Session 3.3: Sicaria (Part 1)

Emma strikes. Roric arrives on the scene. Rian makes himself useful.

Last episode, Emma made her way south from Dalmore House, through the dark city streets, following the whispers of the Burnt King to her quarry, the alley baron Chael. Along the way, she was accosted by a few Crow’s Foot bravos, whom she saw off through the use of her Whisper abilities. She caught up with Chael at a hagfish farm, where she found him sending one of his unfortunate henchmen to sleep with the aforementioned fishes. After doing his bloody business, Chael retired to the farmhouse, with Emma following from the shadows.

Meanwhile, the Jessek brothers had one of the Billhooks who had ambushed them in the Nightmarket under his knife and forced the man to confess that it was Chael who sent them to find and kill the Jesseks. With that information, the Jesseks then approached Boss Roric, appealing to their underworld overlord for some measure of justice against his wayward baron. After a tense moment — and some meaningful looks between Roric and his advisors — Roric decided they would bring the accusation to Chael directly and asked the Jesseks to surrender their weapons and come along.

The decision as to whether the Jesseks would go along quietly was left up to you fine folks. Let’s see what you decided!

Although there are signs that Roric might be willing to betray their trust to keep a loyal lieutenant in place on the eve of war with the Billhooks, running now seems like too strong a move. The Jesseks agree to go along quietly.

We’ll jump back into that scene with the boys — note, this episode is mechanics heavy — lots of risky moves, stress spent and consequences doled out. Feel free to skim the mechanics if they’re not your bag, but if you’re interested in the nitty-gritty, there’s a bunch here.

Scene 5: The Leaky Bucket, cont’d

“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.”

There is a long pause. Aldo’s eyes dart between Mardin Gull and Roric, desperately trying to glean the boss’s intentions. Rian clears his throat and breaks the silence. “No worries there, governor, I’m as harmless as a suckling babe,” he says, holding up his hands placatingly. His tone is light, but his eyes are fixed on Aldo, waiting for some sign of his brother’s plans. Carver is likewise tense and ready, watching Lucas and Roric’s other bravos, sizing them up.

Slowly, deliberately, Aldo reaches into his coat and puts the Billhook blade — still wet with the Whisper’s blood — onto the bar. He clears his throat. “Carv.” Carver carefully reaches into his coat, draws his heavy iron chopper from its leather sheath, and lays it alongside the red-stained hook blade.¹

Roric’s eyes linger on Aldo’s iron before he speaks again. “Right, lads, let’s go for a ride.” One of his bravos hastens to offer his greatcoat, clinking with sewn-in armored plates and trimmed with black feathers, and Mardin Gull, still behind the bar, hands him his polished ebony sword cane. Armed and armored, Roric nods to Lyssa, his second-in-command and prima sicaria² of the Crows, who leads the assembly into the night.

Roric’s carriage awaits outside — a pair of yoked riding goats³ snort and paw at the cobbles, eager to move. Roric boards while the other bravos climb up on the carriages’ railings and runners. Lyssa gestures to the Jesseks towards the rear, where they can ride on a few navy lockers strapped to the rear of the coach. She vaults up to the shotgun seat and nods to the driver. The man gives the goats a whip, and the carriage rattles forward.

The group attracts attention as they move through Crow’s Foot — though it is late, there are still a few hawkers on corners and lookouts on stoops and high on iron fire-stairs. They nod in respect as the boss passes by, and more than a few send runners to warn other scoundrels that the boss is on the move. Carver, walking protectively at Aldo’s shoulder, mutters quietly. “Scoundrels are out late tonight. Everyone’s waiting for something.”

“The Billhooks are sharpening their iron on the other side of the canal, and in the Foot, the Lampblacks and the Red Sashes are at each others’ throats,” Aldo whispers back. “Roric’s the one who’s supposed to hold it all together, and everyone’s waiting for his next move.”

The carriage bounces and jars over the streets and alleys towards Cinder Street. The air feels colder here — perhaps because they’re getting closer to the dockyards and the black, inky sea beyond, but the change feels uncannily quick to be natural⁴. A sense of unease settles over the company, and Roric’s bravos fall silent. The carriage slows as the goats grow unsteady and uncertain. “The dead are hungry tonight. Eyes up, cutters, and keep your charms⁵ close,” the boss calls from within the carriage, his voice calm as can be. “We’ll be at Chael’s soon enough.” The driver gives the whip, and the carriage speeds up again, shaking and jarring the Jesseks as they roll towards their rendezvous with Chael.

Setting the Scene: Emma’s Mission

Here’s a good moment to cut back to Emma, shadowing Chael and waiting for her moment. I thought it’d be nice to do a deep dive on this setup, and how I’m thinking about it from the players and the character’s perspectives. If you’re primarily interested in the fiction, this is an OK part to skip!

GM-Side: Timekeeping

From the GM’s perspective, we’re trying to engineer a collision here between the two plotlines, where once again, Emma and her brothers will be at the same place at the same time, as they were in Session 1.2 and Session 1.3. It would be easy to get bogged down in the timeline here — we don’t know exactly when Emma received her dream that her brothers would be in danger. I did my best to depict it as an immediate threat in her downtime scenes in Session 3.1. Meanwhile, the Jesseks might have started their night out long enough before her dream that these timelines are now roughly coinciding.

But for me, the dirty secret of narratively-focused play is that at a certain point, the precision of these timelines simply does not matter. Gary Gygax was famously exacting about this topic, having remarked

“Game time is of utmost importance. Failure to keep careful track of time expenditure by player characters will result in many anomalies in the game. The stricture of time is what makes recovery of hit points meaningful. Likewise, the time spent adventuring in wilderness areas removes concerned characters from their bases of operations – be they rented chambers or battlemented strongholds.”

He’s speaking from a very simulationist POV. For more narratively focused tables, good timekeeping is useful only inasmuch as it’s good for creating stakes, tension, and compelling scenes for players to have fun with.

That’s what I’m aiming to do here: At the precise moment that the brothers are approaching Chael’s location, Emma is about to strike. It’s a bit of a coincidence, but it also follows from the current chain of events — the Jesseks are making upward moves, Chael is pushing back on them, and they’ve persuaded their boss to intervene, not knowing that their sister has been sent after their tormentor as well.

The remaining mystery is why Emma in particular would be sent by her patron deity to kill Chael. If things go the Jesseks’ way, maybe we’ll find out!

Player-side: Metagaming

The character decisions that led to this moment are two-fold: First, Emma’s decision to pursue Chael at the Burnt King’s behest, and then subsequently Aldo’s decision to involve Roric, and subsequently to accompany him to Chael’s.

In TTRPGs, there’s a definition of metagaming that means the use out-of-character knowledge to guide in-character action. It’s often frowned upon. But in narratively-focused games, it’s a powerful tool to drive interesting decision-making for a character. In fact, it can be a lot of fun to embrace the dramatic irony of knowing something your character does not, and playing into those situations, as long as there’s a reasonable explanation for your character to make your ‘metagamed’ decision.

Aldo doesn’t know that Emma is confronting Chael. Emma doesn’t know that Aldo is on his way. At the gaming table, the players could use their out-of-game knowledge to engineer this situation, hoping for a bit of heightened drama.

I’m curious how this lands with y’all — does the coincidental timing of events take you out of things? Do the metagamed decisions seem reasonable? How do you deal with timing questions like this with a split party at your gaming tables? Let me know in the comments.

Conveniently, all this metagaming and timeline jiggery-pokery also helps us position the players better in the game we’re playing: Now, the brothers are in a position to help Emma if she struggles in her mission.

We’ll return to the action with Emma moving into position to strike at Chael — the rolls in this scene come fast and furious, so we’ll go through an extended block of fiction and then break down all the rolls and their results:

Scene 6: The Fisher’s Court Farmhouse

Emma draws up her mask, a mourner’s shawl of black lace, and peers into the skylight window. The farmhouse is little but a corrugated iron box, partitioned inside by stacked crates and hanging sheets. Silently, Emma opens the skylight and steals inside, dropping onto the rafters and making her way towards her quarry.

Chael sits at the head of the farmhouse’s long table, his grimy, booted feet on its worn pine planks. His back is to Emma as he watches the farmer’s niece draw him a pint of thick, blackish beer from the kitchen’s small reserve cask. She puts the pint on the table, and Chael leers at her. “Go find some victuals, then. And some for yourself,” he says with mock magnanimity.

As the young woman hurries away, Emma drops to the farmhouse floor, aiming for soft canvas sacks to muffle her fall. While he awaits the woman’s return, Chael busies himself with his knife, playing a lazy game of five-finger filet. Emma quickly bars the door behind them and creeps closer, drawing the Burnt King’s knife from her jacket.

She knows she has little time. Less than she thought, even—the farmer’s niece appears in the doorway to the larder, and her eyes and Emma’s meet. With a flick of her head and pleading eyes, Emma gestures to the girl: Go back.

The girl gasps and drops the loaf of hardtack she was carrying to the ground. The rhythmic tapping of Chael’s knife on the wood table stops abruptly. “What is it?” he hisses and rises from his seat. Emma darts forward, but Chael whirls on her, flicking the stiletto towards her as she rushes him.

The steel catches her in the flesh of her arm, and she staggers back. She drops to one knee, feeling her arm already grow weak as white-hot pain and the warm rush of blood bloom from the wound. Chael looms over her, grinning. He draws a pepperbox pistol from his long coat and levels it at her. On his head still burns the fiery coronet that the Burnt King placed on his head, marking him for Emma.

“No one gets the drop on Chael, little sicaria,” he sneers. “You look expensive, even if you’re not very good. If you tell me who sent you here, I’ll put one in your brain. If not, you’ll get one in the gut, and then I’ll really get started.”

Emma takes a deep breath, willing her racing heart to calm. One of the first lessons she learned in the service of the Burnt King is that beyond the veil, Duskwall is a tinderbox. Over the centuries the city has stood, countless fires have torn through the tenements and manor houses. And after each blaze goes cold, the ashes are built upon, more packed and cramped than the last time, and the fires are forgotten by the denizens of the Foot.

But the ghost echo never forgets, and the King has given Emma the power to bring those memories to burning life. Her eyes flick white as she calls upon those powers, raising up her unwounded arm towards Chael. He mistakes it for a plea for mercy, and he laughs — until a gout of fire springs towards him, washing over him and setting him ablaze.

The last thing Chael sees before he burns. // Source: Midjourney

He howls in agony, and his pepperbox fires, the shot going wild and plinking against the metal walls of the farmhouse. Chael falls to the ground, writhing and tearing at his burning coat. Emma forces herself to her feet. Almost immediately, she hears pounding at the farmhouse door.

Scene Breakdown

Emma first must make it down to the farmhouse floor undetected with a Prowl roll. She’s pushing herself again here, spending more stress and creeping closer to the threshold of 10 — once she reaches it, she’ll be ‘taken out’ of the action by being captured, incapacitated, or otherwise rendered indisposed.

Emma rolls Prowl: Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 1d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 2,5 Partial Success
Stress: Emma +2 (6 total)

As a consequence I introduced a complication: The hagfish farmer’s niece returned more quickly than expected, putting Emma in a Desperate position. To try to get her out of the picture, Emma’s used the Command action, which the book defines thusly: “When you Command, you compel swift obedience.” Command’s often used for intimidation or threats, which isn’t quite what Emma’s doing here, but she’s not trying to persuade either, so it felt appropriate.

Unfortunately, Emma has zero in her action rating for Command, and in those cases, the player rolls 2d6 and takes the lower result. Not great. She’ll push herself instead, which will bring her to 6 stress. Also not great.

One note here from the player perspective — Emma takes a lot of risks here, and does stuff that has a high risk of failure. She’s not yet a seasoned scoundrel, and this scene represents her first action outside of the training she received at Dalmore House. But even though it makes sense for her character to behave that way, some gaming tables can get very frustrated when players take sub-optimal actions ‘because it’s what my character would do.’ We discussed this a bit back in an interlude in PTFO:Stonetop’s story.

As with Stonetop, Blades in the Dark come with some Player Best Practices, which encourage us not to always try to play optimally: the phrase BitD has for it is Go into danger, fall in love with trouble. Fun, risky things heighten the drama — careful, meticulous and low-risk plans are no fun to play (or read!). With all that said, let’s roll the die:

Emma rolls Command: Desparate Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 1d = 0d (Action Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 2 Failure
Stress: Emma +2 (8 total)

Since this is a desparate position, we pile on the consequences: A wound and the situation escalating. Chael throws his dagger at her, halting her charge, and then draws down, holding her at gunpoint. I record “Stabbed in the Arm” as Level 2 Harm.

Emma responds to this by using one of her playbook abilities Firestarter, which is a variant of the Tempest ability. It allows her to summon a gout of supernatural fire from the ghost field to use as a weapon, for the low cost of 2 stress, raising Emma’s total to 8 Stress. She uses the Attune action to strike — finally, a roll she’s good at.

Emma rolls Attune: Desparate Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 2d (Attribute Rating) + 1d (Devil's Bargain) 
Result: 2,4,6 Success

She cooks him. She opted for a Devil’s Bargain to add dice (she can’t Push Herself again because it would put her at 10 stress and take her out of action). For the bargain, I decided Chael’s bravos outside will hear the commotion and come running, adding further time pressure. We’ll leave Emma there for now, and jump back to the Jessek brothers, at roughly the same time:

Scene 7: Cinder Street, outside Fisher’s Court

The coachman clicks his tongue and pulls on the reins, slowing the carriage as they approach the iron-arched gates. The company disembarks, the bravos fanning out towards the gate at Lyssa’s direction. The Jesseks hang back, behind the carriage, joined by Lucas and another Crow cutter.

Roric emerges from the coach, and at his nod, she gives the iron gates three hard raps with a stiletto pommel. They can hear Chael’s lot grumbling and grousing on the other side, and then the murmurs are cut off by a gun’s report ringing out in the night air.

Aldo tenses and looks to Carver. “That was damn close,” the big man growls. From beyond the tall fence, they can hear one of Chael’s men bellowing. “Oi, you lot, snap to! Drav, Eale— you two check on the boss, now! Kobb, go find out who’s at the bloody gate and tell them to fuck off!”

“Open it. Now,” Roric rumbles. His bravos leap to obey, lifting and straining at the gate. Chael’s boys didn’t lock it behind them, and it begins to swing open.

Lyssa waits with stilettos drawn, and she meets Chael’s man, Kobb, a wiry, pale Akarosi with a barbed wire-wrapped club grasped tight in his hand. Before he can raise up, Lyssa’s blade tip is at his throat. “Where’s Chael, Kobb? Roric wants to see him.”

Kobb pales. “He’s in the farmhouse, taking his ease, Lyssa. No cause for things to get brave here.”

“Sounds like things are already brave in there. Make way.”

Chael’s man gives way, and Lyssa slides in. Roric and his entourage follow, and the Jesseks trail behind. “Lucas, take Chael’s people in hand. Lyssa, get into that farmhouse and bring Chael to me.” She nods, hustling towards Chael’s bravos, pounding on the farmhouse door. Roric drifts towards the edge of one of the hagfish pools, looking down at the growing slick of blood mixed with thick, ichorous slime collecting on the water’s surface.

“Maybe the Billhooks decided to do for old Chael,” Rian says under his breath. “What a stroke of luck that would be.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Carver mutters. “More likely, he’s just shot some poor bastard in there for the fun of it. What’s the play, Aldo?”

“Nothing for it. We wait.” Aldo’s eyes scan the courtyard’s perimeter, searching for a way out.

Aldo rolls Survey (Gather Information)
Dice Pool: 1d = 1d (Action Rating)
Result: 5

Aldo gets some good information about a likely way out if things go south. To continue to bring these two story threads together, we use Emma’s way in as Aldo’s way out.

Across the pools, shaded by the underhang of the farmhouse roof, Aldo spots a break in the fence, a clean cut in the iron links, just where he would’ve cut if he were stealing his way in. He follows the line of tenements that loom above the courtyard and spots where an assassin might’ve come down from the rooftops, a sturdy brass standpipe running up the side of a flatblock.

“Looks like someone paid Chael a visit in the farmhouse,” Aldo whispers. “Might be he shot first.”

“I wouldn’t bet against him. He’s a tough one to catch unawares,” Carver replies.

“Shame. Only one way to find out, I suppose,” Rian says, starting towards the farmhouse door as Lyssa and Chael’s boys put their shoulders to it. Aldo gives an annoyed, quizzical look, and Rian smirks. “Trust me, brother. If I’m going to have to talk our way out of this, I’d better get started now.”

Scene 8: The Fisher’s Court Farmhouse, cont’d.

The pounding on the metal door intensifies. Emma shoots a glance at the farmer’s niece, who scurries back into the larder, sobbing with fear. Chael is still writhing on the floor, burning, and Emma moves to end his suffering.

Chael’s already defeated, from the full success on Emma’s last roll. But her mission isn’t just to kill him, it’s to take his soul and bring it to the King. To do so, she’s going to use the blade he gave her and her Attune action, capturing Chael’s spirit so that it can be consumed by her god in exchange for some new blessing — and perhaps freedom from Dalmore House.

Emma rolls Attune: Controlled Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 2d (Attribute Rating).
Result: 4, 5, Partial Success

She succeeds, harvesting Chael’s spirit. For the consequence, we’ll raise the stakes of her next roll (likely to escape the bravos who are pounding on the door) by setting it at a Desperate position.

The ashen blade given to her by the King flicks across his throat, a line of red through the blackened skin. She is already attuned to the world beyond, and through her eyes, she sees the silvery thread of his soul drawn out by the cut, trailing behind the blade like a gossamer tail. Time seems to slow, and before Emma’s eyes, the knife drinks it in until its blackened surface shines like a luminous mirror in the ghost realm.

A metallic shriek snaps her attention back to the true world. The door hangs off one hinge, and a dark-haired brava kicks it savagely. Emma sheathes the dagger in her jacket and races for the rear of the farmhouse, darting between stacked crates and hanging canvas tarps, searching for a way out.

Emma rolls Prowl: Desperate Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 1d = 1d (Attribute Rating)
Result: 5, Partial Success

Lucky break for Emma, but not quite lucky enough to get away cleanly. She hasn’t been spotted by Lyssa or Chael’s bravos yet. For a consequence, we’ll keep piling on the complications. Now, there’s nothing in the rules that says that the complication needs to only be Emma’s — this seems an opportune time to rope Rian in. Back to the action:

Rian follows Lyssa and Chael’s boys into the farmhouse — immediately, the smell of cooked flesh and burnt hair assails his nose.

“It’s him,” Lyssa says, standing over the smoking body. “What the devil happened to you, you bastard?”

One of Chael’s goons wretches. “His throat’s cut. Someone did this. Spread out and find them,” Lyssa barks. She looks back, and her brows rise in surprise to see Rian there. “You too, Jessek. Make yourself useful.”

Rian’s heart pounds as he makes his way through the farmhouse. Behind him, he hears the farmer’s niece crying hysterically as one of Chael’s boys pulls her out of the larder. The other man gestures with a crude-looking machete. “You go along that wall. I’ll take this one. You see anything, you holler,” he growls.

Rian nods and moves along the wall, heading towards the rear of the farmhouse, eyes jumping at every shadow. Until a shadow jumps back. A black-clad arm reaches out, grasping his arm, and a pale face emerges from the darkness. She has pulled her mask so he can see her face, but Rian instantly recognizes those pale blue eyes.

We’ll close out the episode there, with a bit of a half-episode cliffhanger! I had a bit more in my play notes to write-up, but this felt like the best stopping point that I could reasonably reach within my writing time this week. There’s no poll this time, so the conclusion of Session 3.3 will hit your inboxes next week on 6/10. As always, thanks for reading!

1. Some Load mechanics are happening here — by placing his blade on the table, Carver is declaring that one of his three load was his Fine Melee Weapon, a special item from the Cutter playbook, so he marks off one load and has two remaining from the light load he selected. Aldo, on the hand, doesn’t need to mark off anything, because he acquired the billhook in the course of the score. Both Carver and Aldo still have two load remaining.

2. ‘First knife’ — Like a prima donna, but for murder instead of opera.

3. Horse-sized goats have largely replaced horses as beasts of burden in Duskwall. Though the goats can be a little unruly and stubborn, they eat almost anything, which is an excellent trait to have in the post-apocalypse.

4. This is the aftereffect of Emma’s run-in with Chael’s bravos. Her use of her powers has frayed the veil in this area, stirring up the local spirits.

5. The spiritbane charms worn by well-prepared scoundrels can keep dangerous wraiths at bay — sometimes. Better to have some protection than to be naked against the hungry dead.