Tag Archives: RPG

Tenth Session – Sadly, the actual summary is missing.

If I recall correctly, we broke into a prison or police station or something to get the Hand of Kotor (like the Hand of Vecna) and give it to the Centralia Club to get Dylasia Finchester as a patron.  We succeed, I think we were pretty smooth about it.  She helps subsidize our rise to Tier 2!  And Reis wants to hook up with her, but she’s high class and that’s gonna take some doing.

Ninth Session – We go to do some light home invasion that involves possessing a man with the spirit of a parrot, and we get counter-ambushed by Hulls (steampunk zombies) and the ghost of Smelly Pete! Then we go make an alliance with the smuggling gang the Foghounds.

We’ve been looking around for some other not-too-powerful faction to victimize to gain turf, and the Dimmer Sisters, some kind of witchy women, draw the short straw. Reis knows his enemy Flint works with them so we go to bust in and mess with him, which goes fine.  But then a whole mess of very butch bad guys beset us – Hulls, ghosts, et cetera.  For the first time but certainly not the last we use the Random Ghost Generator to determine what kind of rando ghost is near an area Reis can talk to.

Then we go to make new allies and most of the group ends up partying a little (a lot) too hard. That is a bit of a pun since Kraid is introduced to some new drug you spread on your weiner. “Of course!” he says.

Eighth Session – Our longtime foes are some old ladies that run an opposing orphanage, the Weeping Ladies.  They keep causing social trouble for us, so we go to get some leverage from uncovering whatever their member Father Yorin is doing to squeeze orphans for their juices.

This starts with us finding out some nine year old kid in our orphanage was a plant sent to spy on us.  Being nine, he happily tells us all about it. The Weeping Ladies are really getting on our nerves but they’re just like some ladies that run an orphanage, we don’t feel right about using our usual kick murder squad kind of techniques on them.

We do some research and find out their #2 guy, Father Yorin, may be doing questionable alchemical research on the kids by extracting substances from them. We try to go talk to the other Weeping Ladies but he is there and we don’t have any proof.  Luckily we also have an element snooping through his stuff to find proof. They determine he’s extracting happiness from the kids and selling it, as in a fit of bad timing the other group ends up coming into the office they’re burgling. A lot of arguing is cut short by Father Yorick flipping out and trying to spray acid on the head lady Mother Naria. We beat him up as a third element appears with cops in tow.  Finally it’s all over but the downtime and XP as we make a good relationship with the Weeping Ladies (except for Father Yorick, who goes to the pen).

Seventh Session – We figure out a member of another local crew, the Wraiths, has been dumping ritually carved Hollow bodies around the city.  We decide to mess with them.  We find out too late that they are a group of PCs themselves. A standoff on a neon-lit boardwalk ensues!

So we go hunting for whoever’s been dumping ritually defiled soulless bodies around the city for probable demon worship related reasons, like you do, and gathered intel points at Carriless Firm, from some gang called the Wraiths.  Other members include the Whisper named Rune, who we hear is a lotus-head and can summon a demonic dog, “The Lesson,” an enforcer, and their leader is some mysterious Spider woman.

We decide the best chink in the armor is the lotus-head, so we find a local lotus den she frequents and set up an ambush. We’re down two PCs due to absence but figure the three of us can take one NPC, though in this world anything demonic is super tough. We and 10 goons bust in and catch her smoking it up.  Her demon-dog is no joke and comes pretty close to eviscerating us but Reis manages to get a gun to her head and capture her; the dog teleports out through the shadows.  The plan had been to just kill her but Reis called an audible when he realized she was hot (that’s how he makes a lot of his decisions), and I convince the others based on “we can get intel” and “she’s a bargaining chip” and other retroactive justifications.

But her demon dog can teleport through shadows and got away so we anticipate rapid payback.  We take her out to some abandoned entertainment pier that had a lot of electroplasmic lights so we can keep her in total light, tied to a chair. Reis spends a lot of time trying to turn her, arguing that her group doesn’t care about her and they’re doing crazy demon worship and she doesn’t need that.  But she doesn’t break.

And then the Wraiths attack!  Carriless Firm, a little guy, and The Lesson, a huge guy, show up and carve their way quickly through our gang members out front – Carriless is deflecting bullets with his cane and The Lesson sends people flying when he hits them. They are both ultra bad ass to a concerning degree. Hasten Doom tries to go after Firm and they both end up going over the edge of the pier into the dark waters below, and here in demon-haunted Duskvol that’s a lot worse than just falling into water normally.  Doom drags Firm under the water with him and drowns.

Marto tries to shoot The Lesson but their leader, Cattaby, is uber stealthy and gets the drop on him – he escapes being run through by also going down into the drink.  In no time something hideous with black scales brushes by him.

Reis is all that’s left from the Gambler’s Orphans and it’s not looking good.  The demon hound shows up but he sets off a massive flash with the electroplasmic lights rigged to an anti-demon charm and the demon dog is gone!  Then The Lesson comes ripping through the door and… falls through the boards Reis had weakened into the water.  I was working double overtime coming up with schemes upon schemes trying to stay alive.

Finally it’s one on one – Reis with a gun to Rune’s head versus Cattaby, the Wraith leader, with the others possibly returning at any moment.  I just *knew* she was going to betray Rune and shoot her so we couldn’t use her as a bargaining chip, so I had a plan to let that happen but protect Rune, and then certainly Rune would join us… I had the whole reverse-double-cross planned out. But Cattaby actually was trying to ransom her back, and it seemed like they actually were tight with each other. I was mildly flummoxed by this. So Reis ended up negotiating her release for some ransom and a promise to get Carriless to quit the demon shit. The Lesson showed up and carried Rune off and no one killed me.  Reis recovers Hasten Doom, half drowned, from the beach along with our banged up gang members and scrams; Marto came straggling in later.  We spend the rest of the session licking our wounds.

This was a real nail-biter, just the three of us and it turns out this other gang was actually some legit PC group from an actual play Paul follows. That made us even more concerned in retrospect, we didn’t know we were screwing with legit PCs, no wonder they were hardcore.

This is where this game system really shines – we had a really long complicated fight with another group, with combat and negotiation and all sorts of stuff going on, and in the end there weren’t actually any losses on either side but we were 100% sure there were going to be and better than even money was on it being us.  This was the best session of the campaign for sure.

Sixth Session – An unusual amount of this session is spent partying at the Demon Corn Inn. Then we do a favor for a pimp because… I guess Kraid told him we would?  Next thing you know we’re fighting “Professor Slice.”  He slices.

The downtime rules for Blades In The Dark require you to go indulge in vices to recover Stress.  Of course sometimes this goes bad and causes even more Stress.  Kraid is trying to date Captain Luckett and Hasten Doom is trying to date the pugilist Marlene. This leads to a bar fight and substance abuse. Fun times.

Then – Kraid somehow ends up owing a pimp named Theodore Lysander a favor, which involves stealing a magical blade. We help him really for no good reason. We deliver a barrel of wine to a warehouse to get the guards sloshed and go in the back.  I try to arrange for an entirely silent burgling, but when Marto and Kraid see some crazy cyborg doctor called “Professor Slice” they decide they just can’t let things go without combat. So Reis and Toad steal things and sneak out while those two fight.  But then it turns out all the guards are amputees with various weird substitute limbs put on by Slice.  The one who ends up being the most of a problem is a guy with mechanical spring legs. We escape in a running battle down the canal. Then it’s all over but the loot inventory.

Fifth Session – A lot of different kinds of activity this session, without the frontal assaults that are our bread and butter.  Of course, our attempt to sneak blackmail material into a police inspector’s house to have some dirt on the Bluecoats goes south and there’s some shooting.

Delazia Finchester, of the Circle of Flame (cult), which is an underground subset of the Centralia Club (National Geographic Society style club), has been on Reis’ “get with” list for a while.  (In other words she’s the Emma Frost of the Inner Circle in the Hellfire Club, but less evil). They want some artifacts that sound exactly like the Vecna stuff – the eye of Kotor, the hand of Kotor, the head heart of Kotor… Reis talks everyone else into it, his primary motivation being that Delazia is hot.

So he summons a spirit, the Hand of Sorrow, to get information.  That starts going awry and we end up sacrificing Stinky Pete, our formerly-homeless hanger-on, to it. We are very careful to keep this both from Kraid and his player Tim, who missed the session, as they are both big Stinky Pete fans.

Then we go to trade that info to the Centralia Club and get unceremoniously shooed away by the doormen and a backup ghost.