Last episode, the Jesseks found their score slowly going sideways. While attempting to recover the ashen dagger — which contains Chael’s soul, marked for sacrifice —Emma, Aldo, and Carver ran into another of Dalmore House’s students, Mikaela, who sought to steal the dagger and offer the sacrifice herself. Now, Aldo must decide whether to silence Mikaela, perhaps permanently, or to allow Emma to try to reason with her.
Meanwhile, Rian, having seen Mr. Seek returning to the manor house, made a desperate bid to sidetrack Dalmore House’s fearsome huntsman. Unfortunately, our silver-tongued slide ran out of luck, and now Mr. Seek has him firmly in custody.
Before we dive back into the present with the Jesseks, we’re going to dip back into the past again, continuing some of our history of Dalmore House that we explored in last month’s interlude.
The History of Dalmore House (cont’d)
So far, we’ve established that the Dalmore School for Young Women was founded by Lady Jasmin, an itinerant Iruvian noblewoman who sought to honor her family’s traditional role as teachers in her new home in Duskwall. For a time, the school represented an escape for the young orphan ladies of Duskwall’s slums to a somewhat more stable and comfortable life as a domestic servant in the households of the city’s elite. That changed, however, when Lord Renard Dalmore, Lady Jasmin’s noble husband, was assassinated by rival nobles.
In the aftermath of her beloved husband’s death, the Dowager Lady Jasmin, alongside her daughter, Lady Alexandra, fell under the influence of the Burnt King, a dead god whose ruined temple lay hidden beneath Dalmore House. Over the course of a decade, the school secretly began to train whispers, spies and assassins. Lady Alexandra, taking over as mistress of the house, used this network to take revenge for her father’s death, and in so doing, fed many corrupt aristo souls to the hungry god beneath her manor. Everybody wins!
The last part of Dalmore House’s history I wanted to envision is something that establishes a challenge they’re currently facing — something that lives in the faction’s past which our heroes will have to grapple with as they get involved with this faction1.
To that end, I continued with the Microscope exploration, and added another period, which I dubbed Alliance with Lord Strangford.
Lord Strangford is a background NPC that we’ve referred to in a few places, but haven’t yet seen ‘on-screen.’ Back in Session 2, we learned that it was Strangford who sent Detective Inspector Laroze to deal with the rogue Bluecoats in South Crow’s Foot, who in turn farmed the job out to the Jessek boys. Then, in our History of Dalmore House, we established that the Strangford noble family is tied in with Dalmore House: Some decades ago, Lord Strangford intervened in the church inquisitors’ investigations of the Cult of the Burnt King, preventing them from being uncovered and destroyed.
For this new period of history, I established three events:
The Cult's activities attract the attention of the Empire's supernatural secret police, the Spirit Wardens.
Lady Alexandra is arrested by the Spirit Wardens, but freed through the machinations of the young Lord Strangford, son of the man who protected Dalmore House from the church inquisitors.
Young Lord Strangford uses Dalmore assassins to pursue his own aims. His influence grows, and Dalmore House is rewarded.
These three events draw the curtain back a little bit on Madame Dalmore (whom we now know to be Lady Alexandra Dalmore, daughter of the original founder). While she appears to be the mistress of Dalmore House and a loyal servant of the Burnt King, the cult has been partially subverted, and has a powerful patron of its own who guides their .
So far, in our Microscope mini-session, I’ve only envisioned Periods and Events — we haven’t played out any historical scenes. For this series of events, I decided to play out one scene: Madame Dalmore’s arrest by the Spirit Wardens, and her subsequent ‘rescue’ by Lord Strangford. At the gaming table, this would be presented as a flashback to the players, probably emailed prior to the session, and the intention of sharing this information would be to shape the players understanding of Madame Dalmore before having a confrontation with the lady of the house.
Of course, the characters wouldn’t know the specific information revealed in the scene, but savvy players can still use that information to inform their characters’ decisions, as long as there’s a reasonable in-fiction justification for those decisions.
So, with all that, let’s dive into the past with Lady Alexandra, in the clutches of the Spirit Wardens.
Interlude: A dark oubliette, twenty-five years ago.
Black. For interminable hours, perhaps even days, Alexandra’s world had been nothing but black. The silken sack, locked tight around her throat with a leather collar, let in only a ghost of light once the silver-masked Wardens had slipped it over her head after dragging her from her carriage on the South Market Bridge.
From there, they moved her in silence — First, a carriage ride at breakneck speeds, rattling over the cobbles and bridges to some unknown place, and then a cell, as dark as night and quiet as the grave, save for the scurrying of rats and the thudding of her heart in her chest.
Once again, she tries to reach for the veil, draw on the power of the other side, or contact a spirit that might aid her or carry a message, and once again, her grasp is broken by a sharp shock that sends a painful shudder down her spine. The cell’s wards are too strong, and a cold feeling of hopelessness begins to seep into her bones. For hours, she waits, huddled in a dark corner, moving only to kick away rats who scuttle too close as they test to see if she is still alive.
Then, finally, sound and light — gruff voices that approach and haul her to her feet, dragging her from the cell. She is brought to another room and forced down into a hard metal chair. Her hands are bound to a table with manacles, and when the mask is unlocked and whipped from her face, the white light is so powerful as to blind her.
The glare of electroplasmic lights frames the figure sitting before her. He wears the ash-grey jacket of a Spirit Warden, spotless and impeccably pressed. His face shines in the bright — an ornate, filigreed silver mask conceals his every feature, for identities of the Immortal Emperor’s most trusted enforcers are closely guarded secrets, even to one another.
The Spirit Wardens are Duskwall’s supernatural secret police, hunting down dangerous spirits and rogue Whispers for his Imperial Majesty. // Source: Midjourney
“Do you know where you are, Alexandra?” His voice has a strained, hollow quality filtered through his mask.
She stares back at her hollow-eyed captor. Her reflection in the silver of his mask is frightful, her eyes sunken and dark, hair wild and unkempt. She reaches up with manacled hands to brush a few damp locks out of her eyes. After all, even in the direst of circumstances, appearances matter, she hears her mother say in her ear. The frail Dowager Lady Jasmin had been in the carriage with her, taken by the Wardens.
Alexandra disguises a deep, steadying breath as a piqued sigh, and when she speaks, her voice is steady and masterly. “Madame Dalmore,” she says simply.
“Pardon?” the figure leans in ever so slightly.
“We have not been introduced, sir. It would be appropriate for you to refer to me as Madame Dalmore or simply ‘madame.’ Surely our circumstances, whatever they are, have not robbed us of propriety.”
The figure is silent for a long moment. “Do you know where you are, madame?”
Her lips quirk up in the ghost of a smile. “I do not know the specifics, and I need not. You will release me at once. Even the Wardens are not above the scrutiny of the Lord Governor, and the Marchion is an ally of my family.”
“His excellency will not be made aware of your arrest, Madame Dalmore. No one will be.”
“And what am I to be charged with?”
“We do not deal in charges, only in guilt. You and your agents have murdered members of His Imperial Majesty’s government. Further, you have consorted with demons and false gods, putting the whole city at risk in your pursuit of power.”
“What nonsense. House Dalmore has served the Empire loyally for nine generations. When the city burned after my father’s death, my mother set aside the justice she was owed to bring peace back to Duskwall. You are either a liar or a fool.”
“I am neither. I do not need your confession; I already have your lady mother’s.” The Warden reaches inside his jacket and withdraws a long, slender spirit bottle. He places it on the table with a sharp tap. Within, a faint, glowing mist can be seen, seeming to strain at the stopper to escape.
Alexandra chokes back a strangled cry, and only a small sigh escapes from her lips before she regains her composure. “Such courage the agents of the Immortal Emperor have. Harrowing the spirit of an old woman from her body and pawing over her life like some tawdry voyeur. What do you want from me, then? Why have you not sent me to the same fate as my mother?”
“I require your cooperation to put an end to the creature that calls itself the Burnt King. It is a threat to the city’s security.”
“And if I refuse?”
“Your spirit will be imprisoned in the Warden’s archives. Our oldest guests have been there for centuries. Of course, they are quite mad after all this time, but a skilled Whisper can coax a few moments of lucidity from them. But first…”
The figure reaches beneath the table and produces a heavy leather valise. With painstaking care, he opens it and begins to set his table — first, a clean cotton cloth and a shiny steel tray, followed by an array of sharp and polished implements. Some are quite recognizable — blades, pincers, clamps. Others are more unusual, but their purpose is unmistakable.
She glances down at the grim panoply and returns her gaze to her captor. Her mother is dead, her secrets uncovered. Her only remaining hope is that one day soon, they might all burn on the King’s pyre. “Begin, then.”
As the Warden begins his bloody work, Alexandra casts her mind into a deep, hidden place. She has faced torture before, at her mother’s hands, in preparation for this very moment. ‘What is suffering?’ Lady Jasmin had asked as her gnarled, leathery hands had skillfully worked the knife. ‘Naught but lies told by the flesh, believed by the mind. I will teach you to silence these crass demands of the body, for they cloud your vision of the true world.’
Alexandra notes with pride that after some hours, her captor looks exhausted. His grey jacket is now rumpled and unbuttoned at the collar, stained here and there with spatters of her blood. His mask, also smeared with red, sits on his face slightly askew, giving him a somewhat curious look. Through it, she can hear his labored breathing, and when he looks at her, she can tell her bloody visage unsettles him.
He draws himself up, clearly a little unsettled and frustrated. He reaches into his jacket pocket again and withdraws a pocketwatch, checking the time. “We will begin again tomorrow, Madame Dalmore. This will continue until your body can take no more. Then, we will start our work upon your spirit.”
He rises and raps smartly on the door. It opens, revealing another grey-uniformed Warden in another polished silver mask. “Clean her, see that her wounds are bound, and return her to her cell. No one speaks to her, not even you. She is my prisoner and mine alone.”
The junior Warden nods without a word and makes way for his senior to depart. He’s shorter and slighter than the first man but with a strange air of calm about him. Once the first man is gone, he closes the door behind him, crosses the interrogation room, and casually sits across from her as though they were at a Charterhall cafe. His gaze does not flinch from her wounds.
Alexandra breaks the silence between them. “You are wasting your time. I told your master nothing, and I will tell you nothing.”
In reply, the man raises his hands to his mask, releasing catches at the throat and the crown of his head. He removes it and places it between them on the table. At first, Alexandra’s shock is so great that she almost doesn’t look at the man’s face, her eyes riveted to the mask between them. She has never heard even a rumor of a Warden revealing his identity.
“Do you know me, Madame Dalmore? We’ve met before.”
She blinks, trying to clear the blood and sweat from her eyes, and peers at the man. He looks to be no older than 30. He has a pale, blandly handsome face, clean-shaven save for a well-groomed mustache, a common affectation these days among the children of the elite. He is familiar — she recalls flashes of his face at some of the more daring salons she has attended, where the sub rosa2 mingles with the well-heeled.
“Forgive me,” she says, speaking slowly to better enunciate through swollen lips. “It has been a trying evening, and I cannot recall your name.”
“My father and your mother were close friends. When the Sacred Inquisition pursued Lady Jasmin, he intervened to save your household and protect your secrets.”
“Strangford.”
“The same. Aristede Strangford, at your service, my lady.”
“What a pleasure to see you again, young Aristede. You do your family name proud.”
“I strive to do so, Madame. It seems, once again, that my family is in a position to aid yours.” He produces a key from his jacket pocket and unlocks the manacles binding her to the table. “Listen carefully. The Warden who arrested you is Baronet Willas Bowmore. He has yet to inform his superiors nor make any record of your crimes — I believe he plans to position his family to seize all the Dalmore holdings still in your possession and turn your network of informants to his benefit.”
“What do you propose?”
“I propose that I release you from here, you gather your forces, and this night, the Baronet perishes. Let your god consume his spirit. Let him go to oblivion with all his — and your — secrets.”
“The King has not marked him. He cannot be made a sacrifice.”
“Are you so certain? Does he not abuse his power? Is he not driven to cruel madness by his crown?”
Her eyes narrow in suspicion. “You know much of the King.”
“My father stands at death’s door, and he has bid me to read all his papers — his diaries, letters, and research. All he knew, I now know. It is only a matter of days before I am Lord Strangford.”
“The King alone chooses who will burn on his pyre.”
“Madame, forgive me. There are ways to compel a dead god will take what sacrifices are laid upon his altar. And was it not the King’s rapacious hunger that drew the attention of the Wardens to you? That led you to kill too many, too quickly?”
She studies his eager face in silence, and he continues. “I believe what you believe, Alexandra. Those who rule the Empire have grown corrupt. The king must die. But your god does not know he has fallen — he demands obedience as though it were still the World-That-Was. We must be more cautious and choose our sacrifices with wisdom, not faith alone.”
“What you suggest is blasphemy.”
“Blasphemy is your holy work being polluted by that feckless Baronet. I would see you restored to your place. With House Strangford behind you, no one will be beyond your reach.”
“And what will you gain from the death of the Baronet?”
He meets her eye with confidence. “Not much. His place in the Wardens and his post at the Ministry of Preservation will be left vacant. A chance, perhaps, for a younger man to step in.”
“This is a dangerous game you’re playing, Aristede.”
Young Strangford smiles and pulls a clean, white handkerchief from his breast pocket. He gently wipes a smear of blood off of her cheek and offers it to her. “We were born into it, were we not?”
She goes to take it from him, but when she does, he takes her hand with surprising strength and speed. His hand is ice-cold. Her heart races, and she tries to pull away.
“Madame,” he rasps, his voice suddenly low and hoarse.
Alexandra starts awake. Mr. Seek looms over her in the dark of her bedchamber, his sparkcraft eyes casting a sickly orange glow. He is holding her hand tightly in his cold grip. “Madame, awaken. There is some mischief afoot in your house.”
With that, we return to the present, and shift our focus back to Alexandra’s study, where Emma, Aldo, and Carver are deciding what to do with Mikaela Dalmore, one of Madame’s Whisper-assassins. This was the choice from last episode, and it was made resoundingly:
This was one of those polls where I largely expected the result, but I’ve tried to leave the door open for a darker turn in Proper Villains — these characters aren’t quite as nice as the Stonetop gang, and it’s keeping with the genre to have some antiheroics.
But not this time! Aldo is going to try to win over Mikaela — it’s clearly what Emma wants to do, and he’s eager to win her loyalty back from this dangerous cult she’s gotten mixed up in. Back to the fiction:
Scene 13: Madame Dalmore’s Study
“The dead take you, Emma Dalmore. You’re no sister of mine. Madame gave you everything, and you threw it all away for your gutter-trash brothers,” she hisses, glaring knives at Aldo. “Now you’ve brought them here, to our sacred home! That offering should be mine, not yours! I am a loyal servant of this house!” Her voice begins to rise.
Carver claps his hand over her mouth once again. “No time to be soft, Aldo. Say the word, and it’s done.”
Emma puts her hand on Aldo’s shoulder as though she could hold him back from it. “No, Aldo! Please. She’s just as much Madame’s prisoner as I am. We can help her.”
Aldo’s mind races. “Make haste,” Flint hisses from his post by the door. “I hear a carriage — someone is returning!”
Aldo fixes her with his gaze. “Listen here, girl. My brother thinks we should make a ghost of you, and most like, he’s right. But Emma says you’re family, and that means something to me.”
She stares back at him, her eyes hard and angry as she struggles against Carver’s grasp. “I don’t know you from any man jack, but I’d wager we’ve danced some of the same steps. Parents, dead. Alone in a place that wants to swallow you whole. And one way out: Make yourself useful to the right people, whatever it takes. Am I whistling your tune?”
Her eyes are still full of defiance, but her struggles still, just for a moment. Aldo forges ahead, his words coming faster. “Thing is, the ‘right people’ are willing to burn you down and grind out the embers with their bootheel. They’ll let you spill blood for them, and bleed for them, and leave you with nothing but scars and nightmares.” Out of the corner of his eye, he sees Carver shudder, no doubt feeling the chill of the wraith at his shoulder.
“I couldn’t have walked out of the Jessek House of Diligence alive without my brothers. Family holds to family, m’mother always said. Before this city took her from us. So ask yourself: Who’s closer to family, to you? Emma? The woman who’s been through no less than what you’ve been through? Or your ‘Madame’ — the bitch who put you through it?”
We’ll trigger the action roll here — Aldo’s trying to chip away at years of cult conditioning with a few well-chosen words, so I set the position at Desperate.
For this Partial Success, I’ll take a page from the Persuade move in PbtA games, and say that Mikaela is largely convinced, but she needs something more — a concrete show of ‘sisterhood’ from Emma. If the party offers her that, she’s with them, at least for now. Back to the action:
Emma nods emphatically. “Listen to him, Mikaela. Come with us to the King’s throne. We will go hand-in-hand. I will share the sacrifice with you, and share in whatever blessings He offers in reward. Please.”
Mikaela shuts her eyes tightly, then nods her head in assent. Aldo looks up to Carver. “Let her go.” Slowly, with a bit of reluctance, the big man releases her.
“Madame keeps a key to the pyre chamber in there,” Mikaela whispers, nodding to the wrought iron birdcage in the corner of the study.
It is shrouded in black silk, and its occupant, a blackshrike, gazes with baleful eyes at Aldo when he whips the cover aside. The quick-fingered thief gingerly opens the door and snatches the key from its hook among the barbs of the shrike’s cage. The bird snaps at him with its hooked beak, drawing blood, but Aldo doesn’t flinch or cry out as he slams the cage door shut and pockets the key3.
“We must go,” whispers Flint urgently. “The Throne is in the undercroft, from whence we came. Let us make haste!”
And make haste they do — Flint leads them to the shortest path, down the hall, past the still-sleeping proctor, to fly down a servant’s stairway that leads directly to the depths of Dalmore House, where the Burnt King holds court.
But for all their haste, they do not arrive before the lady of the house.
We’ll close out there for this week. The conclusion of this episode, and this arc, will publish on 11/18, dead gods willing. My apologies for sneaking this episode in at the last possible minute on Monday and chopping it in two, my days and nights continue to be packed with all sorts of work and family time, but I didn’t want to push off yet another episode.
As always, thanks for reading! Let me know in the comments what you think of the flashback to Madame Dalmore’s viewpoint that concluded our Microscope ‘session,’ or share your hopes for what gets PTFO’d in the coming denoumont. See you in your inbox next week!
Recall that this current score — rescuing Emma and completing her sacrifice to the Burnt King — should result in Madame Dalmore becoming the crew’s patron if successful, as we established way back in Session 4 planning. Obviously, things can change if things go wrong during the score, but that’s the goal we initially established.
‘sub rosa’ is the term we’re using for Duskwall’s supernatural underground — Whispers and Leeches who deal in spirits, alchemy, and other dangerous magic.
I considered having Aldo roll for this, but “angry blackshrike” wasn’t on the list of obstacles I wrote up before, and the party has already had to roll quite a bit. So, instead, I just held a brief negotiation with myself and dealt Aldo minor harm (‘cut hand’) in exchange for dispensing with the roll. Mechanically, this is allowable by just piling on an additional consequence for the Partial Success of the previous roll — the GM is empowered to dole out as many or as few consequences as they see fit.
I'm now wondering, with all that we learnt in the flashback: if Madame Dalmore is abusing the cult, what does that mean for our Jesseks once she's their patron?
Would the Burnt King mark the Madame for a sacrifice, too? Or maybe she's already marked and we don't know!
I'm also wondering if that blood lost by Aldo here is going to come back to haunt him, there are many uses for blood after all.
I wasn't convinced about Aldo not straight out killing Mikaela, or even getting her unconscious and tying her up in a closet, but you played it well, it actually makes sense with what he says.
I'm now wondering, with all that we learnt in the flashback: if Madame Dalmore is abusing the cult, what does that mean for our Jesseks once she's their patron?
Would the Burnt King mark the Madame for a sacrifice, too? Or maybe she's already marked and we don't know!
I'm also wondering if that blood lost by Aldo here is going to come back to haunt him, there are many uses for blood after all.
I wasn't convinced about Aldo not straight out killing Mikaela, or even getting her unconscious and tying her up in a closet, but you played it well, it actually makes sense with what he says.