🗳️ Session 3.2: A long way from home

Emma seeks her quarry. Aldo does what he must. Roric weighs his options.

Last episode, lost sister Emma resolved to offer the Burnt King a sacrifice in an attempt to earn her freedom: Her god demands the life of Chael, the alley baron who, by some strange coincidence, has been making her brothers’ lives rather difficult. When we left her, she had managed to successfully sneak out of Dalmore House, evading the watchful gaze of Mr. Seek, Madame D.’s dangerous and relentless enforcer, and was heading towards Crow’s Foot.

Meanwhile, the Jesseks ran afoul of the Billhooks, a bloody-handed gang of bravos who often tangle with Roric’s organization in Crow’s Foot. After Rian engineered a diversion, the trio escaped down to the Golden Hive’s meadcellar, where they discovered the method by which the Billhooks tracked them to this location — a skilled Whisper, attuning to the Ghost Field to locate Aldo himself.

Carver quickly dealt with the Whisper’s Cutter buddy, and Aldo managed to quickly get some answers from the man, who told them that their alley baron, Chael, engineered this ambush as retaliation for the Jesseks’ taking some territory he viewed as his.

We left off with Aldo making a choice — does he spare the Whisper’s life, knowing that he might help the Billhooks continue their pursuit of the Jesseks? Or does he put an end to the man? And, if he does, who does the deed? Carver, who despite his barely-controlled bloodlust, would really prefer not to make any more ghosts? Or Aldo himself, who has yet to bloody his hands?

We’ll soon find out what Aldo decides , but we’ll open the episode with Emma, as she makes her way towards Crow’s Foot, and her target.

Scene 4: The streets of Charterhall

The flames light the way south down the Imperial Way until Emma crosses into Charterhall, beneath the great stone arch that was once the old wall encircling the city. On either side of the Charter Gate are a pair of disused lightning towers reaching high above the surrounding buildings, their bronze sparkcraft artifice stained with green patina by age and neglect. Now, they house Bluecoat watch stations that guard the way from Six Towers into Charterhall, the city’s administrative district.

Emma keeps her eyes forward and walks past them with the confidence of one who was to the manor born, and the constables pay her no mind. Here, the streets are brightly lit with electroplasm lamps, but the Burnt King still makes his presence known—a watchman’s flickering lantern here, a lamp burning the midnight oil in a finnicker’s window there—whispering Emma’s name in His voice as she passes, urging her on and on. 

Soon, she reaches the narrow, cobblestoned Scrivener’s Bridge that leads from Charterhall into the tangle of alleyways and piled-high tenements of Crow’s Foot. Emma still remembers looking back at her old home as the Bluecoat sergeant -- a quiet, thickset man with a copper mustache and regretful eyes -- led her across this very bridge on their way to Dalmore House all those years ago. Standing post at the bridge is a pair of Bluecoats, ready to hustle folk from the Foot back from whence they came if they attempt to cross without business in Charterhall. As Emma passes, they look her up and down, taking in her demure manner and fine clothes—a black jacket and skirt with a spotless, starched white blouse beneath, the blackshrike emblem of Dalmore House stitched in dark thread on her breast—and she hears them mutter to one another. 

“What’s a lass like that about, heading into the Foot at murderers’ hour?” 

“Who cares? Shift’s almost over. None of ours.”

As she passes the constables and crosses the bridge, she feels a change in the Ghost Field around her. It thickens like a heavy fog, and in the cold night air, she hears snatches of whispers and echoes from the unquiet dead that cling to the doorways and streetcorners of Crow’s Foot, intermingling with the exhortations of her patron that continue to beckon her south towards her quarry. 

The towering blocks of flats loom on both sides of Cinder Street. At this late hour, the streets are sparse, so it is all too apparent when Emma acquires a tail: A pair of bravos prowl out of the shadows of the alleyway and begin to dog her steps. Behind her, she can hear them growling in low voices and laughing like jackals. She can feel the Ghost Field trembling in anticipation of their growing, violent urges. 

Her eyes cloud over as she opens herself to the field. In her mind’s eye, the many wounds of Crow’s Foot are lit in sickly red ghostlight; streaks and stains mark where folk bled their lives out in the streets. Behind her, she hears the bravos approaching, hard bootfalls on the cobblestones growing faster and nearer. She turns to face them.

In the Echo, the streets of Crow’s Foot are stained with blood. // Source: Midjourney

 They slow their approach, seeming to savor the moment. The lead bravo is tall, slender, and pallid with a knife-blade face. He wears a dark red overcoat and a black cord strung with a few cracked human teeth around his neck. “Where are you flying to, little blackbird?” he sneers. “You’re a long way from home.” 

Emma’s heart pounds in her chest, but she forces herself to breathe slowly and evenly, and quickly it stills. For what comes next, she does not wish to disturb the Ghost Field — fear draws restless shades just as surely violent impulses. “You’re mistaken, sir. Crow’s Foot is my home.” 

“You don’t sound like a lass from the ward. You sound like class. Maybe we should accompany you, make sure you’re safe. Gentle souls like you have a way of getting lost out here.” He draws close to her, reaching out to take her by the arm.

Emma barely feels it as he roughly grabs her — her mind is beyond the veil. With her free hand, she reaches out and stirs the Ghost Field, drawing the attention of the wraiths that lurk just out of sight in the dead lands beyond.

She hears the other bravo speak as though from a great distance. He calls out with fear in his voice. “Nestor¹, wait... her eyes! She’s a bloody Whisper!” 

From the GM's perspective, it seemed natural to throw up a small obstacle here as Emma is navigating Crow's Foot in search of Chael. To see these two off, she is going to try to make use of her skills as a Whisper and the supernaturally active environment of Crow's Foot. BitD's campaign setting establishes that the years of gang violence in the ward have left a mark in the Ghost Field, which can be taken advantage of, or used as a threat/obstacle.

Emma rolls Attune: Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 2d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 5,5,1 Success with a Consequence
Stress: Emma +2 (Total 2)

For the consequence, we'll start a 4-tick countdown clock: Fraying Veil. We'll start with one tick, and if Emma makes too much use of the Ghost Field here in Crow's Foot, the spirits will turn on her. 

Fraying Veil

The Ghost Field flickers and twists before Emma’s white eyes, and a black, gnarled hand reaches through the veil, tearing it like frayed silk. Nestor’s eyes widen, and his mouth falls open as the wraith emerges from the Ghost Field. Its form is like an ink stain in the air, man-shaped with a yawning maw and hateful red eyes. The bravo’s hand around Emma’s wrist goes limp as the thing’s twisted fingers brush his throat, and he stumbles backward on the cobbles, releasing his hold on Emma.

Crow’s Foot is among the most haunted wards in the city, and many of the wraiths lurk in the streets, trapped in the Ghost Field, hunger for vengeance against the living. // Source Midjourney

She doesn’t wait to see what becomes of her would-be attacker. She turns and flees, making for a creaking iron stairway that spirals its way up the side of a tenement hall and onto the rooftops of the Foot. Below, she can hear the bravo’s scream -- a high-pitched keening that cuts through the cold night air, accompanied by the sounds of heedless flight through the streets and cries of alarm and anger from folk awakened by the noise.

Emma makes haste to put the scene behind her, but the rooftops are dark — the light from the streetlamps below doesn’t penetrate the black, and the only light is that of the crescent moon, a sliver of silver in the night sky. She crouches for a moment to dig through her satchel for her lantern—not one of the alchemic lights common among nighttime wanderers in Duskwall, but a brass oil lantern favored by the secret devotees of the King. When she lights it, the small flame illuminates the darkness and whispers to her to carry on. 

Here, I take a moment to establish Emma’s Load — I chose Light², with just three inventory slots, and immediately mark one for the lantern. This is instead of making some sort of Gather Information roll to determine where she might find Chael — we’ve already established that the Burnt King is guiding her by using flame as a conduit, so marking off one of her scarce inventory slots can give us the fictional positioning we need to move forward.

The flame’s whispers lead her over the rooftops, connected by slender wooden footbridges over the broad avenues, until they fall silent at a strange corner of Crow’s Foot that the street signs below name Fisher Court. 

The court is a fenced-in yard that occupies a full city block, abutting a canal flowing with black water. The center of the court is dominated by three deep pools fed from the canal by sluices, barred by heavy iron gates. Dark green algae chokes the water's surface, but every few moments, the water ripples as something long and sinuous moves beneath it. It’s too dark for Emma to make out the shadowy shapes moving around the courtyard, but in the quiet of the night, she can hear snippets of angry, barked conversation.

Now it's time for Emma to be sneaky. She's not quite as good at it as Aldo, so she's going to have to push herself and possibly make a resistance roll if she fails or succeeds with a consequence. Thus far, I haven't been making too many resistance rolls, since consequences and complications drive the drama, but since Emma's alone and her stats are spread relatively thin, she's at a bigger risk of a string of nasty failures, and I'd rather keep her story moving forward if at all possible (though conceivably we could fail enough that she gets ‘stressed out’ and captured or otherwise indisposed). 

Emma rolls Prowl: Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 1d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 3,4 Success with a Consequence
Emma resists: 2, 6, +0 Stress 
Stress: Emma +2 (Total 4)

We do indeed succeed with a consequence -- I'll choose to lessen the effect, and then offset that loss by using another mark on Emma's Load: Burglar's Tools, which provide increased effect. 

She descends the side of the tenement down a sturdy brass drainpipe, reaching the street once again and making her way to the chain fence that surrounds Fisher’s Court. Her satchel produces a set of sharp pliers, and she smiles when she remembers Flint’s lessons on their use. The other girls at Dalmore House were used to sewing, stitching, and etiquette classes and were hopeless with the burglar’s tools, but her father had put the tools of his trade in her hands when she had just begun to walk, and the practice came easy to her.

With a few quick cuts, she opens a hole in the fence and makes her way into Fisher’s Court. She crouches low and keeps to the shadows until she finds a new vantage: a covered shed at the far corner of the yard, stacked high with wooden barrels marked “HAGFISH OIL -- FLAMMABLE³” in tall red lettering, with a crude flame pictograph beneath and above.

She peeks through a dirty glass window at the grim scene beyond. Two big cutters are stood at the edge of one of the pools, holding a sobbing man by his feet above the surface of the black water. Emma can hear the man begging in a high-pitched voice. 

“Please, Chael! I swear the count is right! I’d never steal from my baron, not on my mum’s ashes. I’ve always been a loyal brav to you, ain’t I?” 

Another man steps into view: Tall and slender with a wild mane of hair stuffed under a battered stovepipe hat. He comes to the pool's edge and calls down to the unfortunate below. “You think I can’t tell when my purse is light, you cheeky little shit? I don’t need a finnicker to tell me when I’m being magpied, and I don’t need an Inspector to tell me it was you who had the best chance to do it. The only thing that’ll save you from the fishes is if you tell me where the money is and who was into it with you.” 

“There’s no money, Chael! I put every bent slug in your lockbox at the Sergeant’s Arms⁴; on my honor, I did!” 

“Your honor?” Chael gives a rasping laugh. “If that’s all that’s holding you up, you don’t stand a chance, my son.” He nods to the bravos, who, without any further ceremony, drop the man screaming into the pool. The surface of the water erupts with motion—Emma can’t see into its depths from where she hides, but black water, foam, and flecks of thick green algae seethe from the surface—the bravos looking over the rail step back to avoid being sprayed by the muck. 

Emma is fairly confident that the man who ordered the death is the Burnt King's target, but she wants to be sure. Under normal circumstances, this is a Gather Information roll with no penalty for failure, but since we're tracking the Fraying Veil clock, I turned it into an action roll -- if Emma fails, it could advance that clock leading to a ghostly mishap of some kind. 

Emma rolls Attune, Controlled Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 2d (Attribute Rating)
Result: 5, 6, Success

Chael turns back from the pool and struts over to a knot of his men — Emma quickly moves from the window to the wide loading bay, peeking through the cracks in the wooden door for a better view. There are three more of them, surrounding a pair of pale-faced, nervy-looking civilians. One is an older man with a salt-and-pepper beard wearing heavy chainmail waders. The other is a younger woman, dark-haired and sallow-cheeked, with a bit of family resemblance.

Chael leers at the young woman before addressing one of his lieutenants. “Where’s Rollo? Where’s Nestor? They was sent out an hour ago; should’ve been back with our bag by now.” 

“Can’t say, gov,” the bravo answers tightly. 

“Obviously you can’t, you lackwit. You’ve been with me the whole time. Go look for them up Cinder Lane. Tell them to burn their soles getting back here; I ain’t got all night.”

As the man hustles off to do his baron’s bidding, Chael looks around, searching for another target for his temper, or his appetites. “Fucking stinks out here. I think I’ll take my ease in your office til my men return, Mister Comber,” he says to the man in the waders. Then, he turns to the young, dark-haired woman with a crude grin. “Maybe you’d like to join me, lass?” 

The man tenses, and so do Chael’s bravos, but she puts a hand on his shoulder and shakes her head. “It’s all right, uncle,” she says quietly before taking Chael by the arm and continuing in a sweet tone. “Come along, Mr. Chael; I’ll show you where we lay aside our good beer.” 

Chael gives her uncle a smug, self-satisfied grin and allows himself to be led to the farm’s office -- a squat, two-story shed of corrugated metal across the yard from Emma’s hiding place.

With Chael gone, his thugs begin to mill about, and as one of them approaches the storage shed, Emma makes her move.

Slipping out the back entrance before the bravo enters, she melts back into the shadows and skirts the courtyard's edge, mantling along the edges of the deep, dark pools towards the office shed. In the spot where Chael’s unfortunate victim was dropped, the surface periodically churns and bubbles -- one of the cutters who held him still looks over the edge with fascination, oblivious to Emma as she steals past him. After a short, low run and a few quick vaults, Emma finds herself on the top of the office shed -- there are a few skylights cut into the roof to let the moonlight in, and slowly, carefully, Emma peers in. 

We’ll pause this scene to check in with the Jessek boys before we close the episode out. When last we left them, Aldo was deciding what to do with the Billhook’s Whisper who is at their mercy. He has to make a quick decision — the Whisper can track them if left alive, but Aldo’s never killed anyone, and Carver has been trying to leave that part of himself behind (though it’s easy for him to slip into old habits). We put Aldo’s decision up to a vote — let’s see where we landed:

Aldo decides to take matters into his own hands. As we established in the notes of last episode, Aldo’s never killed anyone before, and this inexperience and hesitation could doom him — we’ll find out with a roll. He doesn’t have Skirmish, which is the relevant action rating, so we’ll substitute Finesse, which he does have, and set the position to Desperate. Carver is aiding by holding the man, even though he doesn’t know Aldo’s intentions.

Aldo rolls Finesse: Desperate Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 2d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Carver assists)
Result: 5,6,1 Full Success
Stress: Carver +1 (Total 4)

Aldo's first kill is an easy one. We'll see if he gets a taste for it. Back to the action:

Scene 4: The Golden Hive’s meadcellar, cont’d.

Aldo comes to Carver’s side, picks up the discarded billhook blade, and stabs it into the mead barrel next to the Whisper’s face. The sweet-smelling golden liquid begins to leak out.

“Why did you come after us?” Aldo hisses. “Who sent you?”

The Whisper laughs bitterly. “Your own people sold you out, Aldo Jessek. It was Chael who told us you took Candle Street and Hulliver Lane, and he told us where we could look for you. Those streets are ours.”

Aldo rolls his eyes. “You think Chael would let you keep that patch after you made ghosts of us? As soon as you moved in, it’d be war with him and all of Crow’s Foot.”

“War is our meat and beer, little Crow. Roric’s hold on the Foot is slipping, and when it does, we’ll be there.”

“Not much more time for pleasantries, Aldo,” Rian whispers urgently. “Chances are someone heard that pistol bark upstairs.”

“He’s the one with the spirit tricks, ain’t he, Aldo? Say the word.” Carver’s voice is thick with bloody eagerness.

Aldo hesitates only for a moment before he wrenches the billhook blade free from the mead barrel and draws a swift, straight line of red across the man’s throat. Both Carver and the Whisper wear masks of surprised shock — Carv releases the man from his grip, and the Billhook touches his throat, staining his hands red before he falls to the ground, his life’s blood bleeding out onto the cellar’s stone floor. Rian gapes at Aldo. “We had no choice. If we left him alive, they wouldn’t stop tracking us,” the elder twin responds.

Before Rian or Carver can agree or gainsay, he starts towards the meadcellar’s far wall. “Come on, lads, we can’t linger here.” Peering through his dark-sight optics, he scans the stones on the wall for a sign of the entrance to the Undercrofts⁵, and quickly, he finds it — a scoundrels’ glyph scratched into one of the bricks, pointing the way to a hollow, false-fronted barrel. The barrel opens with a quick turn of the cask’s spigot, revealing a narrow, dark tunnel leading out and down. Above, they hear scuffling by the trapdoor, and Aldo hustles them through, closing the barrel behind them before the Whisper’s brothers-in-arms come to find him.

The tunnel leads to a wrought-iron ladder that takes them down into a wide, round rail tunnel with rusted tracks and rotting, splintering ties. The trio creeps down the track, Aldo leading the way with his dark-sight goggles, though some light and sound filters in from grates above every few dozen paces. The Nightmarket buzz can be heard — shouting hawkers, laughing revelers, and music and cheers from street performances. The joyful din pauses for just a moment when a booming, sonorous bell rings out in the night — the great toll of Bellweather Crematorium, no doubt sounding for the Whisper Aldo just put paid to. Then the sounds of the night resume, just as raucous as before.

“That’s all for our Billhook friend back there,” Rian mutters, making a quick warding sign in the darkness. “The crow will be on its way, and after it, the Wardens. We should put as much distance as we can between us and that body. Where to, brother?”

Aldo thinks for a moment. “We have to go to Roric. We’ll tell him what the Whisper said — about the Billhooks preparing for war and about Chael’s double-dealing. He knows we’re honest thieves, and if Chael went behind his back to break the scoundrel’s peace in Crow’s Foot, Roric will have something to say about it. Can we get a meet tonight?”

“Won’t be easy — we’ll have to start with Lyssa, Rian replies. “She’ll be bedded down at the Leaky Bucket this time of night. She’ll know where to find him.”

To keep the pace of the action moving, we’ll resolve finding and arranging a meeting with Roric with a single Consort roll, which Rian is well-suited to execute, particularly if he spends 2 stress to push himself.

Rian rolls Consort: Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 2d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 5, 2, 6 Full Success
Stress: Rian +2 (7 Total)

Rian scores a full success. Smash cut to:

Scene 5: The Leaky Bucket

The Leaky Bucket is near-deserted at this time of night — the common room’s chairs have been put up, and Mardin Gull, the proprietor, is slowly and carefully wiping down the oaken countertop, scratched with hundreds of scoundrels’ names who’ve passed through the doors. Aldo watches Gull from the corner of his eye as he and his brothers wait at the bar — before Roric took the reins and became the Ward Boss a dozen years ago, it was Mardin Gull who wore the crown. No one knows what arrangement he made with Roric to leave the scoundrel’s life peacefully, but rumor is that Gull still advises his successor on the most important matters that face the Foot.

After a wait that feels like an age, the door to the tavern swings open, and Loose Lucas, one of Roric’s junior bodyguards, strides in looking sleepy-eyed, followed by the man himself.

If Roric was sleeping, he doesn’t show it: He’s turned out in his usual crow feather-trimmed greatcoat, and his eyes are quick and alert, taking in the Jesseks awaiting his pleasure and his second-in-command, who gives him a sardonic smile. “Sorry for calling on you at murderers’ hour, boss, but when I heard what Aldo had to say, I thought you’d want to hear it for yourself,” she says.

Roric’s dark eyes fall on Aldo. “You Jesseks have been busy lately. You made some trouble you need your boss’s help cleaning up?”

“In trouble, but not trouble of our making, governor,” Aldos says. “We were on the town in the Nightmarket, having a proper scoundrel’s time of it when the Billhooks came looking for us.”

“The Billhooks?” Roric growls. He looks to Lyssa. “Why are they crawling out of the hole we put them in?”

“Some people never learn, governor,” Lyssa says simply. “Ever since old man Tarvul went up to Ironhook, his seconds are hungry to prove they’re the bloodiest hand to lead the gang.”

“There’s more, Roric. To get away clean, we had to take their Whisper in hand — they used spirit tricks to track us down in the Nightmarket. When he was under my knife, he told us it was Chael that put them onto us. As payback for us taking the Candle Lane and Hulliver Street patch from him.”

Roric’s eyes narrow. “Is that so? What happened to this Whisper under your knife, Aldo?”

“I had to make a ghost of him, governor. If I hadn’t, they’d still be on our tail.”

Roric’s brows rise in respect. “I didn’t think you were the killing sort. Just a second-story man, you said.”

“It was him or us, governor.”

“And now it’s you or Chael, is it?”

“Begging your pardon, Boss Roric,” Rian interjects. “I don’t know much apart from pinching pockets, but I know he broke your peace. What happens to him isn’t up to us.”

Rian and Aldo, working together, are trying to move Boss Roric to action. Rian has the better stat here, so he jumps Let’s see how it goes:

Rian rolls Sway: Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 2d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Aldo Aids)
Result: 1,2,3 Failure

The Jesseks’ luck finally runs out. How to interpret this miss? Well, Roric is a pragmatic fellow, and he’s just been told that he’s facing a new conflict with an old enemy, and that one of his formerly trusted lieutenants, who’s always good for a fight, is double-dealing. A strong boss couldn’t overlook this betrayal, but an embattled one might have to, and there have been a few signs that Roric’s hold on the Foot is slipping.

We’ll use this complication as an opportunity to create a dilemma for the Jesseks.

Roric is silent for a long moment, his eyes darting between Lyssa and the Jesseks. Aldo watches his face, searching for some sign of what he might do. Roric glances at Mardin Gull, who’s stopped wiping down the bar and keenly listens to the exchange. After a beat, Gull gives a little head shake and returns to his work.

“Lucas,” he growls finally. “Bring the lads in.” Loose Lucas snaps to obey, opening the door and calling out to the bravos waiting outside. After a few moments, four more of Roric’s blades join them, and the room suddenly feels very crowded indeed.

“Where’s Chael, Lyssa?”

“He said he had some bloody business to take care of at Fisher’s Court tonight. One of his lads was skimming off the top, or so he thought,” Lyssa replies, her tone carefully neutral.

“Breaking the peace is a serious matter — and so is lying to your boss,” Roric says, sweeping a baleful gaze over the three Jesseks. “We’re going to go have a word with Chael, and you three are coming with. We’ll settle this matter tonight. Now be good lads, and put your blades and barkers on the bar.”

The dilemma is simple: Does Aldo trust Roric’s honor and his judgment of character? Or does he assume that he and his brothers are being led like lambs to the slaughter?

There’s also a bit of dramatic irony here: We know something that Aldo does not, namely that by the time they arrive at Fisher’s Court, Chael could well already be dead. If Aldo and his brothers flee this situation and Chael is found dead, they could be implicated in his killing and become hunted throughout Crow’s Foot. If they go along, lots of things could happen — including them arriving at the scene while Emma is still present!

I leave the choice up to you all. Mash the button below to vote!

We’ll collect votes next week, and the next episode will hit your inboxes on June 3. As always, thanks for reading, and I’ll see you in your inboxes next week!

Postscript: Welcome, readers of the Lone Toad!

I wanted to take a second to give a warm welcome to a bunch of our newest subscribers, who found their way here via the Lone Toad, authored by friend-of-the-Stack Croaker. If you’re new to PTFO and joined us from there, take a second to introduce yourself in the comments, if you feel so inclined. It’s awesome to have you all reading, and I hope I live up to the high standards of the other stacks that Master Croaker recommends! For those of you who are interested in further reading about solo RPGs, you couldn’t pick a better stack then his — check it out!

1. We met Nestor earlier, back in Session 1.4, as one of Chael’s bravos. Emma doesn’t know the connection, of course, but this is his patch, so it makes sense his people are out and about.

2. I tend to be a little strict with Load. The book describes a Normal Load as “You look like a scoundrel, ready for trouble,” and we’ve established through specific events — passing by Bluecoats with no trouble, for example — that Emma probably doesn’t fit that bill. A Light Load is described as “You’re faster, less conspicuous, you blend in with the citizens,” which seems more correct.

3. For those following along closely in the rules and setting book — this is a Hagfish Farm, one of the claims available to Duskwall gangs. It allows bodies to be disposed of discreetly — the hagfish consume the body from the inside and, by some quirk of their arcane biology, often consume the spirits of the dead as well as the flesh. It also sets up a big, fiery explosion here, but we’ll have to PTFO for that.

4. This is a bit of a throwaway line to establish the details of another potential score. We now know where Chael’s war chest is hidden. It’s probably not substantial compared to the more established gangs of the Foot, but it still could be helpful to our boys — assuming Emma can convey that information to them.

5. Recall that last episode, we posited the existence of an underground escape from this cellar, thanks to the Underground Maps and Passkeys crew upgrade the Jesseks recently purchased.