Thread by @rdonoghue

From tonight's Miro board for the Blade's game.

So, last session, a smaller gang crossed the Hive (or, rather, definitely APPEARED to cross the Hive) and were themselves crossed out. This created an opportunity, as their headquarters was some quality real estate, and was abruptly unclaimed, so the race was on.

The crew descended on it in force, and got a 6 on the engagement roll, so they were the first ones there in any kind of force so they managed to set themselves up to hold the place, made a fake deed and so on.

So, rather than have another gang show up with violence on their mind, instead they got Mother Narya.

Mother Narya runs a charity and soup kitchen in six towers. She is either the nicest person in the neighborhood - possibly the city - or the absolute best liar.

She showed up with a number of folks from the charity, inspecting the place, because she had the deed, which - she reported - she had legitimately bought, and she was quite indignant at these ruffians and their manners.

One color piece in this game is that the crew are all (except one) recent transplants to Six Towers, so they're not really *known*, so our cutter was unprepared when Mother Narya began asking gang members about their families by name, and the gangers got VERY UNCOMFORTABLE

So our slide, the one person who recognizes her on sight (and she knows his wife, of course) walks in and proceeds to try to convince her that she's been scammed and the deed is faked.

Now, we had discussed the legality of deed a bit, because it's all pretty loosey goosey in Duskvol, and most deeds are just a fig leaf of legal pretense to cover the other nine tenths of the law.

I also was channeling my aunts in this lady.

My aunts are some of the nicest, kindest, most generous people in the world, but they are also HARD AS FREAKING IRON at the core.

My wife recognized this and is a little fussed at me.

So, the Devil's bargain I offered my slide, a player who has an almost pavlovian "Yes" response to Devil's bargains was this "If you take that extra die, her deed is 100% legit"

This was the first Devil's Bargain he has turned down, and was a total GM victory moment.

But then he critted.

So I went with it. She was totally convinced. He was sympathetic and helpful, and even agreed to help "fix the paperwork" for her.

At which point the rest of the crew showed up and very nearly bollixed it for him by claiming *they* owned it.

So, our Slide punched out our Whisper and chewed him out for running scams and being terrible and generally disavowing him.

It worked.

So then Mother Narya went over to make sure the Whisper was ok, and that he knew that this was not the only path available to him, and that however bad it got, there was always a door open to him.

So, the crew totally had the situation in hand, but also knew perfectly well that if they scammed Mother Narya, they'd be the crew who had done that, and that would end BADLY.

So they ended up contributing the bulk of their coffers (6 coin!) to the cause, but spent the money separating the old building Narya wanted as a poorhouse from this secret underground tunnels, which is what they really wanted.

So the crew has a new holding (Secret Routes), and I think the donation is enough to earn a +1 relationship with the Weeping Lady, so all in all, they got their money's worth.

And strangely, so did she.

Probably just a coincidence, though.

Also, Our cutter's cunning plan finally came to fruition. He's had an 8 slot clock running for a while where he dresses up as a greycloak and goes out and is just a giant, violent asshole, and now Six Towers has a negative relationship with the Grey Cloaks.

Also, Vaughn (the whisper who has electrocuted himself a LOT) got a playbook advance, and the player said "I had not been planning on this, but honestly, this is the best excuse for buying Tempest that I can possibly imagine"

So, Vaughn can now shoot lightning, and we're doomed

Broadly speaking, "guilt" is not an emotion that I evoke to often in Blades in the Dark, which is part of why this ended up being such a delightful twist.

Gonna sleep now, but will note: Really leaning HARD into turf as real places with real context has never been anything but incredibly fruitful for me.

I lied: I share a quote from one of my players before I crash.

"Look, I’m willing to support sleeping with the undead and acid trips with the undead but there are moral limits, folks."