Crew exerience, crew upgrade and some down time.
Knights of the Night
607 - BitDYou Got a Guy Killed, You Say That Like it's a Bad Thing
Hey, welcome to Night's and the Night actual play podcast. This "Plates in the Dark Adventure" machinations is written and run by our GM John. And now, please enjoy Episode 600 in 7, titled "You Got a Guy Killed", and you say that like it's a bad thing, actual play begins immediately. Hello, and welcome to Night's and the Night actual play podcast. I'm your host and GM John, running "Plates 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, run away a Ruby and Demon heir, who has possessed some poor poor man. I'm a leech, which means I specialize in all kind of creations, and spark a craft, or, I don't know, old-fashioned 1600s inventions. Visually, I'm 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 engine stoked, so, you know, I'm doing great. Hello everyone, I'm Scott. I'm playing Tesslyn Vale, otherwise known as The Bell of the Abyss. Tesslyn 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. Tesslyn has four stress. Hello folks, I am Jim. I am playing a slide named Skiv and Bang, also known as Busy. She is a socializing and enterprising, handsome young accrosionable, hard at work revitalizing the finances of the Bing Cole mining family. Skiv and very much enjoy 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 ghosts 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, we had abducted Warden Douglas, who ended up being behind the mask, a doctor at the Charter Hall University, specifically Morland's philosophy for our unnatural sciences, and had him drugged at the moment, as he had to have his soul removed or resolved in a real manner. As for completing his rounds, Douglas impersonator extraordinaire, Skivan Bing, made his way through the town, ended up getting his lieutenant, who was beginning to question him, killed in a ghost attack, and had yet to report to his superiors on that matter, just kind of resolved the patrol, and we'll probably handle that maybe after downtime during some free play, or maybe as a reduced key to action during downtime, it depends. But as for all that, we do have some things we skipped last week, including XP for the crew, and that reminded me that we're sitting on a crew upgrade. I know we were trying to get this deal done so we can get money to afford some upgrades. A tier up increases your ability to tangle with bigger foes, and that is what you're waiting on money for, but upgrades to your house or new abilities for the crew, that's not reputation-based, that's just experience-based, so there's kind of like two XP bars. One is reputation that'll make you go up a tier, become stronger as a crew. And XP, crew XP is just for abilities and items for the house and weapons and things. So it looks like we're maxed out on the reputation right now? Yep. Which is good. That means we can then raise the tier. The number of money you need is twice the tier you're moving up to? Is that not correct? I think it's four times. Yeah. You can cut it in half if you have a sponsor, which we just picked up. So now it's two times, but yeah, it was more. So our faction to move up from a zero to a one, we do have two coin. So it could be something we could do. I thought it was, well, because we didn't have, or I don't know, maybe because we have the sponsor now or the patron, if we didn't, it would be four coin. Yeah. So we can have four. It wasn't this a very major score as well because- Yeah, they promised you ten coin and payout. And we just have to prove it when we have to finish it. We did. We just got our man in the place, so they didn't tell us what they actually needed afterwards, so they did tell us we needed to be there until then, so I don't know, this is a lot ago. I thought it was more than a half a day. Yeah. They wanted him to fail. They wanted him to be- As long as you've taken his identity and checked into the place, you've got the payout. They want to make sure you can enter the place and not be- Okay. Yeah. I don't have a problem resolving that before we spend the gold to upgrade the coin. Are you sure we didn't use the upgrade to buy Assassin's Rigging and Quality Weapons? Because I might have been longer or go than that. I can't sell. I think we did. If it means anything, I don't recall either of those being purchased, so it could have been one of the days recently that I had- We looked at it and said you get a free load worth of weapons or gear items. For example, you could carry a pistol and burglary tools for zero load. Yeah. Oh, I do remember that. That was fairly recent, though. We didn't even use that in our last mission, but I think that was the first mission we should have employed it in. Right. Oh, we didn't really crack down on all of our load during that mission anyway. It was mostly social engineering. Good job, busy, by the way. Not that I can tell you that in character. That's fun. So I think we may have spent that upgrade you thought we had banked on crew upgrades. I agree, but we still need to do the XP for it. Completely successful disappearance, murder, accident, or ransom opportunity. Yeah. Yeah. Do you intend with challenges above your current station? Yes, times two. Both do your crew's reputation or develop a new one? No. Yes. Well, for your boss. Oh, yeah. You're right. Never mind. That's definitely that. I was just thinking in terms of we did this very subtly, but that was what our boss asked for. And for them, that would boost our reputation. Yeah. Express goals, drives, inter-conflict, or essential nature of the crew. Kind of sort of, it really is up to you, though. Depends on the GM fiatas to other replacing delegates was a good or bad thing for the neighborhood. Like he was crooked, but he was also working with the dimmer sisters already. So it's not like he's the worst dude in the world. Those are guys we're trying to work with now. From Tesla's point of view, though, he was the worst guy in the world because he's the one who broke up the archive of echoes. Yeah. So from her crew point of view, she wanted him gone and we achieved a crew goal in that sense. But I don't know if it's worth a point or not. I agree. I was thinking on... I know you definitely got an experience for it. I'm just wondering if the crew should also. I think crew goals drives essential nature is like a aggregate everyone's opinion. I know that Tesla and GotXP for taking that guy out. It might be akin to double dipping if we... Yeah. I see that for sure. Okay. I agree with that. All right. Three away from a level up then, but that's that. What about goals, though? Because we were attempting to sponsor and we succeeded. Okay. There you go. You win. You got one. Yeah. I just had to read the whole thing. That is a really long one. I think that's supposed to get every time. Yeah. As long as you're not. It's just the argue role playing part of it. Yeah. A meticulously difficult decision made on our part in order to get the sponsorship and money that we may be uncomfortable with, but are... Nevertheless need. We strongly thought out conversation anyway. All right. So, Tummo and we'll crack it again. Is there anything mechanically we have to do to up our tier besides saying we do it and spend the two coins and then we can pick up money before we do downtime activity? There's a bit of a time skip involved with a tier up generally after downtime. I think so. Yeah. Okay. And if we could get everything squared away immediately. When you say tier up, you're talking about reputation, right? Yes. Reputation is tied to tier experiences, abilities or upgrades. And we're going from zero to one because the people in know are hearing about us and being. That's part of it for sure because reputation is tied to it. But it's also your cohorts get bigger. So like you've got about three people who are sneaky spy types. After this upgrade, you should have seven and your weapons get stronger. So a fine weapon will be tier three and be able to cut through some tougher armor or tier two, I believe. It'll be tier three because of our quality weapons that we have in our career upgrades would be tier two for everyone else. Okay. On our assassin's character sheet. Yeah. It has turf's upgrade abilities cohort, et cetera, right below the assassin thing. And if we click on upgrades, you suggest that John that we had added one already for going? Yeah. I was mentioning assassins rigging and quality weapons seem to be fairly new because assassins rigging was something me and Scott both remembered picking up, but we failed to employ last mission. Okay. So we think we spent the banked point upgrade that John was talking about. And the third column is abilities that would be more about the crew XP, special abilities that we're adding upgrades and abilities are both bought with crew XP. But when you buy upgrades, you can choose two and when you buy abilities, you can choose one. Yeah. I see. Okay. Yeah, there's a lot more upgrades to pick from. So they give you a couple to get. You can also buy cohorts, I think. You can as an upgrade. Yeah. You could say now we've got some thugs that can back us up in a fight, which helps when you're outnumbered. Yeah. And turf. Although you can get turf or cohorts via missions, if it is sensible, I'm going to start claiming turf sin. I'm going to make it the end of the seed lady of thorns mission. Okay, tearing up costs coin equal to your new tier times eight. And now it's times four because of our flow. Wow. That's what we needed a big score before we had the patron. We need eight coins. We only had two, I believe. Yep. Yep. So 10 coin in pending a check in with the spirit wardens as degalos to make sure your identity floats. They know he's not dead because they have contacts that would know that the mask is not working or not is defunct plus the crows would have came, right? Yeah, plus the crows would have come, but they need to make sure you can check in and pass as degalos among his employers. Good luck, busy. In my downtime, I think I'm going to be using my spirit wardens powers to reduce our heat. Okay, that we can do it as that. So if you want to open us up with that, yeah, right folks, even things turn, I guess, to at least start, I'll start with my first heat reducing downtime activity. Yeah, I'm going to be using my spirit word and resources at people that are pissing us off and take away spirit word and resources and places where we don't want them try to reduce our heat a bit. All right. To reduce my heat is what I'm actually trying to do. I mean, my stress and our heat, both. Did we do heat for the crew last time we think we did? I don't recall. I don't think we did the crew at all. We just did ours. Right? Yeah, I thought that's what we did. I jumped in very late, but I think that's all we did. All right. Well, let me go. Let me get some heat to get rid of. We did roll super high, like a six on our thing, so I don't know how much heat or if we got heat. Yeah. The only thing is the guy dying under your control. These things happen. Your bosses might be upset about that. After a score with an opponent, the crew takes heat, take one for a high profile or well-connected target. If the situation happened on hostile turf, one if you're at war, two if killing was involved. I think with killing that guy, you actually managed to smooth and quiet low exposure because he was the only one who could have exposed you, which is zero heat typically, and then the killing is two. He's dead. Goodbye. Goodbye. Only one for the high profile will connect to target, but we'll see how you clear that off. It's a couple there, three, and go ahead. We got some heat. Now it's hot. Feeling it. It's up to a seven of nine for the listening's sake. So I'm indulging my vice, all right. I thought you were reducing heat first. Oh, that roll for that. Or am I rolling for the heat and then? You get two down dimensions. We were going to do heat first. All right. We're seeing, I wasn't planning on reducing our heat. We're going to. The thing about this huge payoff is that even after we've upgraded our tier four coins, we have six that'll allow us to take additional downtime actions. So you can heal, indulge vice, you can do a couple of things. There's two in the vault for the crew that will probably spend on the upgrade. Okay. People end up having 12 minus four is eight coins for people to heal up after this. And this is why big payouts are good because they might hurt you, but usually you get the coin to recover from them. Yeah. All right. So I'm reducing some rolling and reducing the heat in our table, all right. Yes. And this will get you a payout from Grull, who has made sure that you can check in and still be degolose. So you do some duties as a warden checking in with your bosses and redistributing resources. And then you approach him later with, I did it. You can check these regions for less spirit warden patrols. And that'll verify sort of thing. And this is a consort thing. That would make a, that would make a lot of sense for trying to be a spirit warden is like buddy, buddy, elblowing people around. Right. Am I modifying this at all? Not at the moment. Yeah. If you have a friend in the spirit wardens and maybe you can make one with this new identity, they would give you an additional dice. Right now your boss is warden Catherine. She's this tiger faced spirit warden in chat. So let me, uh, what was this, put this in my notes before forget it checks chat so you can write it down in your spare time. All right. I don't pull this back up again. Is it controlled? Yeah. You're a pretty high ranking member. There's not a lot of scrutiny on you unless, you know, you fuck it up. Is my effects great limited or standard standard? This is a day to day affair and you didn't pull off anything amazing that would get you credit. Instead, you got a guy killed. You say that like it's a bad thing. All right. This reduces heat by one. So are you in the tabular also sheet or should I just, I just skip enrolled a three, which is a fall third. So that means, uh, my job here, yeah, warden Catherine gets back to you after you order these changes in patrols. I understand you've lost some people lately. This is likely an attempt to move folk around to make up for that. Yes, you got to just trying to make sure something like this doesn't happen again. That's understood. We have a new lieutenant to replace our comrade. When it comes to these sort of changes, this close to Ark and Vory, you should catch up with me. We don't want to shake the boat too much before the evening. We've got some plans for the holiday. This is a busy time of year for us. We have our annual patrol where everyone shuts out their lights and we clear out the ghosts. Yes, yes. Coming soon. Looking forward to it. We've got a special target. We want to hit that evening. Your change is in silk. Sure. I'm going to have to deny. We need to know what's going on there. But aside from that, I'll catch you up with more details as our crews come in with info. Right now, I don't want to spill my hand too much just that we're going to move there soon. Understood? You got a boss. Very well. As you were. She does a warding gesture, which is their salute of sorts. Yeah. Salute. And hers will, and she walks away. But that's your one downtime action. We usually have everyone do one and then bounce around back. So if you just have like a heel or something that isn't story wise, we can indulge that, I suppose, if it's like something with characters involved, then it's going to be a longer thing. It's just de-stressing is my other thing. Yeah. I want to involve your bookie in a little story thing. So is it OK if that waits a sec? No problem. OK. Then who's next? Anybody got some pressing? You have something you want to do, Thomas? I did. But I'm trying to remember what it was. Oh, yeah. I needed to tie down the binding a bit more. For a free downtime action, I'd like someone to do a scene about the level up, the tear up with girl. That sounds like something ghosts might be good at. It's for contact, right? Yeah. Essentially. Yeah. That sounds like a good idea. But that's not right now. So go ahead with Hadrian. Absolutely fair. OK. It's a healing role, I suppose, which I'm trying to remember how that works. Recovery. Get treatment to take your healing clock. When you fill a clock, each time is reduced, no, no, that's great. How does it action work? If a crew member is healing you, they're a rolling tinker, which is the doctoring skill. If an NPC is doing it, we're rolling that NPC's tear level. But the skill involved for you is likely a tune. And can you a tune on yourself like this, or are you seeking help from, say, the bell of the abyss? Hmm. Well, Tesslyn is nominally free, and she has her own downtime actions. So while I could operate on myself, I wouldn't mind the assistance from an ally, which in downtime doesn't actually cost a stress. Correct. So I suppose I ask her. I approach, after having worked out my dosage of trans powder, so as not to obliterate this poor man's brain while we hold him hostage, speaking of which, I feel like we should negotiate his release afterwards. But anyway, it doesn't matter. You Tesslyn. Yes. Are you there? I am here. Okay. The binding to this body was not perfectly done. I was in dire straits when I tied it down. I'm looking at undoing some of these arcane matrices, and while I can do that, putting them back together will be infinitely more difficult, because I believe it will induce spasms within my limbs, and then drawing fine arcane circles will be an excruciating exercise. Do you think you could help me out with the drawing of the circles, at least before you head out on your own activity? Absolutely. Yeah. Perhaps we can prepare them beforehand. Sorry. Go ahead. No. I have some books on arcane circles and sigils, and I can certainly dust those off, and we can do ones that would be appropriate to this type of ritual. Cool. I've been winging it. He laughs, and you're not sure whether he's choking, but what are you going to do? Here's a devil's bargain right off the table. For an additional heat, Tesslyn, there is a hot commodity ghost that was an imperial demon matzer under the tutelage of the mortal emperor himself, ghost from the imperial city that used to bind demons for the service of the empire, and could give you an extra die in this affair, certainly an improved effect. It can do more than that. Is it something that's in the ghost field, or is it we have a bio hash of it? It's just the heat. I'm representing it mechanically as heat of having to go and pull it out of your satellite archive that people are looking in the area for the remnants of the archive of that ghost. Yeah, I'll do it. I mean, burning briar is an important part of our group, and having a stronger hold on their current body that they're using is, I think it's very important, and also the right thing to do. So she will take the risk and add a heat onto our group to add a die onto this process, Briar's process. Yeah. All right. So that's going to be a two additional die for you, Tesslyn, on your attune. Oh, okay. Nevermind. I think we have exactly the same role. So I'm fine with that if you want to roll. Okay. I have three attune, and I get a plus two, you said? Yes. Okay. Is the position controlled, risky, or desperate? This particular ghost is pretty powerful. Yes. It's going to be risky. Okay. And the effect will be limited, standard, or great. Great effect, especially with the help of this ghost. Okay. I'm going to go ahead and take several cabs instead of taking one to the destination. She switches off just in case she's being followed. She's well versed in how to remain incognito in a city like Dustfall. So losing a tail. Yeah. She switches several cabs, takes walks on foot a bit, grabs another cab, just continues to mix it up until she gets to the cache of spirits and then requisitions it. And here's her role. She rolled the 625s of three into one, so she gets a success. All right. On a standard roll, a success will give you three ticks on the healing clock for greater effect you're getting for. That brings me right back around to where I was. But still, it downgrades my harm from a two to a one and an unstable binding to a zero. Huh? No, sorry, level two harm to a level one harm. I was one tick on the clock and I am, oh, two ticks on the clock now, sorry, I remember at five marks, second count. I'm just trying to figure out some wording for moving an unstable binding down one level of harm. It's kind of like mental interference or something. It's just like a half second of lag or sometimes a spasm, brighter spasms, there you go. All right, that works. And I am significantly less harm. So as the ghost flame flows into these arcane matrices before it pours back down into the soul furnace, Adrian comes back from all the work and grasps his tools firmly only for his hand to shake and drop the tool entirely and then stop for like a good several hours and he says, that is an improvement. Well, sometimes I would just be forcibly ejected to go look at one of my other viewpoints. And now I just shake. Impressive, Briar, quite impressive. Excellent. For your assistance. I have to keep track of these circles and make sure that some of my more natural ones reflect these and you demonologist, you and I are going to have words and he gets right back to lab work and waves you out unless you want to stick around. Yeah. She just watches for a little bit to kind of take in what you're doing and how bizarre and different it is from what she does and her appreciation of you grows a bit and then she sees herself out. As Briar leaves, the demonologist says to you, if that thing grows out of corpses, what do you think is going to happen if you are lost in the action? Keep me close. If I am close, if I am lost, I hope they put my body to good use. I don't have any problem being a vehicle for Briar or anyone else that I'm close to and care about. I would care more about Briar having a good vessel than about some antiquated viewpoints of death and burial and such. So doesn't carry me all that much, but he does consume spirits. I have a method I could teach you about preserving yours after your death such that the spirit wardens can't get you. I imagine you have your own tricks, but they'll be harder to exercise without a body. Oh, it's certainly an intriguing proposition. Don't get me wrong. I'm a bit tied up at the moment with other projects, but is this something that we could revisit when I unstopper you again in the future? I would like it to be sooner rather than later. It's interminable in there. Sure it is. Death is eternal or can be. I'll make it sooner than later or later. When we revisit this, I would like some freedom for an exchange of this knowledge. That seems on its surface to be something that's fair. I would like to discuss the matter with other people of the arcane parts that might be looking at it from a viewpoint that is different than my own. So why it's intriguing to me and I am interested, I will need to get back to you on it. Okay. Well, we'll revisit that very well. We can pick somebody next. Gordon, do you want to go or ghost? I just kind of had a mini scene right there, so I don't need to do mine right now. Yeah, I can go. Gordon, we'll visit you next. What's your downtime action? Okay. Oh, you have a reminder out here from last time. Yeah, you get an XP for visiting Roslyn. Okay, that was one thing. Okay. It's like getting rid of heat, I guess. No. You're rid of stress? Yeah. Somehow I lost my advice. I think it's called. I'm sure you're right. Yeah, I did that thing. We've been rolling really crappy stuff. Yeah, not great. When you indulge vice, you are rolling your lowest category. You see how there's a line down each of these inside prowess and resolve. Everything to the left of that is how many dice you get and I'm seeing your lowest is resolve with one. Oh, yes, got it. So if you click the word resolve, it should bring up a little resolve thing and in the notes, you say, you're getting a plus die for having a friendly contact help out and then you write indulge vice in there in the notes thing, so you don't know what it is. Okay. Well, I continue the non six rolling highs of three, so I just take three off or I forgot how that works. Yeah, Michael, I believe that's how it works. You take three off of your your stress, so you go down to three now from where you were at six, I believe, and maybe a quick description of how you go about indulging in your vice. Yeah, they visit my girl, Rosalyn, and she makes me relaxed. It takes a minute for you to track her down. She's normally on her boat and you just scoot along in the canals until you find the markings and climb on up. But this time she's got a storefront, more or less. It's a public park that sells clippings and seeds and potted plants. She has won the bloom. She tells you. It's a shame you couldn't make it. It was understandably a little hoity toity for you to show up. It was there was a lot of security. So I appreciate that you couldn't make it. Yeah, I'm sorry, I was looking forward to that. So how did it go? We won. That's how I got this front. Sandy Ridge. Oh, there's the floating gardens. Oh, there you go. Yeah, this is usually the sea water and the is a big canal nearby and it's got a bunch of sub canals through the floating gardens, but she's earned her place here with winning the bloom. It says my family's got a bunch of secret techniques to get our plants more vibrant than the rest, a tricky process without sunlight. But we have a history of advanced alchemists and other such skills. It's amazing. I love it. I'm always on the lookout for new ones, of course, but I've got some exotic blooms from Saveros here, the steps have little in the way of advanced blooms and this climate is not their friend, but we have some on we have some grow shelters in our estate that are more advantageous to more friendly to their needs. These are said to be eaten by the horses of the Saverosiail and aid them in their ghost fighting. Oh, so I imagine there's quite a few plants that have adjusted to a certain extent to the much lower lighting. Yes, we have some some here in dustfall, but by and large. Anything we do get to bloom has been through human modification with alchemy or a lot of use of electroplasm in plants to cause them to give off light for others to grow. We use a mixture of the two here in addition to our grow beds to simulate their natural environments. Is that expensive the electroplasm is a little hard to come by and my family isn't doing the best at the moment. So we have our techniques of getting what we need, but that's more on your side of the street than mine. I'm afraid. I don't know the full details. Okay. Well, I have the thought that I don't verbalize, you know, make a little note, but they could use that. Yeah, anyway, you lead her, you say that you've got some seeds for her or found a plant that she could add to her collection. You don't see any of the type among her stock. Okay, I wanted to take her to see something and not necessarily lift it in front of her, you know. Yeah. You can. I did have something to bring her. I don't recall what it was. It was a cutting her. I believe you grab some seeds of the plant, but it can be after she's seen them that you hand them over. We can do a little time skip of the traveling there. She tells me when she gets off and you all take a cab or maybe a canal would be easier because it's all the way on the other side of the city and roads are not water. Sure, make an evening of it. So these are very similar to lumen flowers, Thomas, which is to say they are pale imitations of sunflowers, a type of plant that has grown in the waxing of the moon as it grows bigger in the sky. Big central bushel of seeds with some limp petals around the sides, like you bleached all the yellow out of them. Yeah. Is there not a ring world sunflowers? You've heard tell when you try to look these up that they glow during a full moon, have a little luminescence to them. Nice. They cast off as long as the dimmer sisters are in the sky, which are like two small echoes of the moon itself being refracted through the atmosphere or question mark, question mark magic. But there is no such full moon tonight. The moon is on a weird 60 day cycle and it's waning at the moment, but they are still tracking the moon as sunflowers will do as it travels through the sky. And from up here on the rooftops, they're pale enough that there's like diffuse reflection off of them. Just lights up the garden really well and she says, this could be its entire environment and floating gardens, some moon blossoms during the night to draw people in. Okay, I ask her if she knows the people that are, you know, we're looking at their yard, if she knows them through her. My family has an old estate in this region. If I remember my family history, this used to be the sick and drought estate, but they've kind of fallen out of fashion, much as we have, but they aren't bouncing back. So I think it's largely abandoned. That's likely means that there's criminals in there, but that shouldn't be a problem for you. Right? No, it shouldn't. Apparently, you found this place without much trouble. So well done that. Thank you. Sure. Glad you enjoyed it. Makes me wonder what's growing out in the deathlands. I'm sure mostly nasty things, but there must be something like this out there in the wild spots beyond the walls. Well, definitely keep an eye out. Should I be out that way? Oh, don't go out that way. If you can help it, there's worse things than ghosts out there. Yeah. My asthma's, arcane horrors, it's a nightmare. Yeah, I'll be careful. I'm not going to run out there. Okay. At least be prepared and have a way back in. Most people don't come back in. Exiles kind of a one way ticket, but yeah, that's a thank you. And should you find any deathland miracles, I would be more than happy to house them. Deathland miracles, got it. Thank you. Good birthday, presence. All right. That's Gordon. If I can go next with Esther, I would like to start by reducing my stress. And visiting with Cortland, someone that helped me reduce the stress last time. Yeah, I know where Cortland tends to hang out. So I'm going to go there and try to reduce stress. Let me remind myself where she hangs out and we'll do that. I believe it was a place that used to be a blue coat bar and they kind of moved away or were driven away. Well, better than you did last time. I would have to because last time it was a terrible roll. I think it was a one, but John, I think it was that bar, a cop bar. It was. Yeah. It was kind of the community meeting spot for if they wanted to talk to this crew that had been made clear that the blue coats were not welcome there anymore. Right. So an ex blue coat captain walks into a bar. We got them before in the fact that Cortland had made it clear that I was trustworthy. Kind of safe that she also has a past she's trying to make up for. Correct. And there was something that we ended up doing as a crew to help her. So basically, I'm just trying to meet up with her again and spend some time. I don't have any particular goals. If she has any other things she wants us to do, I will certainly discuss it. But it was more about dinner and drinking, relaxing and going for my stress relief, which is basically pleasure kind of doing somewhat similar to Gordon and that I'm hanging out with somebody and having a good time relaxing. Yeah. That's fine. We could do that. The bar in question is celebrating on ancient scovish holiday. The name of which it is illegal to say, but it is being said here as there are no blue coats around. Right. So there are tales of the druids marching the forest against the imperial troops at the behest of the queen during the unity war. And you don't know how much of this is large tales or mystic nonsense, but it seems there were some traditions that are not allowed to be shared anymore. And here they're telling tales of them. The more drinks I have, the more I smile and laugh at the stories. So I'm not really making any judgment or. Yeah, that's fair. I didn't expect you to get in trouble for it. Right. Now, when you make a indulge vice role, you are taking the category that you have the least dice in for a resistance role. That would be insight for you and you definitely would, just so you know, I did add sway last time when we did experience. Yeah, they used to be tied, resolving insight, but right now it's insight. You were going to be adding a dice for Cortland's help here. I think they would be tight-lipped not knowing you as a member of the community otherwise, but seeing you at her table kind of chills out the event. People are even buying tables for your table drinks. Right. And if she's too busy to spend any time with me, I just raise a cup and kind of wink over at her and then just sit down and deal with someone else and have. I think she gives you a bit of a lowdown of the storytellers as they're going through. This one is a refugee from the war, parents died in the Leviathan refineries, but is practicing the language to try to learn his people better. This one is edited of a- Okay. And go for it extra die for your friend here, so it should be three total. In this case, I rolled a five of four and a three. So you're going to get rid of five stress. And that takes me down to two, which is much better than seven. Yeah. So I have an enjoyable evening. And since blue coats can't hang out here, that's both an enjoyment and a stress relief thing for my character. Yeah. Esther is happy that it's a relaxing night. Carl does not show up here. He would ruin the evening and he knows better. But when you climb in a cab to get back home, he's sitting in the cab. He is driving the cab and brings you down a quiet road, rains up the- Truthfully, I'm a little drunk, so I didn't even know who was driving. Yeah. He had a low cap as well and muttered whatever. Well, yeah, I did kind of thing, but after he pulls up tight, you get a little nervous through the haze or maybe- Why are we stopping? Yeah. He sets up the cap and leans down to peek through and says, "Even in miss, I have- Okay. How often do you do this?" It's my job. True enough. So, Ollie, you will be getting where you're going and consider the ride paid for. Very kind of event. He says, "The trunk on the back should have your payment. Make sure to take it before you go. Consider us your patrons for now." So, you do know what happened. Yeah, we've got contacts that informed us, take a list, check back in and haven't seen much in the way of- He's moved some stuff around in some very suspicious ways. Either they're making a big move or you pulled it off and if you fuck up, well, we know there's consequences for that. So, for now, take the money and enjoy it. It will be consequences on us. But trust me, busy is reliable. He does a good job. I think we will manage to do what needs to be done. I can help you get the coin out. It's quite a bit. So, when we get where we're going, we'll be in contact about future missions for busy inside the place. But remember that if he gets paid by his bosses, we will meet it. Coin for coin to make sure his time there is comfortable. I do have a question for you. You want us to keep this gentleman alive? Yes. Do you have a reason for that? Do you wish him to return to his town? Part of the joining of the wardens involves some imperial sorceries. The death of a warden is known beyond the properties of the bellwether ringing out. So, just the separation of the body and the spirit would be noticeable to them if we had a way to keep that spirit alive and hidden. Good to know. Appreciate the information. It's likely. Arcane sorceries interact strangely. If you're merely killing the man and getting his ghost as it climbs out of his body, that's going to be known. But I can't vouch for how intricate any sorceries will be involved with extraction. Second question I have, when we're done, does he still need to be alive? Or would you prefer that we when you tell us? My inclination, my understanding of the orders are that he's a useful asset, much more useful asset alive than dead, even at the end of this. Okay. But I don't have the specific details at the moment. A lot of our organization is need to know for security reasons. I imagine you've gleaned that. I have, and am intrigued by the fact that there are things about your group that you don't know. Is that stressful to you? They seem to be a very powerful and good organization. I do a lot of work in the city. It does require faith in the process. Well, so far we've been impressed with their. It's easy to have faith when they move mountains at times. True. If I don't understand why they do something, things change. I'm not mad. Okay. I have no more questions for you. I appreciate your delivery of our payment, but also the drive home. Who's at the base when everybody gets out? I don't have the answer to that question. You guys do. Prior hasn't left. He was still tinkering. I don't know where Ghost got to. I can't remember if they did their downtime. I said, Ghost, damn it, I'm in Tesslyn. Okay. I was a little confused. Sorry. I was like. Tesslyn was waiting for Gordon to get back. She's got a little bit of a little brother thing with him. So wanted to make sure he made it back safely before she indulges in her vice late late late at night. Very well. Busy is busy. Yeah. Busy's got to meet with his bookie. Make sure his businesses and hustles are all running and going smoothly. All right. It's several. It's a three crates of coin. This is a lot of little slugs and imperial marks that are bundled up into a big valuable sack and takes a couple of hands to bring it out. But at the end of all of that, ten coins secured, you are presented with the ritual dagger of, I don't know what the crew will name it, but you have one of these now. Because the forget me not are the the object that lets you make a deal that if people betray it, they forget. Nice. It's not my job to tell you how to use this, but it strikes me that it could assist busy in his work with the wardens again with the caveat that they are insorcelled in poorly understood ways and there may be interactions. I think busy is in the most dangerous situation, so I agree. If you're altogether on a store or something and you want to swap it out, but it's not a bad back pocket thing for your friend to have while he's incognito. No, I don't disagree that I would be better using it, but it would make busy a little safer to have it. And also I would like to suggest that we get one coin each and we keep five of them in our crew bank because we might be moving up in the near future. Or we might be able to take it from there, but it's better than to give everybody two. One leg up on the stirrup, about to climb into the seat, he says, "Part of patronage is supplying you when it comes time to upgrade your materials." So if you want to write down some requests for expansion, we can help you procure such things when you invest. Which basically explains where we get the reduced cost when we do stuff. Yes, in addition, I'd like you to upgrade your base and so we'll be funding an upgrade to that as long as it is towards the secrecy of the place. I could do with some more cover when I visit you folks, and dropping off 10 coin needs to be a little subtle. You should. And that sounds like a good idea. Can I have a question for the geom? 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 @KOTN_Podcasts, or you can join our Facebook page, which is Facebook.com/KOTN.Podcasts. And while on Facebook, you can join like-minded folks at our fans page at Facebook.com/groups/KOTN_Pant. 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. Last time we played, I was in a bad mental state. Guess what? Still there. The surgery I had was last Tuesday, and the day after the vision was great. Now it sucks bad. He's going wrong. Oh, no. I'm starting to hear that. I don't know if it's simply the bad sinus thing I have, and I feel a great deal of pressure in my head that's causing the left eye to be efficiently very blurry. They did check it, and they said something about all this has to do with your previous surgery. And we might have to do surgery again, and it's just an nightmare. Great. Wow. I've been dealing with that in addition to dealing with work and dealing with pain and dealing with, yeah, anyways, moving on. Like I said, mental state isn't working, moving on. Okay. Index is actually helpful. And so you know, it's not written by white wolf. Books can be enchanting, but when I'm just trying to run a game, they are always infuriating. I had a grand joy reading the mage book, and then I tried to play the game, and I was like, "Good Lord, wait." Where's the rules for making an explosion happen, and why are they separate from combat? Yeah, that wasn't their forte. Storytelling in their books and their campaign books was very top-rate, but functionality, definitely. It paints off a vivid picture that helps you get it running, but it ensures that it helps enchant the GM into wanting to tell a story, which is important as a marketing thing. But yeah, it's got its problems. Scott, you sound really far away from your microphone. I am actually really far away from my microphone, but I didn't think it was going to pick up that. So I apologize. Zoom in. Back at the action. I was not immune. That's no wonder people were talking over me. I thought you stepped away, so I was trying to fill in a bit. No, I was trying to do the things you were doing. There are possible titles for this episode that were available for voting at the Facebook Knights of the Night fans page were the guy dying under your control. Hmm, these things happen. Plus the crows would have came, right? At least they're not ring world sunflowers. Deathland Miracles. So an ex blue coat captain walks into a bar. The last one is the caveat that they are in social.