It was my birthday and so I got a game run for me!
The system of choice was Blades in the Dark, and the happenings were as follows...
We open on a night of celebration. All through the district of Nightmarket a party is being thrown. James Young, a powerful land lord and crime boss is throwing a lavish birthday party, centred on his casino, the Lucky Saint.
Fireworks go off overhead, drinks are drunk and gambles won or lost. And through the streets of Nightmarket sneak a small crew. They have a cart with them stacked with legitimately purchased drink they are going to deliver to the Lucky Saint.
But no ordinary delivery people are these.
Accrimony Jones - a good ol' local boy. He bears a strong grudge against James Young, his landlord, for increasing his rent several times without clearing up that brown mould infestation.
Sotto (the Strangler) - an immigrant whose dreams of making it big in the city were dashed by the ever increasing rents. At direct odds with the demands of the rental union!
Sprinter Spindleman - his wife was killed by James Young and her soul taken as collateral. He wants that soul back and he wants James dead.
In fact, they all do, but they also want to rob and humiliate him first. And the best way to do that is to rob his vault and bury him under the ghosts of his victims!
So when they arrive at the back door of the Lucky Saint they hand over papers showing the order and offer to carry the kegs in. This is taken up because they're running low. The size of the party drains drinks nearly as fast as they can be brought in. The crew sneak in and then abandon the carrying job as quickly as they can.
At the first basement layer they sneak into the locker room where, FLASHBACK, Accrimony spent seven months as an employee to prepare for this heist. He nods to one of the employees still here and spins a few words while propping a locker open. Uniforms are stolen as the party grab old suits out of the laundry and lockers to blend in. They also steal silver trays to carry the rest of their gear that wouldn't fit under the uniforms.
Now they need to get to the vault, but how will they find the way? Sotto enters the ghost field (it looks a bit like the matrix) and searches through the underground paths for the route. They find the vault impenetrable through ghostly means but have the path, although a ghostly observer has clocked them.
They project an air of belonging and authority into the ghost field, dismissing the ghostly observer before returning to their body. Sotto grins and leads the others to the hidden stairwell leading to the sub-basement.
On the stairs, they run into Avis Crane. A security guardsmen and quite adept at digging out those that don't belong. Accrimony takes lead distracting Avis with a few words while Spindlemen slips behind the legs.
Accrimony flashbacks to when they remember that these stairwells are all heavily sound-proofed. He shoves. Avis falls back over Spindlemen and snaps their neck on the stairs. They wheeze, paralyzed and dying at the bottom until Sotto puts them out of their misery by smothering them. Accrimony turns away during this. Turns out they're terrible with blood which is why they became a sniper. To keep it at a good distance.
Sotto tries to draw Avis's soul out but something goes wrong. It's not a healthy ghost, but a distorted and physical wraith they're pulling out! They stop pulling but this is a problem. The malevolent wraith will chase them if it gets out. But... the vault is ghost proof! They drag the body by it's neck tie as they continue to the vault.
The vault door is a huge monstrosity of steel, cold-iron and silver runes. It has three tumbler locks and a huge turn handle down an arm sized tube. The door is a Byngham design and though Byngham was killed after making it, his apprentice Freike is a close friend of Spindlemen who flashes back to when the two of them went over the heist. The tumblers are explainable and crackable, but the main turner requires a gem-bracelet worn by James Young. It is sonically attuned and without it turning the handle will unleash wires that sever the arm in the tube.
Flashback: Accrimony spent many nights hunting down a broken copy of the gem-bracelet and fixing it. Hopefully it works.
They set to manually solving the tumblers but it takes too long and a guard appears. Accrimony is doing a last adjustment and can't be disturbed, so Sotto tries to buy time by spinning a story about an accident and needing to put the body in the vault. It buys just enough time for Accrimony to finish the tumblers and turn the handle. It works... mostly. He only loses a finger instead of the whole arm.
As the screams of Accrimony disturb the guard, Spindlemen sprints along the wall and over the roof to land a stab to the guard's shoulder. Sotto charges in to help and eventually they subdue the guard. They then kill him and Sotto steals his soul for later use. Then they drag both bodies into the vault.
It's huge, with rails in the floor leading nowhere and curved walls. Papers, deeds, gold bullion, jewellery, cash and coins, and hundred of soul bottles including variants. It also has all the makings of a panic room with food, drink and porta-potties.
Spindlemen finds their wife's soul as Sotto rearranges the ghost labels and Accrimony takes a lot of very expensive drinks. They then put on as much money as they can find, stuff a bunch of ghost bottles onto their silver platters for use later and change outfits. There's some of James Young's clothes down here, but his giant 8'4" frame is too much to passingly be worn by anyone. Accrimony takes a vest to fashion into a dress with a gold chain belt and they head back upstairs.
They pretend to be waiters plus drunk guest and get all the way to the office level. A giant guard stops them but Sotto blags themselves and Accrimony past. Spindlemen will have to make their own way up.
When they arrive in front of James Young, he's hosting an elaborate game. His study is lined with bookshelves of... first edition systems, modules, minis and board games. 3 whole cases are dedicated to kickstarted systems and the table he's running at is a septagonal, lion legged enormous wooden construct. Model tiles, snack trays, dice and chips. The players are jealous!
Flashback: Accrimony spent the last seven years as part of this game, with a specific habit of showing up late and drunk! He joins immediately and is very distracting, stacking dice and jumping on other player's turns.
Outside, downstairs, Spindlemen has climbed out an office window and ascended the outer walls. Rather than sneak in though, he's setting up explosives all around the top floor exterior.
As Accrimony gets up from the table to make a phone call, Sotto approaches with their drinks tray of ghosts. Only to smash it down.
'For the RENTAL UNION!' they cry as a horde of ghosts billow out. The ghosts are bound by common cause, kill James Young!
Sotto empowers the ghost army to attack the powerful whisper that is James Young, meanwhile, Accrimony uses suppressing fire to keep James's players from interfering while also throwing a pistol at the window. It seems like a miss until a stray bullet overshoots it, shattering the window and allowing the pistol to slap into Spindlemen's palm. Spindlemen turns the pistol on James Young's back and fires, putting a bullet in the giant but not collapsing him.
James Young tries to gather the ghosts around him to use against the party but they're not risking that. Sotto and Accrimony make their way to the window while Spindlemen enters.
Flashback: Spindlemen stored some parachutes outside this window a week ago, just for this moment.
Sotto and Accrimony jump out with parachutes as Spindlemen pushes the trigger to detonate the explosives. But oh no! It was sturdier than anticipated. As Sotto and Accrimony fly out of the smoke cloud, James Young is chasing on his ghost-supported game-table! Spindlemen has unwillingly survived, attached to the underside of the table for now.
It's a dangerous chase now, as Accrimony shoots at James Young with enhanced bullets. But his first shots whiff and his parachute gets burned, forcing him to jump to Sotto. However, for their last shot, Accrimony lets slip their grip to get a good aim and falls. But the shot is good! It kills James Young, disabling his magic table and starting both corpse and Spindlemen falling
As Spindlemen falls, his last sight is James Young's exploding head and torso, much as his wife died all those months ago.
Sotto meanwhile has pulled off a miraculous dive that saves both themselves and Accrimony. As the two limp away burning deeds fly from the top floor of the burning Lucky Saint.
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