Down time and crew issues continues
Knights of the Night
608 - BitD I’ve Got Thorn Crotch
[music] Hello, and welcome to Knights of the Night Actual Play podcast. This blade's in the dark story, "Maconation is written and run by our GM John." And now, please enjoy episode 608, titled "I've Got Thorne Crotch. Actual play begins immediately." [music] Hello, and welcome to Knights of the Night Actual Play podcast. I'm your host and GM John, running blades in the dark campaign machinations. Players with me tonight, starting on my left. I'll be playing Hadrian's Briar, or Burning Briar, on the job. I run away a Ruby and Demon heir, who has possessed some poor foreman. I'm a leech, which means I specialize in chemical creations, and spark a craft, or, I don't know, old-fashioned 1600s interventions. Visually, I am an accuracy man, kind of an English analog. A healthy building noble stock fitted with a long coat and some scholarly clothes beneath. A pair of glasses and a great big thorny Briar, bursting from his mouth and eyes at ears. And most magically notable, a furnace installed in his belly that burns with a bright, white-blue ghost flame. Which sometimes shapes itself to the whims of the actual emotions of the creature, hiding in the body. I have four stress, I'm mentally unstable, and I have a level two unstable binding, which means that I have a hard time staying around in this body. I'm burning it out if I don't keep the engines stoked. So, you know, I'm doing great. Well, everyone, I'm Scott. I'm playing Tesselon Vale, otherwise known as The Bell of the Abyss. Tesselon is a subarosi whisperer who does the dirty work for the archive of echoes, at least she did once it was still in existence. She explores the past via ghosts with Lord Pender in her mentor, and she has curly brown hair, olive skin, and green eyes. She favors petticoats, and she has a dead left-hand sewn on to her left wrist that she is very self-conscious about. Tesselon has four stress. Hello, folks. I am Jim. I am playing a slide named Skiv and Bing, also known as Busy. He is a socializing and enterprising handsome young across the noble, hard at work revitalizing the finances of the Bing cold mining family. Skiv, and very much enjoys running his many businesses and side hustles, always finding creative ways of making money from both the good and bad fortune of others. He's currently stressed out with about six ticks on his stress bar, and looking forward to some downtime to try to relieve that. I'm Tom. I'm playing Esther Roland, an ex-blue-code captain who goes by the name of Ghost, because of her pale skin, eyes, and hair. She's a cutter who is dangerous and intimidating, but not one dealing with her crew members. It's her job to keep them all as safe as possible. You guys can say you're stressed, but I have seven. Okay, you win. Hello, I'm Michael playing Gordon, a young, dense, good-natured, scovish lurk. As a lurk, Gordon specializes in infiltration, which allows him to bypass most security measures. He currently has six stress, right up there with you. Sure enough. When last we left off? I have a question for the GM. Yeah. I'm not going to do it now because everybody's going to take the next round. But I was thinking of doing my other downtime as working on the clock that's called Home for Starlight. It sounds like that would potentially be a plus dice in attempting to get it done, because they're suggesting being helpful and building our place better. That also includes the home watch. Yeah, you get an extra dice for a girls' investment. Okay. When we get there. Yeah, I haven't done my first. You can go next? Yeah. So just wanted to make sure we didn't start cycling through again. No, no. I was just asking the question. That definitely sounded like something that would be exactly what I'm working on, so benefit. Mm-hmm. Okay. Gordon, are you there? Yes, I am. Do you have any reservations about having a big sister, younger brother relationship with Tesla? No. Like a developing one. Not one that's set in stone because we're still getting to know each other, but just she does he reciprocate her big sister slash motherly concern about him from his own point of view? Or how does he treat that? Yeah, he always wanted a sibling and hasn't really had one. Okay. Well then, when you get back from your unofficial date with Rosalyn, Tesla is waiting in one of the whatever serves as a lounge or a study or what not, when you come in and... Which is about 11.30. Yeah. Okay. So pretty late and you can tell by her, she could give you a little bit of a pep talk before you left. And so you could tell that she kind of wants to know what happened. Are you willing to sit down with her and share any stories about what you guys did this evening? Sure. Okay. In that case, Tesla is very interested when you tell her about Rosalyn's recent procurement of some severosi flowers that aren't responding super well to the dimness of duskfall and the world kind of in general. And so Tesla says that there's a little known secret among us severosi ghost riders and for our horses that fight against the spirits. And that's the white-bellied canal eel here in duskfall. If like... Belly, what? White-bellied canal eel here in duskfall. If you take a knife and it has a viscous oil around its gills, and if you scrape that off and use it in the concentration to feed the severosi wildfire, which is one of their plant names, if you use it to feed the severosi wildfire, it'll actually respond quite well and grow quite vigorously. So that's just something that you might want to tell Rosalyn the next time you meet up with her. So nice. She had several of those in her collection now. That's very nice. Thanks. I'm glad to help, very intrigued by the flowers of home. So if you learn any more, please feel free to share, and I'm glad you had a very nice evening with her. It sounds like it went quite well. Yeah, it did. It was different. Something I'm adjusting to, but... Sure. I like it a lot. So... Well, you seem to be doing very well. So whatever you're doing, keep it up because it seems to be working. Cool. Thanks. Mm-hmm. And then Rosalyn heads out in a late night cab to find someone by the name of Flint who traffics and spirits, and she meets him at whatever dive bar or hovel that he's hanging out in. Mm-hmm. He's got a background at a place we visited called The Dregs. It's a spirit cafe of sorts. They sell distilled ghost essences that you drink and relive the memories. And that's allowed with the spirit wardens? It's a gray market. They don't claim where they get their ghost sources. There are legal ways to get them. Then it's called The Dregs. Yes. This is where we first attacked Praxis. Yes. Okay. I remember now. There's definitely a place that is becoming larger on her radar since her voice is dealing with spirits and kind of consuming them in some ways. So she definitely visits The Dregs then and makes her way to the back room to where Flint's dealing, and she asks him if he has anything that is peculiar, anything different. That's a common coal mining Dreg who had an uninteresting life. I'm looking for something a little more exceptional. Do you have something in stock? It might be a little out of your price range, but for two coin, I can procure an Arathi scholar. The Arathi family, I need to make sure I'm pronouncing it right, but they are an Aruvian family, a noble family of one of the five major houses. They have captains here that work the ships of Rathi as a person's name. I'm sorry. An Ankhayat mystic from their schools in Aruvia. Their entire family runs the demonology and ghost trade there, more or less. You could say they are the spirit wardens of the area, but that leaves out their willingness to experiment and learn. If anyone's keeping sorcery alive in this world, it would be them. That sounds absolutely delicious. The procurement can happen now if I have the coin. It's going to involve me importing it. That's why the cost largely. It's a week time, and it's one well worth waiting for. I'm sure it is, but I do need something for this evening, so why don't you go ahead and procure that? I'll give you one coin now in one coin when it arrives. However, do you have something a little less esoteric, something, but still, again, I'm not looking for something common. I'm looking for something a life a little more lived, a little more vibrant, if you will. Fair. Yes. There are souls from the Lost District, previously fear from out of town, I can't tell. The Lost District was a wealthy one before it fell, and many of the ghosts there have memories of the higher dealings of society. That sounds perfect. That will suit my need for this evening. That one needs no import. I have a couple on tap. Fantastic. Is there a family you're looking after? I've only got three here, but if I have it, I can supply. If you had a Kellus, that would be absolutely just adorable, but beneath his dark hood, you can see his eyes crinkle and twinkle. That gives a bit of a kick. You've got to be careful with those ones. If you don't know, I've heard the necromancers of their time. I understand. If you have one in stock, I'll gladly take it. Very well. Here you are. She gives him... It's like a standard price, not an actual... Like coins are first. Yeah. Usually downtime actions are just something you take. That's what I thought I wanted to make sure. She grabs a Kellus, she pays a few coins, not actual coins, but just what are they called? A big coin would be an imperial mark. Small ones are slugs. Those are like... So she pays a handful of slugs for a room. She goes into the room. She pulls out almost like a small chemist kit. It's kind of black market, but higher quality than the ones they supply you in the room. Yes. And this particular kit allows her to distill the essence a little stronger, since her addiction is a little more than a normal addiction. More developed, you might say. She goes ahead and she partakes in the Kellus spirit, and she distills it down, inhales it. That's her preferred way of doing it. When they distill a ghost like this, they normally get quantities they can dull out. Memories separated into different things. It's largely by category. This was chosen to be, well, you can say, "Did you want a pleasant memory? Did you want one of knowledge or suffering? What were you looking for?" Probably knowledge since the Kellus family is someone I'm interested in with my clock for the hand of Kotar. Yeah. You can take an additional downtime action to roll for that, if you wish, but right now it is just an indulged vice. Okay, I will indulge vice, which is prowess is my least, which is one dot, so I will click on prowess. I will add no doubts. The note will be indulge voice, and I'll make my roll, which was a two. So I go from four stress down to two, and spend my night in a blissful haze of spiritual narcotic bliss until the morning time, and that's my downtime activity. Okay. We'll hold on to that in case you wanted to roll our research about it. But bouncing back up would be, I guess, there again, or if we are doing the, all the way down all the way up, we do Tesla twice. Oh, okay. Well, then I'll try to be quick with the second one. I'm going to go with a long-term project, and that will be the hand of Kotar, and what I want to do is go, and we don't have to roll played out if you want to move quicker. I want to go to wherever Lord Pendren is hiding out, I'll pack a little picnic basket with some cheeses and eel dips and wine, because I'm sure he's not getting a lot of decent meals while he's on the run. And I want to give him the message from Mildred that she wanted me to pass along, wanting to meet up with Lord Pendren. So I pass along that information to him and in return, I'm not really, like, plying him for information, but I'm certainly, I mean, if he gets a little bit loose-lipped on the wine and lets slip some information, I'm certainly not going to complain. I'm trying to get some information on the Kellis family in general, since it's the topic that we're discussing, and specifically that relates to the hand of Kotar when we move my clock a little. All right. The streets of Coleridge are very narrow and high up. A lot of these are slum tenements for the industry workers, but he has found a quiet space among the dryer sheets overlooking the trade water that lends some privacy with the cover. Okay. And there are no parks in this region, unfortunately, but he can't wander to the mower. Oh, no, I'm sorry, my apologies. I'm not like a picnic. Like I brought like a little tablecloth that we lay down on the floor or over a table he might have in his room. Oh, okay. I meant very impromptu picnic, not an actual picnic. Gotcha. That's fine. So I pass along the information from Mildred to him that she would be interested in meeting and ask him if that's something he would be interested in doing. And then the conversation hopefully slips into, well, how do you know Mildred? I know she was associated with or affiliated with the archive of echoes. But how do you know her and then how do you know her family? And then have you ever heard about the hand of Kotar, you know, like as we're drinking and dining, he's trying to get some more information all the while doing it with the one hand. He regales you of stories of his time in the Imperial City Arcane Academy where he trained in his youth alongside Mildred. You're not sure how the Mildred family got the funds to send her there, but she was there nonetheless. The noble family of the calluses are kind of on the out and out, but he has stories to tell of her. And when it comes time to, I think the segue is like when they were in Imperial Square and there's this statue to Kotar, his hand, his heart, his eye all replaced with spark craft inventions as he is slain by the Emperor. Fascinating. And just the lovely time they had there. Do you know that airships are more common than canal boats there? Oh, to tell, that sounds absolutely just fascinating. And so I listened to him regale me with stories of the Imperial City in his time there. And do I get the idea that Mildred was more than an acquaintance there? They had a dalliance, but it was mostly because of their shared interests. He felt a little used by that is the vibe you're getting. He's not too better about it. They still work together, but they aren't on the best of terms. Well I hand him the letter that Mildred had me pick up from the front desk when we were at Charter Hall. And I don't pride, but I try to get him to talk more about Kotar and the affiliation with House Kellis and just see if anything comes up, they can tick the clock a little bit, and maybe I can roll on that for, yes, go ahead. Okay, it says roll. Is it one of the actual action of the skills? Each project is going to demand something different, but so it's not like insight prowess or resolve. It is not the category. It's a specific skill. Okay, then it would probably be consort because he's a friend and colleague. Is that what I'd be rolling? Yes. You can add an extra die first help. I was going to say add an extra die for the wine, but that help works as well. Okay, the position is controlled or no? Yes, it's controlled. Controlled and the effect is standard or great or limited because he has no. Standard. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and make the consort roll with four dice. I roll a 6115, so she does have a success, which I believe moves the clock several three ticks. Three ticks? Yep. Okay. That's why we're visiting. The Kellis family has a new allegiance, this side of the cataclysm. They're an old family. They were originally associated with Qatar's resistance, but ended up turning trader in a rather spectacular way when the tides began to turn against him. So we were visiting there reminiscing about history, philosophy, resistance, what young scholars do. Yes, of course. But her family has an association with the character that travels down these centuries. And it was rather a blow to them when the spirit wardens got final authority over the dead and ghosts in general. You tell? I think they took it as the emperor besmirching them, but truth be told that mind is ineffable. There's a lot going on the near millennia he has lived. I couldn't say if it was a recent political movement against them or he just wanted to consolidate power. She's a co-car? Yes. No, this is the emperor against the Kellis family by making spirit wardens and charges spirits. He kind of took away their necromancy specialty. But if anyone had family history that they could pass on about him, it would be them. I'm sure they have an imperial order to squash such rumor spreading, but noble families rarely forget their history. So he suggests I talk to the Kellis family. He doesn't know how, because you were being sly about it, he doesn't know how interested you are in Kotar or if this was just poking at his history in the city and wondering what it's like to go to an imperial economy. I reveal a little bit that yes, this is something that's very fascinating to me, the hand of Kotar in when she says that her hand slips into her pocket as she gets very self-conscious and says it's something that I am quite interested in learning more about. Do you have maybe an introduction to someone in the family that you could provide? He waves the letter unopened. You already know Mildred. If anyone is the family historian, she's not a bad bet. I couldn't save for myself, but she did enlighten me as to if you trade her as notions during our training. Okay, and I spend the rest of the afternoon just small talking with him. How's he doing? How's he holding up? Does he still feel a lot of heat? Does he feel safe? Is there anything I can do to help him? I've found a trustworthy valet that can get me around the city as long as I don't poke my head out and the destination is safe enough. I am looking at setting up a more permanent archive, but in terms of how you could help, I've tracked down some leads on the motivating factors behind my declaration of treason. Some of your friends might be able to help with that. I don't know all of your connections. Our relationship is in that regard purposefully opaque. How do you think I can help do you have a specific desire for me to do something to do? I can deliver you a name and you can look into them as to what happens to them. I don't know what would need to happen for this to change. I am limited in my ability to gather information at the moment. The name you're going to give me is someone who is holding power over your current predicament or someone who undoubtedly motivated the Lord Governor to declare my actions treasonous. Okay. And that name is, does he have a name or? Yes, Giles Rowan, a member of the Lord Governor's Court. I don't know what crew affiliations he has, if any. I just know from other flies on the wall in that organization that he had the Lord Governor's ear at that moment. Okay, I assure you that I will look into this Giles Rowan, get more information regarding him and his machinations, if he will, and I will do my best to get back to you within the next week or two with an update. I imagine you understand that until I'm restored to my house's status, there's not much in the way payment I can give. Payment isn't what I'm looking for in this particular situation. I value our friendship. I value our relationship. She says, looking into his eyes a little closer, I want to do whatever I can do to help because not only for the archive of echoes, which we both share a passion for, but also for you yourself, who I've grown quite close to in these days and months as we've worked together. So don't worry about payment. It's not an issue. I will take care of that. He gets a bit saying going at this. And she gets a little uncomfortable and breaks eye contact, and she starts to pack up, not in a rush, like she's upset, but just like kind of a nervous, okay, well, I should be going. It's to see you again and hope things work out with Mildred with the letter she left for you. I appreciate all the tips you gave me as far as talking to Mildred about COTAR and about this Giles individual I will look into. So enjoy, stay safe, and send a message if you need anything, okay? I will be sure to. Okay. And she's safe. We'll do. Esther? Yes, I would like to work on our little house or place that we're going to put Starlight. Starlight is currently at Tangle time. We want to move in Mars, so we have to make something there. So I'm going to work on that particular project. And if I remember correctly, there was some time where skulks had a problem with the bridge that I helped them rebuild it. So I want them to help me work on this. If it's all possible, my ability is command. It should basically demand the people thing do things. So that works. I would like to do that along with the help that Grull suggests it. So I don't know. It's probably you can only add one dice, but yes, I'm going to attack on either hidden or secure layer, it's your choice as representation, in addition to that dice of the building upgrade for your layer. We definitely want Starlight to be hidden, yes. Secure is locks, alarms, traps to thwart invaders. Hidden is disguised location. All right, we're rebuilding a house because this is one that had been basically abandoned. So yeah, we want to make it look like it's going to be occupied by someone. But Starlight's section is definitely going to be hidden. All right, I'll pick hidden then. Gordon was planning on working on that as well. I don't know if we can coordinate that or if that matters. Well, I mean, technically you can use the skulks and I can use Grull. I don't think Gordon has the command to help the skulks. Wow. It might be a different method for Gordon. Certainly not. True enough. But this can be two roles. We'll see if two roles are needed because this might get finished and Gordon has another downtime activity for something else. Right. So Esther. But he's definitely there helping and if he needs to roll, that'll happen. So I'm really committing correct and it's not really a position of risky, et cetera. It's not important. Or am I rolling the wrong section? I don't know if there's a section for downtime actions in particular. Let's just have it be a regular role, say controlled standard effect. Downtime project Starlight's home and I rolled a 443. All right. A4 gets us two ticks on the clock. It was a two of six. Now it's four of six. So Esther is pretty much done as she's just working on updating the house but very specifically building a secret location for Starlight. Yeah. And with that, we'll get to Gordon. There is still room to roll here. We need two more ticks on the clock. So a four, five, six will do. How are you doing it? You have a background in labor. You could be doing it yourself with your hands instead of planning on getting right in there and working on it. I have a finesse and a lot of stuff. So it's it's either finesse or tinker, but they have brought the same score. So yeah, I think it's come down to a lot of the big work has been done and it does require some finesse for the fitly bits to make sure the tank isn't leaking to make sure that you don't get any void water anywhere other than in the tank because that stuff is a little dangerous. You're definitely better at this than I am. So you could finish. Yeah. Go ahead with a finesse roll with your patrons help. You still got to die one for this. They're providing you with little tools that aren't at hand. I don't drink the void water either. So I'm doing plus 1D finesse just controlled if you want to change it, but there's no real harm that can come out of us. All right. That completes it. Yeah. Roll the six and a five. So your base now has a tank. We can say that there's a little round turret that ends up being a circular old for this creature. It's got a lot of verticality for it to give it some space to stretch out a siphon that is supposed to siphon out the ink from the void water. Gordon and I invite Briar to see, look, we finished it. Starlight's got a place. And you mentioned wanting to potentially learn some things from him. I mean, yeah, I had projects, I had in mind, but I'm not insisting that you have to do anything specifically. I just kind of wanted to brag about what Gordon and I finished doing. Basically, look, we did a tinker. Yeah. Congratulations. I appreciate you finishing off the task. I look forward to working with her or him. I don't know. Whatever. Starlight. And I think in the future, though, at least now it's in a location that I'm a little more secure of nobody knowing about because it's our home, so yeah. With that, it is Briar's turn for downtime actions and then Visi. Sorry. It took so long to bounce. All right. Well, I've just received further information from the demo sisters that my network had been compromised by the lady of phones. So fuck them. I'm 90% done with a project that's going to blow up their church and I'm going to finish that. How's our heat gone, by the way? It's something I realized during our downtime actions is that we never did the heat segment. We assigned heat, but we didn't roll for complications or anything. We are at two, three, four, five, six, seven out of nine. Could you count the heat I took? Nope. We are at eight of nine. Okay. Wow. Yikes. If I don't know that. What happens if we hit the top or tip over or anything bad? We get a wanted level that are harder to get rid of, but there are four of them and one star is not the worst. I think there's a certain level that one of us gets arrested. Yeah. Anyway, you're not there. Yeah. Okay. I just was curious what level that is. There will be me at all. We also have some coin. We can throw it that, right? To reduce heat. Yeah, you could. Everyone, if you have not, should add a coin to their character for the last score. Right. We said one each for all of us and then five in the bank or something like that. Yes. I think with the math for leveling up the tier, which did I do, I should, we have four in the bank. We are in a week tier one position zero up. When you say bank, you mean our group, right? Yes. The bank. I think the sheet refers to it as the vault, which is fine, but why is it not five? Because it was 10 and we gave one to each person and once you spent as a pay two more than we had already in the bank, which was two. Gotcha. Great. Yeah. I was just asking. I don't know why we all have four. I was passing. There's one for each character. There are four of you. Five. That leaves. There's five of us. One, two, three, four, five. Yeah. There is. Okay. That's 10 minus five and then add in the two that was already in the vault is. So we should be at three and yeah, it sounds like it should be at three after you subtract four for the, that's math. You can edit that out. It's riveting. Will you kidding me? But yeah. So three in the vault and you're welcome to tap it to reduce heat for the crew because the crew would appreciate that. Yeah. But it's not what I'm doing. No, it's not what you're doing right now. I just meant that gold can always be used for extra downtime actions. Do not forget true facts. My character has just worked out a new level of magic circle understanding that he appreciates and then immediately turns it around in order to trigger all the seeds that he's already laid below the foundations of the lady of thorns cathedral. But before he triggers it, he asks the sculpt team now that my teammates are bragging about having completely succeeded in their creation of Starlight's tank. If they've got some free time, yeah, boss, what do you need? All right. So this structure is about to fall apart for reasons of religious infighting, I guess. I need to be aware of movers and shakers within the group. And I think a catastrophe will see them rise to the top in a prominent way, you know, trying to help people and to show off how leaderly they are. There's a lady by the name of Melissa whom I personally hate, so I'm looking for rivals of horrors that are organizing to undo this catastrophe that I might be able to approach to suborn this church, because knocking it over is all well and good, but they're just going to move to a new house. So you guys are going to watch, you guys are going to find some leaders are going to gain some information other than just missing in their cereal, which is a nice thing for me to do, but it's not necessarily a gain. All right, go. Hurry. My spell already fired. All right, roll your tune. They're going to give you an extra die on this is kind of two actions a little bit, but I can see this any successes rolling over into a new project of taking over. So go ahead. They're going to give you an extra die position risky or because you are safe. I feel like it is just because new adherence to the church showing up on a random day of service is not weird, but standard effects, they are one stage better than we are, and we just hit stage one. I don't know what the lady of thorns church is tier wise might be greater than standard effect. Because of the overlap in your aspects, a sudden growth of thorns that then burst into flames at first is not something they're weeding out. I think you're going to have a standard effect. Because it's something they see happening all the time. That's a benediction. Oh wait, they killed the foundation. All right, that's fair. Plus one does controlled standard notes, none are old five for partial success, which in a longer term, projects lands is more than enough to finish it. It is two dots, which is just one overlap, I mean one over the top of the requirements of finishing this project. So with a crack and a snap as one of his ghost flame sparks leaps from his bushels in his laboratory down through a magical connection and into all of the seeds he has below the cathedral of the lady of thorns, the foundations crumble a roof, maybe does not stand up to all of that. They are actually in an underground cathedral deep in six towers on the edge of the city. You get a vision because you have an ability to see through manifestations of your power. It's true. As an ongoing prayer where all of the disciples are tangled up in this essentially razor wire mess of thorns, bleeding themselves in an tantric ritual. It's actually kind. Yeah. Oh. And a priest, Malatas, Melissa, is incanting to her goddess when these flames burst out and consume a couple of her members, not in a deadly way, just in a very concerning way. People do get harm about it, but no one dies until the roof starts falling in. Yeah. The drill is collapsing in on these people. And a lot of them hunker down under altar, under some more stable structures. Some of them are close enough to the exit to make it, bleeding bloody footsteps all the way. You ruined a very perfectly nice evening. Yeah. Well, but you ruined two of mine so far. So we're almost even. I think that's what cricket says after coming back with some intel on the rebuilding process as they try to recoup and dig out their friends. There is a dispute that Melissa is saying that it's you're doing the rest of the cult is not as clued in to your nature and are saying that she's not favored by the lady anymore. Oh, he fist pumps fucking solid. I mean, good infiltration also. I'm glad none of you are harmed. I should have told you the nature of, I guess I didn't fully understand the nature of her abode until I was having it collapsed and lead it into the foundations of the building above. And then I told me to aim down. Well, boss, I just wished we could have never mind. No, tell me if I know next time I might not plan it the same way. He says as he's working on a new seed already. You want something more showy. Want something a little more warning? No, we just got a little fucked up in the ritual. I've got thorn crotch. Oh, fuck. Can you help with this? I am not actually a physical, but I am all about plants. I can probably help with it. I would probably best be a little slower about it than you'd like simply for your safety, which means you'll probably like if I'm slower about it. All right. These expert sculks are a little weakened in their effect at the moment. I can crutch up. I got you. He takes a sample and gives us solemn promise because it was his mission. It's very embarrassing, boss. Of course I was. Keep this on the down, though. I mean, we were just doing our job. That'll make me slightly slower, but no one will know your secret is safe with me. I am an even of my word. He crosses his heart. I just figured if anyone understood thorns in weird places, it'd be you. Oh, absolutely. You would not even. I mean, now you would understand. Yeah, I'll keep going down the sorry. All right. I've got a new five clocks aboard in the thorn cult. You've got some individuals that the sculks will continue to stalk, figure out names and the new political landscape of the cult of thorns. They have also moved from a tier two to a tier one on your level with their headquarters being destroyed. Fuck, yeah. That we can just start killing them with impunity, which might not be a politically advantageous thing for us to do. Well, you have options. Yeah. All right. Busy. Yeah. Yeah. Finally, get to get out of this. Take a little attire and see how my little empire is doing. Yeah. I head down to Eddie and see what's going on for an update. He's tied up a bit in your brother's business because your brother doesn't use this like a piggy bank, but does use it for his crew at times, much like you do. At the moment, his office is full of Iruvian tea. And he says, being needed a place to store this, Boso had his crew intercept a shipment from the Red Sashes. Apparently, it's supposed to help with the cough plaguing the city at the moment. I think he's taken a box for himself and his crew, but I don't know if he intends to move this. Geez. It's all over the place. Yeah. It's dry here. It'll stay clean. It's a little crowded. I was thinking of making it some of it a bit more liquid, but I could use help with some contacts for moving it. Oh, so he basically just unloaded it on you and said here, could you just move this force? Yeah. I think I might know the way to get this move without it going where it came from. All right, if you have some friends and tea houses, I'm sure they don't care where it comes from. Hey, did um, practices, parents do stuff like this? Uh, yeah, they make tinctures to deal with certain illnesses and this tea definitely qualifies. They might even be able to concentrate it into some kind of cure. Yeah. And like I told him, I'd like to help them out. So we're going to see if we can move it through them. All right. Well, this is definitely your side hustle hidden. Right. So go ahead, hit your, um, double coin for that. It can also be managing your family as well. If you want to do it, like a reduced stress, to indulge ice, yeah, that's what I'm doing is I'm indulging my vice to get rid of my stress here. Yeah. So you're hitting the prowess word, adding an extra dive for edgels help here and something good to, oh my gosh, who's like toss is the only one on an end, Gordon can roll good. I guess. Whatever it has. Look, when it comes to roll Tony, he's not a good day for me for rolling at all. All right, well, two is better than nothing. I can come up with other things your brother can have you help with if you want, or other contacts we've made if you want to indulge vice again, but it will cost a coin this time. Come on. They're burning a hole in your pocket. I was thinking about burning a coin to reduce our heat. If you want to do that, it's worrying me. Makes sense to be worried. So that's what I'm going to do. I'm going to indulge a coin to reduce our heat. What's the trade off on that? It is just one coin for a downtime action. No, I mean, is it one one coin for one heat or one? Oh, it is a whole action. So you're rolling a skill to reduce heat. Gotcha. Nice. Like how much you succeed depends on what you roll. Maybe I'm trying to get some of this stuff moved through certain areas first. Okay. Maybe I'm throwing the praxis parents under the bus by alerting people through the area. Didn't we get the heat there for the other crew like you can do that. Just be aware that we need to burn that bridge real quick afterwards. The unseen move a lot of products throughout the city. They are putting heads with the other biggest faction, the hive in smuggling, but they have a lot of outlets that they can put things to if you want to give it to them. And say in exchange, get rid of some heat for us. Yeah. There you go. That's what they're there for. So I throw a coin back at them and say, hey, get some of these eyes off of us. Yeah. Sure. What does that look like skill-wise? We can try swaying them. Okay. That works. You did. This is a good idea. I think you got an extra dice for both agile giving you these essentially bribes alongside the coin, going to these people. Your relationship with them is a patron controlled or risky. It would likely be controlled. They are pretty good at keeping things on the down low effect to be standard as big as they are. We're going to have great effect. You don't know if it's just that they're moving mountains for you because of your big score lately or if they'll always provide you this, but you're getting great. I'm due for some high roles here. Let's go. There you go. There you go. Go. I got five high. Yeah. That's too heat for standard effect, but great effect is going to get rid of three. Excellent. Well done, Missy. Do you want to take those off so everybody doesn't do it? One, two, three. Boom. Nice. All right, does anyone else? I would just bounce back down, but it's not guaranteed that anyone else is going to have a downtime action. So just pipe up if you have one in mind. Anybody want to burn a coin or got something else they want to do? Not tonight or somebody we missed. No, I think everybody did. Okay. Well, if nobody wants to spend an extra one for a coin, then we can move on to let me do the complication from our heat and then we can do XP entanglements. We are going to roll. What's our heat at? I think it's at four or five. Okay. It was an eight of nine. That's what it was when you were supposed to roll. I just didn't want to take advantage. Then I'll go with that. Thanks for ratting us out. Thanks for being a snitch. All right, demonic notice or show of force. A demon approaches the crew with a dark offer, except hide until it loses interest, forfeit three rep or deal with it another way. So Tara, how are you doing? It will definitely be Sotara. I've got some in mind for her. I just want to let's get back to that. I'll make a note here. Tara has a score for the crew, and I'll bring us up to date on that when we get back. As for now, crew XP and then individuals. Tabula Rasa, execute accident disappearance murder ransom, not so much because it's downtime. When you're going to do that, be quite the trick, contend with challenges above your current station, blending in with the spirit wardens, for sure. That's a high stakes. You blew up that tough ass church, too. You did. That's another level up for the crew. And both your crew's reputation or develop a new one. The reputation of daring is hard to score during downtime. We already hit it for kidnapping, degas and impersonating him. So we're not going to do that again, but can't think of that. So express goals, drives, inter-conflict, or essential nature of the crew. We got to start taking care of it. To make sure you could have space to grow and not get caught. Yeah, reinforcing our headquarters, it's a goal. Yep. All right. One for that. So we'll deal with crew level up also, right down here, and we'll do that when we get back. And who starts off our XP, Briar? Yeah. Every time you roll a desperate action, nope, I don't think so. No, no. Lots of dangerous, not so much desperate. You addressed the challenge with technical skill or mayhem, both. I figured out how to bind my demon soul back into this human body a little bit more thoroughly, and then I blew up a fucking church because they insulted my name twice now because they harassed me several times. You good with that? Yeah. Okay, cool. You express beliefs, drives, heritage, or background. I think tangling with demon complications counts. Yeah, it's definitely at least what I'm trying to tie down like the specifics, but just background and heritage was all day, every day, man. It's hard to not do that when I'm me, but yeah, just one is fine when it complicates your life because it is an everyday occurrence for you. Eventually we'll have a clock started about maybe your family's hunting you down, maybe demonologists have caught wind of your activities. Yeah, the same thing demonologists I wanted to interact with a bit more, but my second downtime didn't have anything to do with them. If I paid for a third, it definitely would have been trying to pull something out of them to help Sotara, which she would have patted me on the back and said, "Yes, I know. We have had that ghost for years, child." Anyway, I struggle with issues from vice or trauma. Yeah, I blew up a church without telling anyone I was going to do it, and I didn't really care about all the people that got in collapsed on. Yeah, because it weakened your scalks. Absolutely. Yes. Other than that, I'm good because I didn't really need to lose advice, although I'm getting closer and closer every day, and I will actually start bothering doing so now that I've picked up the trauma, so we'll see it soon, I'm sure. Total of four. All right. For Tesla, you address a challenge with knowledge or arcane power. I helped earning Briar with her downtime stress by doing some incantations and some circles and such to help him get better. You expressed your beliefs, drives, heritage, or background. I definitely talked about my beliefs, drives, so one of her drives is getting closer to Lord Penderon, and she continues to try to do that in her downtime activities, again, another picnic, again, another bottle of wine, some more intimate conversation to draw them closer together. So I would say that that's one of her drives, and she did that. And then heritage, I be Gordon, the tip, the flowers from Saverosi in the eels that can have their glands scraped to help him with his relationship with Roslyn. So to there, possibly? Yeah, I agree. Okay. So a total of three. I didn't really struggle with issues from my vice or traumas. I mean, I went to a flop. I had an idea for your complication with the drugs, but we are now ending a 10, so probably a good thing I didn't drag it in. Well, she'll do it again. She'll be there again. Yeah. Let's say you have more hits on this ghost left. Okay, more hits left on the ghost. That sounds good. And she also ordered a ghost. You did. I don't think that really caused any issues. I think I played it my vice, but didn't get any issues out of it. So I'm going to go with a total of three. Okay. Busy. Busy. Every time I roll a desperate action, I don't think I was desperate in any of my actions. Hard to get there during downtime. Yep. Address a challenge with deception or influence. I definitely used my bear warden influence and to reduce heat and my side hustle influence, which can also be the heritage or background to move stuff around while I was indulging my vice. Okay. Yeah, that sounds like it. So dealing with your brother's bullshit sounds like another one to me. Yeah. It's kind of trying to use your bookie. If it winds up getting you some heat from his wars with other factions, I could see that becoming a problem. Right. When I can't prop it on his bullshit, that's one thing that got to stop. I didn't struggle with any of my vice or traumas. I'd been limping around, but I don't think it had to struggle with it. No, you weren't running and jumping. So it didn't happen. Yep. It was at two or three. I think it's three total from what I heard. I think you were right next. Next would be Esther. So just a challenge for the violence and incursion. No, you did command the crew, but you're gang, but they weren't. You weren't mean about it. No. Do you express your belief drives heritage or background? Yes. I went to. Yeah, I think your evening with Courtland did that. Right. And then I did actually have a conversation with Grull in regards to how he was in control and who was really in power. And this new organization we're getting associated with, so maybe twice. Yeah. I could see that. You're kind of talking about the threat of what are those motives of the crew we're going to belong to, and you struggled with issues of your advice and traumas, not officially. I mean, but I did reduce my stress, but that doesn't really involve the trauma. So I would say to Max. That makes sense. Okay. Yeah. There was no desperate action, just a challenge with stealth or evasion. This is strictly downtime, right? Right. Yep. I don't think that happened. Special belief drives heritage or background. Yes. My drives got to see Rosalyn and then later at a discussion. Yeah. We had a discussion. Right. So you're talking about? Yeah. Yeah. I think that's your background of your character. Yeah. I agree. You're talking, friends, like becoming a more of a brotherly, younger brother situation with Tesla. Yes. Struggled with issues from your advice or traumas during the session. I don't think there was much struggling going on. No. I was too. We did put some caveats, the last session that visiting Rosalyn would give you a heat, and we did that. But it also says plus one XP and heat. That is just your indulging vice, but it was an experimentation with incentives to complicate the plot. I don't know how well it worked, but I don't want to go back on my word and say you don't get that XP. So have three. Okay. How do you think Rosalyn feels about being called a voice? Let's not worry about a voice. She's not as love or is. I don't think we talk to you. I don't think we use meta. You're my vice. Metagaming language in character, so I think probably also on this list was Hadrian dealing with split consciousness during downtime. I think that hit for the striking back. If not, you haven't built a firewall to keep people from hacking your flame, but you did demolish the access they had to your. Oh, hell yeah. Free XP. So a free XP there. And then there's one for dealing with Lord Penderon and Kelis. So another one for Tesla. That's probably going to be the last time I do that, but I'm not going to go back on it. So okay. All right. All right, then. Okay. I've been your host, Jim John. Thanks for listening. Thanks everyone. Good. Nice for running. Good session. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for listening tonight's of the night actual play podcast. If you'd like to send us questions, comments, or feedback, you can reach us at a number of ways, including Twitter @kyotn_podcast or you can join our Facebook page, which is facebook.com/kyotn.podcast. And while on Facebook, you can join like-minded folks at our fans page at facebook.com/groups/kyotn-fant. And lastly, there's our block, which is found at kotnpodcast.com. And please remember to join us next week for more mystery. And adventure. Because of the overlap in your, let's say, portfolios, that's a very D&D term, are the possible titles for episode 608 that were available for voting on the Facebook nights of the night fans page were white bellied canal eel. Thanks for being a snitch. Don't drink void water. I'm a demon of my word, other than just pissing in their cereal. And we also have some coin we can throw at that, right?