Last episode, we followed Carver and the old spirit trafficker, Flint, through the dark tunnels under the city as they made their way to the undercroft of Dalmore House. Carver stood fast against the spirit-monstrosities that lurk down in the depths where the protective power of the lightning barriers ebbs, and he and his uncertain ally reached their destination.
Once they reached the boathouse, Flint had agreed to undo the false-death in which he had placed Aldo to hide him from the dangerous spirits beneath the house. But it was here that Flint decided to push his luck — before he would wake Aldo up, he demanded Carver swear an arcane oath to deliver the Burnt King the offering Emma collected for him — the soul of Chael Dewitte, their old gang boss.
Carver, at this point, was a little edgy. Rudderless without his brother-and-boss, Aldo, and bloodied from his fight with a shark-wraith in the flooded tunnels, he considered his options: Agree to this binding oath, or show Flint that Carver Jessek has other, less pleasant ways of getting what he wants. Let’s see what you all picked for the big man:
I think this result is a nice depiction of Carver’s internal state — he knows he has to swear the oath, but a small part of him would love to show this old man that he is not to be trifled with.
So, Carv is going to do what it takes to get Aldo back on his feet. Despite misgivings about bringing Emma back into the family, he is determined to show his brothers that he is committed — at this point, perhaps even more committed than Rian, who balked at having to undergo the false-death treatment that Aldo accepted.
Before we dive into the action, I wanted to talk a little about what’s going on in this scene — the core rules of Blades in the Dark aren’t engaging here, since nothing that Carver is doing requires an Action Roll. Instead, we’re doing some exposition: We’re learning about Flint, the cult he’s a member of, and how they see the broader world, all through Carver’s eyes. This type of exposition is important to any story, but few RPGs have any guidance for players and GMs to support getting it into the game.
Luckily, though, the guidance that exists is pretty straightforward to transfer between games. I prefer Stonetop’s Keep Company move, which we made extensive use of in the Stonetop campaign:
Keep Company, one of my favorite moves in the Stonetop ruleset. // Source: Stonetop // Jeremy Strandberg
In the previous episode, we covered a few of these questions. At the gaming table, Carver might’ve asked ‘What new thing do you reveal about yourself?’ leading Flint to share the story of how he came to be in the Burnt King’s service. Next, we’ll deal with the question “What do we find ourselves talking about?” Given that Flint has just tried to press Carver into his cult’s service, Carver probably wants to know more about the Burnt King and why the cult does what it does, so the next scene will cover that as well.
Now, we’ll rejoin the action with Carver and Flint, the latter having just demanded an oath of service.
Scene 7: A boathouse in Dalmore House’s undercroft
Carver grinds his jaw. “I won’t bring your brother back without your word, Mr. Creach,” Flint repeats, extending his hand to Carver.
With a quickness that belies his size, Carver reaches out and snatches Flint, his grip closing tightly around the old man’s bony wrist. The trafficker pulls back — he’s surprisingly strong for his age but no match for Carver, forged and tempered in dozens of matches in the Red Ring.
He pulls the old man close, looking down at the twisting black mark on his hand. The glyph squirms under the skin like a parasite. “I could make you bring him back, you know. I know the places to cut a man that don’t kill him, not for hours and hours.”
“I’m sure you do,” the old man coughs. “But I have ways to hurt you back. As you well know.” A ghostly white begins to dance at the edges of the old man’s eyes, as he begins to attune himself to the other side, ready to call on the restless ghost that waits for Carver across the veil.
“Thanks to your magic, one good cut will see him off, won’t it?”
Unease begins to spread on Flint’s face as the situation slips further from his control. “Your brother doesn’t have time for this, Mr. Creach. If the false-death persists, it will come true.”
“My name is Jessek, old man. Remember it. ” Carver growls, his teeth grinding. He seizes up Flint’s waiting palm with his own, grasping hard enough to grind bone. He can feel the rune, swimming against his skin, so cold it burns. “I’ll swear your oath, and give your god his price. Now bring my brother back.”
Flint holds his grip a few seconds more, as the magic pierces into Carver’s flesh. Carv sees his oath fulfilled in flashes — the pale face of a young woman who looks all the world like his brothers, an ashen dagger, a burning pyre. He looks down at his hand and sees a smear of black grime, and when he wipes it away, a small mote of the stuff remains, embedded in his skin.
“It is done,” Flint mutters. “Help me move the coffin, and we’ll have your brother breathing again soon.”
Without another word, Carver stoops and lifts the wooden box, shifting it off of the barge and onto the wooden dock. The floating jetty bobs in the dark water, and the splashes echo on the vaulted stone ceiling overhead.
Once Aldo’s resting place is safely off the barge, Flint nods to the winding stone stairway at the dock’s edge. “By those stairs, there should be an old seaman’s chest with some clothes. There should be something, even for a man of your size. It’ll get you out of those wet rags, and you might pass for a few moments as one of the household menials.”
Carver goes to the beaten-up, navy blue chest and, indeed, finds it full of dark woolen overalls and white shirts, pressed and clean. While he strips off his wet, torn clothes, he watches Flint work — the old man sets to prying up the nails that seal Aldo’s coffin shut, one by one.
“Tell me about this Burnt King of yours,” Carver says as he shrugs on the borrowed cloth. Aldo’s voice whispers in his ear: Always know who you’re working for, Carv.
The ghost of a smile flickers on Flint’s lips. “A long time ago, before the world was broken, on these very shores, there was a people. They were much like the other peoples of their age — proud, savage, warlike, and quarrelsome. But, through fate or luck, they discovered a great truth of the world. Would you like to know this truth, Carver Jessek?”
Carver grunts a sound offering neither dismissal nor encouragement.
The old trafficker’s voice takes on a practiced tone, as though he has heard and spoken these words a thousand times before. “It is that power is a wasting sickness. When a king dons his crown, that cursed circlet extends its tendrils through his brow and infects his mind, no matter how wise. It poisons his spirit, no matter how noble. It is the crown itself that compels to acts of tyranny.”
Flint continues his sermon as he works — he reaches into his pack and draws out a thick pillar candle of black wax and places it on Aldo’s stilled chest. “Have you ever had a tyrant with power over you? I’m sure you have — so have we all, in this broken world.”
Carver watches him impassively as he lights the candle — a pungent smell begins to drift through the boathouse, and the smoke hangs low, curling in a cloud just above where Aldo lies. “Some truth. The aristos are rotten bastards; we all knew this. What’s it got to do with the price of eels?”
Flint unlocks the black spirit bottle that holds Aldo’s essence from his belt and places it alongside the body. “The truth is nothing if it is not acted upon. These folk came to be ruled by such a tyrant, driven mad by his crown, and the greatest and strongest families among them came together and swore an oath: The king must die. For a year and a day, they heeded his every command — no sacrifice he asked was too great, no indignity he inflicted too terrible. Secure in his position, the king did not expect a betrayal on the anniversary of his coronation. His people built a great pyre for him and bound him to his throne. King, crown, and throne were all reduced to cinders, and thus was the Burnt King born. With each burning, they chose a new king to serve, and with the passing of each year, the king was given up to the pyre, becoming one with the divine. This is the faith we few still keep: The king must die. The pyre calls for tyrants to feed it.”
“Chael didn’t seem like much of a king to me,” Carver says. He watches as Flint’s eyes go white, and he unstoppers the block bottle. The grey smoke of Aldo’s formless ghost begins to emerge from the bottle, intermingling with the smoke from the candle. Aldo’s chest rises and falls, raggedly and unevenly at first.
“The world has changed — the Immortal Emperor’s reign has given us a plague of petty kings. Our god calls each of them to the pyre in turn, though there are few left who can hear His voice. I thought Madame Dalmore was one of them, but Emma’s recent visions have left me uncertain. I hope that our mission tonight might cleave truth from lies. And now, as promised: Your brother lives again.”
Aldo’s corpse breathes in the smoke, and with each rising and falling of his chest, he seems to grow more alive and vital. Finally, his eyes open and dart about, taking in his unfamiliar surroundings. “Well done, Carver,” he says in a halting, crackly voice. “I knew I could count on you.”
“Aye,” Carver says, offering his brother a hand up. “What was it like in there?”
Aldo shudders. “Dark, quiet, and cold. How long was I out?”
“Less than an hour, I’d wager.”
“Feels longer.”
“At first, it does,” Flint replies as he packs up his ritual trappings and makes ready to move. “Once a spirit grows accustomed to the glass, time moves more quickly.”
“Dead gods save me from such a fate,” Aldo says, shuddering. “What’s next?”
“We are at the lowest level of the manor — above us is a storage cellar, guarded day and night. We must pass through it to reach the iron cloisters, on the other side of the undercroft.”
“Lead the way, then.”
We’ll close out this scene here, and make a roll to determine how we set the next scene. In Blades in the Dark, we don’t need to go into detail on how the crew overcomes every obstacle — some parts of the score can be narrated by a single roll and a bit of fiction as we move to the next beat. Here, we’ll have Aldo lead the crew through the storage cellar. The relevant Action Rating here is Prowl, and we’ll be using the Lead a Group Action rules, which you can see here in the Teamwork section of the Blades SRD. Under these rules, every PC (Carver and Aldo here) roll Prowl, and the best result is taken. If Carver gets a 1-3, it’ll cost Aldo 1 stress, in addition to whatever other consequences may arise.
We haven’t defined any of Aldo’s gear yet, only that he’s carrying a Light Load. We’ll take this opportunity to mark a fine shadow cloak and fine lockpicks on his inventory, (which only costs 1 load — lockpicks don’t take up any appreciable space in Aldo’s kit). The cloak increases Aldo’s Effect, which we’ll rule simply cancels out the Tier advantage that Dalmore House has over the crew, meaning he gets to roll straight. We’ll further rule that Flint is providing Aid, giving Aldo and Carver each one more die to work with.
The gang manages to sneak through the storage cellar and past its guard without incident — Carver gets the benefit of Aldo’s full success thanks to the Teamwork rules. The storeroom is navigated without incident, though we can use the opportunity to foreshadow some of the dangers in the house that might assert themselves if things go wrong elsewhere.
Dalmore House // Source: Midjourney
Scene 8: Dalmore House’s Undercroft
At Flint’s direction, Aldo leads the three of them through from the underground boathouse, through a few cramped, spiraling stairways, and into a vaulted stone storeroom.
The place is stacked to the rafters with more food and drink than Aldo and Carver have ever seen in their lives — wooden barrels of salted goat and canisters of flour, locked and chained up to prevent the precious white powder from wandering off in the hands of a scullion or cook’s maid, and shelves laden with copper growlers of beer and boiled rainwater. Mixed in with the victuals are other, stranger things — glass jars filled with what look like finger bones, a rack of lightning hooks, humming with charged energy, and rows of the same wooden boxes that Aldo was hidden in only a few minutes ago.
The storehouse is dark — only a few hanging electric lights illuminate the vast space, and the three keep to the shadows and edges of the room as they move through. A steady rhythm of footfalls can be heard echoing through the space — hobnail boots rap, rap, rapping on the stone floor. Occasionally, the footfalls will pause, and a quiet, feverish muttering can be heard, accompanied by a quick, frantic scratching noise.
Aldo finds the three of them a quiet corner, hidden by a rack of dark woolen coats, and they wait until the watchman completes his rounds. As they make their way through the storehouse to the far exit, Aldo catches a glimpse of him — a twisted, frantic thing hunched over a writing desk near the center of the storehouse floor. It scribbles away at a thick ledger with an intricate mechanical hand, checking off entry after entry with manic swiftness and obsessive attention. Shadows pool in the hollows of its cheeks and its sunken eyes, and in the dim light, Aldo can see how the ravages of time have tattered its stitched flesh against pale patches of bone.
Mr. Book ensures nothing goes missing from Dalmore House’s stores. // Source: Midjourney
“That would be Mr. Book,” Flint whispers. “One of Madame’s pet monsters. He’ll be trouble if he finds us here, but he won’t leave the cellar unless summoned.” Aldo nods, and gives the creature a wide berth, leading them on a roundabout path through the shadowed stacks of supplies to the storeroom’s entrance. A pair of oaken double-doors secure the way out, with a small, iron-bound wicket door built in.
Flint produces the key to the wicket door from his coat pocket and hands it over to Aldo, who, with painstaking care, dribbles a few drops of hagfish oil onto its teeth and slides it into the waiting lock. There is barely a sound when he turns the key, but all the same, the furious scribbling down the hall ceases abruptly. Slow is smooth, and smooth is swift, Aldo assures himself as he swings the door open with agonizing care, the hinges barely creaking. He motions the others through as the sound of hobnail boots draws closer and closer.
Finally, the three of them are through the doorway, and Aldo quietly closes and locks it behind them. Before Carver and Flint can flee down the hallway, he stops them with a gesture and flattens himself against the doors, his comrades quickly following suit. The footsteps arrive on the other side of the door, a small slitted window opens up with the squeal of metal on metal.
“Who’s there, who’s there?” a tripping, rasping voice calls. “Victuals-thieves? Wayward young ladies? Come out, come out, and let Mr. Book see.”
The three are silent, barely even daring to breathe. On the other side of the door, they can hear Book’s shallow, wheezing breath, accompanied by the whirr of some unseen mechanism. Even after the window is closed, the three stay stock-still for a minute more, until they hear the sound of the hobnail boots recede back to his writing desk. He gives Flint the nod, and he and Carver follow as the old man leads them deeper into the undercroft.
We’ll close out the session there — apologies for the short runtime today, writing time was once again hard to find, but I wanted to get something out today nevertheless. We’ll continue our journey through the basements of Dalmore House to the iron cloisters on 9/23, next week. As always, thanks for reading!
Am I more than a month and a half late? Yes, and I come back to read such fine writing!
Loved the burnt king lore here, how did you come up with it?
Also, showcasing possible threats in advance to up the stakes is something I really should remember to do more often even in solo play, it works wonders for tension building. I'm heading directly to the next episode!
I’m so excited to see this continue!
Am I more than a month and a half late? Yes, and I come back to read such fine writing!
Loved the burnt king lore here, how did you come up with it?
Also, showcasing possible threats in advance to up the stakes is something I really should remember to do more often even in solo play, it works wonders for tension building. I'm heading directly to the next episode!