GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Jozy Zim, David Gallo, ET, Spenser Stark
System: Blades ’68
I mean, how can I not run Blades ’68 again with these amazing peeps?!? I played in the 1000′ above Doskvol Cold Open with Tim and I loved it, I wanted to see how it would play with a new cast of scoundrels. I liked the idea that the meeting with Chago would take place in an equally remote and fantastical location as the crew on the airship. The suggestions for “dangerous pet” in the cold open included “a creature from the deathlands” and I had just watched Alien: Romulus so… of course the meet too place in a luxury yacht with a giant aquarium…and a creature lurking with.
We started by reading the intro to the cold open:
Doskvol. Midnight. The glittering lights of the city far below. You’ve been introduced to the SCORPION Syndicate, a powerful criminal faction and half of you are on their airship high above the city, in a huge cargo hold surrounded by piles and piles of white lotus. More than you could sell in a lifetime. There are several armed thugs, and a mid-level lieutenant is explaining their distribution pipeline to you.
The other half of you are with Chago, the sydicate boss, on a tour of their luxury yacht just at the edge of the bubble on the void sea. They’re currently showing you their prize possession—a rare, huge, and very deadly pet.
Who’s on the airship and who’s talking to the boss?
The players, before making characters decided that Spencer and ET were on the airship. Jozy and David were on the yacht.
Up on the airship, you’re thrown from your feet in an almighty explosion. There’s a gaping hole in the hull, black smoke billowing out. You’re gripping tightly to cargo webbing, your ears ringing, as everything in the hold flies out the hole in a vortex of rapid decompression. Product is flying past you everywhere, hurtling out into the night sky. The thugs and the lieutenant are caught by surprise and you see them tumbling away to their deaths, screaming silently.
Let’s make some scoundrels!
Okay, there’s a reason for doing it this way. I think that when you let the players know what kind of situation you have planned for a one-shot game, they are better able to make characters that are ready to engage with the situation. And that they did!
Our Scoundrels
We passed the playbooks around and the problem was THEY ARE ALL TOO GOOD. Everyone had two or three that they were really excited about, but we settled on:
- Twiggie Avrathi, aka Vixen, the Swinger, played by Jozy. Thigh high boots, black miniskirt, and the life of every party. Hired by the Ministry of Discovery to interact with criminals they couldn’t be seen working with directly. Faction affiliations: Blackjacks (for getting fucked up) and Tomorrow Project (throwing the best parties).
- I.A. Wallace, the intellectual recruited by the Ministry of Discovery because of his wild Science Fantasy novels, which had done very well for sometime and then suddenly plummeted in popularity, leave him broke and ready to work for anyone. He had a sparkmind construct named Benny. It was a typewrite that helped him created his outlandish stories. (Benny was obtained by the Mirror House from the other side of the resonance field but would never work for them, so it was eventually discarded and sold to I.A.). I.A. always suspected his career didn’t just dry up, it was sabotaged (and we was totally right, the Palace did it).
- Grigor “The Spare” Ankhayat, the Operator, played by ET. Shifting things up a bit in our fiction for ET’s love of Severos, The Spare “worked” for the Ministry of Discovery,l but of course, actually worked for Blackthorn Park, the spy agency of the United Severosi Covenant. Grigor was the younger brother of the exemplar of the Ankhayat family that people always asked “You two are brothers?” because they looked so far apart.
- TRB-0, aka TURBO, the Hull, played by David. Turbo was an early Ministry of Discovery Hull created for reconnaissance and sass. Turbo always looked a little like they had been taken apart and put back together again. Their controller was Disco Prime (Disco short for Discovery, of course) and David wanted a rival, so we added 3-VA (Eva) who was better than TRB-0 in every way.
The Crew
As the players were picking playbooks and discussing what exited them I started culling crew playbooks so that I could offer one or two that would suit the crew. Normally in a one shot, I just skip the crew creation, but since the premise of the score depends on the SCORPION syndicate having a reason to recruit the scoundrels, I though it was important to have some sense of crew identity.
After some back and forth we settled on a Heist Team that worked for the Ministry of Discovery and was sent to infiltrate the syndicate to find out how their airships were able to pass through the bubble undetected. Vixen met Dorji Kon at a Tomorrow Program party and posed as a would-be dealer that could move white lotus. We picked a crew move (Synchronized Watched) and got started.
The Lap of Luxury
Dorji Kon (tall, humorless, deadly) led Vixen and Turbo onto their yacht, past the many armed guards, and below the decks into a pleasure lounge complete with dim blue lighting, shag carpets, a well appointed bar, conversation pit, and a massive aquarium.
Chago (short, bare chested, finely dressed) welcomed Vixen and Turbo with two freshly made negronis, but when he realized Vixen’s companion was a hull, he shrugged and handed both drinks to her, before picking up his own.
Vixen studied the drinks for a moment before deciding that if Chago was going to drug them, he probably wouldn’t have an open brick of white lotus on the bar, ready for sampling. He also seemed too relaxed and nonchalant to have anything up his sleeve.
Chago regarded Turbo as a walking drink holder and ignored him. Dorji however was sizing them up. Did they have weapons, hidden compartments, advanced surveillance systems. Dorji made no secret of distrusting Turbo and gave them commands as though she was TRB-0’s controller. Turbo retorted with some wicked barbs, showing they weren’t intimidated.
Chago, delighted to show off, took Vixen to the aquarium and tapped on the glass with his ringed fingers. After a few raps a creature emerged from the darkness. It was humanoid with webbed and talons claws, a skeletal frame, gigantic eyes, and a mouth that opened like a sucker fish. It pressed its mouth and hands against the glass, suctioning itself to the translucent barrier.
Chago offered Vixen the chance to feed it, and when she assented he directed to packets of brown and rancid chum at the bar, and then flipped a switch to disable the electric field above the tank. Vixen dumped the chum into the water and watched as the creature devoured it. As soon as she had, Chago flipped the switch and the electroplasmically charged barrier re-ignited, sealing the creature safely away.
One of the armed guards entered the room and Chago and Dorji excused themself to attend to some business. They exited though a door which had previously appeared to just be the wood paneled wall and encouraged the scoundrels to enjoy themselves while they waited. A disco ball began spinning above and lounge music began playing.
Big Ship Goes Boom
Aboard the Storm Surge, IA and The Spare were hanging on for their lives as product worth enough to set them all for life (and then some) was flying past.
As the lieutenant flew past, Grigory grabbed the gun strap of his automatic rifle. For a moment the nameless syndicate enforcer though he had been saved, until Grigory whipped strap free of his shoulder and sent him with the others to their death below.
IA took in the situation and found two possible exits from the cargo bay. A ladder leading up to the passenger quarters above and a hatch at the end of the bay to the cockpit.
Grigory cut right through I.A. fine tweed coat to lash him into a climbing harness and the two of them worked to “climb” into the passenger chamber above…made much more difficult by the cargo flying past them and the tilt of the ship meaning they were no longer climbing up, but sideways. Much climbing gear was lost in the effort [Risky/Standard Prowl group action, with a devils bargain to use up the climbing gear by affixing all the crampons to the ladder rungs].
Trapped
Inside the pleasure lounge, the voice of Chago crackled over the speakers, interrupting the music. “It appears you’ve betrayed us Vixen. The airship your companions are on just exploded. You’ll have to forgive our lack of hospitality, we don’t take kindly to guests who overstay their welcome.”
The PA cut out at the same time as the ectoplasmic barrier charged back down, and a webbed, taloned hand reached out of the tank.
As water sloshed over the edges of the aquarium Turbo moved to intercept the monster while Vixen played with the PA system until she was able to open an channel that broadcasted to the whole ship “You’ve got us wrong Chago, we would never betray our partners. Just let us out of here and I’m sure we can clear all of this up.” Chago was moved, but not ready to let them free until he had confirmation the explosion wasn’t their doing. [Risky/Great Sway. Full success. Three ticks on the winning Chago’s trust clock]. The electric field sparked and flickered back to life… but the creature, which they could now see had bony legs and a long tail, had already escaped and was stalking toward Vixen, loping along on all four hands.
Turbo stood in its path and at first the creature disregarded the Hull, but then touched his chasing with a suction like grasp, sniffed at him, and became fascinated with the delicious morsel trapped somewhere inside the metal frame. Turbo walked slowly (impeded somewhat the creatures arms, legs, and tail entangling them) and moved to wall where Chago and Dorji exited the room.
With help from Vixen (who managed to play with the room controls enough to open the wood paneling and reveal the locked sliding door behind it), Turbo plunged his hand between the seams of metal and rended them apart enough that Vixen (and possibly Turbo) could squeeze through [Risky/Limited wreck. This would have been Risky/Zero effect if not for Turbo’s Powerhouse ability. Mixed success]. The doors opened, but on the other side two masked and armed guards stood ready (and more than a little bit terrified) to stop them from progressing further.
Into the Fire
The Spare popped open the hatch into the passenger area where he saw three figures. A short voluptuous woman he recognized by the flight insignia and reputation as Hurricane, pilot of the Storm Surge and one of the leaders of the syndicate. She was wounded and held captive by two gold plated hulls. They had magnetic seals holding them fast to the floor so even as the airship was spiraling through the air. The hulls, clearly products of the Golden Hand were processing data off tapes (that presumably had been pulled from the Storm Surge’s systems) and transmitting them via a large antenna.
The hulls noticed The Spare (consequence of a mixed success on the prowl roll to get into the champers) and made some mechanical computations. “More Alive.” Followed by some clicks and clacks. “This hostage no longer needed.” The hull that was not transmitting data and had been watching over Hurricane opened its palm and a powerful laser shot forth from it. As it moved it cut through the airship (The hulls apparently had no intention of surviving this crash either) and cut into Hurricane’s arm, but before it could bisect her, Grigory opened fire with his purloined machine coilgun, and distracted the mechanical would be murderer. As the hull braced and backed up to protect its delicate components from the bullets, the laser cut open even more of the Storm Surge. There was hardly anything left of the ship.
I.A. meanwhile was figuring out what these hulls really wanted. Were they truly happy to retrieve the data and then perish? [Normally I would say that finding their motives in this situation would be very difficult and have limited or no effect, however I.A. as the Mentalist ability “You can deduce trivial details about anyone. Study them to reveal a deep desire they didn’t even know they had; gain +1d and potency when acting on this information.” So this option was on the table!]
I.A. found that the hulls vocal capabilities were limited so he quickly connected his RF radio to Benny (his sparkmind construct typewriter) and typed through Benny to communicate. The hulls did not want to perish, but they also could not disobey their commands. “You don’t have to die. We don’t have to die. We can find a way so that you get everything you need and we can all survive. Work with me and we can make this happen!”
Horror from the Deep
Vixen had two problems: armed guards blocking their way and a monster from the deep trying to pry its way inside Turbo. She had one solution: cut herself with an ice pick, cover some chum in her own blood to attract the creature, and throw the chum through the open doorway into the hall of armed guards. The first piece it caught in the air with a long tongue, but she through the other pieces with greater fervor and the creature leapt after them and into the hallway with the guards who opened fire and through knockout gas canisters at the creature (and into the room with Turbo and Vixen) [Desperate/Standard Finesse roll with mixed results]
Vixen grabbed a wet rag from behind the bar to cover her mouth [resisting the knockout] and heard a crackle over the PA from Chago.
The Impossible Escape
The Spare grabbed Hurricane and in a bolt of impossible speed, got her past the hulls (who were still deciding if they wanted to carry on with the original plan or try something that might save themselves) and into the cockpit. Together the righted the Storm Surged (as much as it could be) and bought I.A. time to cobble together a way out.
EVA-2, Turbo’s Rival and in all ways superior Hull, who had been left behind in the cargo would use her rocket jets to fly herself and one of the hulls out.
- Hurricane would use one of the parachutes.
- The Spare and I.A would use the second parachute, though that much weight would mean The Spare had to drop IA on the top of Comber Skyscraper so they both didn’t go down too fast and die.
- I.A. and the Golden Hand hull would coble together just enough rocket propulsion gear to send the final hull to safety, rocked out to the water beyond the docks!
[Desperate/Standard Wrench. Mixed success. I.A. would die in the fall, but it was resisted down to Level-3 Harm “Broken Leg”]
They should have all rushed out, but The Spare paused to grab the takes the hulls had been copying…and Hurricane saw him do it!
Better Hospitality
The PA system crackled to live again and Chago said “we have just received confirmation of your story from our pilot. We’re very sorry for the confusion. Please forgive our poor hospitality.”
The door Vixen and Turbo entered in opened but at same time there were horrible sounds from the guards as they were attacked by the creature (with his advanced sensors Turbo witnessed their resonance being devoured) and they fired wildly. Several of the bullets came into the room and shattered the wall of the aquarium. Water poured into the room and they had to race to the exit.
The creature moved much faster in the water than it did on land and nearly caught them. Turbo slammed the door but its tail whipped through and would have punctured Turbo’s frame, if not for Vixen standing in the way [Desperate/Standard Skirmish. Mixed results were going to lead to Level-3 Harm “Resonance Drained” but it was resisted down to Level-2 “Resonance Weakened” and then further resisted with a protect action from Vixen to Level-1 “Weakened]. Turbo slammed the door and the creature was trapped in the chambers within. No longer their problem.
The Tapes
The Spare and I.A. Landed on Comber Tower relatively safety, but before they could be picked up by their Ministry Handler, The Spare asked I.A. for one final bit of technical assistance (the pain of his broken leg was ameliorated by a fist full of white lotus he consumed before making the jump) and using Benny to copy the tapes.
Debrief
From their handler Taylor at the Ministry “Well done and thank you for your service. The BLUERAKER-5 project finally has the last piece of technology needed to pass beyond the B.L.U.E array undetected.” What good news!
Thoughts on the game
This game rocked and we had an amazing time. Everyone showed up with incredible characters doing unbelievable rad stuff. A+.
I had a great experience using business cards to show faction affiliations. It didn’t take up too much space on the table and it was so cool to make something someone had talked about feel REAL!
We had just two playtest notes that came from the intellectual playbook
- Unclear what a Gaittion clock is from the Unalloyed Genius special ability.
- Try not to break it this time might have a typo (give rather than gave)
