Yep, the title says it all.
First of all, the world is so grimdark, it is absolutely worthy of Warhammer. The Cataclysm had shattered the sun, the earth is in perpetual darkness. The souls of the dead roam freely in the wastelands. The city of Duskvol, an amalgamation of Victorian London, Venice and other cities, is kept safe by giant tesla coils which keep the undead at bay. Power is supplied by literal demon blood, harvested on the high seas by armored warships hunting leviathans. Corruption and crime run rampant.
Everybody is a criminal. The PCs are henceforth referred to as "the scoundrels".
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I actually jumped in for the second session. During the first game, a bunch of intrepid criminals had been captured and imprisoned. There, they befriended a crime boss, the leader of the Billhooks gang, who wished to take over kitchen duties from the Red Sashes. The scoundrels got their hands on rat poison to mix in with the food, and also dead rats to scatter about the kitchen. This is where the second game session started.
Scoundrels:
- Adrian, slide (charisma based)
- Dova, hound (ranged attacker and tracker)
- Motherfucker Jones, cutter (melee specialist and also me)
- Veska, leech (tech)
The chemist-type leech character put all the poison into the food, and we sneaked back to our cells. At lunchtime, us and the Billhooks only faked eating, with the rest of the inmates shortly experiencing violent diarrhea, vomiting and occasionally death. This provoked quite the furor in the prison. Soul Wardens descended on us to contain the ghosts of the dead, and so on. Shortly before getting released, the Billhooks boss thanked us for our service, and gave us the contact details of his daughter, his lieutenant.
Once outside, we decided on banding together and forming our own gang. Overwhelmed with options, we decided on abandoning the usual murderhobo adventuring life, and became Hawkers instead. Our goods of choice: prostitutes. With prostitution legal in the city, discussion quickly veered into weird territory - how to make it illegal? Bestiality and other deviancies were brought up, and puns abounded. In any case, we decided on being a really weird gang.
Second, to start us on our way, miss Billhook lieutenant got us a mission: to steal some cash from the Red Sashes. Turns out, these guys are actually run by a foreign nation. So we stalked out the embassy and scouted the probable route the armored wagon was going to take. We set up our ambush on a bridge, with all our prostitutes milling about, and us disguised among them.
The wagon slowed and the driver was suspicious, but speechcraft by our slide convinced him to stop. At this, I executed my cutter specialty move inhuman feat of strength, jumped on the wagon and threw the gunman into the river. The driver was then stopped with the threat of violence.
The occupants of the wagon, armed to the teeth, tried shooting out at us, but our well prepared leech[1] disabled them with smoke and shrapnel grenades. I threatened them with extreme violence, and they surrendered. We grabbed the cash and made our escape by boat.
*************
I missed a session where the guys robbed a train in search of ectoplasmic essence. Apparently, our gang's next objective is creating a new type of drug. Then, we needed a recipe; and we were going to steal it.
We found out about an illegal laboratory fronted by a pharmacy in Charterwall, one of the nicer neighborhoods. The gang running it, The Hive, is a decentralized organization run by merchants. We used that against them with easily faked documents[2] stating we were members of a partner organization, coming to inspect new possible partnerships. The other plan would have been a break-in in the night; but hustling up info about The Hive resulted in abandoning that one. They are fond of high tech gizmos and alarms.
And so we sauntered into the pharmacy, with Adrian as a crime boss and Veska and I as his bodyguards. A couple of surprisingly good rolls later, the head pharmacist/thug lead us into the underground facility. As he was enthusiastically showing off the machinery and scientists/thugs working them, Veska placed a smoke bomb to simulate a fire. In the confusion, Adrian nicked the recipe and replaced it with a drawing of Dickbutt.[3] I then shouted about needing to protect my boss, and we were escorted out.
Most surprisingly, the mission went without a hinge. But low risk, low reward: we got the recipe but no other valuables. We spent a bunch of our hard earned cash on stuff, and we were left with... not enough to upgrade our gang. Sigh.
*************
After the previous score, we had enough reputation to upgrade our gang, but not enough cash. Sigh. We asked for an appropriate score. Thus, Dova was approached by a strange looking fellow looking for hired muscle. Given that we asked for such a score, we said yes, even though he was part of the Deathland Scavengers[4] and wanted us to accompany him into the deathlands.[5]
We started off with two heavy wagons, each pulled by 6 goat husks[6] and driven by a scavenger. Our mission: resupply an outpost in the deathlands. Well we got just outside the city walls when we were accosted by Spirit Wardens, who demanded our supply of ectoplasm. The scavengers noted that we need this where we're going. So I took the initiative, hopped off my wagon, walked to the leader of the Spirit Wardens, pulled out my scary weapon - a brass knuckle jesus dual taco holder butt-plug - and told him where it's going if he doesn't let us through.[7] Dova intervened in a more conciliatory tone, offering 1 tank of ectoplasm to make everybody happy. The Spirit Wardens relented and accepted the one tank, along with a penalty in reputation. To play on his background, Adrian told them off, rewarded with another point of penalty.
We rolled off into the darkness, and soon we were attacked by huge wolf-like creatures. Dova picked a couple off with his fine long rifle, while I jumped out to hold half of them off with my superhuman strength. Adrian threw some dog biscuits to distract them. Veska almost set a wagon on fire. With lots of stress and harm suffered, we killed them all.
Finally, we arrived at the Scavenger outpost, surrounded by angry ghosts. Apparently, the Scavengers found some artifact that allows them to look into the world before the apocalypse[8], but it attracts ghosts like crazy. They loaded it up into a wagon, refilled the ectoplasm containers in the outpost, and we prepared to leave.
The first attempt to distract the ghosts while we ride out involved a drone made by Veska, but the ghosts interfered with the control signal. We decided on a simpler approach, and Adrian and Dova threw an ectoplasm grenade out the back window. We jumped into the wagons and let fly.
Thanks to our drug-enhanced goats, we made good time and left most of the ghosts behind. However, an axle broke. Sigh. We loaded the artifact unto the other wagon, and anybody wagonless rode the freed up goats. Dova kept the ghosts at bay with ectoplasmic shots.
We were approached just one more time by ghosts as we rode towards the city gates, but we threw ectoplasm vials to distract them.
We made it back to the city, with no losses and the artifact intact. We got some cash and the Scavengers owe us a couple of favors. I got interrogated by the police, again, but refused to give in and earned some heat.
We juggled around with money and downtime activities until the gang was upgraded, we took down our heat and stress, and generally advanced our characters.
Next up: back on track with drugs and prostitutes.
[1] This took a while, it's a complicated character.
[2] We hired a false document expert, and Adrian rolled well.
[3] We are a strange gang.
[4] Who specialize in scavenging in the deathlands.
[5] The previous note was useless, but funny. The deathlands are whatever is outside the city limits, unprotected by the lightning towers. A.k.a. ghost territory.
[6] Husks are bodies without souls, especially obedient and with no free will.
[7] Told you, we are a strange gang.
[8] So like a VCR.
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