GM: Sean Nittner
Players: Eric Fattig, Adrienne Mueller, and Karen Twelves
System: Blades ’68
Last session was the City Council Cage Match and it led to a huge revelation from Lord Dunvil (he’s been using the hull project to create an army of hollow assassins) and enough heat to fall on the Dirt Barons that one of them was going to Ironhook.
Aftermath
As she entered a cab towards six towers Nav noticed a static charge in the air causing hairs to rise ever so lightly. The cabbie was silent and efficient on his way to Six Towers. As he started crossing the Candle Street bridge however, he started speeding up to unsafe speeds.
On his way through Brightstone to a midnight rendezvous with Kassius Carver, Paolo noticed the plasmovision sets blaring away the news in a fancy electronics store across the way. As he passed through an ally, he noticed a smoker who had been walking behind him pick up speed to close the distance.
Nav put her gun to the driver’s head. He did not flinch. She looked in the rear view mirror of the autopod and saw his eyes, dead and empty.
Paolo suffered a single glace back and noticed the smoking man and noticed the glint of metal in his hands.
Nav switched cartridges to tranquilizer darts and shot the driver in the neck. The dart barely penetrated his leathery skin and the tranq had no effect. He continued to accelerate as cars honked and pedestrians yellow out in alarm.
Paolo darted through a gate into the back yard gardens of post Brightsone residents. The man followed after, undeterred by any obstacle. Paolo began a full tilt run over fences, through windows, down allies, and around corners. He gain himself some breathing room, but the predator was still after him [Success on a Risky/Limited Prowl]
Nav tried to open the door the cab but found the knob on the door latch was removed and sharpened steel protruded instead. She curses as her fingers were cut pulling at it. She switched the cartridge back to normal bullets, took aim at the door lock and fired. She kicked open the door to the autopod and bounded out on the quad of Charterhall University just as the car crashed at full speed into Morlan Hall. [Desperate/Standard Finesse with the Wetwork ability]
Dunvil’s assassination attempts failed. This time.
Critical Condition
Meanwhile, with the help of GRD-9, Delta had disassembled most of his components and spread them out across the base to try and repair them, but it was beyond his ability. His charging receptacle was fried, his core containment fractured, and the majority of his components were mangled beyond repair.
GRD-9 remembered what it as like to be hunted and asked if Delta though he would be safe returning the the Golden Hand. The scene at the council meeting was not one that they would forget, and humans can be very cruel to hulls. Delta was confident Paolo and Nav would protect him, but could they once they turned him over to the Golden Hand for repairs. Could Croc keep him safe?
Nav and Paolo returned to the base from their harrowing escapades to find Delta scattered around the room in parts along with many of Paolo’s cravats. Would would clean up after him if Delta was gone?
Downtime, the usual stuff.
Nav knew that if word of the council meeting got back to her family it would be the end of her “visit” to Doskvol. She worked her friend Mita Ankhayat to intercept the report that would have gotten back to them. News travels through the Ankhayat Consortium and Mita called in a favor with Harani, the local diplomat (read: spy) to intercept not only that report, but other activities in the city. What else could that report contain?
When the job was done and the two friends could relax in a cafe, Nav revealed that she was in danger. Mita, always the dilettante, suddenly became very serious and aware of her surroundings “Do you need a way out of the city?” Nav assured her that she was going to be okay (which they both knew was a lie, but propriety and good manners prevented Mita from saying so) but did drop a hint that it was Dunvil who was after her. Mita gave Nav a location in the Docks, 46 Sea Shanty Lane and a passphrase that would last until next Elisar “The serpent slithers smoothly through the sea.” [Indulge Vice: Obligation. 6 stress cleared]
Delta, disassembled, worked on his charging station, but cannibalizing still more parts from his own frame [Devil’s Bargain: Level 1 Harm missing parts]. With GRD-9’s assist he was able to make progress [Up to 8/10 ticks on the Generator Clock]. Delta’s critical condition worsened, every day it seemed like his core might fail [All harm boxes filled].
Paolo, who needed some a thrill after that last job [Harm Condition: Self Medication] couldn’t really throw the dice because of his sprained arm, so he settled on betting of races at the Ankhayat Autodome. As soon as he arrived he noticed that he had a tail, but thankfully this one had eyes with life in them. Just your ordinary security. Paolo was grumpy about being there, muttering to himself, and generally planning on being alone with his own troubles when Mack Ransom appeared and patted him on the shoulder (of course the one with the sprained arm). “Paolo, my friend? Are you here to race? No, to bet. Do you need a few stacks to cover you? I could always extend your debt to me?” Paolo didn’t accept Mack’s money, but he did agree to “owe him a favor” in order for Mack to set up another meeting with Kagney. Paolo hadn’t done the job, but he had put a dent in the Hull Directive, so maybe that would be enough to smooth things over. [Indulge Vice. 4 Stress Cleared]
Downtime, continued and amplified
Nav followed up on her final lead, the Charterhall clerk Nadia Royce. Nav stalked her for a few days. The clerk went to work on a direct path and returned home afterward. She looked both ways when she crossed the street, had four bolts on her apartment door, had her windows covered, and in all other ways appeared a very private, if paranoid person. But people have to eat and eventually she went to a little bodega in Charhollow to buy supplies. Just as she was putting a bag of rice into her basket, Nav, who had been tailing her the whole time, startled her by saying “Nadia Royce, I’m not with the Bluecoats, but I have some questions for you about G. Rubens.” The woman paused for a long moment, put the rice back on the shelf, set her basket down, and walked out of the bodega into Charterhall part.
It took some time to gain her trust, and then she finally admitted how she agreed to sworn testimony against George so that she would face the same sentence he had. “George worked beside me for year in the accounting office. I always wondered if he would ask me out, but he never did. George was honest, curious, a terrible dresser, clumsy, but most of all, very kind. He was good with numbers and read voraciously, but that was bad for his eyes and even with glasses he began to have trouble making things out. That’s how I got involved.”
Nadia looked once again the park to see if others were watching and Nav assured her that they were alone. “He found some ancient ledger in tiny spidery handwriting that he couldn’t make out, but I could. It showed evidence of City Council funds being diverted, embezzlement for sure, in order to get a document moved out of the Ministry of Preservation, that’s what they used to call the Ministry of Stability back in the day. As far as we could tell someone paid a small fortune to have the document procured, but over time it was just forgotten about.”
“So, naturally, George, being curious, we went to find it ourselves, to see what someone had paid so much for, and then forgotten about. In a dusty bankers box we found it. Rolled up paper, but thicker than paper, vellum maybe, covered in symbols we did not understand. I wrote down the first few and I think they said—” Nadia tried to work around the words in Hadrathi, sounding them out like a child first learning to read. It took a few attempts, but Nav eventually realized the words she were saying was “Leviathan Song.”
Nav inquired about the crime. Why was he arrested? “We spent two days together trying to solve this puzzle. When we returned to work there was Section 6. The grabbed poor George and hauled him away. They took me in for questioning. They told me he, and three other men I did not recognize, had kidnapped me, killed a guard, and held me for two days. They told me if I signed a statement saying that was true, I could go back to my old life. Or I could go to Ironhook and be subjected to the Lusk Reform Treatment for violating the Espionage Act, theft of government property, and leaking classified information.” Nadia looked down, ashamed, and after a pause she continued “I took the deal, and now I lead the shell of a life. I see ghosts in every corner. I never know when the wardens will change their mind and come for me.”
Nav told Nadia that George was still alive (in some sense of the word) and that if she wanted to visit him she could. Nadia accepted Nav’s card but it was clear she was too scared to take her up on the offer. She did however, rifle through her purse (where Nav noticed she caried a snub-nosed shooter) and pulled out two paperclips, which she latched together. “Give him this. He’ll know what it means.”
Just as the were going to depart, Nadia told her one other thing. “Later, I went back to check on the document and of course it was gone, as I had suspected. But I noticed in the records that someone named Rajan had entered the archives just after we did. I’m not sure what that means, but perhaps it will mean something to George.” [8 Tick Clock – What was Rubens arrested for completed]
Rubens was trying to merge his consciousness with Delta. Ever since the anomaly it had happened a few times on accident during moments of duress or when familiar things had appeared. Every Rubens tried to assert himself intentionally however, he suffered enormous pain and found himself constrained by PROGRAM DIRECTIVES. It was an awful experience, but oddly as Delta’s power core was weakened, he found it more bearable .
Paolo was walking aimlessly through the base, almost unaware of Delta’s presence because he was so disassembled asking “Now, where is my trowel?” when Rubens spoke to him [Adrienne uses a different voice for Rubens and Delta, very distinct]. “Paolo, Paolo. Do you recalling obtaining a box for me?” Paolo was confused, unsure whose voice this was and where it was coming from. Eventually he realized it was Delta’s voice box, but Rubens’ voice.
They talked about Paolo’s trowel, which was misplaced, cousin Stev, which Rubens was delighted that Paolo know, and in that, we all realized that Rubens recent memory watch patchy and incomplete. Occasionally Delta had to surface to fill in the gaps. Eventually Paolo did give Rubens the cigar box of his old notes.
As they spoken Nav entered the base, ready to share what she found, but she heard Paolo speaking to someone she did not recognize. Immediately she had her guard up, stalked into the room and burst in with her gun drawn…only to find Paolo still rooting around for his trowel and the disassembled parts of delta speaking in a voice she had never heard. The conversation was difficult for Rubens. Many times his voice glitched and Delta’s auditory functions needed to be rebooted, but he was eventually able to tell his friends how he felt. “Thank you for helping me find myself. Thank you for treating me like and equal.” Paolo winced at all the times he had used Delta as his personal valet. “Well, almost like an equal” (Rubens twisted the knife).
Nav told Rubens about meeting Nadia and gave him the two linked paragraphs. The malfunctioning crackling noise he mad turned out to be a laugh, or his attempt at one. Back in the clerks office, Nadia and Rubens joked that the whole place was held together by paperclips and that the thin veneer of government process could devolve into chaos at any time. They had a long chain of paperclips strung together, and every time a too-important politician would misplace a document, fail to file on time, or otherwise flagrantly break the rules, they would add a clip to the chain. Delta asked GRD-9 (who know that he was going to by Rubens asked if she could be called Geraldine) to help in integrate the paperclips into his circuitry. [Resolve training to gain a dot in Attune]
Paolo finally found his trowel and told the crew he wanted to plant the rowan tree that he had been nursing. The tree was getting big enough, it needed more fertile land to grow in. And it was part of a spiritual journey for him. In order to heal his own wounds, he wanted to do this. Nav was skeptical at the least “Wait, is this a religious thing? Remember that time you joined a cult?”
“To my credit, it wasn’t a cult when I joined. I just became a cult afterwards.”
“And they made you their cult leader!”
“Yes, well, I can’t help it if people love me.”
Sister Elsa, who had given Paolo the tree in the first place, back when it was just a wee sprout, went with him to plant it in Charterhall. As the crossed the bridge he felt a compulsion, almost a magnetic force, guiding him to take it to the Bellweather Fusion Station.
Electroplasm makes modern life possible, powering everything from the city-protecting bubble down to every humble lightbulb. Electroplasm was once refined from leviathan blood, but today the world runs on electroplasmic fusion. This super-efficient process turns a deceased person’s psychic residue, their resonance echo, into raw electroplasmic power. Where once the dead were cremated to stop their echoes haunting the physical plane, now they are cycled through the fusion plant to contribute to the safety and prosperity of those still living. The body remains intact, and Section 6 disposes of it privately and respectfully.
The secrecy around the Bellweather Fusion Station has led to a number of conspiracy theories. Anti-war activists often assert that the Imperium’s constant warfare (or “peacekeeping”) is really just to keep the fuel flowing. oldiers are conscripted, die on the frontlines, and their bodies are sent back home in resonance-stasis to be disposed of properly at a fusion station in Akoros.
[As a GM I was quite torn here. Paolo has been slowly guided by his dreams and his encounter with the Rowan tree itself to take this action, but from the faction point of view, this is a huge task. A 10 tick clock for a Tier 4 faction. This should require multiple steps, probably multiple scores, and really be a huge project…and also it’s something we’ve been playing with for a while, and I just wanted to see what would happen. Sometimes a clock fills one tick at a time, and sometimes you just walk into a building confidently with a trowel in hand.]
Bellweather is a mass of juxtaposing paradoxes. A sleek ultra-modern bubble designed facility, built inside of and often protruding through and ancient stone tower, fitted together with rough cuts of an unfamiliar black stone. Most people didn’t notice them, but as he passed Paolo’s eyes were drawn to the runes carved into the iron bands that reinforced it. At the entrance were two vacant looking greeters. The stood, handed out brochures, smiled, and Paolo knew from their eyes that they would just as soon say “Goodday” to him as break every bone in his body. Thankfully these weren’t the hollows that had been hunting him, but they were terrifying just the same.
As he passed through the threshold he felt the same tingling of static electricity that Nav had a few nights before. Inside there was a Charterhall professor walking a group of students through the public displays “And this is the generator that funnels power into the B.L.U.E Array, which gives us the beautiful sky above.” Paolo smiled as he walked in, looking all the part a gardener and made it by with only a few wayward glances [Devil’s Bargain. 2 heat to get in. Accepted].
As soon as he trowel touched the ground however, he felt the power of the fusion station tugging at him, at his resonance, at his soul. He pledged the trowel deep and with it his intention to change the resonance field, and history, forever. [Success on a Desperate/Standard Attune, with help from Sister Elsa who gave him an obsidian pendant (Spirtbane charm) to protect him].
Paolo planted the rowan tree and felt a sense of accomplishment. He had competed a journey. Sister Elsa helped him stand and as he put his hand on her shoulder he saw the Rowan house signet ring, the one that had always been there. [Mega Anomaly #2 for this game, the first was the starting session. This technically didn’t fill any type of downtime action, but borrowing from Deep Cuts a bit (as I haven’t been here and there) we classified it as Work, in this case for another faction.]
Downtime, wrapping up
Rubens gave Geraldine instructions for tidying up after Paolo. She’s very good at throwing things away (a street sweeper hull by design) not so much at ironing and folding. But she committed to doing her best and they said their goodbyes.
Paolo and Nav very, very carefully loaded up the still connected by wires but otherwise disassembled chassis of Delta into a cart and brought it to the Golden Hand arcade. The were not permitted entry, but shortly after the door guard Gamma units identified Delta and surveillance cameras zoom in on his broken form, Croc came out of the building (which he never does) and raced to the entrance, tears in his eyes. He saw the core ultraplasm generator cracked, the resonance echo chamber lights dampened, the mangled gears, and lamented his poor child. He brought the barons back to his workshop (which he is forbidden to do) and began working to stabilize Delta’s critical infrastructure. Many hours later, sweat dripping from his brown, he emerged to tell them that Delta, all the important parts that make up Delta at least, would survive. [Recharge. 5 Drain recovered]
It was a few days later when they got a message from Croc, delivered via carrier hull, and then via Little Gallo (who of course read it). Kavira had turned over Delta to the Bluecoats.
Hulls don’t go to Ironhook, and if a hull takes the fall for the crew’s crimes they’ll either be decommissioned or have their memory wiped.
That’s the rule at least, but this was the first exception. Someone pulled strings to make sure that Delta’s suffering would continue.
Paolo and Loretta got about filing papers, greasing hands, and charming clerks to make all the residual heat the Barons had disappear. The didn’t want any more visits from Vran. [Reduce Heat]
Hard Time
A few months passed with Rubens and Delta in Ironhook. It was, suffice to say, the worst time in his life(death?). As a defense mechanism, Delta often took over, trying to mitigate the many threats waylaid upon him. The results of his time:
- Physical Toll: Minor damage to his frame from the many assaults with makeshift weapons. [Level 1 Harm]
- Metal Toll: A stressful (and draining) experience that left Delta harried [4 Drain]
- Schemes: An attempt to help out the SCORPION Syndicate move product through Ironhook inside his hidden compartments backfired. The compartments had never been searched until he had a visitor that then, worst timing imaginable, they found the contraband. The visitor, of course, was Noleburn, just Delta’s luck [-1 faction status with Scorpion Syndicate]
Time Passing outisde
Meanwhile, Nav and Paolo had to oversee the Dirt Baron’s expansion [upgrade to Tier 1] as the the rest of Doskvol took notice of them.
Paolo mostly thrived during this time.
- Win: He continued following Kassisus to find out who he really is (see below)
- Setback: Mack did help make things right with the Blackjacks, but to celebrate they went out riding on souped up autocycles and Paolo had a bad crash [Level 1 Harm: road rash. Level 2 Harm: bum leg]
- Win: Maybe it was the accident, maybe it was his own spiritual journey, but Paolo finally learned to take it easy some times [Deadlock “Can’t back down” shifted back to the Key “Competitive”]
Nav had some ups and downs
- Win: She found a new friend Harani Ankhayat, who it turns out is in a similar predicament. The entire Ankhayat Consortium are members of a failed coup in Iruvia, that have been exiled to Doskvol. That package she intercepted (see above) also included information about the AC activities she didn’t want anyone to see. Harani is going to have some jobs for the Barons next game!
- Setback: The assassination attempts from Dunvil’s Hulls continued and she’ll start the next score both stabbed [Level 2 Harm] and bruised [Level 1].
The Dirt Barons, as a whole, had some wins and losses, but mostly losses. People don’t like new kids in town take up turf.
- Win: The finally buried the hatchet with Dunvil so his assassins will stop coming after them [+1 faction status with City Council, going from -2 to -1. We’ll figure out how the did this next session].
- Setback: Turns out Delta shared a little more that he should have in Ironhook and inadvertently revealed that the Barons snuck Blaze onto the Storm Surge and gave him schematics for the ship. [-1 Faction status with SCORPION Syndicate, down to -2]
- Setback: After the city council meeting Bowman, who had already been keeping tabs on Nav because of the SMF documents she leaked to him, completed his investigation of the Dirt Barons [+4 Ticks on that clock, filling it]
Kassius Carver(s)
After some trailing, Paolo there was definitely a difference between the Kassius inside Comber house an the one he was dating. For one thing, the Kassius he knew kept marveling at the BLUE array and let slip he didn’t have one of those where he was from. Also, each Kassius seemed to know what the other knew, but the knowledge was incomplete and delayed.
Finally he tracked him into the SMF building and then and then waited and saw both Kassius and Kassius walk out of a room side by side.
When confronted outside Kassius finally revealed the truth. He wasn’t from his world. He came through a rift [Mega Anomaly #3] controlled by Castelle Fane. In his world there is no array and Doskvol is still in darkness. He loves it here, but there’s a cost. He can only exist half the time, as Fane’s agent on the outside. His local counterpart, from this Doskvol takes over when he enters the building. The each live a half life. He does it because his home was terrible and a half life is better than none at all. He doesn’t know why the other Kassius accepted the deal.
As a minor (MAJOR) other point, he noted he wasn’t the only one. Castelle Fane, the one running everything, is from his world as well. He doesn’t know what happed to the Castelle Fane here!
[Internal note. I redid my art for Kassius to make them more believably the same person and to correct the blue/orange color coding. I had it wrong before]
Open questions for Nav
Here were some questions I had about Nav’s inquiries at the start of this session:
- Will Nav recover the unredacted minutes from the council meeting? Not sure, but maybe she did, and trading them was the way to get Dunvil to back down?
- Will Nav find out why Rubens was arrested? Yes she did!
- Will Nav research the ritual of binding found in the Comber House? Not this time but after we learned what we did about Kassius, maybe she will!
- Will Nav pursue the Blueraker-5 project? Not this session, but it’s still on the table.
I really like the time passes rules. It makes sense for the crew going up in tier and skipping over prison time. It also helps clear up some old lingering threads (resolve them or drop them) and helps me think of the game in terms of a “season”. I’m excited for Season 2!
Next Session
We’ll open with some montages. The assassination attempts, how they got Dunvil to back off. Noleburn’s meeting with Delta, Paolo’s debt to Mack, and maybe a sign that they’ve fallen from the good graces of the SCORPION Syndicate.
Planned score: acquire Kassius Carver as a shadowy fixer. I’m sure SMF won’t mind losing one of their Carvers!
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