Actual Play – Spirit Wardens Most Wanted (12/12/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes I jotted down months ago. I pray they make some sense

Last time two spirit wells formed a spectral repulsion that destroyed all spectral matter in the vicinity, and a lightning bolt destroyed the top third of Bellweather. This making the Doskvol Spectral Society the most wanted criminals in the Spirit Wardens minds.

  • 10 Heat (Devastating Exposure, Hostile Turf, Well Connected Targets, Killing Involved)
  • 6 Rep
  • Faction Status: Spirit Wardens dropped to -3 (at war), Leviathan Hunters +2, Skurlock +1

Downtime

Elke, went to Wend to be tended to (hiding out in the Six Arms, the Devil Hunters Hall is under lockdown by the Wardens and Bluecoats). Wend was able to hear her normal would, but also found that the sparkcraft in her neck had been damaged during the explosion, and if she could open up the area and get very precise tools in there to separate the entwined wires… so she dove in, and had to cut away more to to remove them [Desperate Tinker, Mixed Result, Caused Level 3 Harm and removed the Spirit Warden brand.

Jadvyga hided out with her friend Frake (cold, shrewd, fierce), who reached out to Malcolm Dundridge to get a new set of clothes from him. She was cut to pieces but sought a new outfit rather than ministration to her wounds (Indulge Vice). Frake didn’t want any trouble, didn’t spare any sympathies for Jadvyga either, but he owed her.

Elke and Nyryx connected, Nyryx possessed her to comfort her [Recovery]

Hix took a look further, into the ghost world behind the vale…

Actual Play – Into Bellweather (12/7/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes I jotted down months ago. I pray they make some sense

Through her contact Elke was able to gain entrance back into Bellweather, where they delivered the lightning cage….just as the power to it was failing!

Elke continued to power the field with her Tempest but it only last a moment. She needed an incredible amount of energy to sustain it.

Yadvyga tapped into her demonic nature and took it’s form.

  • A sea demon, humanoid with bestial features.
  • Hard carapace of metal plates.
  • Razor sharp claws
  • Glassy crab eyes
  • Forked tongue and split mandibles.
  • Kylastra!

Hix, terrified, but also seeing a possibility attached her electorplasimc conduits into the cage and plunged the receptors on the other end into the demon in front of her. If refined blood would power the cage, perhaps pure blood from a living demon, ignited by the Keeper of the Flame, could do the same! Acting as a human conduit she funnelled enough energy in to the cage to keep it sealed… and to reveal Kylastra and the Keeper of the Flame to all the Spirit Wardens in the Bellweather.

They were… surprised. As was the Keeper, who screamed a whisper of truth into Hix’s mind “The dependence on demons will be the downfall of humanity.”

A Fine Entrance

When the senior wardens arrived, Elke told them that they must take the lighting cage to the incinerator, otherwise 144 ghosts would break free and if they were lucky just kills us all, if we weren’t form a spirit well right here in the Bellweather!

This… was a compelling argument, but so was the demon in their antechamber! The Warden split. One masked warden to take them to the incinerator and the others to stay (with a Hull) to capture the demon in their presence.

The Ghost Field

An electroplasmic arrestor shot from the chest of the hull and flew towards Kylastra. Meanwhile the two masked wardens began dragging a chain around her and beginning a ritual that hasn’t been performed in their lifetime.

Yadvyga attempted to enter the ghost field but her new physiology was incompatible, and so, had to shed her demonic form. Literally, ripping the carapace from her skin to enter the ghost field and disappear. [Ouch, it was level 4 harm, resisted down to level 3]

Into the Crematorium

Hix and Elke convinced the spirit wardens to try putting the lightening cage into the incinerator, which they learned also has a spirit well in it, it’s what they use to make sure ghosts don’t escape.  What happens when two spirit wells collide? That’s just what Elke, Hix and Scurlock want to know.

And the answer is:

  • A spirit warden took her mask off, called herself Leanna and told Elke she needed to leave Doksvol, and never return.
  • She also told them that Bazran was a spy for the Spirit Wardens and had been reporting on the Spectral Society for over a year.
  • Oh, and a massive explosion rocked Bellweather, destroyed the incinerator, nearly killed Hix and Elke (also destroyed the spirit cocoon in Hix) and,
  • The opposing polarity of the spirit wells repulsed all ghost matter away from them (in other parts of the tower, ejecting Yadvyga, violently, from the ghost field)

One Last bit of Business

Yadvyga, bleeding, concussed, and confused, made her way to the top of Bellweather, found the room that Naria Strangford was held in and affixed the token Needle provided her on the door, and then took a big step back, just before a storm cloud formed above and lightning struck the tower, blowing up a huge section of it, including the protections around Naria’s chambers. Dragging herself a long, Yadvyga helped Naria leap from debris down into a hay cart below (heck yeah flashbacks!)

Actual Play – Indulgences (11/28/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes I jotted down months ago. I pray they make some sense

All hands downtime action – Chaterhall Crew performing practices in the Doskvol canals (reducing heat).

Hix’s mastermind action – Send them out again to setup a course that would be a cover for sneaking boats into the deathlands (reducing heat).

Elke investigated who trashed the wards at the Devil Hutner’s Hall, and sending the spectral defenders out, they came back with Eren (ghost), held in Myst’s body (ghost passage ability), who they then interrogated and tried to win her over to the true path (1/4 ticks).

They also continued to work on a cure for the drowning plague (2/8 ticks). (Long Term Project)

Wend went to the Black Tree (underground) and gabled on the Whisper Lightning Cage Fights. The Red Claw vs. Atrius. The Red Claw won and then went onto face She who Slays. (Indulge Vice)

Haland tended to by Wend to treat his pneumonia and found his lung had been punctured. Yikes (Recover)

Elke tended to by Wend, who discovered the Spirit Warden brand was actually wires fused into her blood vessels. Some very advanced Sparkcraft! She could help her other injuries though (Recover)

Hix continued to study the metaphysical weight of the soul and looked to what happen as the spirit passes from the body at death. She found it is called to another realm which has it’s own force (the Spectral Force) and if one was to detach and seek it out, they could enter the Ghost Realm (Long Term project, complete).

Some notes after the game

What does Scurlock want now?

Short term – to test his theory that two adjacent spirit wells with opposite polarity could create a force that would repulse spectral energies. Long term? To give “life” to Bastion. Longer term still, to be reunited with Elise Salkaran (Elke’s grandmother).

Actual Play – Let’s Go Get Ring, but later (11/14/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes as I have them

Months later, these don’t quite make sense to me, but I’m transcribing them!

Let’s go get ring!

Path of Echoes includes: Penderyn, Vond/Cricket, Skinner, Ring.

Visit the Leaky Bucket

  • Cross is there, eager to see them.
  • He’s lost a day (while a Spirit Warden cloud covered Crow’s Foot)
  • Picket is deathly sick (remnants of being possessed by the ghost dragon). Elke begins research to recover from harmful possession.
  • Wester is not happy to see them and madder still when he found out Ring had rejoined the Path of Echoes. He set off to find her (and was not seen again).
  • Bazso there negotiating with Lyssa but from them listening in, she was inscrutable (constantly changing her mind).

 

 

Actual Play – A job for Skurlock (11/7/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes as I have them. The Offer

Elke and crew paid a surprise visit to Scurlock, were terrified of the ghosts trapped in the waters outside below his manor.

Scurlock shows concern (genuine?) for Elke, and disdain or indifference for her servants (the other PCs)

He presents them a small but increcibly intricate lighting cage (carried by Bastion), which he wants them to put in the furnace of Bellweather. (note, not a coincidence. He told Elke he wanted her to get something into Bellweather a long time ago, the society just decided as long as they were going in there, they might as well get two jobs done at once. No sweat!)

Hix recognizes the cage as something crafted by Una Farros (Sparkwright).

Let’s think on this

Back in the Devil Hunter’s Hall the cage is studied and found to have not one or two, but many many more. Soldiers, housekeepers, goat herders, midwives, adepts, chimney sweeps, factory workers. 144 in all.

Harland (erm professor Harland) summons Una to look at the box, but she arrives with Argus and Beaumont, who have been wanting to see the Hall now that it’s back in use (mixed result).

Yadvyga distracted the other two professors with a tour of the building while Elke took Una down to the lab to ask about the cage. Una was surprised to see it still existed! It was a theoretical marvel but once created, her research was stopped because of the potential that a critical mass inside could form a spirit well once they were released. She never got to see what happened.

Other affairs

Hix meetings Needle (who she pissed off by asking about Master Slane’s books?) and took the job (and found out about Master Slane).

Yadvyga finished he ritual to trap a the demon Setarra, which requires removing her from her element, but that also required Yadvyga to remember back to her own demonic heritage. She saw a dying demon passing on their power into a human and knows that she opened a conduit her demon ancestor. And with this connection open she will never be able to return to Tycheros.

 

Actual Play – Buzz on Canal Street (10/31)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Last Time

Paid of Sergeant Lochlan (shrewd, tough, commanding) to look the other way.

Convinced Corran not to fully trust Eren (aunt, dead)

Elke made enemies with both of them.

Buzz on the Street

Spirit Wardens called form all the districts to investigate demonic presence in the Docks. People on dry land are drowning spontaneously.

Nightbreaker still at sea (won’t dock) despite orders from the Ministry. Electroplasm in the city is running low.

Lord Sukur [who we know is possessed by Roric] returns from the Lost District!

Entanglement and other fallout

Eren trying to breaking into the Devil Hunter’s Lodge but is foiled by the wards Elke placed.

Rosslyn (aka Lady Drake) asks Jadvyga if she knows anything about the death of Captain Lannock (they are trying to pin it on a city council member)

Needle finds out Elke was arrested and had been in Bellweather.

Downtime

Hix gathers info! Rysus (longshoreman, tired, worried) set up a meeting with Needle (a Bluecoat agent of Lord Strangford), who has a job for her. The DSS is to bring an artifact (that looks like a dream catcher) to Naria Strangfold, currently a captive in Bellweather Crematorium. He also tells Hix that Strangford is planning a coup of the city council [Sean, why the heck did he spill these beans?]. Rysus is rewarded for setting up the meeting with a night of free drinking…and the attention of Needle.

Harland went to recruit new members to the True Path. Wisdom of the Ages (From the ghosts by the way of the Hand of Kotar?). Finds potential recruits: isolated and socially awkward new students at Charterhall. [Indulging Vice]

Elke talks to Nyryx about how to hold onto four ghosts at a time [Indulging Vice]

Hix visits professor Montgomery Beaumont who tends to her wound and has theories about the divine presence enshrined in the Rail Jack’s arm [Recovery]

After game thougths

Scurlock wants to bring his son to life. Bastion can only stay in the hull for short periods of time. Every time he goes in he looses some of his free will. Bastion is the creation of Skurlock and Elke’s grandmother?

 

Actual Play – Peace Made in Tangletown (9/26/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes I jotted down before the game. Did these make sense back then?

Tentacle Monster Attacked their ship as they tried to dock. What the what even? (it was drawn to their lightning barrier hull)

At the meeting in Tangletown

  • Sergeant Lochlan (speaking for Captain Dunville)
  • Corran, in butchers garb cooking meat (fierce, loyal, quiet)
  • Erin (ghost, shrewd, tough, cunning)
  • Darmot, with the Bluecoats
  • Tor (Billhook, chewing, spitting, bored)

How it went down:

We’ were just doing a job: 6/6 Ticks filled and the Billhooks back off, but with the following consequences:

  • Corran will not rest until Elke is dead
  • Corran hates Elke but believes her that Erin isn’t totally stable. (A crack in their bond forms)
  • 4 coin spent to appease the Bluecoats as well as the Billhooks.

Entanglement

Unquiet Dead: Erin comes for retribution!

Faction Clocks Move

The Ministry is investigating the death of Captain Lannock. Rooting out seditionists and making an example of the Emperor’s might. Naria Strangford (the Lord’s daughter) brought on trial for harboring rogue spirits and practicing vamparism! Found guilty by Judge Mora and imprisoned in Bellweather.

Leviathan Hunters demand the Iruvian hunting grounds as theirs have all but run dry.

Ghosts are close to breaking free from the bonds that tether them to the Keeper’s lighting towers (3/4 ticks)

 

Actual Play – Ending the Smear Campaign (9/19/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves,  Adrienne Mueller, and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Notes I jotted down before the game. Did these make sense back then?

Frost comes back with Lizette in manacles. Tells Hix about the investigation, asks what in the Devils she is doing.

Preceptor Dunvil (formally)

Danwood and Harland requested to consult on new cult activity. Someone is luring students into Crow’s Foot. When the come back they’ve started having violent nightmares.

I think this was partial list of gang members (sometimes it’s real hard to remember everyone in the crew)

  • Cavelle (ghost, destroyed)
  • Wester (ex-member, now a Lampblack)
  • Ring (ghost, ex-member, returned to the Path of Echoes)
  • Quintus (ghost, paranoid, insistent, savage)
  • Scapa (ghost, lawyer)
  • Thistle (leader in the True Path cult)
  • Brie (recidivist, part of the True Path cult)
  • Hoxen (ghost, knows the ritual of spirit embalming)
  • Myst (Tycherosi)
  • Leanna (Rosslyn’s of the Gills daughter)
  • Litha (part of True Path cult)
  • Lizette (leader in the True Path cult)
  • Irelen (former member of the Dimmer Sisters, broken)

More fallout stuff

The office of the Ministry of Preservation claims that the City Council are harboring rogue spirits any the council members have refused to comply with their attempt to investigate. Lady Slane is taking members of the council to appear before a magistrate. Judge Moria presiding.

Lord Strangfor has refused the summons and his ship, the Nightbreaker has halted it’s return to Doskvol and is now moored in the bay just outside the city. It is full of refined Leviathan Blood, much needed by the city.

Quellen asks Elke for Electroplasm, her supplies are running out.

Notes from the game

Oh Sean, why do you do this to yourself. Who is supposed to know what this means?

Ink Rakes: Echo Mae / Urlan Bertani – Have  vendetta against them because in Charterhall they reserved the reading room indefinitely and she could never find a place to study. But, also she was payed to draft the smear campaign by “The Hook”.

Corro appears – Armed with silver nail mercenaries and offers the Crow’s Roric’s location to buy his own skin.

Roric negotiates with the Reconciled who all vie for powered. Tipping Ministry of Preservation off about Reconciled (Maybe I meant council?). Sneaks one of them into use the Hand.

Entry into Crows Foot

  • Encounter Ghost Echo, which Elke destroys with Tempest (first time using it)
  • Scouted after the enter by Lampblacks (but one in hospital?)

Talk to Cross and find out “Hook” is Corran (one of the leaders of the Billhooks)

Convince Darmot (Bluecoat) to setup a meet with Corran in Tangletown.

Present at the meeting is Sergeant Lochlan (works for Dunvil)

Summon Ink Rakes with this lure:

  • We have info about the City Council
  • Meet us in a canal under Hill Street
  • Contact is Echo Mae

Clocks

  • Wanted (8 Heat): 5/8 ticks
  • Spirit Wardens Destroy Six Arms: 0/4 ticks
  • Path of Echoes takes The Gills: 1/6 ticks
  • Find out who is involved with the smear campaign: 4/4 ticks (Billhooks, Bluecoats, and Ink Rakes)
  • End Investigation: 1/6 ticks (First tick gained by sending Inspector Frost to investigate the Church of Ecstasy)

 

Actual Play – Feast of the Dead (9/13/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Note: I fell way behind on my AP reports so these are written many moons later based off my notes. The accuracy will likely vary greatly! Also, this is just transcribed from my notes. Things may be out of order!

Downtime

Investigation of the Pox placed on those who touched the Hand of Kotar. Through some reference to the old text that once belonged to the Dimmer Sisters they discovered it was called Liar’s Bane ad that once infected the speakers lies would echo through the ghost field and attract angry spirits, which come to torment the speaker!

To break the transmission of the pox, the would have to find the ghost of a whisper who could consume the spectral resonance that surrounded the infected, otherwise it would travel from person to person, in the order that they touched the Hand.

Jadvyga recovering from both her limp (from jumping out of a building if I remember correctly) and from her dread.

Elke, now aware that ghosts could be “healed” by feeding them from the spectral remains of others trapped in a spirit well, took Scapa (who had become both Violent and Vengeful in her death) to the spirit well that Grigg’s fed Rorick on, and though she wasn’t attuned to it, she ventured to dip Scapa into the well, tether her with a lightning hook and let her feast on ghosts she compelled to offer themselves up. The process was dangerous and gruesome, but after being sated Scapa seemed to regain some of her humanity (or at least someone’s humanity, she was now Elitist and Fierce, not her original traits, but he she can keep feeding, she can hold onto them!)

Hix sought to become close friends with Oilweather by working with him and helping him elevate his status in front of the other professors and students, and to do she she delved into his works and became a catalyst for his connection to the Ministry, from whom he sought a grant [Devil’s Bargain, Hix’s reputation is chained to his, and vice versa].

A member of the I’Yalim named Zara Jayaan showed up (to reclaim the statues?)

Lady Drake and Elstera Avrathi (Magistrates). Why are they in my notes again?

Elke Indulges her vice by perusing Mordis’s wares.

She also tells Scapa now that she’s recovered, that they need help with legal issues.

What Rocked

Some revelations in this game! We figured out how Reconciled get that way, or at least how some of them do. It’s pretty horrific, but also, not surprising. It was delightful coming to that together. It also puts the Gondoliers in a strange position with the Reconciled. Fun!

Also, Liar’s Bane. How cool is that?

Actual Play – What is known cannot be unknown! (8/22/2017)

GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Karen Twelves and Eric Fattig
System: Blades in the Dark

Note: I fell way behind on my AP reports so these are written many moons later based off my notes. The accuracy will likely vary greatly! Also, this is just transcribed from my notes. Things may be out of order!

Downtime and Free Play Continues…

Elke indulges her weird vice going to The Black Tree along with Nyryx, Quellen, and Jadvyga. They have drinks that taste like strange unpronounceable words, people passing spirits back and forth between each other, and a shadowy ghost god that guards the outside.

They came however to watch the Whisper Cage matches which were being announced by a woman named Talon (Severosi, wears a silver talon ring). The contenders were the Red Claw vs. the Broken Mask. A ghost was released that was made of claws and beaks emerging from a gaseous body that dripped of acid. The Claw won and the Broken Mask was dragged out by his ankles, with black fluid coming out from behind his spirit mask.

Elke’s spirit warden brand made her stand out so there was some discussion about how to remove it, should Elke go home (Nyrxy was all in favor!), and that Elke doesn’t have to be like her Grandmother. Hah!

Harland asked Griggs to come see him and when she arrived she came in gondola with two acolytes and a specter hovering over her. Despite her suspicions of him, Harland convinced her to give him access to the spirit well she kept hidden (by threatening to tell the other Gondoliers about it!), so Harland and crew could get access to it.  [Long Term Project for him to attune to it]

At the spirit well, Elke attuned and realized that the spirits were feeding off each other, and that should could develop or find a ritual that would all her to “heal” the ghosts in the gang by letting them siphon off the mental energies of the ghosts inside.

  • What does the ritual do and how is it weird? – Removes the “ghost” traits that non-reconciled ghosts acquire over time. It looks horrific because the ghost has to consume other ghosts to do so.
  • What must I do to perform the ritual, and what is its price? – Bring the ghost to the spirit well and hold it tethered so that it is able to feed from the well without being sucked it [3 Stress and a downtime action]
  • What new belief or fear does knowledge of this ritual and its attendant occult forces instill in you? – By the devils, all reconciled ghosts are cannibals! Is this what Nyryx does?

Jadvyga looked for a source to break the bond between demon and humans. She visited Quellen for aid and tapped into her ancestral memories. She remembered far, far back to an ancient battle where the first Tycherosi made a pact with a demon to carry it’s blood through the generations in exchange for helping them win a war against the demons that were assaulting them! Jadvyga is, understandably, freaked out!

Elke returned to Danworth to find him in an even worse state than before. He had figured out what the Church was doing, how they planned on emptying bodies of their souls in some attempt to transcend into an eternal soulless life, and how they were following in the wake of … oh, shit…. the Emperor. When they realized that their finding even suggested that the Emperor may in fact be a demon, they both panicked and destroyed months and months worth of research. The collected it all and ran it to an incinerator, ensuring that it was completely destroyed before they left.

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