Blades '68: Ghost Town
Winstone clashes with his past, and Eve tangles with her trauma; the crew choose their next Target
Preamble & GM Notes
The ska titles will continue until morale improves.
We left on a cliffhanger last time and as I write this I’m either somewhere in Qatar or Berlin1 so hopefully I’ve managed to publish it in time because I’m not in a position to monitor it very well.
We left on a cliffhanger last time and we’re in Personal Business so we’ll have some fiction and fortune rolls, then rolling up scores. Let’s get straight into it.
The Streets of Crowfoot
Winstone and Eve ran from the warehouse and found the route the protest march had taken in the span of a few moments, it was easy to follow the trail of placards and annoyed looking barstaff as they checked their street furniture for damage. They were passing through the center of the district when they had a stroke of good fortune, which in its present form was standing at the side of the road with a broom in its hand.
“Anvil!” Winstone called out, “Join us for a moment, we’re going to find Brielle.”
The Hull nodded sharply and placed its broom against a wall, then joined the other two at a light jog.
The Hull playbook gains XP when it follows orders. Making it unique among playbooks in that it gains XP reactively instead of proactively.
“She was going to ditch at the bridge?” Winstone asked.
“Mm,” Eve confirmed, “Said they’re more likely to arrest people at Ink Lane.”
“She’ll cut along the canal?”
“Yeah,” They turned a corner, still following the clues left behind by the protest march.
“From there back to the warehouse, but she won’t be in a rush, haven’t seen any agents yet, watch the rooftops and windows.” Winstone picked up his pace.
“How can you run and plot at the same time?!”
Anvil kept up wordlessly. They came to an intersection from which they could see the bridge to the Docks District. Winstone glanced in each direction and went left.
“Why left?” Eve questioned, catching her breath.
“Just feels like the way she would go. Slow down now,” He raised one hand, “Let’s not spook anyone.”
“Roofs are clear.” Eve replied.
“I see curtains and potted plants in the windows.” Anvil contributed.
“Thank you, Anvil.”
“You are welcome. I also see a man with a trilby hat in that one, looking out.” Anvil extended one arm and pointed an accusing finger at a window three buildings further down. By the time Winstone’s mind caught up with what Anvil had said, the window had been vacated.
He sighed, “Thank you, Anvil.”
They walked with purpose down this street, Winstone leading but not particularly sure of the destination. Then the destination emerged from an alleyway ahead of them and almost collided with Eve.
“Eve? Hang on, why are you all-” Brielle began.
“Thought you were in danger.” Winstone said, somewhat awkwardly. The menacing threat he was expecting to have manifested the moment Brielle left his purview had failed to, and while he felt relief at that, he also felt a little bit embarrassed that they had rushed to her aid entirely unnecessarily.
“Oh. There is that man in the hat again.” Anvil said, pointing down the street.
Eve looked back the way Brielle had come. It was an alleyway linking two smaller streets, and two figures were advancing along it, walking in step.
“Think your instinct might have been spot on, actually, Fisher.” Eve said, reaching into her coat. She squared up her stance, boots scratching along the cobbles. Brielle fell in behind her, unclipping a pocket on her bandolier.
“We fightin’?” Brielle asked.
“No.” Winstone replied, his voice was heavy, dripping with a dread that was slowly sinking in. On the opposite side of the road was a café and three of the patrons had just left their tables and were walking in their direction, one leaving behind a pastry and a coffee, the other two a copy each of today’s financial broadsheets. Sunset were surrounded.
The man in the trilby hat got close enough that they could make out his face underneath the hat’s shadow and Winstone gave a quiet sigh, only Anvil heard it.
His chin was angular, jutting out just a little bit, and his nose was flat against his face as if someone had struck him hard there a few times in the past and it had simply settled like that. He had no facial hair to speak of so his jawline, sharp and well-defined, was prominently on display. To a member of Duskwall’s élite, he would have been identified as ‘of good breeding’. He lifted his cap and gave a brief nod to the crew, his face breaking into a winning smile, revealing a set of immaculate teeth.
“Tally ho, Winstone!” The man clapped two black-gloved hands together, “Been a damn long time since we last saw one another, what?”
“Karla, I’d heard you were back in town.”
One black glove clapped Winstone on the back, Karla having covered the remaining distance at great speed without even appearing to alter his stride. “Quick moment alone, chap?” The black gloved hand was directing Winstone away from the group now, and Karla glanced back at the rest of Sunset, “Don’t you lot worry, all perfectly safe. Sorry for the drama.”
“We’ll stay, if it’s all the same to you.” Eve replied coolly. Her hand was still at her waist, her body a coiled spring.
Karla ignored her and continued walking with Winstone until they were an appreciable distance away from the group, then he leaned in with a conspiratorial whisper, “Everything alright, there?”
Winstone could barely restrain himself from rolling his eyes, “What is this about, Karla?”
“Look, it’s all a bit hush-hush, what I can share with you,” Karla tapped Winstone on the chest with the other hand, as if sharing this information was in some way putting him at personal expense, “Is that this is a big project. Comes right from the top, comes from…” Karla looked both ways, “…Central.”
Winstone felt a weight settle on his chest. Central - the head of the Palace, who monitored operations at a significant distance from the main office in the capital city, who split time between managing ministerial and imperial officials and directing the various heads of the service across Akoros and the Isles, had for some devil-forsaken reason taken a personal interest in something Karla was doing?
“Are you-”
“And I’m afraid,” Karla continued, “That Tailor will find his inquiries flummoxed. I’ve sent him my own apologies, but I am here to stay until the mission is done.”
“What mission? And what has it got to do with intimidating my local contacts? You do realise-”
“Sorry!” Karla stepped back, throwing arms wide open in a plaintive gesture, “Can’t talk more on it. But!” One finger raised, “I shall leave your little Sunset operation alone as long as our paths only cross in social settings. Does that sound agreeable?”
“I-”
“You’ve always been a stand-up gent, Wins. I’m sure you understand, perhaps you’ll even be read in further if you keep up the good work.” Karla turned back to the rest of Sunset and tipped his trilby, “Good to meet you all but must dash, needs of the country and all. Team!”
With a snap of his fingers, Karla turned heel and smartly marched back along the street to when he had come, passing by the building he had been using as a sentry nest and onwards in the direction of the city center. The rest of the Palace agents melted away into the scenery, disappearing quickly along alleyways and into the main thoroughfares, leaving Sunset alone with their thoughts.
Winstone stood apart from the rest, his face alternating between bafflement and rage.
“What was that shit about?” Brielle asked with total sincerity.
The Warehouse
Winstone had explained everything, including the move Tailor suggested to make Brielle more vulnerable to Blackthorn Park agents so that Winstone could in turn go after them, along with everything he knew of Karla.
“He has a well-connected family, his great-grandfather grew their fortune as one of the last leviathan hunters and various other ancestors turned that fortune to many enterprises. They’ve intermarried with various prominent families in both Doskvol and the Imperial City in the generations since, the end result is that Karla is politically untouchable. When he joined the Palace he bounced between departments and eventually upwards to work on the USC desk. He’s incompetent but cunning, and when his actions cost us informers and vital intelligence he tried to scapegoat someone else on the desk, landing on me because I was often not there to defend myself. His actions came to a head when he blew a network I was running, one of the biggest we’d had in years. His connections insulated him from serious consequences and he was moved to Imperial City and given, I thought, less power; while I was moved to Duskwall and given a... less prestigious post with a deal more independence. A sweet drink with a poison pill, as it were.”
Brielle snorted, “So he’s a nepotist, then?”
“Crony. Nepotism is if you’re related. The Palace is elevating him in exchange for goodwill with the family.” Winstone said, unable to stop himself.
Brielle waved a dismissive hand, “Shit and excrement, man. So you’re saying,” And she leaned forward with a smirk, “You actually want me to go kill Calliard?”
Winstone sighed, “Eventually. The plan was for Blackthorn to contact you and give you details on Calliard’s routines, schedules, his weaknesses, things you could exploit to go after him. Then I pick up whoever contacts you and deliver them to the Palace.”
“Works for me, gets Calliard dead.”
“I think,” Eve announced, standing up, “We listen to Karla. Ignore him and his activities, and he ignores ours. He interrupted one of your extracurriculars, Winstone, but it sounds like he genuinely had no idea it was yours. When he inevitably cocks up he’ll be recalled back to the City, right?”
Winstone considered this for a few moments and shrugged, “I suppose so. But keep an eye out, all of you,” And at this he inclined his head towards Anvil, who had followed them back to the Warehouse, “Remember faces that you see in the street. Especially when it’s quiet. Tails will swap outfits and rotate people but every now and then they have to repeat, and if you do think you’re being followed, don’t try to shake them. Don’t give away that you know they’re there.”
Eve was making her way to the front door, “And on that paranoid note, I’ve got an appointment.”
This will unlock a Long Term Project for Winstone in relation to Karla, depending on how he decides to handle his nemesis.
The Hen’s Tooth, Crowfoot
Eve and Fellows raised their mugs in a mutual toast. The pub was quiet this afternoon, and Fellows had been able to find a gap in the hectic schedules of his recruits to steal away and join her for a convivial drink and a chat. The conversation meandered gently around the various standard topics - what the other had been doing for the past week or so, with Eve delicately dancing around the details of her actual employment, and Fellows relaying a story of two recruits brawling over a card game.
They were on their second pint each when Eve made her gambit, “We saw some shit in Irondale, Fellows.”
“That we did.” Fellows’ eyebrow rose with a mixture of curiosity and skepticism for where she was going with this.
“The rest of our unit… do you keep in touch?”
“Everyone except Brackley,” Fellows grimaced at the name, “Most of them are settling into civvie life, you included.”
Well, about that… Eve pushed the thought away and nodded, “They saw the same shit we did. I’ve got this stuff,” She reached into a pocket of her trousers and pulled out a small bottle of tablets, “It’s supposed to stop the nightmares and it mostly does. I bet most of them have something just as bad, if not worse.”
“Where are you going with this?”
“We should schedule a get together. A card game, drinking, something or other like that.”
Fellows mulled it over, a few more thoughtful sips, “I can put you in touch with them. You wouldn’t want Brackley there, right?”
“I hope he’s at the bottom of the Dusk and I bet everyone else feels the same way.”
Fellows smirked, “Aye, hope so.”
Irondale, Two Years Before…
“Clear!” Eve swept the muzzle of her rifle across the scene in front of her. The Irondale Docks hadn’t seen pitched combat before. Bricks and shattered mortar lay in great piles at either side of the road that Eve and the squad were advancing down. She directed two of the junior squaddies to move up and cover while she reviewed their situation.
She turned back to the rest of the squad once she was feeling a bit safer and took in their conditions. Gunsmoke was hanging in the air and everything rankled with the stink of cordite. Three insurgents had been waiting for them in the rubble, the devil’s mercy and their poor training the only reason that Eve and her squad managed to survive and return fire. Now the three were lying some way off, still and silent. Eve moved past the rest of the 12-person squad towards Jules, the medical specialist, who was looking over two of the wounded.
“How are we looking?” Eve asked.
Jules moved closer to Eve so she could lower her voice, “We need the medipod, Barr took two shots and I can only stabilise him for so long here.”
Eve gave her a nod and a reassuring tap to the shoulder, “Keep it up.”
Then she started looking for Brackley, the squad’s radio operator. She found him squatting next to his massive backpack-mounted RF radio kit, checking it for damage. She knelt down beside him, “Hey, you alright?”
“Huh?” He looked over at her as if he was only just realising where he was, “Ah, yeah, sorry. The equipment’s fine, but the buildings are blocking my signal. I can’t get anything through to HQ.”
Eve glanced up. The buildings around the docks were all massive tenements, recently built and with chunks torn out of them here and there where rockets had impacted. They loomed over her and her squad. She looked back at Brackley, “If you had a clear line to HQ it would work?”
Brackley nodded mutely.
Eve nodded, getting to her feet, “Lopside, Marian, go with Brackley, secure that building and take the roof, or as close as you can get.” She pointed towards the nearest brutal tenement.
The three soldiers department and Eve busied herself with the administration that came with the standard equipment they had been given. Ammunition needed to be replenished, the firing mechanism was making that strange noise that meant maintenance was coming due very shortly, her belt had been feeling a little light and she suspected a clip holding some of her grenades had frayed and sent eight to twelve ounces of explosive rolling into the water.
She was in the middle of staring off the dock wall trying to spot the telltale shape in the water and wondering whether grenades were buoyant when she heard the gunshots.
She sprinted towards the tower block, checking her rifle and ordering Fellows to fall in behind her. Inside the stairwells were blackened with evidence of a past fire that had been extinguished, but they were still sturdy enough to support her and Fellows as they charged upwards, checking as they went but moving recklessly. There were only two gunshots. Three soldiers meant one survived, no return fire means that third soldier wasn’t doing anything, that was a concern.
They arrived at the top floor, the telltale scent of gunfire was now mingling with the hint of blood. Eve and Fellows stacked up against the only door leading away from the landing, which swung ajar gently on its hinges. Fellows pressed one hand flat against the door and permitted Eve entry.
Lopside - so named because of a lazy eye - was supine on the floor, a pool of blood slowly spreading away from his body. He was not breathing. Marian was clutching at her leg, gasping in pain at the far wall. Brackley wasn’t here, his bulky radio abandoned at a large hole blown in the wall. Eve swept the room and declared it clear, making it over to Marian as she produced a tourniquet from her pack.
The memories blurred together from here. Eve remembered Marian pointing after the hole, mumbling that Brackley had shot, then passing out from the blood loss. Fellows ran to the edge, scanning down and finding a ladder, probably used by insurgents to set up a sniper nest out of view of the wider docks. It led down a couple of floors and Fellows, reaching the conclusion faster than Eve, darted back down the stairs on the hunt for the deserter.
Present Day
“All I found were boot prints in the dust.” Fellows concluded morosely.
They had exchanged the tale at most meetings they’d had since Eve had left service, not that they had had many. It was the spectre hanging over all of their conversations, Brackley’s desertion, the death of their squadmates because they couldn’t call for help, the long trudge back to the nearest field hospital, blind and deaf to whatever was going on around them.
“Did I miss something?” Eve asked. She asked this about half of the time this anecdote was shared.
“He was fine. Just a bit quiet, nobody had been ribbing him that day. Shit, I gave him some of my coffee ration before we set out because I thought he needed a jolt.”
“He looked distracted when he was on his radio.”
“You’re not a mind reader, Eve. You couldn’t have known what he was planning.”
“Maybe if I’d gone with them?”
“Then you’d have been shot too.”
Eve balked, “You think I couldn’t have gotten the draw on him?”
Fellows chuckled darkly and drained the dregs of his beer.
This conversation triggers the option of a Long Term Project for Eve, Deal With Trauma, which will entail gathering old squad members and forming a support group.
The Warehouse, The Next Week
“Welcome back all.” Winstone drew everyone’s attention to the circular table that had been moved to the center of the conversation pit, “Glad to see Karla’s left us unbothered so far. That’s still true, right?”
Eve shrugged, “I’ve seen nothing suspicious.”
“I’ve seen a lot of suspicious shit,” Brielle took a pull from a bottle of beer, “Not spy-flavoured, though.”
“I am under constant surveillance by my supervisor.” Anvil replied in a vaguely cheery monotone.
“I can never tell if Anvil’s being sarcastic or sincere.” Winstone remarked, to nobody in particular. Nobody answered.
Seguéing into admin, this is where we will do Score Presentation. I’ll be rolling each one up as we go so everything gets a fair shake. The Target Tier is a 1d3 roll and the payoff is the crew tier (0) plus the Target Tier, I’ll populate the actual Targets after the fact:
Winstone: He’s pitching work on behalf of the Keels again, dealing with debtors, and this time it’ll be permanent. Target tier is II, payoff is 4.
Eve: She wants to expand the crew’s claims, she’s heard of a VIP Bar where the owner has racked up some debts to criminal sources. Target tier is II, payoff is 3.
Brielle: Brielle wants to expand the crew’s claimed turf further into the slums of Charhollow, and one of her union contacts has pointed her the way of a landlady who owns a huge chunk of the tenements there. Target tier is I, payoff is 22.
Anvil: Is still a Hull who has a day job, so is unfortunately unable to serve up a score.
Choosing randomly, I get Brielle.
“Alright,” Winstone tapped the table, “Brielle, talk us through the plan.”
“Ah, motivation first.” Brielle raised a finger, then drained her beer and dramatically slammed the bottle down onto the tabletop, “Her name is Celestine Vong, she owns four tenement buildings in the north of Charhollow. Most of the people there are factory workers in Coalridge or cleaners and couriers in Charterhall. Skov families mostly, since the Akorosi population moved out in the past few years. Now,” She cast a glance at Winstone, “The Skov haven’t been too popular among the people here for a while, and Celestine’s taken a bit of liberty with that to extort them for every bit of rent money she can find, while neglecting the properties themselves.”
At this, Brielle fished around in a jean pocket and produced a cut-out from a newspaper, it was just the headline. ‘Fire at Charhollow flats kills 50’.
“She used to own five, but the worst-maintained one went up in flames a couple of weeks ago. Shitty building materials meant that fire on one level spread over the whole complex in minutes.” Brielle tapped the headline, “Survivors were left homeless and pleas for help ignored. They weren’t worth anything to her anymore, so she’s washed her hands of them.”
“The clients for this one can’t pay much, right?” Winstone cut in.
Brielle shook her head, “Nah, the families have clubbed together to put feelers out and fund it, but they don’t have much. If we off her, we’ll have a base of support to work with in Charhollow though, we can expand out further.”
Winstone shrugged, “I’m not opposed to it. But we’re not running a charity here, Brielle. We’ll have to take on something that pays better soon.”
“Deal, deal, I’ll bring a bigger fish next time.”
“The angle?” Eve asked from halfway between the two, a few scrawled notes on a pad in front of her.
“She’s not well-defended, every weekend she travels from her apartment in Megablock One3 to the Sands Casino in Silkshore. I don’t want to tangle with the security in either of those, but her route takes her through Barrowcleft, where the Bluecoats don’t give a shit about anything that isn’t car crime.”
Another finger went up as Brielle continued, “One hitch, she doesn’t head out at the same time every weekend. So we,” She indicated herself and Winstone, “Skedaddle up the block and stress her out a little, nothing overt, nothing that’ll trigger an alarm. We radio out when she leaves, and walking roadblock over there-” A point at Anvil, “Stops her car in a perfect sightline for wherever you,” A final indication at Eve, “Set up.”
“Had time to think about this one, eh?” Eve said once the details of the plan had been settled.
“Nah,” Brielle grinned, “Think I’m just naturally creative at killing greedy bastards.”
Conclusion
Another Personal Business in the books, this one was backstory exposition for Winstone and Eve, now that we’ve met Karla and technically met Brackley who are their respective rivals on their playbooks. This has also set up some initial Long-Term Projects for them.
One thing I used here was a flashback to exposit a bit more about what Eve did in Irondale. At a group game this would probably be one or two sentences said by Eve’s player to get everyone up to speed on their backstory notes, so it’s quite indulgent to add it in here, but it was nice to write.
Making Karla into an upper-class villain who is insulated from consequences by virtue of birth and class flies so far in the face of his namesake from Tinker Tailor that it almost feels offensive but I feel like it also works in this kind of narrative where Karla is going to be acting in direct opposition to Winstone when he pops up.
The next score is decided and it’s going to play a little weird, because it’s very low-payoff at 2 Stacks but it’s also got a couple of layers to it. How it’ll likely play out is I’ll treat the entire score as a singular ‘obstacle’ where everyone gets a chance to roll but otherwise it will be over fairly quickly.
As a teaser for next time I’ll roll the Engagement here:
1d for luck +1d for striking the target where they are weak. We roll and get 6, so we start Controlled.
It’s the most travel I’ve done in about a year and it is going to be stressful.
I rolled a 2 for this, the standard rule is that for a Claim score you should subtract 0-3 stacks which I did for Eve’s. However the game doesn’t really give you an option on scores worth less than 2 stacks, they’re just super not worth it. So I kept it at 2.