Tag: heestcomplete

Just finished part 1 of the Dead Setters’ Ironhook jailbreak heist. They’re busting Lampblacks out of Ironhook and assassinating some key Red Sashes as well as Master Krocket, the Filch-like houndskeeper for the prison.

First, I wanted to say how much v7.1 of the rules helped out with this. Couldn’t have been better timing. Having Dunslough and Ironhook more fleshed out really made this session work, and the prison riot got sparked off early during the work detail at Dunvil Labor Camp. We had a ton of clocks going on:

1. An 8-segment “Riot” clock, which when filled would cause enough chaos that the 2 Dead Setters on the inside could reach the lightning barrier with their Lampblack rescuees.

2. A six-segment “Quelled” clock, which represented Ironhook bringing in their riot squads and drown powder bombs and dogs. Less segments because they’re a higher Tier and they have stuff in place for riots.

3. A 4-segment clock for each Red Sash on Bazso’s hit list.

4. A 5-segment clock for the Lampblacks – each segment represented 2 Lampblacks. Since the PCs were getting paid per guy they got out, I could assign prison rolls to either quelling or the lampblacks, or tick them as consequences/complications/devil’s bargains.

It was real close. The Hound snuck up to a vantage point in Dunslough and managed to crit nearly everything she tried, including popping Krocket through the face and handling the Red Sash problem. Even with her help and the Spider and Cutter resisting Ironhook’s attempts to quell the riot, they only skated by 1 tick ahead of the prison riot squads.

We had to call it a night then, but the Whisper is up next with a crazy flashback plan to unzip the lightning barrier and somehow get a dozen prisoners out of jail and then back into Duskwall.

—

Before all that, we had some masterful back and forth trying to convince Baszo not to doublecross the Whisper and Hound, ably critted (again!) with some help from the Spider’s fine whiskey, provided via flashback.

Still, a 2 on the engagement roll is not what you want when your plan is to be arrested on purpose. The Cutter was going to be sent to the lightning wall immediately with the other death row inmates, but they crawled their way out of that.

I hope I made the situations dire enough for the guys. Going up against the prison shouldn’t be a cakewalk IMO, and this didn’t feel easy to me as the GM. They got a lot of crits along with a few abysmal rolls, but the good rolls were where it counted and the bad ones were able to be mitigated.

#heestcomplete

TURF RETAINED!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. They were attacked by the Reconciled.

2. The Reconciled are enemies with the Dimmer Sisters.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

#heestcomplete

https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RSrDs9fRWJ4/V14dTd-hCYI/AAAAAAAAIGs/G_tj9i1yMcQ96HQ848iZ2lfnequsMtJegCLcB/s1600/gots6e806.jpg

HEEST COMPLETE!

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

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

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

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

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

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

—

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

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

—

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

—

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

#heestcomplete

HEEST COMPLETE!

Last night the three Dead Setters who showed up to play (Teatime the Whisper, Richter the Spider, and Deemo the Leech) discovered several things:

1. Being at war kind of sucks when you have downtime plans. Teatime had to indulge his vice because he’s the founding member of Trauma Club (“You’re not supposed to talk about Trauma Club!”), which meant he had to spend coin to reduce Heat (they were 8/9) that would have otherwise gone into his stash, or been used to advance his own plans. Deemo and Richter were similarly stifled. They did spend money to reduce Heat down to 3, and they considered a plan that wouldn’t involve murdering people this time.

2. Slippery (the Thieves ability) is pretty sweet. Also, claims can be easy come, easy go – the Red Sashes made a play against the gambling den the Setters claimed last session, and rather than start another war with a Tier II gang, they just let the Sashes have the den. This was better than 1) a war, and 2) the Arrest entanglement that was on the table as well.

3. Richter was a former Inspector. He was sold out by his partner/apprentice, Jennah, in his backstory. Turns out although Richter was taking money from the Hive, Jennah had been bought by the Unseen. Richter doesn’t have proof, though, although he recently completed a LTP while he was in prison so that if he does get Jennah on the hook for something that lands her in jail, her life becomes his to toy with.

To that end, and to possibly put an end to their war, the gang decides to bait a hook for the remaining Crows and let the Inspectors in on it. Pull an Enemy of the State ending.

4. I discover that when it comes to these social/deception scores, it’s pretty hard to figure out when to go to the engagement roll because so much of the plan making sense hinges on the fake story you want to sell. So the guys are working through what they want the Crows to believe, and we’re all making this shit up as we go because I had no preconceived notions about Jennah working for the Unseen or anything like that before the game started.

Anyways, the “score” (if you could call it that) comes down to Richter trying to plant rumors of a big score in the Strangford mausoleum* and failing forward all the way from Controlled to Desperate as some Crows take his disguised ass out of a bar and try to intimidate (and then torture) the truth out of him. He finally convinces them he’s the groundskeeper there and there really are valuables underneath. Meanwhile, he’s already tipped off the Inspectors that the Crows are seeking to rob a prominent member of society. This was mostly all done in flashback too.

5. When the score feels shaky, just roll on the friggin’ demon table. There certainly was something in the Strangford crypts – Ahazu, the Heart’s Desire. The Crows accidentally release a demon, a collection of mirror-silvery orbs that appear to be made entirely of cutting edges. The thing(s) cut into and then envelop some of the Crows, like when Neo takes the pill in the Matrix and quicksilver runs over his body. These attempt to pull the other Crows into loving embraces, but because whatever these things are cut whatever they touch, just end up with ribbons of meat and severed bones. The Inspectors arrive at the carnage and the few surviving Crows are more than happy to be arrested at this point. The Inspectors pull out, Teatime avoids the demon’s notice thanks to his demonbane charm and hella good resolve resistance, and Richter hides in a sarcophagus.

Ahazu’s many forms walk slowly out into Duskwall unopposed.

Did Lord Strangford even know this thing was down there? Was it how he came to power? What did it promise him? Did he somehow get the upper hand and trap it?

This was a shaky session heist-wise (the “score” was tricking Inspectors into arresting Crows for something they didn’t do, but since they ended up consorting with demons it worked out really well *), but plot-wise it was really nice to start some threads involving larger factions (Leviathan Hunters, Inspectors, the Unseen) and getting into demon stuff. Our game has felt increasingly tied into the Tier II criminal gangs as of late, and branching out felt good.

#heestcomplete

* Why would anyone have a mausoleum in Duskwall? They burn the bodies! Well, we decided that the rich and powerful have skeletons crafted (sometimes from precious materials) just so they can display their family heritage in crypts.

* For relative values of “really well”.

“All you have to do is keep rolling sixes.”

After a tense cliffhanger that left 2 PCs trapped inside the Crows’ watchtower HQ, the rest of the PCs joined the battle alongside Vampire Roric’s basement assault. A lot of Skirmish went down, a lot of resistance rolls (you don’t want to go out by being drowned in shin-deep sewage), a lot of looting. We had a looting race clock, as the Buzzards and the Dead Setters tried to scour the Crows’ HQ for valuables and intel before firing the structure.

We learned something about every gang member through their actions this session, enough to warrant that “anytime XP”.

The Spider led a charge against the remaining Crows but turned it onto a “you guys go first” feint, which while effective, was witnessed by Roric.

The Hound tried to murder the surrendering Crows, and was only stopped by Roric shoving her gun skyward.

Roric might have caught on to how the Setters were trying to make sure the Crows didn’t have too many people to swear loyalty to Roric, and they were trying to thin out the Buzzards just in case. It’s going to affect the faction standings, and it was a cool Devil’s Bargain.

The Leech waited until everyone else had made Desperate Prowl rolls to parkour their way out off the top of the HQ to avoid the Crows’ bribed bluecoats swarming the perimeter before revealing she had Spider Oil and just walking to safety.

The gang was clear, with 10 Coin and a decent lead on where Lyssa had escaped. 3 of them had 1 stress box left. It had been a close thing.

So Rook the Cutter decides he hasn’t killed enough cops today and heads down to street level.

There’s twenty of them, and they were waiting in a firing line for anyone to walk out the front door of the watchtower.

“You’ll have to make a resistance roll before you can even do anything-“

“I’ll spend my Armor, and I have enough slots for Heavy if I need it.”

I offer a Devil’s Bargain: the gang’s Bluecoat contact, Laroze, is down there with the cops. He might catch a bullet if you don’t roll a 6. Acceptable.

“Bluecoats are Tier IV, so you’ll have limited effect even with Brutal and your railjack hammer.”

“What does rage essence do?”

“Well, that’d cover the gap in effect level for damn sure.”

Rook walks out, face smeared with blood and rage juice, duckfoot pistol in one hand, railjack hammer in the other, screaming a Skovlander working song. The cops empty both ranks of their firing line into the man and he rips off the dented and holed pig-iron breastplate, Eastwood-style. Rook lays into the cops. No fucks are given. Nothing less than a six is rolled across multiple Skirmish and Prowess resistance rolls. The 12-segment fight clock is filled in record time.

The cops’ morale is broken. Laroze tries to spark a retreat – Rook catches all but Laroze and wants to interrogate them. He’s on rage essence, though, so I ask for a Resolve resistance roll. Rook finally – finally – rolls a 2.

“You can ask your questions for 4 stress or you can kill them.”

And that’s how you make 10 Heat on a score.

#heestcomplete

The Dead Setters only had 2 players this week, but what were we gonna do? Not play?

The Feast For Crows Caper

I was running for Teatime the Whisper and Raven the Hound. Last week the gang allied with the Crows’ formerly alive former leader, Roric, who was currently a vampire in charge of an upstart gang called the Vultures, a bunch of loyalist Crows who bailed on Lyssa when she betrayed her master and some new recruits who didn’t mind working for the undead.

The plan was Infiltration. The gangs deemed a ground approach too risky, due to the Crows’ network of scouts and paid-off Bluecoats. Roric and his Vultures would cause a distraction in the tunnels below the Crows’ HQ while Teatime and Raven (they argued for more help from the Vultures but Roric said he needed his men with him) used the rooftops to parkour their way to the watchtower roof.

Because the gang didn’t take downtime between sessions, I considered that the Crows didn’t know they were at war yet. Still, they were a Tier higher than the Dead Setters, and this and that and this and that.

Didn’t matter. 6 on the engagement roll, and we picked up as the PCs rolled the tower guard and went for speed, blitzing down through the watchtower before the Crows could muster an organized response.

Raven was on fire. She ably tracked Lyssa down in the middle of the Crow leader’s personal gearing-up montage and opened fire. Lyssa tossed a vial of ghost oil on the wall behind her for an escape route, while the 3 thugs (Marie, Fist, and Handy) with her downed rage essence and moved in.

What followed was a lesson in what happens when a Hound survives enough Desperate knife fights. Even though I felt I was harsher with incoming Harm and consequences (“The thug grabs both your arms and pulls, dislocating both shoulders” or “Marie bumrushes you back, grabs your head and bashes it against the wall until you die”), Raven had 4d6 to resist with Prowess and then armor on top of that. Lowest she rolled was a 5, too. Most of the time it was sixes – or multiple sixes, so she took the incoming harm from the rage-thugs while Teatime handled offense on Lyssa, smashing her alchemical vials with ghostkinesis, forcing the crimeboss out the ethereal hole she’d made in her wall. Raven got a shot off as Lyssa’s “boss fight clock” filled in, blowing a hole through the woman’s mouth just as she reached a squad of loyal Bluecoats.

Me: “You got a 5 on that roll, so of course I’m going to reduce the effect to keep her alive – barely. However, do you want that shot to be debilitating or disfiguring?”

Raven: “I know it’d be better next time for it to cripple her, but Raven would disfigure her.”

I’m only realizing this now, but we learned something about Raven right then (and I immediately messaged her player to let him know to mark that XP).

We left the duo victorious against the rage-thugs, but they’re still surrounded in the Crows’ headquarters with 8 stress each. If more players can play next week it should be a hell of a flashback.

#heestcomplete

The Dead Setters did a bit of a setup heist last session, in the prep for the eventual Feast For Crows Caper.

The Spider’s player was sick and the Hound’s player was seeing something called a Caravan Palace, so with a Cutter, Leech, and Whisper left, we agreed that tracking down Roric’s ghost to use for intel in an assault on Lyssa’s Crows was interesting enough to be done in “heist time”.

Why were the PCs so pissed at the Crows? They had a +1 status with them on paper, but several sessions ago Lyssa discovered the Dead Setters’ hidden lair’s location. She sent Belden (her second) and a small group in the lair to lean on the Setters. 8 Coin in 3 days. I grossly underestimated how affronted my players would be at this, and how little respect they would have for larger gangs. To their credit, they have bloodied far larger organizations, so it’s not unwarranted. The end result was Belden was captured, interrogated, and vivisected for information. The vivisection bit was a great Devil’s Bargain because it skewed a little too close to what the Leech did to indulge her vices, and it limited Belden’s usefulness. It’s just so hard to arrange a live subject, though. Wouldn’t want to miss the opportunity.

Their grisly work done, Teatime the Whisper worked up a sort of Dresden-esque magical compass using Belden’s flayed skull and the gang set out into the seedier parts of Duskwall, running afoul of a few random encounters as they completed the “find Roric” clock.

What the players didn’t know was that I’d been keeping a clock for Roric since close to the start of the campaign. The formerly incorporeal Crow boss was now a vampire, and was gathering a small splinter cell of loyal Crows and new recruits. These guys caught the Setters off guard but with a friggin’ crit on a Sway check, Teatime made fast friends and the Dead Setters and Blackbirds (maybe? Not in love with the name yet) are well on their way to deposing Lyssa.

Fun tidbits:

1. My original idea for Roric’s current body was a female Red Sash guard the party tossed to hungry ghosts in the first heist. However, I kept going more and more piratical with my accent and I can’t shake the image of Roric as Barbossa from Pirates of the Caribbean. Maybe he’ll get a slight retcon.

2. Maybe Lord Scurlock doesn’t like the idea of an “unauthorized” vampire running around his city? He’s a contact on Teatime’s sheet and I haven’t used him much. Might be fun to pit a contact against an ally.

3. Roric’s splinter cell has a Whisper with a pack of controlled attack dogs (inspired by a post on this community). Thank you, Nick Belleque!

4. We only had 3 players, which meant we got more spotlight time for everyone and hit all their XP triggers. Normally it’s harder to get those “belief/drive” XPs in heist time, but taking a page from Michael Yater’s games, I ended up asking a few more leading questions for each character to get some more flavor into the narrative.

#heestcomplete

The Strangford Files Caper

The Dead Setters’ heist is still in progress, but I had to share some highlights:

“What’s Iruvian?”

“Bitch, you almost made me laugh.”

(apologies to Chasing Amy)

I had the Spider’s player (his PC was in jail this session) provide details of the banquet menu at Lord Strangford’s masquerade ball:

– Cream of corpse soup. Made from the remains of royal pets.

– Also, “ghost liver on ethereal crackers”. We couldn’t decide if it was better if someone had actually figured out how to carve up spirits into edible chunks, or if the whole delicacy was just the cracker, but nobody wanted to say they couldn’t taste the ghost liver so the height of Brightstone cuisine is just crackers served with a heaping helping of the Emperor’s New Clothes.

Teatime (the Whisper, and the only character actually from noble stock) ended up bringing the infamous deadly dandy Roethe Kinclaithe along with him when he went to steal Strangford’s maps from his library.

On a gameplay note, this was our first session where I really pushed the Tier disparity. Strangford had access to Tier III and IV goons and locks, and I think when the Leech didn’t immediately pop open the office door with a six it hammered home that there’s still quite a ways to go to the top of Duskwall.

Strangford’s men knew not to kill anyone – who needs Spirit Wardens poking around – so they carried truncheons hooked up to battery packs. One good jab and the batteries discharge, zapping the piss out of the target. Unless they flash back to insulating their corset and burning Armor. The same discretion did not apply to the Hound, resulting in an increasingly desperate series of rolls to try to save the hapless guard’s life as he bled out and realization dawned that ZOMG CROWS NOW.

#heestcomplete

The Dead Setters had an entire session devoted to downtime in the We Won’t See You At The Party, Richter (because you’ll be in jail) Caper.

With the crew rocking an impressive 8 Heat and 1 Wanted level after winning their war with the Eels, the entanglements were harsh: Demonic Notice (#teamnope) or Arrest. I thought they were going to pass off some of their Eel captives to take the fall for them, but Richter, the crew’s Spider, actually really wanted to go to jail.

Richter: “No, it’s okay, I have a plan!”

Me: “You know you have to roll your crew’s Tier and see if you get a Trauma, right?”

Richter (more apprehensive): “… no, I’m still good. I’d rather have the Eels in our hands.”

Richter takes the fall, with his former partner Inspector Jennah heading up the opposition. He rolls a 4, scraping by unscathed while in prison, and with his Mastermind and Foresight abilities, he’ll still be able to help the crew with their next job. Not only that, but since his vice is gambling, we all agree that’s available in jail. Then he overindulges. Instead of making a new character or losing access to the source of his vice, he rolls a new entanglement, but because the crew’s Heat has been wiped and they have no +3 allies, he lucks out with one of those “non-entanglement” results.

The rest of the crew fares really well with their actions – Nearly everyone clears their stress or finishes off long-term projects. Raven, the Hound completes her string of sacrifices and befriends the Deathseeker Crows:

1. Casta, a Tycherosi bounty hunter (done in heist time)

2. Moray, the Eels’ leader (also done in heist time)

3. A rich merchant (reeeally wanted her to take the devil’s bargain and have the victim be one of the Hive, but she didn’t and rolled a crit anyway), one who survives off the bloated corpse of the city (like a carrion bird himself).

4. An old Bluecoat, days from retirement, someone who has seen a lifetime of murder, someone the crows favor. His death is made gentle at the crows’ request.

5. A priestess of Schmwhocaresyoucantpronounceit, a Fallen God. Raven infiltrates her nascent cult and sacrifices one who sacrifices.

Deemo, the Leech, finishes her gadgeteering with the stolen lightning barriers around their Claim, a spirit well inside a crumbling manor. The gang all have pendants now that allow them to pass through a barrier without shutting it down first. The last of her current projects is to make their own barrier fully one-way, so other spirits can wander in but cannot escape, adding to their supply for eventual bottling and sale to their allies the Dimmer Sisters.

Finally, Rook (the Cutter)’s player has been studying the faction writeups in the v6 quickstart. He made progress a few sessions earlier with gaining the Gray Cloaks’ favor, but that backslid when the crew chose a different job than the one the Cloaks asked them to do. He was also looking at the Grinders, and works out a heist idea to get back in with the Gray Cloaks and foster an alliance with the Grinders. The Grinders want to steal a ship and get a crew. The GCs want revenge on Lord Strangford and his leviathan hunters. The PCs will steal cargo, crew, and shipping manifests from Strangford and release them to both gangs. This helps the Grinders target a ship, which advances their LTP, and the Gray Cloaks get intel they couldn’t get otherwise, since they’re known to Strangford.

Because the last few sessions have seen quite a bit of combat, I figure maybe Strangford’s files* are in his manor in Brightstone, and maybe he’s hosting a ball. And then Rook asks “Is it a masquerade ball?” and I have to say yes.**

One last downtime action to acquire clothes worthy of Iggy Azalea, and next session we’ll party like it’s 1899!* *

James Garner in The Strangford Files. It writes itself.

** I really didn’t mean to rip off John’s Bloodletters game.

* * * Or some dubious time period and tech level that sometimes approximates that year. We’ve started watching Penny Dreadful, which is great inspiration for some of the creepy bits.

#heestcomplete