GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves, Eric Fattig, and Adrienne Mueller
System: Blades in 68′
This session was some long awaited downtime. After rescuing Val, the scoundrels were beat up and needed to recover.
It was also time for me to start planting some seeds for the upcoming score “Bowman takes a Bath”. I didn’t think it was a score the Barons would want to take on immediately (11 stacks score vs. a Tier 5 faction is serious fucking business) but the connection to Nav’s past meant it was going to come up sooner or later. I started asking myself “what does Bowman do for the Palace?” and in the spirit of improv “if that’s true, what else is true about Bowman and the things that interact with him”.
I’ve got some ideas hidden in a spoiler tag so my players can read this post without seeing it. Consider anything here something that could be learned from Gathering Information about him.
I’ve got more in my notes, but this is where my head is right now. My other notes for the game were:
- Returning the Storm Surge (the players indicated that they’d rather improve their faction status with the Scorpion Syndicate than have an airship). Blaze wants to tag along for his own ends.
- Mack Ransom putting pressure on Paolo for info on the Velvet Veil.
- Thieving Bastards (Crew Trouble). Vran wants a confession from Delta about doing violence to Wilde.
- Asking the Heist Team questions that Tim put in the new draft.
Who’s who in the Dirt Barons
These are the Heist Team questions that Tim added to the 5.2 draft
- Who has the most experience with heists? Nav, but she learned it from doing espionage in Iruvia.
- Who handles the homework (making maps, plans, charts, etc)? Delta, they are good at following instructions.
- Who sells the goods? Paolo. Nav is not great with people.
- Which of you knows the streets? People of Silkshore, definitely Paolo. Actual geography however, Delta.
Unwinding with the Weeping Lady
The crew took Paolo (who was extremely beat up) to the Hospital of the Weeping Lady. [Note, that I didn’t know any hospital names, but I thought it would be fun if the charity and soup kitchen of Doskvol gain the patronage of the Church and became a hospital in 68.]
The hospital is tall wooden building filled with ley and clergy members of the Church, miniature rowan trees in small clay pots, and patience with all manner of horrific ailments. Sister Elsa admitted Paolo, accepted the church “donation” (three stacks, a hefty sum) and saw that he got care.
A few days later when they were allowed to see him again, Paolo was convalescing in a hospital bed watching replays of the race on a plasmovision screen, with an untouched tray of unidentifiable gruel in front of him. In his secret compartments delta snuck in Paolo’s plush robe (taken from the Blue Baths) and comfort food.
Seeing Paolo watching the race over and over Delta chimed with some concern. “You. Drove. Fast.”
“I did!” Paolo was full of glee watching the split second win on repeat. Nav also expressed concern that he could have died in the race but Paolo couldn’t hear their concern “It was all passion and fury he said’ [Paolo had deadlocked a key and now had the deadlock “Can’t Back Down.”]
Once they convinced Paolo to stop rewatching the race, the crew shared real food together and the gossip they had gathered. “Little Gallo is like a colander of information, it just goes right through him.” [Everyone recovered 1 stress]
As a parting gift and reminder to keep growing and healing, Paolo was sent home with a miniature rowan sapling. Nav was convinced it had some recording device buried in the dirt!
Returning the Storm Surge
The crew decided they were going to return the Storm Surge to the Syndicate as a gesture of good will in the hopes to improve their relationship [they had -1 faction status because of their work selling good through Caton, especially because some of that intel was on the Syndicate themselves].
After some pressure from Blaze (“Nav, I got the crap kicked out of my by the Syndicate pit crew to help you win that race, you owe me at least a chance to see the Surge before you give it back”) the crew agreed to take him with them to the Plaza Imperial Hotel where the Surge is parked (and where the Syndicate operates out of).
Caton greeted the Baron’s as they entered and led them to a back room to meet Dorji Kon, the second in command of the Syndicate. Paolo, fresh out of the hospital and not looking to go back there anytime soon, opened with “We’re hear because we won a tour of your amazing airship” and he showed the sparktech keys that he won at the race, making it very clear they didn’t plan to keep it.
Dorji sized up Paolo quickly and learned he was a person that wanted to be shown respect [I gave Eric the option to resist this, but he was fine with Dorji knowing] so the brutal man quickly smiled and said “Why just a tour, after beating Hurricane in a race, you deserve to at least take it for a ride.”
With Nav keeping Blaze in check (he was very eager to see the the airship), the Baron’s followed Dorji to the roof of the Imperial (35 stories tall) where they felt powerful gusts of wind that nearly knocked them over and then climbed higher up a ladder to a tiny dock with a beleaguered dockmaster where the Storm Surge was anchored. In the raging winds they crossed the narrow gangplank onto the airship.
Once on board, Dorji and Paolo were quick to enter the cockpit and start going over the controls together. Meanwhile Blaze immediately started snooping around, looking for navigational data. Nav stopped him (he wasn’t being subtle) and convinced him to let her gather than info by turning on the backlit navigational charts and scrolling through them while Delta recorded them. The did it all without Dorji noticing [Success on a Risky/Standard Finesse].
Barely familiar with the controls, but confident he could drive anything Paolo took the helm. The ship immediately started diving down but he was able to recover it quickly and after some trial and error made a small loop around Brightstone [I told Eric to start a 4-tick clock for Paolo to learn how to fly an airship and put 1 tick on it].
Hurricane was notably absent from the whole affair.
Delivering Papers
Nav delivered the packed handed to her at the Iruvian Sands to her case officer Lenaya at a non-descript cafe in Charterhall. Lenaya checked in with how Nav’s other affairs were going but the Operative kept her cards close to her chest. Lenaya didn’t press but she did warn Nav of having further infarctions with Karstas, who the Palace believes is a Blackthorn Park informant. The AFU’s good relationship with the Palace is based on the belief that they have nothing to do with the United Scov Covenent (USC) or Blackthorn Park, their intelligence gathering service.
Lenaya also mentioned that she would have future work for Nav if she wanted it and gave her a single-use encrypted communications array so they could pass off information in the future.
Thieving Bastards
[Last session I rolled up the Crew Trouble “Thieving Bastards” which means that another faction has either already stolen something from the crew or makes an attempt to (triggering a raid). I looked at the situation (they are well hidden in the Velvet Veil) and their security upgrade, and I couldn’t imagine a lot of factions that would have the ability to find and break in and the drive to do so. My strongest candidate was the Tomorrow Program coming to get back their tech, but I really didn’t want to trigger a raid since they just had a tough score.
After pondering it a bit, I realized there are other ways to take from someone and other kinds of things you can take. Paolo had told Vran that he would get the Bluecoat dirt on Hulls but hadn’t delivered. Vran didn’t need to break into their base, he just needed to threaten to do it!]
The Dirt Barons heard and uncommon knock on the door to their base. Outside was an irritable Val with a message. “There are Bluecoats here asking for you. If you don’t go out there, they are coming in, so you better head out there and get rid of them. Try not to bring any more heat on us if you can.”
Paolo went out to meet Vran to buy sometime while Nav and Delta held back to support as needed.
“You haven’t delivered for me Paolo, so I’m coming to collect.” Vran learned that Delta had brutalized Wilde at the Blue Sunrise and he wanted Paolo to either confess that he had ordered his Hull to assault someone or confirm he hadn’t given that order and that the homicidal machine did it of it’s own volition.
Paolo stalled with Vran while Nav and Delta quickly downloaded the recordings of the assault and removed them from Delta’s storage. When the Hull did appear, it had nothing useful to share with Vran. He still had the account from Wilde though…and with no confession from Paolo of ordering the attack, he was going to use that in his crusade to prove that Hulls are just as violent and dangerous as the echos of the criminals that power them.
Downtime
The crew took other downtime actions mostly including indulging vice (Paolo went and gambled with Mack Ransom, Nav wrote letters home, Delta recharged at the Golden Hand arcade), healing/repair (everyone was pretty beat up), and reducing heat (bribes to Vran). A few minor notes:
- Delta did a terrible job of recording the the comings and goings of Ministry personnel at Saltford’s bank for Kavira D’har (leader of the the Golden Hand) because he was so distracted by his old memories slowing returning.
- Nav learned after she gave the navigational info to Blaze that his plan is to steal one of the SCORPION syndicates big deliveries of Black Lotus, and this gave him a piece of crucial info he needed to do it.
- Paolo wasn’t willing to sell out the Gallo family, but Mack is still going to try and leverage his relationship with Paolo to make something happen..
At the end of the session the crew gathered and decided on their next score: Finding GRD-9!
