In continuation of our Blades game (Find more here), last night was fantastic.
Due to a family emergency, we were at four instead of five last night. To be clear: family is more important than the game. This let us play a bit more far afield.
In previous sessions, our MC was Tony. Last night, Rachael stepped up into the MC role. Tony picked up the child-thief we adopted, turning him into a PC.
This gave us the following PCs:
Hammer the Cutter, played by William.
Myst the Spider, played by George
Milos the Leech, played by Tony.
The whole session came about due to our young Leech’s enminity with Malista, a local pirate-priest. This was the enminity build from the character sheet and, when asked why the priested disliked his character, Tony said that Milos tried to rob from the pirate – doing so by putting a hole under the water. Unfortunately, this has some negative side-effects for the seaworthiness of the vessel as well as the cargo of silks.
In character, we learn about this when an urchin belonging to the Thiefmaker sets off our proximity trap. Hammer grabbed the kid out of the trap and brings him inside the lair for cookies.
We learned Malista was sufficiently annoyed at the loss of her cargo as to put pressure on the Thiefmaker to find the kid what did it. The Thiefmaker is now torturing the children in his care to find out who did it. We decide to make it right by getting Malista her silks back – afterall, Thieves’ Prosper and pirates and essentially thieves. We also want to create a market for her to sell the silks at a good profit.
Well. The Nobility wanted the silks for an upcoming yearly celebration involving yatchs and silk. Turns out, a local merchant was warehousing a very large amount of silk and using that to increase the the price. As much as we like messing with the nobility, this gives us a fantastic opportunity.
We decide this is a deception job: Steal the silks, get found out, and make merchant believe we are just stealing, and doing so on behalf of a Noble house.
We do our engagement roll: It’s a 6. We’re in a controlled situation. The Job opens with Mist and Hammer in the warehouse, trying to convince the guards that we’re working on behalf of one of the Five Noble Houses.
Flashback: We rigged the floor we’re on to fall like a trap door, with a nice alchemical trigger. We roll, get a crit.
Flashback: We’re planted one of our contacts – a thug Hammer knows – as one of the guards to repeat the name of the Noble. We roll, get a 6.
So uh … Here’s where Blades really shines.
We’re rolling controlled, with Great effect. We want to convince the guards that we work for a local Noble house, and to give chase. I get a dice regularly and, through help and a Devil’s Bargain, this gets up to three. I roll a crit, I believe.
That Devil’s Bargain? Our man on the inside shoots me with a crossbow bolt into the arm, for a level 2 harm. Ouch!
We trigger the trap floor. They give chase. one of them – smarter than the rest – jumps into our boat. He pulls a crossbow on Hammer.
Flashback: This is our 2nd time into the warehouse. The crates are empty, with just enough silk on top to make it look like there’s silk. Our boat can haul ass, as it is essentially empty.
Hammer takes the crossbow away from him, and orders him to sit. The guy does – Hammer’s pretty intimidating when he needs to be, plus the Spider (flashback) put some sleepy potion on a spring release in Hammer’s sleeve. This was always part of the plan. The role was something like a 4, and hammer gets a consequence – he and the guard will fall into the shark infested waters. Hammer resists, and takes no stress. Nobody falls into the water.
The guards give us a merry chase to the Noble’s section of the docks, which is private and has a guarded gate. We planned for this, and our new Leech is already planted inside. He’s rearranged the wires so that the gates will open for us, and close just perfectly to let in the merchants.
He gets great effect, but with a consequence: He’s going to release the devil fish and fall into the water. He resists the fall into the water, instead ziplining from the tower into our boat.
At this point, remember: The silks are wherever we want them. The merchant guards have followed us into the Noble marina, with the doors just closing behind them. We’ve got a guard with us, listening to our banter regarding exactly which Noble house we work for.
As the merchant guards in their boat come into the marina, they see the silks already decked out on the Noble ships. They attack.
Flashback: We rigged the noble ships to catch fire once the merchantmen attack.
At this point, our job is done. The merchants are pissed at the Nobles, who are pissed at the merchants. Everybody knows we stole from the merchants. We’ve got more than enough coin to repay the Pirate-Priest.
We do post job. We get a boat load of coin, heat, and rep. We get a fun consequence, essentially the priest-pirate taking an … active interest … in our young ward. She recruits him to join her on her ship, to increase his moral understanding. Basically, to teach him Thieves Prosper.
We realize: We’ve got maxed out Rep and 8 coin. We go ahead and increase our Tier. We’re now tier 1.
Now that we’ve tiered up, we have no rep, no coin, but plenty of heat. We’re at war, so we each get one downtime action. We’re all pretty stressed out, and Myst takes Hammer out to see a show. Myst has a move that allows him to use a single downtime stress action that impacts two of us, and to let us modify the role by two. We both get rid of most or maybe all stress.
Milo goes gambling, but never quite gets into it. He only loses three stress off 2d. Poor kid.
Hammer, meanwhile, goes out to reduce our Heat by beating up the guard who landed on our boat so he won’t talk. What a jerk, but it does get rid of alot of Heat. Hammer keeps his harm, figuring he can solve it after the war.
We do end of session questions. Hammer gets enough XP to level up his playbook and Resolve – he gets the Bodyguard move, and a dot in piety. The kid gets just enough XP, and Myst gets close.
We close up, thank each other and say our goodbyes. All in all: Not a bad way to spend 3 hours.
Query: I’m enjoying writing these. The last one got no comments. Are folks enjoying reading these?
