Session Writeup: Blades in the Dark - 1

We played our first game session of Blades in the Dark today. It's basically "You are a crew of thieves in a setting that's Dishonored with more nasty supernatural stuff", and today was our first actual heist.

Here's a brief and imperfect recounting of how it went, with undue emphasis on my character's actions because that's how my brain works. Mea culpa.

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We learned from a contact that a shipment of arcane materials confiscated from a cult would be sent through the city canals under guard of six Bluecoats (corrupt cops) and a Spirit Warden (a CIA agent responsible for dealing with occult problems). We decided to steal it en-route.

After debating the plan for a while, we picked a bridge over the canals in a rough part of town from which to orchestrate an "accident" of dropping a crate full of bricks (marked "PIANO") onto the gondola so the goods would sink and we could dredge the canal later to recover them.

What actually happened:

1: We got stopped by the gate guard of a manor house trying to figure out if we were supposed to deliver the "piano" to them. Nail, my dispossessed nobleman fast-talks him while our two bruisers maneuver the crate to the edge of the bridge. My character half-cranks the roll and instead of fast-talking the guy, veers into a spiteful rant about how he can't keep his house livery clean and he stands with a slouch, like some kind of peasant.

2: Our bruisers, Boots and Binkie, get into position anyway, vocally disavow me entirely, and leave the guard to do violence to my old man body while they "accidentally" tip 800 lbs of bricks onto the lead gondola as planned.

3: The gondola is damaged and violently tilts. Bluecoats are hurled everywhere. Our target crate slips into the water, and one of the gondoliers (who tipped us off in the first place and who are ostensibly our allies) has his legs broken by the impact.

4: Boots, our Absolute Unit of a thug dives into the water to "help" "rescue" people. A crowd has gathered. The Spirit Warden is trying to figure out what the hell is going on while Bluecoats flop around in the filthy canal. Another bag of cult trinkets flops into the water.

Boots, swimming. Drawn by his player antlerrr.blogspot.com

5: Beetle, our feral urchin sneakthief party member has, unbeknownst to us this entire time, SCUBA'd her way under the first gondola with an augur and holed the thing. It begins to slowly sink from a dozen punctures.

6: The gate guard is about to beat my old man senseless when our fifth team member, The Barrow Wight (a legless orphan-herder who walks around on stilts like some kind of fucked up Victorian Dr. Caligari) shows up in a stolen Bluecoat uniform and immediately tries to "arrest" me. Nail thanks him for the distraction, shouts to the crowd that he's being ABUSED BY THIS GATEHOUSE RUFFIAN, and draws an over-sized antique fowling pistol from his voluminous coats. He "slips" and fires it into the canal, holing the third boat (containing the Spirit Warden), which ALSO starts to sink. The crates of desired goods start sliding along the tipped deck, directly toward Boots in the water.

The Barrow Wight. He's wearing stilts.

7: The antique fowling pistol smokes and explodes loudly, dazing everyone in the canal and immediately drawing the attention of the entire crowd of day-laborers on the way home from their horrible Eel Cannery jobs.

No longer available for purchase, alas.

8: Boots, being ridiculously strong, grabs the crates in an attempt to "help" put them back in the gondola. He twists, flinging the Bluecoats also gripping the crate into the canal and shatters the crate against the stone walls. It's full of confiscated cult stuff, and there's a reason it's being watched by a Spirit Warden--a tattered, bloodstained dress flies out of the shattered crate and begins buzzing the crowd.

9: Binkie declares that the dress belonged to his murdered aunt, exclaims his undying filial piety, and leaps into the open air to tackle the flying dress while brandishing a traditional ghost-warding amulet in his hand.

10: Binkie is immediately possessed by his dead aunt and is now haphazardly flying around wearing a long Victorian dress.

11: The Spirit Warden finally gets to his feet, realizes something is fucky, and starts whispering to a bewitched knife and drawing a bead on the heads poking out of the water.

12: Beetle darts out of the canal and shoves the Spirit Warden's gondola, dumping him into the water. He drops his witchknife. The feral child is instantly distracted by the shiny object and dives after it.

13: Boots decides to fistfight every single Bluecoat in the water simultaneously, and successfully does so--somehow involving dynamite (!!!) in the brawl without dousing the cigarette clamped in his jaw.

Boots, post-brawl. Drawn by his player antlerrr.blogspot.com

14: The Spirit Warden realizes that things are banjaxed and tries to swim away. Nail uses the attention and eager ear of the crowd drawn by The Barrow Wight to direct the angry crowd into a frenzy. The momentary leader of a riot, he orders them to dump our legless party member into the canal (making for an easy escape), and then goads them into tearing the canal bridge apart and stoning the swimming Spirit Warden to death with hurled bricks. The crowd cheers in proletarian bloodlust, rain stones on the agent, and hoists Nail onto their shoulders and away to glory and the nearest pub.

Our party escapes, nobody has any idea what the hell just happened, and we even managed to recover one of the crates we smashed.