GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves, Eric Fattig, and Adrienne Mueller
System: Blades in 68′
Inside the Dirt Baron’s blackbox theater, Nav activated the micro-ultraplasm transceiver, hardcoded with the encrypted frequency Lenaya set when she gave it to her. The mercurial fluid entered the chamber and the device began transmitting. Nav (and crew) could hear Lenaya’s modulated voice and they used a set of codes to perform a secondary authentication.
“As you probably know Lord Daros was found dead on the street in Charterhall a week ago. His death is a mystery and the only witness knowing is a street sweeper hull unit with designation GRD-9. The hull has been spotted, but it’s location is currently unknown. There are a lot of people that want that hull. We don’t care about the hull itself, we want to know what it saw.”
The crew had see the fliers and heard the anti-hull protests. The tabloids blame GRD-9 for murder and there are more than one mobs who want to see it melted down for parts.
The crew also knew there are others with strong feelings about hulls:
- Croc, Delta’s controller sees hulls as the future of humanity, immortality at our fingertips.
- Sergeant Vran see’s hulls as a threat to his job and the jobs of other Bluecoats.
- The crew had seen GRD-9 at the student protest during the Alluvium Affair. The students seemed to adopt and want to protect GRD-9, but the hull itself looked nervous and afraid.
The Hull Directive
Because Adrienne is playing a hull, I thought it would be great to introduce the Hull Directive, a ticking timebomb in the setting. Here’s the skinny from the book:
The Lusk Reform Technique turns a criminal into one of the Reformed and produces a hull to boot; is it a clever, efficient form of managing the criminal population, or is it a horrific crime against humanity?
Reformed or not, hulls are used for more jobs around the city every day, putting more and more people out of work. Already the rail jacks and the gondoliers have been made redundant, and rumor is the bluecoats are next.
There are some questions for the players, and since Paolo and Nav have both been a little horrified at the violence Delta is capable of and Paolo was really unconformable when talking about it, I asked this to him:
How has the life of someone you care about been negatively affected by hulls?
Paolo recalled a distant memory where a friend of his…a musician (we all know it’s Three-Fingers, but he’s been erase from Paolo’s memory so the details were hazy) had his instrument damaged by a hull.
Based on the events already in the game, I’ve ticked the first three segments on the Hull Directive ticking timebomb so we currently have:
- Anti-hull protests (add the Protests ongoing trouble).
Digging for Dirt
Knowing that GRD-9 was last seen in Charterhall, the Baron’s gathered information about who might have spotted the hull and came up with the name Professor Kole, a spokesperson for a group of political radicals called the Burn Corps and open opponent. Kole was the professor who signed off on the students permit to protest for hull rights. He also had gambling debts with the Gallo’s. A solid lead!
In Charterhall hulls were present but they all seemed to be trying to stay out of sight. The few that they did seen were occasionally vandalized, graffitied, or damaged. Though the students may be supporting the hulls, the citizens as a whole
They found Kole in his office, filled with books, paperwork, and the expected bills (seems that he owes more than just the Gallo family). He was distrustful of the Baron at first, but was curious about Delta and wanted to know his name (not his designation). Kole is anti-hull because he believes they still have personhood and sees their creation as an inhumane act, and their use as whitewashed slavery. He also fucking hates the Bluecoats.
Eventually Paolo and Nav convinced Kole they were trying to help GRD-9 [Success on a Risky/Limited Sway] and he gave them her location. “If you want truly want to help Geraldine, you’re going to have to keep her safe from a lot of other people who want to find her and do her harm. The students have been hiding her in the Jayan dorms, but I think others are looking for her there as well. You should move fast.”
Playing a Golden Hand
When Barons arrived at the dorms, they found students all about the quad and moving between the four main buildings that comprised the dorms. They also spotted two Golden Hand hulls, Delta-914, Detla-969 (968’s batch twin) and Avrad, the head of operations who were searching the dorms as well.
Paolo put on the charm, dropped professor Kole’s name, and convinced two of the students, Beleran and Tarn to take him to GRD-9 (or Jeri as they called her). Nav held back to see if Paolo had a tail and Delta stayed outside, trying to blend in with the other Delta units and appear to be “helping”. He turned off his receiver however, so radio communication was impossible.
Meeting Geraldine (GRD-9)
Paolo was lead on a circuitous path through the dorm buildings and eventually into an apparent where several other student protectors gathered. He went through a beaded doorway to find Geraldine sitting on the edge of a bed, appearing to wait for something.
Tarn had warned Paolo not to mention the “incident” as it would upset her, and when the looked around the room he saw what the students were talking about. Geraldine sat very still and looked pensive, but the holes in the wall told stories of uncontrolled violence.
It took some time, but Paolo convinced Geraldine that there were people coming after her that meant to do her harm. She asked why. She tried to understand the logical reasons for things. She made conclusions about humans that were incorrect, but hard to refute. Finally, she agreed to go with Paolo as she did not want to see harm come to the students that were protecting her thus far.
Escape from Jayan Dorms
Outside Delta detected that Avrad was using some technology to locate GRD-9 and had found her. He sent units 914 and 969 after. The hulls moved with determination, forcing their way through throngs of students, but Nav had time to prepare and ambush. She had her sniper rifle planted and sighted in. 914 made it up the first flight of stairs and Nav took her shot, hitting it’s hip servo and disabling one of it’s legs. With a single leg 914 sprung towards her and sent them both through a wall [Mixed success on a Risky/Standard Hunt].
Below Delta was “helping” 969 by continuing to get in it’s way and slow it down at every turn. Between the two of them they held off the Delta units while Paolo made it out another way…right into the barrel of Avrad’s gun [Miss on a Risky/Prowl].
Avrad put a silenced bullet in both of Paolo’s legs (still better to disable than to kill in Doskvol) and was was this close activating a control module that would force GRD-9 to comply with it’s orders, when Delta came charging through and tore the sparktech harness of Avrad’s body, breaking Avrad’s arm in the process [Mixed success on a Risky/Standard Skirmish]. It was a choice Delta had to make, knowing it would forever change what the Golden Hand thought of him. Knowing it might cut off his home. Knowing he might be hunted from there out. And he did it!
The Baron’s made their way to a gondola Nav had in position and got out of there!
The Blue Baths
That could have been the end of the score. Turn Gerladine over to Lenaya at the AFU and call it good. But then what would be the fate of Geraldine? And how would Lenaya get the information she needed? They knew that the topic caused her duress, it might even damage her to relive it. What Lenaya really wanted was the information and that’s what they wanted too.
Nav didn’t understand what happened at the Blue Baths, but she gathered that it had something to do with resonance echoes and memories, and it was worth a shot. The Barons were on good terms with Mirror House and although Nav shouldn’t be seen going there…they were the best chance of getting the information needed.
And so they took a trip to the baths [Nav undetected by the Palace watch thanks to her Infiltrator move], into the waters [Geraldine and Delta], past the ancient stones [Paolo and Nav convincing Karstas to help them], walked through the gravity anomaly, and witnessed the resonance echoes. The readings needed to be recalibrated (they had never used the technology on a hull before) but Delta entered Geraldine’s memory and saw what happened.
Early in the morning lord Daros was dropped off by a cab on Sapphire Street all alone, except for Geraldine who he took no notice of. The young lord looked up and down the street, and when he was sure nobody was looking he pulled a brick from a wall and placed an envelope inside the cavity behind it. He was just about to replace the brick when a blade ran him threw. Geraldine (and Delta) witnessed the killer, a person with vacant eyes and sallow skin. The looked at Geraldine (and Delta) and even though this was a memory they knew the hollow could see them both and would be haunting them [Mixed result on a Desperate/Standard Attune roll. Consequence Hunted resisted down to Haunted by Nav who insisted that the shut down the machine].
As the body of Lord Daros fell, no bells tolled.
