GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Eric Fattig, Adrienne Mueller, and Karen Twelves
System: Blades ’68
This is the unhelpfully named part 2 of A Bath for Bowman. I really didn’t know how it was going to turn out and I was fucking delighted with how it did!
We picked up right where we left off, Little Gallo, Nav, and Paolo all regrouping in a raised parking lot looking down on the Blue Baths (where Bowman needed to be). The Bowman in they had in the car was staring to wake up, groggily making some noises as he came to.
Nav said she was going to scout ahead leaving Little Gallo and Paolo to decide who was going to force some sleeping pills down his throat (they thought a second tranq dart might actually do permanent harm). This was their expression deciding who would do it…
Blackthorn Intervention
As Nav approached the Blue Baths she wasn’t quite intercepted, but she did notice a figure who stepped out of the shadows to get her attention. Agent 36, who she had seen briefly in the City Council meeting. The Agent told her Palace agents were inside the Blue Baths, but there was nothing to do for it. Nav said she was going to do reconnaissance so in she went.
The lobby lounge was filled with the wealthy and those who wanted to appear wealthy. A nervous receptionist took Nav’s card and then led her to a restoration room to meet Karstas…and Bowman (the real Bowman), who had a gun at his back.
Nav was going to back out then, but Bowman asked her to consider talking. All the people in the lobby were his agents who would stop her (or at least try to). He’d rather make a deal is possible.
Discovery
As the faux Bowman (the Fauxman if you will) was waking, Little opened his shirt and inspected his skin, there he found the early imperceptible line between the mask he was wearing and the real person beneath).
Meanwhile, Paolo drew the short straw so he crushed up some slipping pills in seltzer water (from the broken remains the bar in his car) and sent the dissolving pills down his throat. He was coming to now, but he’d hopefully fall back asleep soon (sleeping pills don’t work quite as quickly as tranquilizers).
They got on either side of their Bowman and dragged him like a passed out friend to the elevator [6 on a fortune roll indicated the parking lot had one, phew] and down to the street level.
On the way in they also noticed Agent 36 so Paulo split off to talk to her, leaving Little Gallo in charge of Bowman. Little Gallo had been practicing sounding tough to the unconscious Bowman “Don’t you trying anything! Don’t you!”
Buying Time
Nav entered the room and heard the deal. Bowman knew she wasn’t going to get Castelle’s tome, but she was still useful to him. She could come with him now peacefully or he could shoot Karstas, a known USC spy and send in his people to apprehend her. She was connected to the Iruvian spy apparatus and could be traded up for someone more important.
She pressed, and confirmed that the someone more important was her parents. This didn’t sound like a good trade, but as long as Bowman was talking he wasn’t calling in reinforcements. She opened her radio connection and signaled to Paolo and Little Gallo to leave the package outside on the steps and back off.
Don’t try anything
Just as the tranquilizer was fading and the sleeping pills had not yet kicked in, would-be Bowman saw it as only Little Gallo guarding him so he made a run for it. Little Gallo grabbed him and slammed him into the wall, knocking him out cold [Success on a Controlled/Skirmish].
Meanwhile Paolo was learning more from Agent 36. She was invested in Karstas making it out safe, but her role was surveillance not extraction. From the radio the could hear things heating up for Nav. An agent from the lobby was coming down the hallway to cuff and detain Nav.
Desperate Standard
Little Gallo ran into the Blue Bath, past the agents posing as guests in the lobby, past the agent who was walking down the hallway (but running now) and into the room with Bowman, Karstas, and Nav. He slid on his knees towards Bowman drawing his attention and flicked a silenced shooter with tranq darts to Nav. The plan worked perfectly, Bowman shifted his focus to Little Gallo getting his gun away from Karstas and giving Nav a shot! [Crit on a Desperate/Standard Prowl]
Nav took the shot, stuck Bowman in the neck with a dart and he flinched in pain. All the GoGo Pills he was on kept him standing, but his vision was starting to blur. Compromised, Bowman implemented the Palace Protocols. He called over his radio “Phoenix Down” and bit into a poison pill that would kill him (better to die than to be knocked out and taken)…Or he, would have if Little Gallo hadn’t leapt up grabbed the handset so he couldn’t activate it and plunged his tongue into Bowman’s mouth so he couldn’t bite down [Mixed success on a Risky/Standard Hunt. Both consequences resisted]
Nav heard the whisper quiet sound of a silenced gun and saw Little Gallo’s white shirt bloom red as Bowman shot him at point blank range. Little Gallo crumpled to the ground [Level 3 Harm and a Deadlock]
Paulo’s Move
Paulo dragged the unconscious Bowman into the lobby and shook him awake [Flashback to giving him GoGo pills….man this is the 60s, he had a cocktail of uppers, downers, and a mild concussion], pointed his gun to Bowman’s head, and then told the agents to back off. The bluff didn’t work this time, they all drew their guns and pointed it at him so he used Bowman as a human shield. [Failure on a Risky/Standard Command. He would have been trapped but he resisted]
Kick Flips and shit!
Karstas grabbed Bowman and Nav jumped from a seated position to kick the gun out of Bowmans hand. She disarmed him but when she made contact some electropasmic defensive device electrocuted both her and Karstas, sending the both flying back [Mixed success on a Risky/Standard Finesse. Harm resisted for Nav, but Karstas’ ribs were broken].
The gun was on the ground. Karstas and Bowman eyeing it and each other. The agent that was going to arrest Nav had drawn a gun of his own and was raising it to fire at her. She spun, shot, and dogged. His shot went wide as he staggered back, a tranq dart in his neck.
Karstas and Bowan both dove for the gun, wrestled on the ground, but Bowman got control and shot the Scov agent in the heart…or he would have if Nav didn’t kick him out of the way at the last moment!
Turning Point
Paolo was stuck, but but he had one more trick up his sleeve. He had the fake Bowman, but in all the confusion, and the switches, how could anyone know for sure. He saw in this performer a desire to have the position of power he was only feigning now [Crit on a Desperate/Great Study to read his desires with the Mesmerist Ability] and whispered to him “This is your chance to be Bowman. Tell them you’ve got the situation under control and let us go.”
The man behind the mask did some very quick math and realized he could make this work. He nodded as Paolo lowered his gun. On his radio he signaled “Phoenix Reborn” and then told everyone in the room to stand down, the Section 6 asset has been placed. Paulo didn’t know what that meant but it seemed to work. In the other room the real Bowman wondered what the hell was going on as this was definitely not a Phoenix Reborn condition, but he was too busy wrestling control of a gun to send a response.
K/O
Nav clocked Bowman on the head once, twice, three, four times, maybe five. He was out after the second hit, but she needed to make sure…and she just hated him!
Sealing the Deal
Prichard (who was posting as Bowman) convinced Paolo, who in turn convinced Nav to go with them as “captives” where they would be taken to a safehouse, where he palmed Paolo the key and pointed out where the cameras were.
Little Gallo was given medical treatment (as was Karstas) and picked up by Kassius, who told Karstas he needed to pay extra for hazard pay (that’s why they keep Kassius around!). On his way out Little Gallo even remembered to bug this reception area [Black Back Operations]
Nav and Paulo “broke free”, Kassius brought Little Gallo home in the very beat up Lola, and they celebrated pulling off the impossible heist!
Aftermath
Payoff and Faction Changes:
- Stacks: 13 (2 to the Gallos)
- Rep: 6
- Heat: 12
- Faction Status: Palace -1, Mirror House +1 (+2 Total), Blackthorn Park +1
- Faction Clocks: Blackthorn Part added 6 ticks to their clocks (based on Bowman’s info)
Harm Complications:
- Nav and Little Gallo: Impaired (both -1 Finesse after being shaken up)
- Paolo: Self Medicating [Dangerous as he just Deadlocked and had very little stress]
Unwind: The Barons worked their way through all the broken bottles of booze in Lola. The Daggerite liquor was too spicy for Little Gallo but he drank it anyway. Paolo called him “Gallo” (no Little Gallo, just Gallo, and told him he did a good job).
Personal business:
- Nav and Little Gallo went to a private hospital (3 stacks each to heal up). Phantom Val there doing Little Gallo’s slide move all over the hospital floors. Little Gallo telling Nav and then Nav and Paolo how he knocked out Bowman “Do you try anything!”.
- Pablo got patched up the old fashion way with tinctures and drugs from Silster Elise for his road rash, and a strange trance that Lydia Rowan put him in to help with the Time Looping.
- Nav, by not being captured made small move that had large ripples. Because she wasn’t captured couldn’t be traded up for her parents, the Palace lost it’s chance to secure the AFU’s loyalty, which left it as exposed as ever to Blackthorn Park plots. She changed the nature of her Obligation vice. She was no longer pretending not to be spy, she was now going to start using the same innocuous messages she had been sending her parents to now include coded information. Her mother Sevra would be her contact. She started a long term project to remove the Doubting Deadlock [2/8 ticks]
- Paolo Gambled. He had to. And he decided to cheat [his new Deadlock] and be obvious about it. Skavo the Shark grabbed him by the collar and dragged him outside (they all recounted stories of how Skavo and broken the fingers of another cheater) and told Paulo that if Dossani didn’t have a soft spot for him, he’d be joining Three-Fingers in the digits department. He was cut off [Overindulging]
- Little Gallo tool Lola to Honest Stev to have her patched up. Stev gave him all kinds of trouble, telling him how much it would be, how long it would take, how he’d need to special order parts, etc. But of course he could fix Salvation (which had a broken axel) right up for Paulo [Uptick contact for Paolo, downtick for Little Gallo]
Next score: Rescuing Delta from Nolburn. Stealth operation. Point of entry: Noburn’s 2nd story window. Engagement roll results: Controlled Situation (I think that’s a first)
As Paolo smoothed out his jacket from Skavo’s gruff hands a figure stepped out of the shadows. The man was a stranger he had never seen before, and would never see again. The long lines on his face drawn by careful study. “I’m coming to you because you’ve been tampering with time, creating anomalies that have ramifications you may not understand.”
Paolo asked what he meant and he told Paolo that the mind could only maintain so many realities before it fractures, irrevocably. He handed Paolo his card and told him that if he wanted to turn back now there was still a chance for him. “If you want to talk again, I don’t have a name and I won’t wear this face again, but you can ask for the Whisper Warden.”
Thoughts on this game
Wow, wow, wow, that was so incredible. I had no idea what the scoundrels were supposed to do. I almost never do. I just present situations and then see where they go with it. This session we had a few times when the players looked at me and each other unsure of what to do, things seemed pretty terrible. But they stuck with it, kept making moves, and eventually something clicked…and clicked hard!
Nav saving Karstas (she was one stress away from Deadlocking so that resistance roll was a tense one), Gallo plunging his tongue into Bowman’s mouth to prevent the poison pill, and finally Paolo convincing Prichard to actually take Bowman’s place made it all possible. We had shoot outs, wrestling for guns, cool kicks and flips, mission impossible style masks and disguises, loyalty and betrayal. It was magical.
A Tier 1 Crew of scoundrels against the Imperial Intelligence Agency (Tier 5)? Yep, it can be done. You’ve just got to really want it! (Crits don’t hurt!)
What’s going to happen to Bowman? We don’t know. Prichard ws going to kill him, but Nav suggested he find a hole to drop him in forever. “If you kill him, tell him I’m sorry. If you don’t, tell him I hate his guts forever!” Prichard took all that under advisement!
Also, I’m delighted to bring in Section 6 to the game. And they aren’t even the only ones who care about anomalies!
