🗳️ Session 4.6: Tethers

Aldo works his trade. The sisters strike. Rian sees trouble coming.

Last episode, Carver and Aldo, accompanied by their ally Flint, delved into the undercroft of Dalmore House, seeking to free their sister Emma from captivity there. Carver, having just been pressured by Flint into swearing a mystically binding oath to ensure Emma’s offering to the dead god is safely delivered, pressed Flint for information about the Cult of the Burnt King and its beliefs: They seem to be a religion that runs on regicide, with their dead god demanding the sacrifice of ‘tyrants’ — from corrupt aristos down to cruel alley barons like their old boss, Chael Dewitte.

The machinations of the dead god only of peripheral importance to Aldo and Carver, however: They are here for Emma, and she is held in the iron cloisters, where they are currently headed. Before we rejoin the action, I want to talk a bit about score planning from the GM’s side — how we arrive at scenes like sneaking through Mr. Book’s storeroom and the tussle with the shark-wraith in the flooded. This section is about the nitty-gritty of GMing blades, so if you’re here primarily for the fiction, or just for the solo player perspective, feel free to skip this bit!

Planning Dalmore House

Blades in the Dark, compared to a gamey, tactical TTRPG like Dungeons and Dragons or Pathfinder, is quite prep-light, but it’s not zero prep. To run a score, the GM needs to come equipped with a rough idea of the obstacles that PCs are going to face as they attempt to burgle, kidnap, spy upon, assassinate, or smuggle their way to glory. Obstacles like locked doors, guard patrols, or malevolent spirits are how the GM can create the drama and tension required to support a scene.

Figuring out the obstacles for any given score depends on establishing method the crew is going to use to achieve their goals, and Blades encourages and structures this step with its rules around planning and engagement. Back in Session 4.2, we voted on the Jessek boys’ method of entering Dalmore House, by suborning Flint the spirit-trafficker, and then we confirmed that method in Session 4.3, when the crew decided not to confront Mr. Seek while he brought Emma home from her visit to Dalmore House’s preferred sawbones (who seems to do a side business in turning people into mechanized flesh golems).

Once we knew for sure that Flint was leading them into the manor, I did some thinking about the obstacles for them to face:

Getting in through the tunnels: Securing a boat, navigating to the correct location, and knowing the way through. This obstacle was dispensed with by the engagement roll in Session 4.2 — the crew scored a critical success, meaning you skip the first obstacle and are in a controlled position to confront the next, which is exactly what we did: Flint made all the necessary arrangements and led them to the tunnel entrance.

Confront or evade undead horrors: We’d established before we voted that the flooded tunnels under Dalmore House are dangerous because of the Deathlands horrors that lurk there. For this part, I wanted to show something from the Deathlands that couldn’t reasaonably be contended with physically, to build the world a bit and show what’s got people so keep on keeping the lightning barriers running.

Confront Carver’s ghost: Down in the tunnels, where the lightning barrier is weak, Carver will have to confront his own ghost. This didn’t necessarily mean fighting him — we’d established that Carver has big feelings about this ghost — but it does mean that he’d cause trouble that Carver would have to deal with, which he did (by disrupting Flint’s ward so the shark-wraith could attack).

Make it through the Undercroft: From there, we knew they’d need to make it through the Undercroft into the mansion proper, so I needed to come up with some sort of obstacle that fit with what we’ve already established about Dalmore House and Madame Dalmore’s operations. This lead to Mr. Book — Mr. Seek’s (somewhat) less dangerous counterpart.

Release Emma from the iron cloisters: This is the obstacle we’re about to confront — we’ve loosely established that these are the ‘maximum security’ cells in Dalmore House, so the obstacle should reflect that level of security, with both mundane and supernatural security.

Deal with Mr. Seek, the upper floors, & more: After (and if!) they successfully free Emma, there’ll be more to do — they’ll need to get her ashen blade back (since it holds Chael’s spirit) and then get to the Burnt King’s altar. Mr. Seek’s been forshadowed a bunch, so it’d be a shame not to use him as an obstacle here. That said, pushing the party to confront him directly isn’t quite fair, since on multiple occasions they actively decided to avoid him, so from the GM’s perspective, we should try to honor that if at all possible. After that, there’ll be at least one more obstacle on the upper floor — maybe another locked door, bound spirit, or cybernetic servitor. This part of the prep, I kept pretty loose, so it could be responsive to what happens in the moment, and the ideas that emerge during active play, rather than during prep.

Once I’d pulled this list together, I considered whether there were too many obstacles. Each of these obstacles constitutes about 1-3 Action Rolls, and the iron law of TTRPGs is that the more the PCs have to roll for something, the harder it is. In D&D, if you’re fighting a kobold, a single successful attack roll will win you the fight. If you’re fighting the Tarrasque, you’ll need to roll dozens of successful rolls, and you’ll have to do it before the Tarrasque rolls some number of successess itself. It’s very difficult to find a core mechanic in TTRPGs that gets away from this dynamic. So, as a GM, when you’re considering the difficulty of things, the number of rolls you’re going to ask for is a key piece of information.

For Dalmore House, I was comfortable with some pretty stiff difficulty — the gang has been working towards freeing Emma since Session 1, and giving them a big challenge to complete their quest seems reasonable.

So, with all those obstacles prepped — and with the understanding that all of it might need to get thrown out if some great or terrible rolls fall, or if some crazy new direction occured during play. As we often say at my day job: Plans are useless, planning is everything.

So, with all that prep under our belts, let’s dive back into the fiction, with Aldo, Carver and Flint making their way to the iron cloisters to make a bid for Emma’s freedom.

Scene 9: The Iron Cloisters

Flint leads them through a few hallways lit with buzzing electroplasm bulbs and up a spiral stone stairway. They pass a double-locked iron door, and Flint briefly genuflects. “This is the door to the Burnt King’s court. If all goes right, we will return here before the night is over.” He nods down the hall, where the lights dim, leaving the way shrouded in shadow. “Down that hall are the cloisters. Prepare yourselves — the spirits of the house watch over them.”

Down the shadowed hall they go, finally coming to a long gallery with a half-dozen cell doors of dark, heavy iron with polished brass locks and hinges. Here, the only light comes from a few candle sconces, their wax pillars almost burnt down to nubs at this late hour. Flint stops at the room’s threshold and motions for Carver and Aldo to wait. Even at the edge of the room, Aldo and Carver can feel the ghostly chill and see their breath fogging the air in front of them. Carver draws his blade from its hiding place inside his coveralls and grips it tight.

“There,” Flint says, pointing to the center of the room. Hanging from the ceiling are a pair of glass globes, like lanterns, though no light burns within. Instead, they contain seemingly random things — a thin gold ring and a gentleman’s cigarette lighter, tarnished and stained with a few spots of rust-red blood.

“What are we looking at?” Carver whispers.

“Tethers,” Flint replies. “They bind two guardian wraiths to this place — the Wicked Sisters.”

“Lovely,” Aldo mutters. “What can you do about them?”

“Keep them dormant for a time. I’ll work my trade on them, and you work your trade on that lock,” he gestures to the third iron door. “Emma is held there.”

Aldo busies himself preparing his tools, plucking a selection of slender picks and vials of hagfish oil, while Flint approaches the tethers, his eyes going white as he attunes himself to the Ghost Field. Carver stands at his shoulder, his knuckles white around his blade’s hilt, his eyes darting here and there, searching for signs of a spirit pushing its way through the veil.

Aldo gives the tether-cages a wide berth as he crosses the room, and his heart is racing with anticipation as he nears the door. He takes a few deep breaths, trying to still it, to no avail.

Cut into the center of the door is a thin slit covered by a metal slide, and with trembling hands, Aldo opens it. Within, he can hear a sharp intake of breath and then quiet shuffling towards the door. Light blue eyes appear — eyes like his, looking into his.

“Aldo? Is that you?” She whispers. “What are you doing here?”

“It’s me. We’re going to get you out of here.” He reaches out for her through the prison door, and she to him, brushing fingertips. Aldo’s heart seems to calm, and his hands are again steady as he lays out his tools at his feet and gets to work. Emma touch seems to have stilled the shaking in his hands, and the first oiled pick slides into the lock smoothly, finding its rest and pushing up the first pin.

“I told you not to follow me,” she whispers through the door.

“I know you did. But family holds to family, mother always said.”

“Did she? I don’t remember. She and father seem a distant dream to me, too kind to have been real.”

Aldo chuckles bitterly as he slides the second pick into the lock, questing for the next pin.

Now seems an opportune time to see how the lockpicking goes. Aldo is rolling Tinker here, which he only has one rank in (that seems a good place to invest some XP in soon). To get an edge, he’ll push himself, and we’ll also posit that Flint is adding another die by keeping the spirits at bay (for now).

Aldo rolls Tinker, Risky Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 1d (Action Rating) +1d (Push Yourself) +1d (Flint Aids)
Result: 2, 4, 4, Partial Success

For success with a consequence, I’ll envision that Aldo makes progress on the lock but Flint is no longer able to hold the spirits at bay, and now the crew must contend with the Wicked Sisters.

He works diligently, and the second pin slides up smoothly, but as he reaches for the third pick, he feels a chill suffuse the air with unnatural quickness, making the joints in his fingers ache.

“Hurry, boy,” Flint hisses. “I cannot hold them for long.”

“Now is not the time to falter, old man!” Carver snarls.

“We have faced much already!” Flint protests. “My strength ebbs, and these creatures are trained to resist a Whisper’s tricks!”

As though in reply, the empty air between the hanging tethers flickers and seethes. Carver, standing beside Flint, sees the old man’s knobby fingers moving like sawbones, furiously working to stitch the wound in the veil, muttering under his breath as his white eyes look into the deadlands beyond. Aside, he growls to the big man: “Steel yourself, Carver Jessek. They are coming.”

The Wicked Sisters stand guard over the wayward girls consigned to the cloisters. // Source: Midjourney

The twin spirits precipitate out of the air as one, their inky, ectoplasmic forms mingling together as their slender forms take shape. Tall and lithe like dancers, the wicked sisters have the look of old ghosts, the years having stripped away much of their human trappings. Their faces are pale and smooth, with dark, yawning hallows where their eyes and noses should be, and their presence seems to draw the light and warmth from the room. The candles gutter and fade, and patches of frost spread their tendrils across the stones of the walls and floor.

Their eyeless voids fall upon Flint first, and they drift towards him and Carver with slow menace. As they move, their bodies split apart from one another, and, moving in unison, they seem to draw weapons from the thin air — slashes of pitch black, held in their hands like curving daggers, held high and ready to strike.

Carver looks into those dead eyes and feels the breath in his chest freeze. His heart pounds like he is a rat facing down a terrier. But, fresh from the ordeal in the tunnels, he has grown accustomed to this feeling. His shoulder still throbs from the fearsome teeth of the shark-wraith, and the clawing fingers of the ghouls in its maw, and now the blades of the Wicked Sisters seem less than terrifying. Who are these wretches, anyway? Carver mutters to himself. Just two more fools who think they can make a ghost of Carver fucking Jessek. Not tonight, and not any night. “Come on, then!” he growls to the twin wraiths. “Come try your luck against old Carver!”

The left-hand sister strikes first, feinting a rush at Flint but turning towards Carver and lashing out with her slash of midnight-black, accompanied by a earsplitting howl. Carver’s blade blocks hers with a flash of blue sparks and slides up the edge with an eerie shriek to slice at her dead hand. The wraith darts backward with another mournful wail, and her sister rushes forward at Flint, who meets her charge with a lash of his lightning hook, another flash of blue illuminating the candlelit room.

Carver and Flint put Aldo at their backs as the sisters circle again for another pass. Their ectoplasmic bodies touch and intermingle as they regroup, and they seem to take an unsettling solace in one another’s presence before they turn their baleful eyes back on their living prey. They seem to meld into one form again as they rush towards Carver and Flint, only splitting apart again at the last moment to come at Carver from both sides, their blades slashing high and low.

Carver meets the high blade, catching the strike with his free hand — his hand jolts when it makes contact with the electroplasm¹, but he feels his grip close around it tightly, much to the spirit’s chagrin. He grins wickedly as he plunges his blade into the inky flesh of her shoulder, raising another bone-chilling howl, and the wraith’s sister retaliates, plunging her black dagger into the meat of his calf. Carver bellows in pain and falls to one knee. Flint drives the wraiths back with another lash of his lightning hook, and they withdraw to be near their tethers — the ghostly wound of the left-hand sister is already starting to knit back together as rime continues to spread on the surface of the tether’s glass cage.

Behind them, Aldo works with furious calm. He glances over his shoulder and sees Carver struggling to rise to his feet and slashing furiously to hold the sisters at bay. The fifth and last pin finally slides up, and Aldo turns the lock and throws open the door. Before him stands Emma, looking almost the same as the first night he saw her in the alleyway outside Molino House just a few months ago — her almost-white hair is tousled and wild, and she is clad in head-to-toe black with a high-necked jacket and skirts. Aldo reaches out to her. “Come with me — I’ll keep you safe this time, I promise.”

Emma smiles softly, but does not reach for him. “I know you will, Aldo. We’ll keep each other safe.” She shoulders by him and her eyes go white as she attunes to the Ghost Field, joining her strength with Flint’s.

The Wicked Sisters sense the change immediately. The air around them seethes once again as Emma seeks to push them back beyond the veil. The sisters surge towards her, brandishing their daggers and shrieking like banshees, but Carver is there, holding them back with his chopper, slashing at their roiling ectoplasmic forms.

Emma raises her hands and reaches out for the veil. While Flint moves like a chirurgeon when he attunes, Emma moves like a conductress, her quick, subtle gestures spawning vibrations in the Ghost Field that shudder through the wraith’s bodies and still their howling voices.

“Rest, sisters. Back to your tethers, to a deep and dreamless slumber,” she says softly. Two pairs of dead, black eyes fix onto her face, hate and weariness at war on their faces. Then, with a swift, cutting gesture, Emma dismisses them. The glass globes that hold their tethers shatter with terrific force, and as quickly as they appeared, they vanish, drawn into the invisible tear in the veil from which they entered.

Flint’s eyes lighten with relief, and when he turns and sees Emma, his snowy brows rise with respect. “You’ve learned Madame’s lessons well, Emma. I’m proud of you.”

She smiles at him. “Thank you, Mr. Flint. I dared not hope you would find some way to help me, but here you are. I do not deserve such kindness.”

Her gaze goes to Carver’s unbeautiful face, beaded with sweat and twisted with the pain of the wounds he’s suffered tonight. After a brief, uncertain silence, Aldo speaks. “This is Carver, Emma. He’s… our brother.”

Emma reaches out to offer Carver her hand. “I know your face, Carver. I’ve seen you when I touch the Ghost Field in my sleep, to dream of Aldo and Rian. Thank you for looking after them and coming here to this terrible place to help me.”

Carver shifts his weight uncomfortably and can’t meet her kind eyes nor take her hand in his. “Weren’t nothing, Miss. Aldo and Rian have done the like for me more times than I can count.”

Emma shakes her head. “It wasn’t nothing. You braved this place; you stood against the Wicked Sisters. You’re as brave as a knight from the world-that-was.”

“There will be time for this reunion later,” Flint interjects, beckoning them out of the cloisters. “Emma, where is the King’s offering? Where is His ashen blade?”

Emma’s face twists with worry. “Madame took it from me the night I returned. It is in her study.”

Flint’s face sets with determination. “Then perforce, our path lies there. The King must have his due.”

“Surely not! We must escape and find another way to serve Him.”

“No. We must settle this matter tonight. Madame Dalmore believes you are a false prophet, that you lie or are deceived when you say you hear the King’s voice. I believe you are telling the truth. Which is it, Emma?”

“I hear Him. I swear.”

“Then prove it. If Madame is mistaken, she is leading everyone — you, me, and your Dalmore sisters — to doom and folly. And if we simply leave now, Mr. Seek will come for you and your brothers.”

Emma nods, her face lined with worry. “Very well, then. Aldo, Carver, follow me. We have only a few hours before my sisters will begin to rise for their morning duties.”

The four decamp from the cloisters, their boots crunching on the broken glass as they go. Emma stops, looking down at the thin gold ring and fine cigarette pocket lighter on the floor, waiting with subtle menace. She plucks them from the ground and places them in her jacket pocket. “Come, sisters. Let’s see if we can find a better place for you.”

Scene Breakdown

There were a bunch of action rolls here, so to avoid breaking the fiction into too many pieces, I opted to break down the rolls and their results all together at the end — I often used this practice in PTFO:Stonetop, but BitD has comparatively fewer rolls and moves triggered, so it has come up a little less frequently. As above, this is a lot of mechanics and table-talk, so if you want to get back to the fiction, this too can be skimmed or skipped.

The mechanics first engage when Flint attempts to prevent the Wicked Sisters from manifesting. Since no PC is performing this action, this uses the rules for a Fortune Roll, with its dice pool determined by the GM, taking into account Flint’s strengths and weaknesses. I gave him three dice, since he’s intended to be a skilled (but not virtuosic) Whisper.

Fortune Roll:
Dice Pool: 3d (Flint’s Quality)
Result: 5, 3, 1: Partial Success

Flint was able to hold the spirits back long enough to give Aldo a shot at opening the lock. Then came Aldo’s attempt:

Aldo rolls Tinker, Risky Position, Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 1d (Action Rating) + 1d (Push Yourself) +1d (Flint’s Aid)
Result: 1, 4: Partial Success

Aldo’s work took take time, and it’s time they didn’t have. As with any string of partial successes, the consequences ratchet up, and so the Wicked Sisters manifested and moved to attack. Next, Carver had to master the fear that the dead strike in the hearts of the living. This was a dicey roll for Carv — he only has two stress remaining, so he had to get either a 5 or a 6 on his Resistance roll to avoid filling his stress track completely and being taken out of the scene. In this situation, that might’ve meant he is rendered catatonic by the spirits, he might’ve fled back into the Undercrofts, or flown into a rage that Aldo then had to talk him down from, rendering Carv exhausted and unable to help further. But the dice fell well for them:

Carver resists with Resolve
Dice Pool: 2d (Attribute)
Result: 6, 2
Stress: Carver +0 (8 Total)

A perfect roll. Carver stood fast, and then could roll Skirmish to contend with the Wicked Sisters.

Carver rolls Skirmish, Risky Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 4d = 3d (Action Rating) +1d (Flint Aids)
Result: 4, 1, 1, 5; Partial Success

Carver held off the sisters for a time, and takes a wound in the process. The spotlight then passed back to Aldo for another Tinker roll:

Aldo rolls Tinker, Desperate Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 1d (Action Rating) +1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 6,2; Success
Stress: Aldo +2 (2 Total)

Emma, once freed, lent her strength to Flint’s and attempted to banish the Sisters back beyond the veil.

Emma rolls Attune, Desperate Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 4d = 2d (Action Rating) +1d (Push Yourself) +1d (Flint’s Aid)
Result: 6,6,2,4; Critical Success

For her critical success, I envisioned that not only were the Sisters banished, they are sent back ‘into’ their tethers, which Emma was able to collect and can now make use of, as a kind of single-use ‘ghost grenade.’ If she doesn’t end up using them, she can perhaps put them to rest as a bit of a feel-good scene.

That roll concluded the “Iron Cloisters” obstacle that I mapped out in my GM planning — it ended up being six rolls, which is a fairly beefy challenge. Resources-wise, it cost four stress, a piece of equipment (Aldo’s lockpicking tools, though they can be re-used), and a moderate level of harm — Carver is now pretty banged up, and will probably spend multiple downtimes recovering. If I was GMing at the gaming table here, I would probably make loose plans about what to do if the party were defeated in Dalmore House — likely to capture them and force them into the service of the cult.

Finally, to set the next scene, I had Aldo lead a Prowl group action. I won’t write out every single roll here, but it was a tricky one — after Flint, Aldo, and Carver had all rolled, nobody had gotten a single six. I opted for Emma to take a Devil’s Bargain to add one to her dice pool in the hopes of finally seeing six pips, and wouldn’t you know it, that did the trick — Emma rolled a six on the final die, so the crew successfully navigates the manor house to emerge in Dalmore House’s upper floors.

Remember that Devil’s Bargain — it’s going to be the subject of this episode’s poll. But for now, we’ll shift the spotlight to our wayward brother Rian.

Setting the Scene: Rian’s vigil

We left Rian back in Session 4.4, cursing Aldo under his breath as he watched the crew float away on Flint’s pole barge. He and Aldo had just quarreled about the dangers of Dalmore House, and rather than force the issue, Aldo ordered Rian to hang back and watch the manor house from their hiding place across the way. This allowed both he and Rian to save a little face, which, of course, annoyed Rian to no end.

In prepping for this scene, I took a look at Rian’s character sheet, and realized he was due for an advancement — the Playbook XP track² on his sheet was full. For his new ability, I chose Cloak and Dagger — a move he had originally and then I swapped for Functioning Vice. I chose it now for the same reason I chose it back then, which is that it sounds fun: It allows Rian, when throwing off a disguise, to always have the initiative in any situation.

Rian, though separated from the rest of the crew, needs some way to contribute to the score. I considered having him go for backup, perhaps using his silver tongue to recruit some of the ghost-hunting Silver Nails³ that reside in the Six Towers, but that seemed like a stretch, and not necessarily something that would help. So, ultimately, I envisioned Rian heeding Aldo and watching the manor from across the street. With that in mind, I put on my GM hat and asked what kind of obstacle I could put Rian in the position of dealing with. I’ll share the answer I envisioned in the fiction:

Scene 10: An abandoned squat in Six Towers, across the street from Dalmore House

“Damn you, Aldo. I always knew you’d go off and get yourself killed and leave me alone in this gods-forsaken city. How am I to enjoy a fine drink in fair company with your and Carver’s idiot ghosts looming over my shoulder?”

Rian mutters to himself as he peers through Aldo’s spyglass at the shadowy pile of Dalmore House, across the broad boulevard from their broken-down bolthole in a squat manor⁴.

He’s been watching the house for an hour now, anxiously awaiting any sign of alarm or any signal from his brothers. Several of Aldo’s cheroots are stubbed out in a circle around him — foul things, but at least they settle the nerves, Rian thinks, as the smoke tickles his nose. He lowers the spyglass, rubs the raw spot around his right eye, and gnaws on his already-bleeding nails. Where are you, damn it. Show me something, anything!

When he raises the spyglass back to his eye, his breath quickens in his chest. That window wasn’t lit before. He fingers a catch on the spyglass’s brass casing, and the distant window snaps into focus. There, in the windowsill, is a single candle, burning brightly. As Rian watches, it’s snuffed out and then re-lit. When the light shines again, he sees Aldo’s dour face, and he stifles a cry of joy. You mad bastard, you made it!

Rian scrambles in the dark room for his electroplasm lantern, which he twists, sparking it to life. After a few moments, he douses it and lights it once again. In reply, the candle snuffs out. Rian’s relief fades as quickly as it came. Damn it, now what? So they’re out of the Undercroft — it doesn’t get any safer from here! Should I have gone with him? Damn, damn, damn.

Rian’s reverie is shattered by the sound of goat hooves on cobblestones. This late at night, no carriages should be on the dark streets of Six Towers. He trains the spyglass towards the sound, and rolling down Mistshore Avenue, he sees a grey-clad carriage. The driver is a burly workman that Rian doesn’t recognize, but riding in the shotgunner’s seat is a tall, slender figure in a long black coat, masked with a sparkcraft eyepiece glowing with a sickly orange light: Madame Dalmore’s huntsman, Mr. Seek.

Emperor’s blood… That monster will be on the house’s doorstep in a few minutes. Rian shoots to his feet, running towards the rickety wooden stairway as his mind races, grasping for any plan that might help his brothers in Dalmore House. Aldo said that creature can find anyone, anywhere. If he makes it back to the manor, he’ll find them sure as the moon rises. Think, fool, think!

He bursts out onto the street, shouldering his way through a few of the manor’s squatters, standing watch beneath the stately house’s porte-cochère. The carriage clatters down the street towards its destination, and Rian, still swearing under his breath, turns up the collar of the filthy, moth-eaten greatcoat he’s donned and scrambles for something, anything, of use. The sidewalk is littered with smashed and charred furniture, burnt to warm squatters’ hands, broken cobbles and bricks thrown in carelessness or anger, and other detritus of urban decay. Still barely sure what he intends, Rian snatches up a half-burnt chair leg as the carriage approaches.

Rian breathes a silent prayer to whatever dead gods or living devils are listening and jams the stick beneath the rolling carriage wheels. The carriage gives a tiny jump as it splinters the brittle wood, and there’s a loud snap and crack. Rian flings himself behind the carriage and begins to writhe in mock pain on the cobblestone street.

“Oh gods, oh bloody Emperor’s balls, that hurts. My leg, my leg! Oh fuck, I think it’s broken!” he howls at the top of his lungs. The squatters across the street start to their foot, hooting and pointing at the scene. The driver pulls the goats to a braying halt and looks back, fear and annoyance playing across his face.

“You aristo bastards, you’ve run me down! Oh gods, the pain! Isn’t it enough you’ve got your floggers’ boot on my neck? Why’d you have to take my bloody leg?!” Rian continues, pitching his voice towards the gang of squatters across the way, who start to approach the cart, a few hefting cudgels and brickbats picked up from among the rubbish.

Rian’s laying it on thick here to try to get Seek and/or the driver to come shut him up. This is a pretty slapdash plan, so I pushed the position to Desperate.

Rian rolls Sway, Desperate Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 3d = 2d (Action Rating) +1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 1,3,6; Success

Rian ‘succeeds,’ if your idea of success is attracting Mr. Seek’s attention. Back to the action:

Rian’s ears prick up, listening for a sign from the driver and his fearsome passenger. “Stay with the carriage,” he hears the huntsman rasp in a voice like the White Plague.⁵

Mr. Seek rises from the shotgunner’s seat and hops down from the carriage, first facing the squatter gangers, who grow more restive with each moment. “Begone,” he snarls, pushing his coat aside to reveal the barker holstered at his side. The squatters take in the strange quickness of his movements, his glowing eye, and his fearless manner and choose discretion over valor, abandoning their weapons and melting into the night. Seek turns to face Rian, still theatrically writhing on the cobblestones.

Rian’s heart races as the flesh-and-sparkcraft thing approaches him. “Please, sir,” he simpers convincingly. “I won’t be able to work like this. Just a few coins, please. Ain’t I owed something?” He holds out an open palm.

Seek kneels next to him, his hand going into his coat and coming out with a slender, black blade. “I have all I owe you right here, gutter trash,” he rasps. “Now, why don’t you crawl away and die somewhere out of my sight?”

“Yes, of course, sir, but you see the thing about that is…” Rian begins, and then his outstretched hand dives into Mr. Seek’s coat, reaching for the handle of his pistol.

Rian’s making a Finesse roll here. Normally, as the GM, I’d make this roll more-or-less impossible to attempt by assigning it Zero effect. We’ve already established that Mr. Seek is quicker than a mortal can be, so beating him in a quickdraw with his own gun is out of the question.

But, thanks to Rian’s newly reacquired Cloak and Dagger move he can get the drop on Seek by ‘throwing off his disguise,’ which overrides the fiction as already established. The position is still Desperate — this is a longshot with serious potential consequences — but he’s got a shot.

Rian rolls Finesse, Desperate Position; Standard Effect
Dice Pool: 2d = 1d (Action Rating) +1d (Push Yourself)
Result: 4,5; Partial Success

Rian succeeds, but with a serious complication. Back to the fiction:

Rian doesn’t bother drawing the pistol — once his hand is around the grip, he twists it inside the monster’s coat until it’s pointed into his gut and pulls the trigger. There’s a bright green flash of electroplasm as the gun fires, and Rian hears the round shatter against Seek’s side. The backblast of the round hits washes over his fingers, stabbing them with numbing needles, but the effect on Seek is immediate and intense — his stitched, sparkcraft body goes rigid, and he falls to the ground, twitching and sputtering curses.

Rian scrambles to his feet, pulling the hand cannon out of Seek’s holster and looking at it in a wild panic. The heavy, rotary cylinder has two rounds left in it, and Rian raises it up and fires off a wild shot at the carriage goats before turning to sprint down Mistshore Avenue. Behind him, he hears the clattering of hooves and the alarmed braying of at least one of the goats — he’s not sure whether his aim was true, but he’s confident those animals won’t be much use to the driver for a few more minutes at least.

Now a few dozen yards away, Rian chances a look back at his handwork. The carriage is clattering down the street once again, the goats pulling in different directions, causing it to weave this way and that, rocking its wheels back and forth at alarming angles. But the grin on Rian’s face falls when he sees Mr. Seek rising from the cobblestones and moving in his direction.

He raises up the hand cannon and tries to aim — the huge pistol is heavy in his hands, the iron sights wobbling up and down as he tries to bead Mr. Seek down them. With a muttered curse, he lowers the gun and turns, running into the shadowy hallways of a sagging tenement house with Madame Dalmore’s creature in swift pursuit.

We’ll close out this lengthy session there! I had fun writing all the rising action in this one, and I hope y’all had fun reading it. For this week’s poll, we’ll return to the question of Emma’s Devil’s Bargain. As a refresher, a Devil’s Bargain is a bonus that can be applied to any roll, at the cost of a pre-agreed consequence that occurs regardless of the result of the roll.

For this consequence, I envisioned that someone else is awake and wandering the halls at this late hour, and the crew will come across them. This doesn't mean that they’ll instantly be caught, but they will have to figure out how to navigate this person’s presence — they might be able to just sneak by them, or it might get more complicated than that.

We’ll be putting on our GM hats for this poll, and deciding who that person will be. I’ve envisioned three possible choices to ratchet up the drama here:

1. Madame Dalmore: Perhaps the most obvious pick. It’s easy to imagine that Madame might be wandering the halls of her own house, unaware of the treachery going on under her nose. This choice might really bring the conflict between Madame and Emma to a head, forcing them to have a reckoning of their respective faiths.

2. Mikaela: We haven’t heard from Mikaela since Session 2.1 — recall that she is a rival student at Dalmore House who competes with Emma for Madame Dalmore’s attention and regard. She might be up to no good tonight, perhaps even trying to take Emma’s offering to the King for herself!

3. A friendly, innocent face: As a third option, we’ll envision another one of Emma’s fellow students, someone who is at least a little friendly to Emma. Of course, just because she’s friends with Emma doesn’t mean she’ll play ball here, and her not being a direct rival makes her a little trickier to just dispose of.

Hit the button below to make your choice! We’ll gather votes for two weeks and the next episode will arrive in your inboxes on 10/7.

Thanks, as always, for reading!

1. Normally, Carver would be quite unable to take hold of a ghost’s ectoplasmic body, but thanks to Flint’s magic (conferred on him at the beginning of Session 4.4), he has the Ghostfighter ability, allowing his hands and weapons to interact with and harm supernatural creatures.

2. Blades in the Dark tracks XP as four separate tracks — one for each attribute / action rating group, and one for the playbook as a whole. When the playbook track is filled, the character gets a new playbook ability.

3. Recall that back in Session 4.1, we randomly chose the Silver Nails as the criminal faction that Rian is renting their lodging from.

4. Many of the stately old manor houses of Six Towers have been abandoned and subsequently subdivided by squatters fleeing homelessness or violence in other districts. These “manor squats” provide easy, if insecure, lodgings and hiding places for local scoundrels.

5. The White Plague is a real-world colloquialism for Tuberculosis.