Dealing with an unsual person in a flying boat
Knights of the Night
621- BitD It's My Job to Put You in a Position
(music) Hello, and welcome to Night's Night Actual Play podcast. This blades-in-the-dark adventure and machination is written in run by our GM John. And now, please enjoy episode 621. Titled, "It's my job to put you in a position, actual play begins immediately." Hello, and welcome to the Night Actual Play podcast. I'm your host and GM John, running our blades-in-the-dark campaign machinations and the players with me starting on my left. I'm playing Hadrian's Briar, or Burning Briar, if you please, while I'm on the job. I'm an Aruvian runaway demon heir who performs the "job of the leech," which then subulates her awesome. A saboteuro technician who specializes in the creation of potent alchemical substances, healing, doing magic, all sorts of nonsense, inventions if you let me out this shit for long enough. This wise, I've stolen a body, so don't even get too attached to the demon description. I'm currently an accuracy man of healthy build and noble stock, fitted with an open-chested long coat, a pair of glasses, and an authority Briar barely poking out of the corners of my mouth and ears. Wisping off from those Briars and leaking from a great big furnace in my belly is a powerful ghost flame which sometimes reacts truly to my emotions, giving off spooky little faces that won't let me lie. I also possess a prosthetic foot because I've got to cut off a while ago. I've got a level one arm to represent that, a lame foot because it can't move on its own, and I've got one, two, three, six, stress, and I'm unstable, don't fuck with me. Hi, everyone, this is Scott. I'll be playing Tesslyn Vale, otherwise known as the Bell of the Abyss. Tesslyn is a seborosi whisper as part of her crew, but she also does some sideline work for the archive of echoes, exploring the past via ghosts with her mentor Lord Hendron, who is now disgraced. She is a petite brunette who is partial to petticoats. She has flowing auburn rocks, olive skin, and green eyes. Tesslyn also has, much to her mortification, a dead hand sewn onto her left wrist. It is gray and mottled, blue, bruised, and disgusting. Tesslyn currently has six stress, and she has a level one arm of painful cuts. Hello, folks, I am Jim. I am playing the recently wounded Silver Tongue slide named Stephen Bing, also known as Busy. He's a socializing and enterprising handsome young, Hecarosi Noble. We're not getting shot on crew business. The very Busy spends his time behind the scenes trying to revitalize the finances of the Bing coal mine family. He called himself Busy because he's always working hard to try to find ways to profit from the good and bad fortune of others. Currently he spends most of his days as a spirit warden Delegos. I currently have four stress boxes. I am Tom, and I play an ex-blue coat captain who goes by the name of Ghost because of her hail, skin, eyes, and hair. She is a cutter who is dangerous and intimidating woman, but she also does her best to keep her crew members safe and protected. She was born and raised in Hecarosi, so she knows a lot of bad things about this city. She currently has seven stress, which is kind of normal for her. It tends to run high protecting people all the time. True enough. I'm Michael playing Gordon, a young, then good-natured scolvish lurk. As a lurky specializes in infiltration, allowing him to bypass most security measures, Gordon currently has eight stress. Damn, he got me beat. What was the lowest amount? I have six. I heard four. I had five or four. I started with nine, but then unsuccessfully used mine to try to get me out of trouble. So you're at four? I'm at four. Okay. And what were you at? Prior? Also six, so our law is too busy. We need some downtime. Yeah. Should be able to get there tonight. Like I say, but luckily, we don't have any. We still live in the middle of an adventure. If we don't get killed by a demon. Then last we left, a demonologist, as me, had watched her friend Busy get shot through the lung in a noble duel and brought him up to her airship for some healing. She had some sort of biological component that glowed like electroplasm and stitched his lung back together, partially healing it, reducing it from a level three to a level two harm. Level two harms take a die away from roles in their category. This one's probably going to be physical. If you have mental things going on or social ones, not likely to trigger that die loss, but if you're going to try to wrestle her off the edge of this airship, say it's going to be difficult. More difficult than it would be normally for Busy, who's not the buffest dude around. When we last got some and tried to poison him, yeah, you had all hidden up here as your goal is to assassinate her or get rid of her in some way. After tending to Busy and the adrenaline started waning, she took a look around and something tipped her off to people being here. Something's not right. And Ghost took that moment to give her the smelling salts treatment with a vial full of poison. She had butted it, knocking it loose and pushed Ghost away and seemed not affected at all, but that is the in-media res we left on. But we are now opening to player turns, so we can do whatever. In this particular compartment, Busy's lying on the bed wounded, Gordon's hiding underneath this fold up bed, or I think there's a ladder on it, yeah, it's like higher up, a bunk. And that doesn't make any sense now. Let's say it's a fold out bed and ignore the ladder. Gordon was hiding underneath stealthy, as ever. Tesla and Briar, not counting on their excellent prowl rolls, were in the hold and have just emerged when shit begins drifting fanward. And what do you do? As soon as I can, I'm going to try to defuse this whole situation. I'd like to see you try. Good luck with that. By basically what Busy's planning on doing, because he's kind of half out of it, just getting his senses and bearings and he's thinking to himself that he does not want her attacked or killed, and I want to talk to her, I want to have a discussion and try to calm everybody down into like a parlay or stalemate, or can we just call the truce here for a second? So that's basically what Busy's trying to get up and just saying stop, stop, wait, do you want to talk about this, let's not attack and talk for a minute. All right. I'm not doing anything specifically like attacking, but I am backing towards the door so that Gordon would be behind her and she's having her eyes on you. Yeah, she's definitely focusing on me right now. So that's all I'm doing currently when I start to hear Busy talk, I don't attack. I wait. John, would you say it's a consort or actually a command? Because it's right. I could be a sway, a consort or a command. I do not dictate what a player uses. I tell them the effectiveness of what they've chose. Gotcha. Yeah. I mean, I'm more or less trying to command, but since I'm not good at it and maybe I'm trying more of a sway or I'm just trying to tell everybody that it's not basically, yeah, I'm trying to sway my friends from attacking and her and from her not attacking back. I'm trying to. I'm saying, Hey, she's not the target. We thought I like her and she's trying to help me. Let's not kill the person who's trying to help me. How much of this is like subtext that you're handing to them? Are you just like admitting you're connected to these folk? I think I am hinting that I'm connected to these folk, but I'm also putting my back to her and shielding her from, as I get up from the rest of everybody else, trying to get in between so she knows that I'm trying to protect her. I'm not facing her, attacking her, doing anything aggressive. Gotcha. I'm trying to interpose myself between me and ghost at the moment to say and hold off, hold off. Let's talk. So I think the situation has changed from what? I will say that you still have in your vicinity a high class dueling pistol that missed its mark. But if you were to reload, it would be quite a shot, but you are de-escalating. So let us, which skill did you end up going with? Which approach? I'm strong sway. I'm trying to just influence the both people. I feel kind of know me at least they thought they knew me and like me, so I'm just using my sway to convince everybody just to give it a few seconds before everybody freaks out. Okay. Even though there only just seems to be two people right now, right? Is this us three or in the room, just ghost me and her as far as she knows? Yes. You did catch Gordon as you were being brought to the bed, right? But in the ensuing madness, he's still hidden. He's just managed to catch your eyes. You were propped up on this bed. So go ahead. Give us that role. I'll put you behind us me here. Well, wait a minute. Is busy getting out of the bed? Yeah. That's kind of injured. Yeah. She said, I thought he said he wanted to get between as me and ghost. Well, that would be past as me. Yes. That's true. I remember him saying his back to as me to protect him from anyone else in this room. I.E. Gordon. Well, I'm going between two people who look like they're about to fight, but to be ghost and as me. All right. Let me scoot ghost a little bit so I can fit you in there. I was curious. Yeah. I can move coast too. I think everyone can move everyone, but yeah, I was curious about that. Any modifiers here? Dice wise, I can't give you any unless somebody's helping. You aren't having any taken away because this is a more of a social thing than a physical. As far as conditions go, I think she's very ready to take action and you getting in the way might be dangerous. Is it desperate? Is it almost desperate? It's about to come to violence. So yeah, it is desperate, but you have a rapport with her. Normally, someone trying to poison you, this would be like a limited effect. I think your relationship with her gives you a standard one though there will be a lot to answer for. No, it's not. So no modifier, no extra dice and I'm not, I don't think I'm going to put anything more into this. I'm just going to hope for the best. Putting more into it hasn't helped them so far this evening. You're not going to push it. No. So he's just going to take what he gets, which is a three force. Three to kind. You do it, but there's a consequence. You suffer either harm or serious complication or reduced effect. Is it like severe harm because it's desperate? Does that bump it up to like from regular harm? Yes. In the game. Okay. Thanks for what the riskiness is and adjusts how the consequences will be. What a partial success looks like. Wouldn't it have something to do with this current condition medical? That's a good avenue or the fact that she was about to attack me and he stepped in between us. That is another one I was thinking is she would grab me and use me as a shield or a hostage. I think halfway through your explanation, your lungs give out and you've just run out of breath and you're kind of gurgling. I'm not going to put you in a position. I get to have all of my knees and I'm trying to get my breath again. Yes, for air. This is easy enough for her to pick you up and she does you a kindness of trying to get it out of you. She slaps you on the back, but by the time you recover breathing, she does have a blade out of her dress and against close, but not touching your skin. And she says, I don't know how you're connected to all of these folk, but if that's the case, I can use that and you will help me. No harm will come to you, but I need and she takes a pause. There are two heartbeats here that I can't account for somewhere behind or beneath me and out on deck. Get the one in front of us gone and we'll sort the rest out in a position where we're not all threatened. I say ghost. I don't think she this well, we're not supposed to be taking people out or good people and I think she is good people. And I kind of side I her with my eyes, though I'm pretty sure she's not people. It's a dark chuckle at that. But I like her and I don't want to see any harm come to her. You like her? Yes. She's threatening you now. And I think she's the one that arranged that individual to shoot you, which is why I was trying to get at her. I'm lying, by the way, I'm lying by the way, Jim. Busy can tell that. Yes. I'm sure. So what were you saying, Busy? All I know is that I made a lot of stupid mistakes. So far by not trying to think and talk my way through some things earlier and I'm trying to do it now because that's what I do best. So let's talk about what's going on. So I'm moving off to the side because it seems that she wants to go through the door with Busy as a target so that no one hurts her. So I definitely step aside to let them go through. She gestures to the lantern on your right Busy. Grab that, she says. Yeah, I grabbed the lantern. This is full of a ghost flame of briars. It's been tinkered with, but she seems to want to have it, so. I tell her she. I'm not going to do anything to you. I'm going to try to talk these people out of doing anything through you. You don't need to be sticking your knife in my neck. I got it. I'm here with you. And I want them to know I'm not fine. Fine. Yeah. We were not unequal terms at the moment. I want to make sure we get there. Understand, well, let's move along. Does Gordon get a turn? Yes. Gordon, you can do what you would like. I just wanted to finish that conversation. She has some sense of where you are, but she doesn't know you're in the room, exactly. If I were to involve one of my throwing knives, what would that be? Scowass? Yeah. From your hidden position, it would likely be a prowl. Yeah, it makes sense. Naked text though. But so far, you've picked up vibes that she's not quite human. So there is a concern to how much damage you could do with a mirror throwing knife. And busy trying to tell everybody not to attack her. Yeah, I hear that. I just want to make sure you heard that. I imagine you did. I was just... Okay. So what's our mission here? I mean, it's been a few weeks. Take her out. Take her out. I do want to ask you to either get her out of the city or take her out. The social route could lead to getting her out of the city, but it's not going to kill her. I'm just going to toss a knife at her arm that's holding the knife. Okay. That's a good move. What kind of knife does she have? Is it like a dagger knife? Is it a small short sword? Is it a scimitar? What's she got? It is a ritual dagger. It looks like it's largely used for... Not murder, but blood sacrifices sort of thing. Okay. So disarm her. Go ahead. Go ahead and do it. I think you have a risky position as she isn't aware of your exact location and standard effect because you don't have the best angle on this. You could have great from a hiding position, but not at this particular angle. You don't know how long I practice laying in my back and throwing it. So is anybody going to help me out here? I mean, I've only got three, but I feel like this is critical. Everybody's maxed out or close to it, right? Yeah. Bad shape. I got a devil's bargain that could give you an extra die. That seems to be like already included, but why not? Little's bargain is causes busy to drop the lantern holding Breyer's flame. Oh, sweet. Yeah. Boom. Yeah. It's coming. Yeah. We got to add complications. Well, there you go. Partial success. All right. You hit her square through the arm and it ends up... I was fucking muted when I was talking the whole time. Somebody got... Oh, wow. Before I announce. Yeah. Were you helping? I had intended to because when I saw that Gordon was stepping out from underneath where he was hidden and started to throw a knife, I intend to do something at the same time. So I'm not going to give him an additional role, but my intent is to deal with that lantern. My thought process was that she's insisting and I have the ability of Ghost Fighter where I can grab spirits, which means I could probably see spirits. Do I see one in the lantern? Because I'm assuming she's got a relationship to that lantern. A reminder for you, then, is this is the lantern that holds an echo of Breyer's flame. It's not so much a spirit as an essence of a demon, a fraction of an essence of a demon. Is it related to her is my point? Is it linked to her? No. She hasn't had the time to try to bind it to her. If you had to guess, that's probably what she was going to use it for, but she hasn't yet. Okay. So my intent is to grab the lantern. If it causes it to fall, I am going to grab it and then I'm going to smash it against the wall and grab the spirit by the throat. The spirit is Breyer burning Breyer, Thomas. He gave a couple of notes of his spirit to busy, I think, in the past. And he has like a gift to Esmerola and her it is in her headquarters. It's still dangerous for her to have, because she could, she can hack him through it. If I'm smashing it, I intend to grab it and throw it and say, go, join your full spirit together. Type of thing. All right. Release it. Yeah. Okay. So that might require a different role. That's fine. It likely will. With a partial success and you aren't adding another die, so we don't get to roll another. We have a complication or we wind up in a desperate position. Reduced effect. I want to say that you hit her through the arm and that it winds up pinning her to the edge of her. Corders. Yeah. There's like a word for a bedroom in a ship, but I don't, I don't give a fuck for a state room. There is a shower of sparks from that arm. As for. Oh, she's a hall busy. You are let go kind of like knocked forward, but that lantern goes tumbling towards ghosts direction. It is going to hit the floor and light the place up when it shatters. Maybe having an essence of burning briar consuming the ship will be to your advantage, but you're welcome to try to stop it. I'm a hungry hungry fire. Hey, I'll try to catch it before it hits the floor since I'm probably the one closest to it at the moment and then handed to go if I do catch it because she's this is right in this way too. This is an aspect of ghosts bodyguard where she can resist consequences for allies. This is more or less a consequence of Gordon's mixed success. And what's more catching it is going to be prowess resist and you're going to be down to die because you're full of blood and goof in your lungs where I get a plus die because I'm assisting your reactions aren't as good as they should be at the moment busy. Are you saying we're both going forward at the same time? Well, I swear she was holding your arms. She was holding you she asked you to pick it up and when she got knocked away, she upset the lantern in your hands because you're a little bit shaky. You can try to snatch for it. That's fine. If nothing else, then I'm trying to block her from catching it and giving us the full if it goes badly, it will definitely be because you're too fumbling over this falling thing. But I guess I'm not doing anything except hopefully watching ghosts catch the lantern. Are you literally assisting? If I could assist, I can if it's going to assist a resistance role. I think that's like one of the teamwork things. That's fine. Do I have an idea of what the sparks shooting out mean? Yeah, they are indicative of electroplasmic circuitry. Her arm that arm is part of some machine. She could be part hole. Or it could just be a bionic arm. Okay, I intend to use skirmish because it's too entangled to target in close combat, which catching this lantern is resisting a consequence of a failed role. So I'm asking for a prowess as if you were resisting being hit. Oh, I see. So I'm rolling a prowess skill. It's not only wounds that you can resist if there are like meta story consequences. You got you roll resistance and justify how it's happening and my bodyguard skill has one dice. So that's the modifier I'm taking. Yep. I don't think it asks risky or whatever. This is just holy crap. I rolled it. Well done. You've got a six here or you can say that. Yes, I rolled a 2, 3, 4, 4, 4, 6. Why? Because I rolled prowess and I have every skill, finesse, prowl, all of them. All of them. So that's 4 dice plus one because I'm a bodyguard. So the best one is a six. All right. You don't even have to like dive on the floor or anything. You manage to loop your arm through the handhold of this thing and just whip it back up and still have a hand free to do messy business, if you wish. But first, let's get to Tesla and Briar who are hearing shouting from inside. But the specifics are a bit lost. We do hear busy in a calming mama, mama, mama, mama, mama. There's a bit of silence and then a heavy thunk clamoring. Yeah, at the sound of busy's voice, Tesla rolled her eyes towards Briar, knowing that he had kind of a soft spot for her and it's not surprising that he's doing a lot of talking in the situation instead of action. And I will open the trap door to the surface and let busy go. I'm not busy. Let burning Briar go first if he desires sure, but first I just got to make sure was anything you're supposed to do down here, get the engines running or what? No, we were just hiding because it was the best place to hide. Okay. We couldn't fit in the bedroom. There's the thoughts of hijacking the demon to get it going where you want to. And it's in another room. No, it's not down here. It is. Got you. We have to pass through there. I'll probably stop there unless they desperately need me for some kind of crazy. We can gloss over that the engine, whether or not it was running it is now. Yeah. If you could get us airborne away from Lord Strangford's possible reinforcements, that would be there was a lot of time you spent hiding in that hall. So you can have prepped to we can do like a free be flashback where you got the engine ready to go. And then when it kicked off, you just did the lawnmower pull string thing and got up here. Yeah, we've got to engage the demon to make it go even faster or something. But yeah, right. Cool. It's begun moving. I will pilot us with my tanker skill. I think that's the skill you use to drive checks descriptions. Spring can get it going. Fine maneuvering is typically. Fairness. Fairness. It is. It's true. I remember. That's why we were trusting somebody else with this shit. I suck at driving, but you suck like zero suck or no, I've got a one. I got this. Well, I just want to do a very solid thumbs up and tinker can get this thing going fast, which will get you distance away from the estate, but it will not give you like coherent direction with a breathless giggle. He says, I've got this in the bag and you know, to be worried as he steps behind the wheel. All right. We move into that night into that location. Yeah. I might be able to intervene here. Yeah. Yeah. Once you extricate yourself from the situation, you can absolutely take over the piloting. Okay. These characters haven't had a thing yet, so I just wanted to know what they were doing. Okay. You want to make your role? Sure. I mean, some readings on these implements and charts, you know, we got any permissions you can grant me. And by that, I mean, do we have, I don't know, is there air traffic control tower equivalent? I don't think there is no city does not have enough. We'd have to go communicate by semaphore. We'd have to get out there with flags. Yeah, there is probably systems for such an Imperial city, but as infrequently as we get airships up north here. You just do what you want to baby, my favorite description, but you do pull up to this helm. It's got levers. It's got systems that are not labeled and try your best to intuit with Tinker, I imagine. Correct. Oh, wait, make sure it's not like a video game where you get your X, Y axis and your X axis confused. Mm hmm. Up is down and down is up. Yeah. I got a roll Tinker in order to actually fire up the engines first and then to get to go full throttle. All right. Cool. I open her up. I roll with the Tinker and you know what? I ask the demon to help out. Don't don't worry about any fallout goes hard as you want just to get my bells bargain. He does something that he really shouldn't because he's never been asked to do whatever he wants. Is that cool with you for next? Yes. I'll keep a secret what that does, but you do hear chimes and its own repressed jellyfish giggle. It is a mix between jellyfish and wind chimes, just kind of a hanging organic metallic mess in this magic circle. Demons nevertheless speak a language that is universal. So after all that noise, you do get the instructions of how to let fly. All right. With great belches of the flame from his furnace and a little arcane, not even arcane, I met arcane in its definitional sense of hard to understand. I think there's a better word for that, but I can't come up with it right in. Is it Eric? Yeah, sure. Eric symbols leaking out of his ears and his eyes and his mouth. Briar absolutely stops speaking human speech as he begins his ranting and raving about the process and rolls an extra die. We are at, I assume, risky, could be desperate. Not desperate yet. That desperate. We'll see how this goes. Yeah. Some cannons are pointed at us or demons showed up that didn't like them. Very rarely is a cannon pointed skyward in this city. True facts. Standard. Great. We'll be looking at limited. With the help of the demon, you have great effect to get this thing going. Oh, yeah. All right. I'm rolling plus one dice total of three, three, three, four, very bad, but not the worst. Yeah. Suffer harm, complication, reduce effect or whatever the case you end up in a desperate position. It is not whatever the case. It's like one of these. Oh, it's one of the options. Yes. All right. Everyone neglected to, and it's fine, there's a lot going on, raise the gangplank. So it starts scraping along the wood, knocks over a brazier as you pull away from the tower. Hey, we're new at this. We never flew before. Yeah. It's its maiden voyage, you're supposed to smash a bottle, right? Yeah. Well, you did more than that. The levers you've thrown have got this thing raring. And the last valve, it has you open. There's a jolt and everyone kind of like sways backwards as this thing has extra kick. And at the same time, the magic circle around this thing containing it fizzles and pops. And the containment is reaching a bad language. He says, let's see, looks behind him. It is going fast, but it is beginning to sink. Because I will absolutely let you out when we do our thing here. But I would like it if you stayed and controlled this thing until we were ready, huh? He's beginning to offer some. There is an electric barrier around Strangford Manor, and your ship is listing dangerously toward it because of the gangplanks extra weight, or no, because of the breach of containment. Oh, I got you. It controls altitude and the demon is less than under control at the moment. I can't. That's your desperate situation you end up in. You got it going. I can fix this. He offers in English, not English, sorry, accuracy. Into in passing to Tesla prior stop saying that and do it. And Tesla. And what are you up to? Tesla is looking at the containment fields. That's something with her attunement and her spiritual skills can feed into in repair it or somehow for a stress, you can have a flashback where you thought to bring along your demonologist ghost bottle. Well, I will add to you an extra like effect here, otherwise you are not too well versed and will have limited effect in your okay, so I use is that like one of the items that we carry? I have to use as one of the items that we have as part of I believe that arcane implements includes a spirit vial, so like I imagine you have that already. That's just this specific spirit vial is for day or a deep cut right okay, I will spend a stress to do that. So the idea is to try to gather the escaping. Is it the demon that's escaping? Yes, whatever is containing it, the seals around the container are beginning to give. Some of the instructions that were fed to Briar were less than, let's say, cooperative. And it puts stress on the system such that the demon was able to flex and kind of break it a little. Okay, and containing, I'm going to call it a demon bottle containing the demon or gathering it up in the demon bottle, that would allow for some, it wouldn't be able to escape. So I'd be able to negotiate with restore buoyancy to the craft. Okay, that's what I was looking for. So that is what I will do. Is that a tune or is that some other skill that I need to do a tune would work. It is arcane knowledge you're trying to tune into the specific frequencies that are containing this demon and figure out where they have broken. Okay. All right. With some consoling demon words and some belches of flame that spell out some arcane symbolism that Hadrian himself has studied, I offer a point of support by marking another stress. Hadrian has been working on demon containment with his magic in particular ever since that the bog in the last quest. Yeah. He's got a little bit of insight that you may not have gotten on to since he did that alone. No, I've been in some of your sessions where you've been working on it, but not as many as you have, obviously. I don't have the same skill in that or the same knowledge in that area. So I'm certainly listening to you as you give me advice. These flames reinforce some of the circle with sigils and symbols that float and flicker. Wow. This demon calls you several old names. Yeah. He explains down to that you've given yourself over to humanity, a servant, a tool. I was born to a tool. Kind of funny at all calling a tool a tool. Oh, he's a trap tool. Good thing this is not here to make friends. Yeah. I explain that we are going to get this thing out of the lightning fence or he's not going to be able to escape either. So priorities because you may call me a tool now, but we need to not crash yet. I'm going to take out. It's not a valuable thing. It just has the smallest point of a diamond on its tip. It's a pen that's used for etchings and glass containment bottles for spirits and demons and taking the information that Briar just gave me and etching some sigils into the glass container, giving myself a plus one in the role to contain, hopefully, the demon. Is a demon still nameless at this point? It has. Oh shit. Did I name it? I feel like you ended up a name, but I didn't write it down in the chat. It doesn't matter. I use its name in my pronouncement. Its name is Hemi. That would be something I have to check the recording for. I'm sorry. I'll just say I want to. I'll just use my last description of etching with a diamond tip pen. Okay. Sigils into the spirit bottle, but the demons. Something I run into when we skip or I don't write something down is like I don't want to contradict myself. Okay. Position. Is this desperate or is it risky? Desperate position. Yeah. We have been put in a desperate position. The bottle you're etching on that houses this creature is cracking and you're trying to etch the glass such that it isn't interrupted. These circles are not interrupted by the cracking glass and restrict its power so that it can't do that anymore. Okay. And the effect. You are going to have great effect. Can you tell me how you're bringing your demonologist friend to help out? Your ghost. This is not controlled circumstances where you could put him in a viewing booth or anything. Right. There is a way on the spirit bottles to allow you to converse with the spirit without releasing them. It's not as like there is a very dedicated way to draw them out and get them to do favors for you and things along those lines. But just to interact with it and speak with it, there is like a little bit of on the lid a way you can turn it and it opens up a spirit protected opening that are like a the spirit veil, whatever it's called. I'm losing the terminology right now, the what? I feel like the ghost field, the ghost field, yeah, there's like a little, there's a little part of ghost field that activates and allows you to speak to the ghost or spirit, but doesn't allow it to escape. So I'm saying, okay, okay, help me now. I'll make it worth your while. And the demonologist at that point starts spewing along with Briar, sigils, words of command, things along those lines. Yes. As you attune and open your site, the demonologist begins throwing energy into the ghost field in the shape of what you need to draw for this, actually makes a note that this is an old demon of air that has long been owned by the demonologist college. And he knows its name and gives you great effect. Okay, and then we'll get back to the folk in the fighting room, but this right. I have the name of this demonologist before I'm looking at my notes and I don't believe so. We have yet to name them. I don't want to. It was someone, Satara eight at some point. I'm going to go ahead and make my role with the help of the demonologist and with the help of Briar, it leads me to four dice in a desperate position with great effect. Here we go. Five is my highest number on the four dice, which gives me a success with severe harm, a serious complication or a reduced effect. All right. For a desperate role so far, go ahead and mark one in insight, I believe. Experience and busy made a resolved action. So go ahead and add an experience to your resolve. How's this for a consequence as you are etching these sigils? The cracks keep interrupting them. And finally, your friend in the bottle says, put mine up to the glass. I can work on it with contact as you do such the reverberations in the glass slow stop and then concentrate in the spirit bottle you're holding, which as you gain control of this vessel, it lurches back up into the sky, the spirit bottle in your hand, the one holding the demonologist. Yes. Seems like fair payment. I'll just tip my cap at the moment and curse under my breath and he lingers for a bit manifesting in a fog that fills the space where the bottle was. You fortunately walk away from a desperate partial success with no physical consequences and goes around the containment vessel and to it, shoring things up and then just kind of begins to fade and says, I will talk to you again. Our relationship is not done, but it will be on my terms without the torture. I give you a glance while he's trying to vanish because I could just eat that fucking ghost and we'd be done with it. I look to Breyer and give a slightest nod in his direction. It will be a fight, Breyer, and you're kind of in a situation. Yeah, you asking for a lot. The last time I did this, I exploded and also hurt everyone. But it is up to you which you rather engage in. It would be an experience point to indulge your vice in lieu of the mission here. We were about to move on, first of all, so we should do that. But just something to think about when we get back to you. I wanted to request is our altitude stabilized. Yes, it has gone backwards and the demon is making pained groans and mutterings as it is forced to put its strength into writing the vessel. All right. So a bunch of savage grins leak out of our good boy and then we cut to the next room. All right. As me is pinned up against the wall, showering sparks from her arm in some sort of manifestation of electroplasmic energy, she is on the back foot at the moment. You probably want to take advantage of this as the vessel like lurches and she loses her footing, hanging literally from her arm for a moment before she gets her feet back under her. I suppose I'm the one that can pin her to the ground. She's close up against the wall. If you want to tear her arm free of the wall or get some medical and chains going, you can try that. I definitely have medicals and chains. That's a standard item that my character carries. Yeah. If you want to go for a kill shot, you can try that too. I will attempt to do that then. Which one? Because I did just like chaining her up is very different from trying to kill her. I'm not going to try to kill her. I'm going to try to chain her up. This is definitely a skirmish where it says you might seize or hold a position and absolutely try to fight for her men and do it on. So I'm trying to grab one arm spinning around and then place the medicals on her because like I said, that's one of the things I have the rage essential vial which I've used in the past but also the medical those are just things I naturally have. I want you to be careful with the rage essence vial because when a fight ends, the rage essence vial does not. You keep looking for a fight. Oh, no, I'm not doing that. No, no, I'm saying I did it in the past and I automatically have it. I'm not doing it this time that just endangered my crew last time with that. So I'm avoiding it that and my stress level is nearly as high as possible. So I'm attempting to pin her and I clearly have the medical in my hand where it's understandable what I'm going to do is anyone assisting and by that I mean busy or Gordon because you're both in this room with me. I don't don't have any stress to share or does that mean, does that mean I can't do anything or what damage do I take? Yeah, it would be one stress and if you would get a trauma to assist, you're already at eight and it would take you to nine. Yes. Yikes. Yeah, you probably don't want to do that because trauma takes you out of this entire scene. Oh, yeah. No, that is yes. Something we've only briefly touched on with Briar who had exceptional circumstances. You're not going to turn into a plot of flame. Yeah, no, but it will leave you like mentally disfigured at the moment and that trauma gets you awesomely more experience each night but I wouldn't suggest that you have to do that. So that kind of leaves you busy if you're going to assist. Busy is just like fuck, fuck, fuck. This is just not going right, this is not my day. The option is to kill her or take her. I understand. I'm telling her it looks like your best bet just to let us chain you up because otherwise this is going to get ugly and I'm helping try to chain her up. You can see her weighing the options in her head. So Mike's spending stress to give you an extra die. Should die. Yeah. Stress. One. Two. I'm like, sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry, this thing trying to help get her in position and get the cops on her. I assume that this is acquiesces and this does not require a role. Oh. So then I do not have to spend the stress. She says, well, I'm going to need my arm out of this wall if you're going to chain me up. Well, I spin the other arm up to the one in the wall to make it easier to chain her, but then I do remove her arm. That is a contortion that is uncomfortable. She was hanging like the arm is high up on the wall when the ship lurched her feet left the ground and she was just like hanging by a pinned arm. Right. So yeah, you you figure it out one way or the other. She is chained up. You folks are above you clear the lightning fence when you make your way out of this party. When this is happening, I'm nodding my head repeatedly towards the door as in someone should open it and get Tesla and Briar involved to let them know what's going on. Right. Before we like drop out of combat mode, Briar, you drop the controls to eat this ghost. And we're about to get a better pilot. So, yes, I was asked to and I Tesla's my closest friend here, really. All the busy's making some strides lately. You are in a risky position because you're trying to eat a demonologist, even if it is a disembodied one. It has some tricks. I didn't even think about that. We clear the lightning fence. Yes. You are headed straight into Rooke's crow's foot. A fair clip. There are some towers here that will be concerning for navigation purposes, but you chose what you chose. Yeah. I'm thinking of a bunch of bad things. I really need to remember how bonuses work. Not how you use too stressed to push myself. Yes. Devil's bargain or too stressed to push yourself. Every other dice has to come from an ally. Filling the track is fine. Getting one more is bad, right? I believe filling it is what gives you a trauma. Oh, okay. Well, I ain't doing that. I don't need a bonus trauma. I am rolling two dice to burn this ghost to even find her electroplasmic ash. I wouldn't mind an assist. Perhaps, Tesslyn could whip out a lightning hook. Exactly what I was thinking, but she might be out of stress by now. She has one more stress she can give before taking a trauma. So she uses that, pulls out her fine lightning hook, and lunges towards the spirit as it tries to disengage and leave, drawing it closer to Ryer's hungry. Go add a dice to that. Absolutely. I add a dice. It is still risky. My fact is still standard. Hope I roll better than I have been tonight. You want to see what the Devil's bargain might be? We could consider some. I was just wondering if you wanted it because I don't want you to get hurt. Yeah, the first one I thought of is I helped the wind demon escape, which I think would be pretty disastrous, and I'm not really into. I considered it. Well, that was what I was thinking of when I said I'm only considering bad ideas right now. Okay. Devil's bargain. You can ask the players? I can, but my idea right now, and we can reject this and try to find other ones, is that this demonologist becomes a voice in your head. It knows how to persist inside a demon for a bit from his experiences with Sotara. Hmm. We did get that. Can I ask a question, Thomas? What is your trauma? I am unstable. I'm over here. Well, could be associated with that. Yeah. But just a thought. I don't know what the thought means, but yeah. Well, the thought is that you're unstable because you found out that when you consume powerful ghosts that they actually still remain in your head a little bit. And the initial instability only showed up when I ate one of the most powerful ghosts in the entire world. Right. Which is what I was thinking as a Devil's bargain, yeah, as John suggested, that it would work together. Oh, I'm a heaven, you or a hell, I guess. All right. I don't mind that too much. You guys might later roll into it. Back up by the rest in the ass. Risky still total of four prior to two, two, one, six and then see that last dice was the devil's bargain made it. Yeah. That would have been failure. That's ugly. Yeah. I thought you had three. Oh, this year. Right. It would have been a two, two, one. Yeah. That's it. No, I don't have to in a tune. I have two in every of my highest kills prior to. I see. You're going the wide. All right. We'll run us since man. Yeah. All right. Shit. You do it then. Yeah, absolutely. All right. So I don't, how do you tell me how you eat them? You feed them to the furnace? Yeah. All right. Sure. It's going to be like a combo thing though. So Briar takes his hands off of the airship controls, spins around nice 180 and with a move reaches down to the furnace that is belly and opens it wide. And it releases a gout of flame in the shape of the snapping jaws, which afterwards vanishes swirling inwards towards the mouth of the furnace and captures a great heaping chunk of the ghost, the rest of it perhaps dissipating into electroplasm, maybe sticking to the lightning hook that Tesla forced him to juke away from. But devouring the vast majority of the ghost with a satisfying crunch. And then thankfully with a six, not spreading a great big gout of flame everywhere else. There's some burns around the eyes and the ears and the mouth that he usually has briars poking out of, but it didn't destroy his body and it didn't even do any actual damage. So he's quite satisfied with the results. Speaking of which, do I recover any stress for a yes, you recover three stress for this ghost. Oh, oh God, I love my self, he says, for some reason, I'm picturing like this big smiley face with a tongue hanging out coming out of your chest as this goes for this. Yum, it was delicious, it's munching away, the tongue hanging out. It's very private, don't judge me. Okay. How are you guys doing, you got her? That wasn't the plan. Well, I have my hands on her and she's also kind of locked up, so close enough. Yeah, I don't know how good she will be at escaping this, but we are definitely in a position now where we can talk and make decisions, and I think we want to talk to her. 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 blog, which is found at kotnpodcast.com, and please remember to join us next week for more mystery and adventure. Hey, you're downwind. Okay. Attic. But what you gonna do, that's this time of day that I get Attic every day. I tried taking a nap. I virtually didn't sleep last night, so it's the reason for that. The project. Yep. I mean, went live Tuesday, and I was praised because it's phenomenal, and there hasn't been a single issue. A lot of research I had to do, because they were afraid that something might have gone wrong in the new process and all. But for some reason last night, I couldn't sleep. Still thinking of solutions? Probably. I definitely do that. Wake up and go, "Oh, I know." And I can't go backslip just for the outtake. I am literally trying to grab as being a thrower out of the ship, and it won't let me. So we can't move anybody else. I couldn't move. Busy, either. I could just move myself. So anyway, sorry. Good. Oh, there are titles for this episode that were available for putting on the Facebook Nights of the Night fans page were bad complications, a fraction of the essence of a demon. This demon calls you several names. Your friend in the bottle says, "Last time I did this, I exploded and hurt everyone." it's very private, don't judge me.