ground, and clamps it shut once the ghost is inside. Shade asks if the woman will remember what’s happened, Nyryx says it’s likely, explaining that while some ghosts develop the ability to block their hosts’ memories while possessing them, most don’t bother. Nyryx takes possession of the bottle, and bids Shade good night. They go their separate ways, leaving the woman unconscious in the alley, but free of the ghost.

Later that night, Kamali and Boots make their way into the Bell & Birch via the side entrance into the kitchen. With Tocker out of the way, the only security (besides the vault door) are a trio of thugs named Grine, Coil, and Vale. Grine is helping himself to some whiskey at the bar when no one’s looking, while the other two are upstairs. This allows Kamali, all but invisible with her fine shadow cloak, to sneak up on Grine and knock him out cold. However, she doesn’t have time to hide him before Coil comes downstairs looking for him. Coil sees the body and draws his knife, and Boots engages him hand to hand. It doesn’t go well for Boots, and he narrowly avoids a nasty cut (Harm reduced to Minor). Kamali is able to deal with Grine in the same manner as his buddy. By now the scuffle downstairs has attracted the attention of Vale, the third guard. He comes thundering downstairs, but Boots manages to get the drop on him, but not before Vale is able to break Boots’ nose with a well-timed elbow. Boots yanks Vale’s jacket over his head, and uses the opportunity to knock him out, but not before Vale has some choice words for his attackers.

Kamali opens the safe with the combination, and narrowly avoids a spring-loaded spike trap, triggered by a pressure plate inside the door. After disabling it, she and Boots grab all the cash they can carry and get the hell out of there. It’s quite a lot, but as they will soon discover, it can disappear just as quickly as expenses start to pile up.

Notes:

It’s a completely random coincidence that the dice happened to reinforce the idea that Boots’ forte is ranged combat, and that he is just not built for close quarters.

#dontmesswiththedolls

The Porcelain Dolls: Session 8 (April 6th 2016)

The Hit List Job (Part 2):

On the third night, Gloves gets some more useful info on the locals, but has to sacrifice his winnings to throw off suspicion.

Kamali susses out the weak spots in the Lampblacks’ operation at the Bell &  Birch. There is a back room which is the cash vault, secured by a stout metal door with a combination lock,  and only the pit boss Danfield has the combo, until Kamali manages to observe him opening it. She also has information on the security arrangements. While the place is open for business, cash is stored in a strongbox behind the bar, which is transferred to the vault after the places closes down (hours of operation are from about 5pm to 6am). In fact, the only time the vault is opened with customers in the place is when Baszo’s man Brock comes in, whispers something urgent to Danfield, who opens the door long enough to retrieve a bag of coin, looking annoyed the entire time.

Shade follows Tocker home, and watches her indulge her own vice,  a small drop of unrefined leviathan blood on the gums. She takes a nap before returning to the Bell & Birch for the night shift.

Kamali stays on at the place a couple of days to round out the list.  The remaining names:

Merril Brime: Information broker, owns the Hooded Fox

Jira: Merchant in the Night Market. Also a smuggler.

Ereth Skane: an advocate with unseemly vices (Shade has seen him in Setarra’s brothel).

Stavrul Kardera: Member of the Skovlan Consulate.

Sevoy: Ink Rake.

Lannic: Art forger.

Remira: Whisper.

Lady Drake: A local magistrate who is currently on the Lampblacks’ payroll.

After her shift, Kamali follows Lady Drake home and decides to leave her off the list. The crew delivers the remaining names to Mylera, who is pleased.

Later that night, Boots catches someone entering the factory by the rooftop entrance. As Boots holds the intruder at gunpoint, both of them exclaim at the same time: “What are you doing in my house?!”

Notes:

I was able to correct my earlier problem with the clocks by holding myself to narrating direct in-game results for every tick of a clock. Whenever Gloves got a success on advancing The Regulars, I gave him another name, and some details about the person. When Kamali got a success on advancing SOP, I gave her specific details about how the place handled customers, cash flow, scheduling, etc.

#dontmesswiththedolls