Tag: heestcomplete

The Dead Setters dealt with the aftermath of the Slaughterhouse Slaughter Caper, where they Fistful of Dollars’d both factions of the Billhooks into wiping each other out at the gang’s slaughterhouse as a favor to Ulf Ironborn.

I have to say, the Shadows ability Slippery feels wonkier now that the entanglements roll can be skewed along a curve instead of a flat distribution. Still, when you have 3 Wanted levels, perhaps rolling twice should still result in Show of Force no matter what. Instead, I gave the crew two options for the show of force – either the Bluecoats raid their gambling den (the Dead Setters have terrible luck with keeping gambling dens) or the Spirit Wardens finally move on their spirit well. They chose to give up the gambling den, although Rook the Cutter was perfectly fine with going to war with the cops.

Lots of long term projects got finished off, and I think we saw our campaign reach the point where there’s a race to some kind of finish or finale now. The crew’s Tier III now, with 11/16 Coin in their vault and Lord Scurlock as a Patron. They could go to Tier IV before we’re done.

Deemo the Leech finished her spark-craft rotor drone, the Motorized Alchemical Application Device (MAAD). It’s an unreliable little machine designed to drop alchemical charges from a distance and return to Deemo. She immediately used her free ticks from Analyst to start designing a new creation, and we got to fully engage with the v8 crafting rules, which are pretty nice. This idea’s a soft filter powered by a bit of leviathan lung and electroplasm that will help resist side effects from using alchemicals (and we ruled it could be burnt like special armor to prevent such a consequence outright). It requires rare components. She also brought back Chokedust (the precursor to Drown Powder) to be her signature move. 🙂

Raven the Hound, working with Mara Vale, a rogue architect, finished her tomb of horrors, the “Crow’s Coffin”. It is where Raven plans to spend eternity, and it is an old-school D&D dungeon lair underneath Crow’s Foot.

Teatime the Whisper finished his series of LTPs, restoring Tinriver House (his family estate) to its former glory and legitimizing his family name with Duskwall nobility once again – with the assistance of Lord Scurlock and his distinguished Hull manservant, Mr. Clicks.

The Dead Setters learned that Ahazu, a mirror demon they unleashed a while back, has been slowly possessing notable figures in the city. That fact struck home when Richter the Spider met with Laroze, their Bluecoat contact, and saw that the cop had mirror-silver irises. Teatime plans to create a trap for Ahazu at his upcoming inaugural ball to celebrate the reopening of Tinriver House.

Secondly, the crew’s One Last Job is coming together. Rook brokered an alliance between the Reconciled and the Skovlanders in the city. The Setters need the Skovlanders’ muscle and the Reconciled’s secret to retaining their faculties in death is a key part of the Dead Setters’ ultimate heist – they’re going to steal immortality.

#heestcomplete

The Dogs? Yeah, I Like Do-OH MY GOD Caper

The Dead Setters get back to basics, helping Ulf Ironborn run the Billhooks off some turf at the docks.

As an entanglement from their low-heat last session (low heat only because it happened on the Void Sea and nobody knew about it), Ulf Ironborn (known in our circles as “Good Ol’ Barf Ironface”) came to the Dead Setters for a favor. They were +3 with him, and when he asked for their help taking over the Billhooks’ extortion racket at the docks, the crew agreed even though they were also +1 with the Billhooks.

Amusingly they chose a social plan, convincing Coran that his sister Erin was planning on using supernatural chicanery to finally gain control of the Billhooks. This led to a confrontation at the ‘hooks’ slaughterhouse, which was easily fanned into the flames of fratricide. I set up a clock for Coran’s group and a clock for Erin’s group, and then set up a smaller clock for the death-dogs Erin loosed upon her former comrades.

The dogs won, and then the Dead Setters Ol’ Yellered the dogs.

Coran survived, albeit with one hand looking more like a Pez dispenser and strips of meat ripped from his other arm. Rook ushered him out the back, as the crew didn’t want Ulf to storm in and just kill him. They might have use for the wounded Billhook scion.

It was a pretty simple score. We had to break before payoff and downtime, so we’ll get that next time.

This session we also broke from Hangouts and tried using Roll20. We had tried it at the beginning of our campaign but couldn’t get everyone to hear each other back then. They’ve made improvements or something, because I felt like the audio in Roll20 was even better than over Hangouts.

Of note: In our refactoring character and crew sheets for v8, we ended up needing to choose 2 crew abilities. They chose Ghost Market (as their long-term plans involve dealing with the Reconciled and applying their secret of longevity to still-living people somehow) and Patron (because that’s how you get from Tier 3 to Tier 4). Ghost Market wasn’t taken lightly, as it filled their second Veteran dot and blocks off other winners like War Dogs, which they had been eyeing for some time too.

#heestcomplete

The Dead Setters fight a demon on a boat in The ‘Game Over, Man!’ Caper.

The crew and Ulf Ironborn headed out to sea, hiring the smuggling ship Insider Raiding to rendezvous with the Colossus (their stolen state-of-the-art leviathan-hunting prototype vessel) and retrieve Ulf’s family (his wife Arika, his sister Yan, and his son Alf) where they had been stashed while the Setters dealt with Lord Strangford. Captain Minos and the cohort of exhausted, terrified rovers clamored for help as soon as the PCs came aboard. Something was taking the crew and stalking the ship for victims. Minos estimated about a quarter of his men were missing or dead (2/8 on a clock), although Ulf’s family were still alive, kept under guard in his own quarters.

This situation came about due to a Demonic Notice entanglement on their way back from Skovland a few sessions ago. I rolled on the random demon table and got keywords like amorphous, gears, and savagery. I was also one of the few sad people who saw the Jamie Lee Curtis movie Virus in the theater.

An Assault plan went awry with double 1s on the engagement roll. A sudden storm enveloped the sky, capsizing the Insider Raiding! They couldn’t evacuate Ulf, his family, or their beleaguered cohort of rovers! They’d have to stick together to hunt this creature, but a poor Hunt roll meant the demon found them first! It tried to crush several crew by tearing a pressure door off its hinges and using it like a trash compactor in a narrow hallway, but Rook the Cutter took the hit and burned his armor. The demon opted to hit and run, tearing through to an upper deck and collapsing a stateroom down into the gap. The glimpses the PCs got were of a vaguely simian shape, all massive hydraulics connected with human meat and sinew, pumping oil, electroplasm, and blood through pipes and arteries.

Ulf saw the thing and immediately headed for his family. Rook tried to cajole the Skovlander into working together and destroying the entity first, but Ulf would have none of it. I asked Rook’s player if he’d be willing to go to a fight over it, because that’s what it would take to stop Ulf, but Raven compromised and went with Ulf. Party: split!

Each team found evidence of other creatures and remnants of hapless crew as they went. Spider-bobcats, fashioned from clockwork and meat, or headcrab-like vent-crawlers, all human hands with shaving razor fingers, clamped down over ruined skulls and corpses stripped of useful parts.

Rook and Deemo the Leech took the rovers on the hunt for the demon and critted! I decided that they would get the drop on the demon in the most advantageous location – the reactor room. With limited effect, Deemo surveyed the situation and couldn’t find any specific “silver bullet” weakness, but Rook, a Tier III monster with Brutal, a fine heavy weapon, and Not to Be Trifled With, waded in and started whooping ass with his railjack hammer. If you have the right stuff, sometimes you can knock over the stone tower with a hammer.

Meanwhile, Ulf and Raven made it to the captain’s quarters and found… corpses and the signs of a struggle, but nothing had been able to get through the sturdy door. Clearly the demon hadn’t constructed its behemoth body yet. The only snag was that Ulf’s family weren’t sure it was him! They said the creature was taking people and maybe it was trying to trick them. Raven managed to sway them, however, and Ulf was finally reunited with his family. The storm would destroy any lifeboats, though, so they weren’t out of the fire yet. No escape. They headed below decks to reunite with their comrades, deciding safety in numbers was better than going it alone.

The demon had a clock going for corrupting the Colossus’ reactor, plus a small group of its “helping hands”. I didn’t get cute with consequences or positioning, just doled out harm (which was absorbed by armor and then by masterful resistance rolls) and desperation. The Dead Setters had dealt with monstrous enemies before and they dealt with this one now, wrecking the construct with railjack hammer, alchemicals, and electroplasmic bullets. But – but! – it managed to deal actual harm to Rook before its corporeal form was trashed. I know Rook had taken harm before, but probably not in the last 9 months or so. Small victories. 🙂

Deemo used Alcahest to make stripping the body horror out of the ship’s engine easier, then got to work actually fixing the reactor. The rest of the group scoured the vessel for any leftovers, but soon found that the entity’s presence, while divested of its corporeal assets, was still haunting the ship.

We had to break there, but overall this was a success in terms of tone. I feel that while the actual combat felt a little light, I was able to provide some good complications in the storm, Ulf breaking ranks, his family’s initial mistrust, and the lingering danger still to come.

#heestcomplete

“What’s Skovland like?”

“I don’t know, what is it like?”

The Dead Setters evade the wrath of Lord Strangleford and the Imperial Navy by running to Skovland in the Non Extradition Country Caper.

In the I’m on a Boat Caper, the gang hijacked Strangford’s newest, largest, most advanced leviathan hunting vessel ever built, the Colossus. Although the score was over, the crew couldn’t just putter over to the Eels’ old waterway access and park the ship. They had just broached 3 Wanted stars, and the Navy was after them.

Could they fight and board the warship? Maybe, if the navy was there to board them (they weren’t). But they did owe Ulf Ironborn a favor from several sessions ago (smuggling his family out of Skovland), and Skovland was somewhere that was not Duskwall.

And so, with several references to Red Seas Under Red Skies, the Dead Setters steamed for Skovland and the cold, white north.

We had a strange downtime – being on a ship meant some downtime actions wouldn’t necessarily be available, but everyone found ways to indulge their vice, whether it was nicking the lion’s share of luxuries from the officers’ quarters or gambling with their cohort of Rovers in the hold.

We also weren’t on a score, but we had some opportunities for action rolls as Raven the Hound used her hunting raven to Survey for a cove or similar to stash the Colossus while the Setters headed overland to Lockport. Everyone fought off posession attempts, because we assumed the non-city areas of Skovland were deathlands just like Akoros.

They arrived mostly none the worse for wear, and we started making up Skovland as we went. Rook the Cutter was from Skovland, and aggravated everyone with how majestic and historic the motherland was. It wasn’t, really – I used the phrase “in the shadow of former greatness”, and we generally agreed it was about 80/20 Russian to Viking. Great orthodox-style ornate architecture, but long-looted and stripped by the occupying imperial military. Bases of toppled statues. Street urchins. Ramshackle wagons. Elevated train lines. Very industrial but in a black-lung, run-down kind of way. We also fleshed out the Skovland Refugees faction a bit, and added some mafiya-type characterization to them so they’d deserve their Tier IV rating.

Richter the Spider tried to gather information on Ulf Ironborn’s family by visiting a sauna and chatting up the people there. With a 1, the people turned out to be imperial officers, and the basic gist was that Ulf’s family were prisoners of the state, being used to lure him back for a quick death.

It wasn’t much, but it was enough to plan a score for next time.

Bird Rentals -> Burt Reynolds -> Raven’s player wouldn’t let me retcon her raven into a firebird. 🙁

#heestcomplete

The I’m on a Boat Caper ended with the Dead Setters in control of the Colossus, Lord Strangford’s largest and newest leviathan-hunting vessel, and with Richter (Spider) as the newly “elected” magistrate of Crow’s Foot.

Strangford’s control over his leviathan hunting business dropped to Weak as his peers distanced themselves from the scandal he’d invited upon himself. Because the Dead Setters’ lair has remained so well hidden, Strangford resorted to appointing Richter to public office to make him visible. It all completely backfired, of course, when the duelist (Roethe Kinclaith) Strangford arranged to kill the new magistrate at the Colossus’ launch party turned out to be a sometimes-ally of the Setters. Then, after the party, undercover Bluecoats attempted to drive Richter’s carriage into the canal and drown him. That didn’t take either, as apparently as a result of too much contact with leviathan blood combined with a Ghost Contract with Ahazu the demon, Richter picked up the Tempest power and Harry Pottered his way out of the deathtrap.

On the boat, the rest of the crew and their new cohort of Rovers, led by Captain Minos (a former leviathan hunter himself), struggled to take control of the Colossus on its maiden voyage. The PCs smuggled themselves onto the boat in barrels and crates, dwarf-style. Setarra the water demon, who was in concert with Lord Scurlock and “on loan” of sorts to Lord Strangford in order to keep the vessel’s prototype Sparkwright electroplasm reactor running, tried to drown them then and there but was rebuffed with a crit from Teatime (Whisper).

After that, it was fire and blood. Rook (Cutter) led the rovers to the upper decks where he singlehandedly fought and destroyed a hull-powered waldo, a giant hydraulic crane arm for harvesting leviathan flesh and blood. A second such drone arm gave him more trouble, almost tossing the cutter into the Void Sea along with a section of the deck. Meanwhile, Deemo (Leech) had her hands full repairing the reactor after a hapless engineer got thrown into it. Strangford’s whisper, Miss Sprunk, went up against Raven (Hound) and lost her boots. Also her life, but the image of Raven looting Sprunk’s quality footwear as the whisper bled out below decks was a high water mark (ahem) for this nautical adventure.

The Colossus’ captain Rackson surrendered after doing her best to sabotage the vessel’s bridge. The Dead Setters’ rovers took quite a few losses, leaving them Impaired. No PCs took any harm, although there was a lot of stress spent. Lots of sixes in our first session saw the crew wedge themselves firmly into the score before the second session’s luck turned against them somewhat. Still not enough to cause serious problems in the moment. The high-profile nature of the job did leave the Dead Setters with 3/9 Heat and Wanted 3.

Good Stuff:

I think this score was big and complex enough that everyone got spotlight time. We had steampunk gadgetry, straight-up fighting, magic, stealth, and all juxtaposed with a high society party.

I think everyone got into how weird I was making the Colossus. It’s the Red-October-crossed-with-Titanic of leviathan hunting ships. I think calling the engine a reactor was appropriate. The bowels of the ship blurred somewhat between pipes and steam and actual bowels and pulsating, breathing tissue. Hull bodies built right into the deck like drone arms. A Big Daddy-inspired first mate (critted immediately by Rook).

Mechanical Stuff:

This session also saw my first attempts at multiple consequences. Miss Sprunk had warded a ship corridor and when Raven tripped the ward, she had to resist the damaging ward as well as Sprunk trying to shut the door and trap her inside the corridor. Likewise, Rook had to resist damage from the drone arm at one point as well as being pinned by it.

These are experienced characters and they have the dice to handle this stuff, but throwing these extra dangers into the mix made our second part of the score feel more dramatic and dangerous.

Funny Stuff:

The Bluecoats’ deathtrap for Richter. It was pretty great. Under the (completely true) pretense of Strangford possibly trying to kill Richter, some undercover Bluecoats got him into a carriage and then simply drove it into the canal, then waited around with shotguns in case he got out.

They had no idea he had JUST taken Tempest as a Veteran advance. A little magic to blow the door lock and some fog to conceal his exit from the canal, and Richter easily took down the cops because he also took Not to be Trifled With as a previous Veteran ability.

Questions:

You don’t roll anything for Tempest, do you? You pay the stress and the stuff happens, right? Can you resist the stress that you’re paying? I would think no, especially if there’s no other roll involved. It seems like a straightforward pay for effect mechanic but I’m curious if I’m interpreting it correctly.

What does Wanted 3 look like? How are you guys generally using Wanted in your games?

#heestcomplete

(We all wore silly hats this time)

The Dead Setters bribe a dock boss with his own money in the Pier Pressure Caper.

Recap: At war with Lord Strangford and his Leviathan Hunters, the Dead Setters entered into a ghost contract with the demon Ahazu to retrieve Strangford’s spirit for the entity. To this end, they looked for opportunities to both strike Strangford himself as well as high-profile crippling weaknesses inside his organization. They were also researching the effects of refined leviathan blood and its black market trade in an eventual bid for immortality, inspired by dealings with the Path of Echoes and run-ins with the Reconciled.

Although the gang knew that Lord Strangford’s new flagship, the Colossus, was supposed to be launched at some point in the near future, the list of things they didn’t know was far greater. Some espionage was in order, so the Setters called up Captain Minos and his rovers (their new cohort) to help carouse the information out of the dockside bars (non-downtime Gather Info roll, great effect).

Strangford operates a warehouse and office on the docks across from Whitecrown and near an infamous tattooist’s shop in Ink Alley. While there’s definitely a connection between the leviathan blood and the tattoo parlor, the intel the crew was interested in was primarily about the warehouse and the people who oversee it. There were two main people of interest – a Sparkwright, Helen Gauge, who’s a contractor/liason between Strangford and the Sparkwrights for the prototype advances built into the Colossus, and then Chief Helker, the seaside dockers’ boss for that stretch of territory. Of the two, Teatime (whisper), Deemo (leech), and Raven (hound) chose to approach Helker with the time-honored plan of “let’s bribe him for information”.

Considering the Chief was probably bribed by a LOT of people to keep a LOT of information, they chose to ensure he was tight on funds when they met him and so Raven robbed him blind via flashback. Teatime then bribed him with his own money. Things got tense but Teatime’s social graces (and an additional coin on top of the 2 Raven took from him) navigated any troubled waters, gaining them all sorts of interesting tidbits:

1. The dry dock/shipyard where the Colossus is being finished. They’re down to “polishing the guardrails”, as Helker put it, and the launch celebration for the vessel will be in a few days.

2. The location where the celebration will be hosted – a private launch in Brightstone, away from the unwashed masses at the docks proper. More symbolic than practical, as the Colossus will have of course already launched in order to reach its own launch party.

3. The names and roles of several of Strangford’s inner circle. He employs a Whisper, Miss Sprunk. His household head of security is Devon McLaren. Both Sprunk and McLaren have made appearances at the dockside warehouse, although Strangford’s own visits are infrequent (though he gives plenty of warning). He has a trusted personal financier, Jorg Banks, and finally also retains a barrister, Ms. Phoenix Pholgers.

Only 2 Heat (leaving them at 5/9 Heat, 2 Wanted) because the guys were sly this time (and half that was simply the “wartime tax”). For those same reasons, though, they gained no Rep since nobody knows what they were up to. They’re at 5/8 Crew XP as well.

This was basically a huge Gather Information roll done up as a score because of the risk in going into the Leviathan Hunters’ territory. However, the engagement roll was a 6 and they bypassed or resisted the consequences so it all went smoothly.

The entanglement roll was Demonic Notice, TBD next time.

#heestcomplete

Long Term Play with Blades in the Dark

My group’s been playing weekly sessions since February and they’ve gone from a Tier 0 Thieves crew under v5 to Tier 3 Shadows using v7.1. Here’s some of the things I (or my players) have noticed about Blades’ campaign play:

1. Low dice pools lead to desperate actions: When you’re starting out you don’t have a lot of dice to throw around. A bad roll here or there can land you in a Desperate situation quickly, and for my group, that was often combat. A fight is usually what happens once stealth or parley fails – not always, but it’s what makes sense most of the time given the kind of PCs and NPCs we’re dealing with.

1. Desperate rolls feed into future choices: Those Desperate XP add up over time and you’re going to want to bolster those actions that you use the most in those desperate times. That meant Skirmish for most of my players, and beefing up at least one other Prowess dot to help their resistance rolls as well. That meant when they got XP or trained during downtime, they were usually a smidgen closer to a Prowess dot than not, so the advancement subtly reinforces the in-game fiction. This is NOT a problem IF you really like knife fights, but it has slowly lead us to the point where even the Spider is rocking Not to Be Trifled With, the Leech can carve her way through thugs with a bowie knife, and the friggin’ Hound is as tough as the Cutter. Since you tend to want to do what you’re good at, you end up making plans that have “let’s just kill everyone” as a thinly-veiled plan B.

My crew is really just Breakers at heart.

2. Tier, Rep gains, and punching up: I feel like my players’ crew, the Dead Setters, feels about right where their crew abilities and upgrades are concerned. They’re Shadows, with Slippery, Ghost Echoes, and Crow’s Veil (as Veteran). They have 2 Cohorts (thugs and now rovers), Thief Rigging, Underground maps/keys, Hidden, Quarters, Secure 1, Vault 1, and Workshop. There are TONS of choices left and TONS of abilities left to choose.

That said, they’re Tier 3 with Strong hold and they continue to effectively “punch up”. When you can punch up against Tier IVs, that’s a ton of Rep every score. I feel like it’s easier to advance Tier once you get that foothold and can affect larger factions, and it’s a little off for me. Sure, a Tier IV faction can make things hard on you, but it’s kind of like pissing off the Lampblacks at Tier 0. They can make life hard on you too, and besides, that’s all part of the game. I think the saving grace is the escalating Coin cost to advance Tier at this level, but I still feel maybe that’s still too fast somehow.

They ARE Tier III but they only have two Cohorts. To me at this level, that’s still on the small side. In my mind, some of these factions are going to have way more people at Tier III and IV. The Dead Setters still feel like the underdogs to me. This is good for me as GM but I don’t know if this is how my players feel, since I just realized that it might be a conceptual hangup and haven’t asked them. At what point should you feel like Stringer Bell instead of Omar Little?

3. Extra Double Turbo Badass: You can spend XP for days. We haven’t hit any limits except those from not having the Mastery crew upgrade. 🙂 When you’ve played the same PCs as long as my players have, you feel suitably badass most of the time, but I think the tension is still there because you’re really only one bad roll away from a trainwreck. Rook the Cutter is fucking scary. He has no problem with just fighting cops – or anyone, and he generally wins. Brutal, Not to be Trifled With, fine heavy weapon, and rage essence just in case all that’s not enough. Teatime the Whisper is almost as scary, because when he rolls Attune it’s generally going to work. They are all Leverage-level competent now, and it’s flavoring the kind of scores they’re planning. It’s interesting to see this evolution though, and competence alone doesn’t worry me as much as their attribute scores. That brings me to…

4. Resistance is Futile: Rook the Cutter and Raven the Hound each have at least 1 dot in all their Prowess actions. They are effectively nigh-invulnerable to physical harm, which means they opt to dish out said harm since they’re ironically at their safest when they’re fighting people. Now part of this is my fault for sure – early on we set our “damage sliders” so I’d let them roll resistance and then choose if they wanted to spend Armor. Additionally, I’ve let resistance rolls severely reduce any incoming harm. Avoiding harm is clearly important to these two players and they’re having fun. It’s not a capital-P Problem, but it is challenging to keep threats cerebral rather than physical. Creatively fatiguing and all that.

Furthermore, I don’t want to come off like dealing harm to PCs is how I gauge my worth as a GM (I consider how full their stress tracks are first lol). I wonder, however, what resources do we have as Blades GMs once our players have really beefed up their resistances? I suppose you’ve gotta start doubling up on resistable things, and letting players make hard choices about what they want to allow to happen and what they want to prevent? I feel like that’s next level Blades GMing, where I want to get to in order to keep the challenge fresh and have the players’ choices matter even when they’re shutting down the bad guys’ actions.

#heestcomplete

Also circling in Jason Eley, Adam Minnie since they expressed interest in my previous recap post. John Harper so he can read/ignore/troll my feedback. 🙂 Sean Nittner – your DSS game has been running a while too, right? Andrew Shields (I hope this is the right Andrew) have you run a lengthy campaign or do you typically deal with shorter runs? I wish I could guess at which Michael Yater g+ is trying to include, but I know he’s been running his Twitch game for a bit as well.

The Dead Setters: The Road So Far

February to October 2016

Started with v5, now on v7.1

Wars: 3

Tier: 3

Weekly games missed: 2.

I fell off the update wagon, so I’m getting back to it with this recap post of my group’s shenanigans. We’ve been playing weekly since February! That is some kind of record for us. I’ll have some feedback about longterm play with Blades, but that’ll be another post. This one’s long enough!

U’Duashan Moon Pool Ruby Caper

The Dead Setters robbed 4 Coin of Mylera Klev’s lesser objects d’art (and threw her off a balcony), plus retrieved the Moon Pool Ruby contained within the idol of a Forgotten God. The ruby is said to bring good fortune if the proper sacrifices of willing blood from a possessed person are made. They fenced it for extra cash, however.

Spirit Well Twinkie Caper, aka I Have a Victrola For a Mouth and I Must Scream

The crew, working for the Dimmer Sisters, takes a spirit well claim from the Eels.

And You Will Know Us By the Campaign Trail of Dead Caper

The Dead Setters entered into a Ghost Contract with Ava Dimmer to take over security and transport for the spirit well in Coalridge. The first problem to be dealt with was the small matter of the Spirit Wardens being called in to investigate and potentially exorcise the location.

I’m Getting Too Old For This Shit Caper

The Dead Setters battered the skeleton crew of Bluecoats guarding the Coalridge spirit well with sewage, constant malice, and pinpoint birdshit. They reclaimed the location after killing the two loose cannon Spirit Wardens inside the manor house.

Too Much Planning Caper

The Dead Setters took a bunch of downtime and leveled up!

Opulence I Has It Caper

The Dead Setters overplan and then steal a faberge giraffe hull off a train, put a ghost inside it to drive the thing, and burn a Lampblacks base all while impersonating Bluecoats.

Oh God Not Another Sewer Level Caper

You helped Father Yorren retrieve an urn that his supplier, Lucia Eastlake, failed to deliver on account of her being captured, tortured, and left for dead by the Eels.

There Is Only War Caper

The Dead Setters laid an ambush, then countered an ambush by the Eels in the catacombs.

To Survive a War You Gotta Become War Caper

The Eels were scattered and broken against the submaritime ingenuity of the Dead Setters, ending their war.

Strangford Files Caper

They infiltrated a masquerade ball in Brightstone. With Richter still in Ironhook Prison (and with Inspector Jennah sending corrupt guards to beat him down every week or so), the social heist fell to Teatime, Deemo, and Raven, with a special guest appearance by Roethe Kinclaith.

The Price is Wrong Caper

The Dead Setters find that Belden of the Crows had infiltrated their base. His attempt to extort 8 Coin from them was less successful than he’d like, and now the Setters aim to strike at the Crows’ headquarters before Lyssa realizes Belden’s a defiled corpse and his soul sits in a bottle, ready to be used for future taunting.

Feast For Crows Caper

They tortured, interrogated, and vivisected Belden (not necessarily in any order) and learned the former Crows leader, Roric, was still in Duskwall somewhere as a spirit. Teatime tracked him down and the Dead Setters allied with now-vampire Roric’s new gang, the Buzzards. Teatime and Raven sent Roric and his Buzzards into the underground tunnels to stage a distraction/assault on the Crows’ watchtower HQ. The duo then snuck in across the rooftops and climbed to the tower roof to assassinate Lyssa.

Fuck Tha Police Caper

Rook does combat drugs and murders a squad of Bluecoats to cover the Setters’ escape from the Crows’ nest. The gang takes a gambling den as a claim while the iron is hot.

Strangford Mausoleum Caper

Teatime, Richter, and Deemo lured the Crows remnants into Lord Strangford’s mausoleum with rumors of valuables, with Richter posing as Strangford’s groundskeeper as their “in”. The demon Ahazu is released from Strangford’s crypts and escapes into Duskwall after wiping out the Crows, ending their war with the Dead Setters. The Burned King is summoned by clued-in nobles to destroy it but breaks free and also escapes.

Let’s Go To Prison Caper

The Dead Setters framed Jennah the Inspector for releasing Ahazu (plus a bunch of ghost chicanery).

Bustin’ Makes Me Feel Good Caper

A strike force from the Reconciled, led by their hired man on the ground Flint (who was “comin’ for Teatime”), assaulted the wrong spirit well and were driven off by OH SO MANY SIXES, culminating in a timely crit by Deemo who commanded the Reconciled to capture their own hirelings.

You’re Cutting Out Caper

The Dead Setters survived a downtime phase plagued with spotty connectivity and a slow mobile hotspot.

The Winchester Brothers Caper

The Dead Setters, at least partially masquerading as sculptor Orlan Uno’s house staff, banished the demon The Burned King from Duskwall.

It’s Quantum Entanglement, Not Teleportation Caper

The Dead Setters broke ten-er, nine Lampblacks out of jail to make good with Bazso Baz (and for the cash). They escape using a ghost-field stargate, which promptly explodes.

The Ghost of Toko Jobler Caper

The gang starts a fight between Roethe Kinclaith and his dandies and a bunch of Iruvian brats in order to lay claim to a Red Sash bridge-side gambling den. They spike Roethe’s drink with rage essence, whereupon he quickly earns the new moniker Red Roethe. They also learn that the life essence of those ingesting refined leviathan blood is how the Reconciled retain their “humanity” after death, and may actually link into the secret of the Emperor’s immortality.

The Deadliest Catch Caper

The crew goes pirate, hijacking one of Lord Strangford’s leviathan hunting vessels for the raw blood it carries. They barely escape one of the colossal beasts and part on shaky but non-lethal terms with Captain Minos and his crew.

The Kitchen Nightmares Caper

Unable to break free of reality show-named capers, the Dead Setters lay claim to one of Strangford’s restaurants used for distributing refined leviathan blood and other luxury goods. They actually bribe the Bluecoats instead of simply murdering them. The Dead Setters are now at war with Lord Strangford’s leviathan hunters. When rumors of their exploits spread, Ahazu the demon approaches the Dead Setters and they enter into a ghost contract: The Setters will get Strangford’s spirit so Ahazu may have its vengeance for centuries of imprisonment, and in return they may keep what they kill. The demon will not doublecross or otherwise muck with the Dead Setters, despite its predilection for possession.

#heestcomplete