🗳️ Session 4.4: A vial of Hebanon (Part 2)

Denizens of the tunnels draw near. Carver sees the world that was. Flint makes a demand.

Phew! I said we’d be back on Monday, and here it is Monday. My apologies for the delayed publication — writing was slow going this week, and I decided to take the holiday to finish the job.

Last episode, the spirit-trafficker Flint made good on his promise to smuggle the Jessek lads into the undercroft of Dalmore House in a bid to rescue Emma from her imprisonment. His plan, however, was quite unpalatable — Aldo and Rian would have to undergo a sort of false death to avoid the attention of the monstrous denizens that inhabit the tunnels below the city, and while Aldo was willing to take the risk for Emma, Rian was reluctant. In the end, Aldo didn’t press the issue, and instead told Rian to stay behind and serve as backup in case things go awry. Aldo alone took the poison Flint offered, and now slumbers safely in a spirit bottle while Carver and Flint brave the tunnels.

We’ll rejoin the action with Carver and Flint — the old man has told Carver there are still some dangers yet to face, but for now the waters of the flooded tunnel seem calm.

Scene 6: The flooded tunnels beneath Dalmore House

After a time with the barge drifting in silence, the black water lapping against the weathered hull, Flint gives Carv the nod to light his lantern, and they take up the poles once again.

“There is a fork in the tunnel ahead — we must take the left-hand path,” the old man mutters, gesturing into the darkness. Ahead, the tunnel splits into two dark, yawning maws, and together, they push until the craft bumps softly against the stone walls.

Carver's eyes are on the water as they make their way down the tunnel. The lanternlight dances on the dark ripples, and a shape moves beneath the surface — Carv tries to follow their swift, darting movement, but they seem to vanish and reappear before his eyes, and he can feel his heart pounding in his chest as the tunnel grows cold and his breath begins to mist.

“Something’s here,” Carv growls, and Flint nods in confirmation.

“Yes. Other beneficiaries of that long-ago charnel feast¹.” There is a thud against the barge hull, and it shifts troublingly in the water. Carver draws his blade, and now he can make out black, squamous flesh moving beneath. A rot-eaten fin breaks the surface of the water, trailing ominously behind the boat.

“A lion shark,” Carver mutters. “Big one, too.” The thing in the water descends beneath with nary a ripple, and as it passes beneath the boat, Carver gets a good glimpse. It’s ten feet long, and its dark, leathery hide is torn through by teeth and decay. Behind it, the water clouds with blood and ichor, and its eyes are black, empty holes. As it swims closer with strong, slow strokes of its tail, its maw hangs open and within, through the murky water, Carver sees a dozen dead eyes looking back at him — the thing’s gullet is choked with ancient, ravaged skulls, and the sockets seem to stare hungrily at Carver.

Dark things swim in the waters below Duskwall // Source: Midjourney

“A hungry ghost wearing sharkskin,” Flint corrects him. “A few found their way down here when the plagued blood was thick in the water, all those years ago, and they gorged themselves on the bodies until they were these twisted, undying things. I will try to persuade them to seek prey elsewhere, but something’s stirring them up.”

The old man’s eyes fade to white and he mutters in a strange, uncanny tongue that makes Carver’s eardrums buzz unpleasantly with each sibilent syllable. An electric twinge fills the air, and the water’s surface begins to vibrate as though it were beneath a hard rain. The creature responds immediately, lashing and twisting to get away but still following the barge from a distance, circling around them in the confines of the flooded tunnel.

Carver turns to look back at the old man, and his heart goes cold when he sees they are not alone in the barge. Standing over Aldo’s coffin is a tatterdemalion wraith, dressed in the remnants of his Jessek House uniform, his throat opened with a ragged cut and his eyes full of hate.

“Hello, Carver,” the spirit rasps. “Miss me?”

Carver has to make an important decision here — once again being confronted by supernatural threats, he either has to make a Resistance roll to overcome his fear, or instead choose to freeze up or flee in terror. Neither of these are very good choices at the moment, but Carver only has 2 stress remaining on his track — if he rolls poorly (or even average) on the resistance roll, those could easily be filled, which would take Carver out of the action and force him to mark a Trauma condition, a character flaw that he’ll suffer from for the rest of the game.

In this case, I’m going to choose to have Carver not resist the fear, and freeze up in panic. It fits with what we’ve established so far — he’s more able to put aside his fear and act when he’s facing terrors other than his own personal haunter — and he may need to save some stress to fight that monster in the water or act in some other desparate situation. So, Carver chooses not to roll to resist, and lets the spirit have the initiative.

Carver raises up his cutter to hold the spirit at bay. “I wish I hadn’t done what I did,” he says, his deep voice shaking. “But you turned your coat on us back at Jessek House. Boss Tanner said you had to pay.”

“With my life? All you caught was a caning and a few days in the stocks.” The spirit reaches out towards him with moldering fingers. “You were my friend, Carver. Why did I have to die?”

“I run with a proper crew now. We do things different.” The spirit’s hand brushes against Carver’s knife, and there’s a spark and a hiss, and it draws back in surprised pain.

“You’re still nothing but a dead-eyed killer, Carver. And soon, I’ll drag you begging and screaming to the other side, where you belong.”

Before Carver can reply, Flint interrupts — his face is drawn and strained from the focus required to maintain the warding field against the monster in the water. “We don’t have time to bargain with your old friend, Mr. Creach. One good cut should see him off.”

The spirit’s eyes gleam with malevolent mockery. “That’s right, Carver. One good cut. For old time’s sake.” He pulls back his collar, showing the gruesome wound Carver dealt him all those years ago. Carver’s racing heart feels like it will explode in his chest, and he backs up against the railing of the barge, keeping his blade held high and hoping it will hold the spirit at bay.

It does, but Flint has no such protection. Focused entirely on holding the thing in the water at bay, the old spirit trafficker is helpless as the wraith turns on him and seizes his throat with its ghostly hands. He cries out and doubles over in pain, and then, with a quickness that belies his age, his hand darts into his coat and lashes out with his lightning hook. A sickly green arc of energy lashes out from the device, slicing into the wraith’s spectral form, which boils away into nothingness as quickly as it appeared.

The thrumming ward vanishes, and the shark surges forward, its fin cutting through the water towards the barge.

Carver is going to use Skirmish fend off the shark, either with the bargepole if he can, or his blade if the thing gets in close. This monster is serious business — a higher-tier combatant than Carver, so we set Carver’s position at Desperate. He doesn’t have a lot of stress to spend, but fortunately Skirmish is his highest action rating, at 3.

Carver rolls Skirmish, Desperate Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d (Action Rating)
Result: 1, 1, 2, Failure

Brutal. Failure on a Desparate position means a severe consequence. We’ll split the consequence into two: Some harm, and a complication (harm because Carver’s particular build basically begs to have harm inflicted on him, and a complication because complications drive drama in an action sequence). For the harm, we’ll envision some damage at the ‘hands’ of this shark-wraith (I recorded it on his sheet as ‘mangled arm,’ and for the complication, we’ll dump poor Carver into the water. Under normal circumstances, Carver could try to resist one or more of these conseqeuences, but he’s too low on stress to attempt such a thing at the moment.

“Hold fast!” Flint cries out just before it strikes. There is a terrible splintering sound, and the barge lists heavily to one side. Aldo’s coffin strains against the ropes that lash it to the deck, and Carver and Flint are sent reeling toward the rails.

The next thing Carver feels is the cold press of water on his skin and the weight of his heavy woolen coat and thick leather boots dragging him down. His lantern gutters and flashes, and he knows it will only stay lit in the water for a few more seconds. The pale glow pierces the inky black water just enough for Carver to see the jaws of death opening wide for him. From inside the creature’s gullet, the skulls seem to extend ghostly arms, clutching towards Carver to pull him towards their fate.

Carver grips his blade tightly and struggles to turn himself towards the beast as it bears down on him. It knocks the wind out of him when it strikes, and he feels the thing’s jaws close down on his arm and shred through the heavy wool of his coat.

Pain blooms red in Carver’s vision as the beast drags him by his arm through the dark water. Carver can feel the freezing, skeletal fingers of the wraiths in the thing’s gullet scratching at him through his sodden coat. His lantern goes out, and all is black. He hears a distant voice, a deep, quiet baritone whispering in his ear. ‘I hope they kill you at Jessek House, boy. Better you’d never been born.’

He thinks of Aldo, lying dead in the coffin, and Rian, somewhere out in the city, with only his silver tongue to protect him from men like Chael and Roric. His brothers, who are still counting on him. Holding thoughts of them close, he clenches his free hand around the handle of his blade and begins to cut.

This is another skirmish roll, and it’s not a good one. Knife-fighting a shark, underwater in the dark seems like the textbook definition of a Desperate position. As for Effect, there are a few different factors to consider: The wounds that the shark has already dealt him reduce his effect by 1 level², but he’s also been granted the Ghost Fighter move by Flint’s magic, which allows him to harm ghosts and spirits with his hands and weapons, and it also grants increased effect against the supernatural. So, his wound and his potency against ghosts cancel one another out. But, I also think fighting underwater will probably reduce Carver’s effect, so without any other advantages to cancel that out, Carver’s effect sits at Limited.

As for his dice pool, he can’t Push Himself without filling his stress track, but he still has a few options — his Battleborn ability lets him expend his special armor to push himself in a fight.

Carver rolls Skirmish, Desperate Position; Limited Effect
Dice Pool: 3d (Action Rating) +1d (Battleborn)
Result: 6, 5, 1, 6 Critical Success

Some well-timed good luck to make up for the last roll! Critical success increases the effect by one level, meaning a limited success becomes a full success. Back to the action:

Over and over again, Carver stabs his blade into the rotting bulk of the beast as its jaws worry at his arm. True to Flint’s word, the blade slices through its ectoplasmic flesh, opening great wounds that stream thick black smoke into the water, boiling up towards the surface. The ghoulish claws reaching from the thing’s mouth grow frenzied, grasping at his eyes and throat, and Carver pulls the blade from the shark’s flesh to slash at them as well, cracking through ghostly bones which boil away into nothingness once cut from their host.

Carver feels himself break through the surface of the water, and then feels stone slam into his back as the creature rams him against the tunnel wall, dragging him against it. In the dim light of Flint’s lantern, Carver takes aim and plunges his dagger into the thing’s empty eye socket, freeing another gout of black smoke from its husk. Its jaws open wide, letting Carver fall, and with a lash of its powerful tail, it disappears, leaving the black water still once again.

The next few moments are a dark blur. Carver pulls his way through the water towards the barge and, with Flint’s help, manages to pull himself back aboard. He feels his warm blood mingling with the cold water that soaks his coat, and he collapses onto the deck, gasping for air and still clasping his blade.

When Carver opens his eyes, he sees a strange vision in the dim light: A white city on the banks of a blue river, all illuminated by a shining sun. He blinks the water from his eyes and looks up in befuddled wonder.

“What is this place?” he groans, raising his hand to point skyward. Flint, at his side, looks up. Overhead, on the tunnel’s arched ceiling, is a fading mosaic: Towers and columns, meadows and gardens, the yellow disc of the sun, and a wide, calm river, all picked out in tesserae of alabaster, malachite, lapis lazuli, and peeling gold leaf.

“This is the world-that-was,” he says with a sad smile. “The world that was taken from us by the usurper, and that the Burnt King will restore one day.”

An ancient vision of the world-that-was // Source: Midjourney

The vision fades away as the barge drifts down the tunnel. Carver sits up with a wince, and shrugs off his soaked wool coat. Beneath, his dirty white shirt is a ruin, and blood seeps from a multitude of cuts on his shoulder. Carver picks a tooth from his flesh and grins. “Better luck next time, you toothy bastard.” When he throws it to the deck, it melts away into a thin, black smoke.

Carver turns his attention back to Flint. “So, is that why you joined this mad cult? To fix the world? Can’t be done, mate.”

The old man laughs mirthlessly. He kneels next to Carver and draws a wad of clean white linen from his pack, and goes to work bandaging his shoulder³. “No. Even if His Highness can truly revive the dead sun and put the stars back in their places, I think I will not live to see it. I joined for revenge.”

“That’s a story I wouldn’t mind hearing.”

“It is not one I am eager to tell. Suffice to say, there was once someone I valued very much, and a powerful man — a high magistrate — who wished to possess them. I posed an impediment to his designs, and for my impudence, I was sent to Ironhook Prison for ten years on some thin pretense. While I waited in prison, this powerful man had his way, and when I was released, there was nothing left.”

“What became of this magistrate?”

“I had my way, too. The Burnt King promises to throw down the unworthy tyrants that rule the world, and he made good that promise to me. That is a story for another time, perhaps — we’re here.”

Flint rises and takes up the bargepole again, maneuvering them into a stone archway and then unlocking and raising an iron portcullis. Beyond is a grand boathouse built into the undercroft of Dalmore House — well-appointed and maintained, in stark contrast to the crumbling tunnels that led them here. The old man guides the barge into a mooring and hops onto the pier to tie them fast.

Carver stands and gestures with his bared blade at Flint. “The bottle, old man. Bring Aldo back. Now.”

Flint doesn’t move. “Soon. First, I require assurances.”

“What?” Carver says, his tone gone dead.

“Before we go any further, I need to know you and your brother will do what we have agreed: We will rescue Emma, yes, but to aid her in delivering her offering to the King. You must swear you will not take her and flee.”

“We’ve already agreed the plan, you old fool. Now, do your part and bring my brother back.” Carver’s voice is shaking again now, and his knuckles go white around the hilt of his blade.

Flint holds up his hand. On his palm is a black glyph, squirming against his flesh. “You must swear and take my hand. And if you break your word, my curse will be upon you.

Carver grinds his jaw. “I won’t bring your brother back without your word, Mr. Creach,” Flint repeats, extending his hand to Carv.

We’ll close out the episode here, and we’ll leave Carver’s decision up to you. Here, Flint is using the Spider move Ghost Contract, which functions more-or-less as he described. If Carver breaks the oath and lets Emma escape without delivering her offering (which is Chael’s soul, bound into her ashen dagger), he’ll suffer permanent level 3 harm until he makes good or the curse is broken.

Carver suspects he can play hardball with Flint here, using Command plus a generous serving of physical violence to force him into action — their last conflict with Flint⁴ suggested that he at least values his own life, and Carver can certainly threaten his life, here.

Of course, the gang had already planned to do what Flint was asking for, so it’s easy for Carver to say yes. What we’re really deciding here is a character moment for Carver — how does he react to being threatened in this way, without Aldo to moderate him? What’s his posture towards this weird cult? Does he resent being drawn into their machinations, or did Flint’s story about revenge against a powerful tormentor intrigue him? And how much is he willing to risk Aldo’s life if he can’t overcome Flint?

Smash the button below to vote, and let me know what you picked and why in the comments! We’ll see what Carver does in two weeks, on 9/16. As always, thank you so much for reading.

1. The first, of course, being the monstrous amalgamation of dead flesh Carver and Flint encountered in the previous episode.

2. For those following along closely, Level 2 harm (which Carver has) normally reduces his dice pool by 1, but since Carver has the move Tough as Nails, it instead reduces his effect by 1. There’s some debate in the Blades community whether losing a die or losing an effect level is worse, but rules as written, this is how it works.

3. This is not healing Carver — he still has Level 2 Harm. We’re merely providing some fictional positioning for Carver to soldier on — it’s not exactly gritty realism, but gritty realism isn’t always fun and entertaining.

4. Back in Session 4.3, where they kidnapped him in a bid to negotiate his cooperation.