#blades of Duskvol
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indiaboeckh · 1 year ago
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My Whisper character for the Blades of Darkness campaign I’m in
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onemorestepinduskvol · 9 months ago
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Heartbeat Scale
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Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.
It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.
Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.
I call this the Narrative Scale.
Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.
Let's call this the Action scale.
That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.
But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.
Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.
I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.
It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.
It's the very moment that matters most.
Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.
It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.
And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.
Scaling in and scaling out helps add a tempo and contextualise the narrative arc of a score and its surrounds in a way that can feel quite visceral and taut and bitter.
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wheelie-butch · 8 months ago
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indie-ttrpg-of-the-week · 11 months ago
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Blades in the Dark
https://johnharper.itch.io/blades-in-the-dark Sun's gone, lets do crimes about it
Touchstones: Peaky Blinders, The Wire, Bloodborne, Thief (game), Dishonored
Genre: Heist, Dark fantasy
What is this game?: Blades in the Dark is a game about playing as a gang of rowdy thieves in an eternally dark city, its core mechanics focus on high tension and drama
How's the gameplay?: BITD has a very complex and granular system, meant to keep tensions and drama at a constant high, trying to fully explain it would take a bit longer than i'd like but I'll try my best Blades uses a system where you roll an amount of die equal to your bonuses and take the highest, in addition the game also utilizes a Risk system, determining how bad things get if you fuck up, Characters can also take on a Devil's Bargain, guaranteeing bad consquences for better rolls. BITD also has many subsystems related to character's traumas, injuries, and more importantly, vices, things that your character falls back on if they get overly stressed. BITD's game design is entirely meant to make dramatic and stressful scenarios, as well as to make sick as hell heist scenarios, characters are scummy criminals who do bad things, and the gameplay reflects that, moves like being able to flash back to a prior preparation are a great example of this, showing how a player prepared for the current heist. Alongside this, the game also has a "Crew" playbook, which plays into faction shenanigans with your party, a crew playbook is shared across the entire party and determines your origins and methodology, while character playbooks are more about the personal character, how they're like and how they work
What's the setting (If any) like?: BITD is set in Duskvol, a city under eternal night, shit kinda sucks here! a corrupt empire calls all the shots, doing usual oppressive empire here, as well as some usual imperialism. The Courts are more corrupt than an Oblivion save file, and its often said that everyone in Doskvol's guilty, so its better to line your pockets with cash before you get caught.
What's the tone?: Doskvol pitches you a dark, opressive city, filled with corrupt officials and evil rich assholes who get away with their crimes by just coughing up the dough to get away from it, it is a very dark game, players are often the scum of the town, doing bad things to get ahead in life. BITD is a very very dark game, but goddamn does it work
Session length: Short, BITD's resolution mechanics make it so you can usually get a lot done in a short amount of time, 1-2 hours should be plenty of time
Number of Players: 4 or more is recommended 
Malleability: Blades' setting seems pretty stiff at first, but you can definitely hack it to set it in different worlds, its not the most malleable game but it can definitely be changed quite a bit
Resources: Blades in the Dark is a very popular game, so there's a ton of fan-made content out there, as well as a ton of great official content as well.
I have mixed feelings on Apocalypse World, but Blades in the Dark is phenomenal, really does deserve its legacy, its dark, gritty, and its mechanics complement it very very nicely, great game
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txttletale · 1 year ago
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bundletober #15: the sunless seasons
almost halfway there. woah. living on a prayer and all that. today's bundletober is interesting in that i'm not looking at a standalone game. the sunless seasons is a blades in the dark--i hestitate to call it a supplement, it's more a play tool or as the cover proclaims, a toolkit--by eskur.
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so, for those who haven't played it--blades in the dark is my favourite ttrpg. it's a heist game set in duskvol, a city in the middle of a blighted perpetually dark wasteland, a dark and brooding take on a world like that of dishonored or bioshock that embraces character competence, the over-the-table conversation, and cutting out all the parts of stories and games that aren't the fun parts.
the sunless seasons is a very short set of pages containing tables of plot hooks, vignettes, and weather conditions for each of duskvol's seasons.
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the weather tracking works with a pretty ingenious hex grid--you roll to move a counter between these hexes at different intervals--you can base it off in-game time passing or between scenes for when you want a dramatic hard cut. it's a simple thing but it takes another element of 'being the world', of creating an immersive and breathing space to play in, off the sole shoulders of the GM.
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the plot hooks provided on the 'weird weather' hex are very cool, too. this toolkit gives duskvol a pulse--i'm always talking about how games can be co-authors, and this is pure game-as-co-author, this is game as someone who interjects 'oh, and it's raining' at the most dramatic point. if you play blades in the dark, you should 100% read the sunless seasons, if not to use it, to get some inspiration for how you describe duskvol. even if you don't, it might inspire you for whatever ttrpgs you do play, or to include something similar in your own game.
this, imo, is better to make a place feel real than any amount of lore or timelines or family trees or could be. it's something material and present, something you use in play rather than just read and forget about. this is how you make your world feel real.
the sunless seasons can be downloaded for free through itch.io
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utilitycaster · 1 year ago
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If you've read that recent article on polygon about Candela Obscura - "Critical Role’s Candela Obscura fails to differentiate itself enough from its inspiration" (6 November 2023) - I don't know much about the other systems and have trouble being objective about things I love, I was wondering what your opinion is
Hi anon!
I have! I will also admit I don't know Blades in the Dark terribly well, or rather, I have roughly the same BitD knowledge as I have Candela knowledge: I've watched (or in this case, listened) to a actual play show run in it (TAZ Steeplechase) and I've looked at the SRD. The Candela full rulebook doesn't come out for a week, so I really can't judge it for myself. So this isn't going to be objective either, but hopefully it will point out what I think the flaws in this article are regardless of the merits or failures of Candela Obscura as a game.
I think my overall issue is what I said about Polygon on the whole earlier this week: it really feels like their metric is first, is this innovative; and second, "does this reinforce my pre-existing political values in a way that allows me to feel warm and fuzzy and virtuous because I played a fun game/watched a fun show and lets me continue to ignore that I haven't actually engaged in any of that tiresome and inconvenient meaningful anticapitalist action."
I also, for what it's worth, think that this mentality very explicitly conflicts with what Critical Role is doing. I think a lot of people interpret the whole "a group of friends playing games" image as encouraging parasocial behavior (which, frankly, is weird in that while the CR fandom has had a parasociality problem, it's no different than any large fandom - Laurisha shippers or the Twinnies & Husbands crowd are literally just the Actual Play Fandom equivalent of Gaylors and Larries; also like, the pitch for WBN earlier this year was basically "hey, we're four friends playing games" and no one has blinked at that, nor should they have) when I think it's intended to mean "we are friends having fun making and playing the games we want to play; it's great if you'll join us but we're doing what we want." Given that Polygon has shown something of a bias towards those shows that give them early access, I do think it might be that they're just cranky they're not being given any special treatment or catering by an actual play show they've been shitting on for years, and this is simply a vicious cycle.
All that aside, more importantly in this case, I think the article shows a notable lack of Ebert's law: "A movie is not about what it is about. It is about how it is about it." Samantha Nelson, the author of this article, appears to be both incapable of evaluating Candela Obscura outside the context of Blades in the Dark - which is frankly, in my again admittedly limited opinion, vastly overstated as an influence (the Forged in the Dark engine is certainly a strong influence, but that's purely mechanical and also it's still only an influence - more on this later) - and also seems to want Candela Obscura's rulebook to flesh out Newfaire and Oldfaire in the same way that Blades in the Dark fleshes out Duskvol.
The thing is, those wide-open spaces and the vagueness of OldFaire? That's deliberate. The Looper interview with Spenser Starke and Rowan Hall as well as the Tabletop News interview both make this clear. The aim of Candela Obscura is to be very easy to pick up, to not have a bunch of intimidating lore that players and GMs need to know before they jump in (and I say this as someone who, when invited to her first D&D game, was the person who read the PHB and sent the other new players a brief summary of each race and class; I love intimidating lore), and to accommodate a wide range of styles. They considered making Oldfaire much more detailed in the book and then decided not to so that GMs felt more free with the world. Again, my knowledge of Blades in the Dark is heavily skewed by an actual play of it that's explicitly not in Duskvol (which I think is a very interesting commentary, namely, maybe Nelson just really fucking loves Duskvol but no one else gives a shit). I genuinely think they are, as more and more Polygon TTRPG/Actual Play coverage seems to be, barely paying attention to what's in front of them and just deciding based on who put it out.
As I said in my earlier posts I do think Candela distinguishes itself from BitD in a number of ways mechanically. The gilded dice mechanic is obviously one of the biggest ones. The lack of flashbacks - a pretty core element of Blades in the Dark - is another. The fact that scars change your stats rather than dealing a permanent penalty (as Trauma does in BitD) is seen as a flaw, as is the lack of lair-building, but I think these things work in tandem. Blades in the Dark is very much about growing territory and becoming a more and more powerful crime syndicate; while four traumas will take you out of the game the same way scars will, there's a lot more opportunities to heal and I believe you have much more room to take stress. Candela Obscura, as another interview I read states (ScreenRant), is a gothic/eldritch horror game about normal people in unfathomable circumstances. You don't really get much better! You adapt, but progress against these monsters is always a long shot. Candela as an organization has been operating for millennia, and the war seems to be one of attrition, and the mechanics, from what I know from the show, reflect that.
The bit about the criminal crew and the lair is honestly kind of funny to me, because in the TAZ Steeplechase wrap-up I listened to last week the McElroys noted that the lair element of BitD was actually really hard to incorporate and they largely ignored it. Obviously that's not true for everyone, but famously D&D in the earlier editions guided high level play towards running one's own dungeon, and there is a reason that hasn't survived to the newer editions, namely, that shift from being a crew out there doing wild and exciting heists and adventures to painting the walls of your clubhouse and hiring guards is not actually fun for a lot of people.
So in summary: I really don't think the author of this article paid a single scrap of attention to the motivations behind design choices, is mad the horror game doesn't give them a kiss on the cheek and tell them they're So Good at Leftism (the comment about not understanding that the restrictions on scarlet aren't tied to anti-immigrant sentiment is particularly egregious), and generally is like "why is this game that shares some similarities but ultimately rather different goals than Blades in the Dark not literally Blades in the Dark but with slightly more aggressive ghosts."
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forgedinthedark · 8 months ago
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Evil Hat are running a public playtest of The Dagger Isles! Remember that place that somehow manages to not have a lightning barrier? Well, we're getting a whole book about gaming there! Blades in the Dark is expanding beyond Duskvol.
You can register interest below. I have just done so and am excited to see the playtest.
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dungeonofthedragon · 10 months ago
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Kiwi RPG Bundle Final Days
There's little time left to grab the Kiwi RPG Week Itch and Drive Thru bundles. Both contain a collection of awesome titles from kiwi creatives, for an 80% saving!
We've got everything from standalone games, to expansions for Mausritter and Monster of the Week. We've got adventures aplenty, and some wonderful maps of Duskvol for Blades in the Dark!
My own work is in both bundles as well. Voidwalkers and The Tower in the Meadow are in the DriveThru bundle while Explorers of the Forever City and Super Unnatural are in the Itch bundle. If there's something here you've been eyeing up, now's a great time to grab it!
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open-hearth-rpg · 2 years ago
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Since I manage the community feed occasionally I boost some of my own work.
Age of Ravens: Volume II: Running
I've now released the first two volumes collecting work from AoR from last 14 years. This second one brings a host of tables, resources, generators, game guides, and more . This clocks in at 261 pages with 29 pieces.
You can pick this up on itch or DrivethruRPG
So what do we have in this book? The first part has lists of all kinds:
Oceans Rise, Empires Fall: 100 random kingdom events 72 Sci-Fi Heists: challenges for hi-tech intrusions Fight Scene Elements: 100 random places & items for conflicts 150 Details for Swashbuckling Scenes: inspirational details for gambles, stunts, and color There and Maybe Not Back Again: 100 random events for journeys The Fall of Summer: 36 threats for urban fantasy communities 36 Mood Elements for the Wastes: new exploration details for post-apocalyptic rpgs Wasteland Plots: story seeds for post-apocalyptic character archetypes 36 Mood Elements for an Alien Planet: exploration details for a space colony world Space Colony Events: random events for any space colony game The Many Names of Gamemasters: 202 alternate titles for game facilitators
The second part offers a host of different approaches for play
Tools for World Building: Techniques for names, shared maps & campaign maps Arcana Innominata: a story game of fantasy tarot creation On Icons: ideas for using icons and icon relations outside 13th Age Iconic Examples: a new pantheon of icons from a homebrew world Party Down: galas, celebrations, and events in rpgs More Than Coin: FitD rewards for expeditions, jobs & beyond In the Halls of the Monkey King: racing Forged in the Dark clocks Community Playbooks: using playbooks to create collaborative neighborhoods
The third part is about unpacking different rpgs
On Fate: a new player’s system guide to the Fate rpg Gumshoe Guide: A new player’s guide to the Gumshoe system Understanding 2d20: a new player’s guide to Modiphius’ 2d20 system Legacy: Life Among the Ruins: a new player’s system guide to the Legacy rpg Unpacking Voidheart Symphony: a guide to running & playing Voidheart Symphony Lessons from Duskvol: Learning Blades in the Dark Running Kuro: playing j-horror with a cyberpunk edge Strixhaven for Storygamers: exploring this D&D 5e sourcebook & setting Loops and Floods: Resources for Tales from the Loop & Things from the Flood Race and the Modern FRPG: a look at Against the Darkmaster & Worlds Without Number
If that kind of stuff sounds cool to you, I hope you'll check it out.
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citylitlena · 2 years ago
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Callout post to my Blades In the Dark players >:()
You all brought some rancid vibes to the game in the greatest way possible for being a gang of criminals. Come to Duskvol, we have
The Shape of Water, but turned up to 11
Gaslight, gatekeep, girlboss. And what do girlbosses say to death? Not today!
40K Dreadnought but more based and goblin
Socialist comrade publsher, doing *very* direct praxis. Somehow this reporter is the best fighter among them.
@kitchendeviant, @chuthulhu and the others who are not on this hellsite, thank you from the bottom of my heart for the ideas, investment and vibes, you all are wonderful!
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miraclemaya · 1 year ago
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if i ever go back to my old blades in the dark campaign, or start a new campaign of it, i really want to go full hog into the weirdness of duskvol.
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onemorestepinduskvol · 9 months ago
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Web of Relationships
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One of the core tensions in BITD is your crew's relationship with the other factions in the game.
If you draw a dodecagon (12 sides), each point can represent a faction and you can keep your crew's relationship with them clearly displayed in the same (nice) diagram.
Yes there are more than 12 factions in Duskvol but realistically your crew will not have a relationship with all of them.
They won't even have a relationship with 12, quite possibly, so it's advisable to start with a line or trianble between the crew and one or two factions they encounter first and add more as they appear.
What's fun about this is is that you can then connect those points to each other as your crew discovers the relationships those factions have between each other. Very valuable information indeed..
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wheelie-butch · 7 months ago
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The Old Things Comic #8
Gay ear
i made this as a text post ages ago but decided to doodle it. Orianna is extremely nosy and Cross hates to talk about his personal life. She's actually totally oblivious that he's gay (she's quite sheltered in some ways) but it's a funny running joke we make that she's always trying to "prove" it.
Comic #1 , Comic #2, Comic #3, Comic # 4, Comic #5, Comic #6, Comic #7
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digital-magus · 2 years ago
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Starting a Blades In The Dark campaign tomorrow.
The chances of my players recreating Late-2000s rave culture in the grim, haunted, steampunk streets of Duskvol are low...
...but not zero...
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coolcattime · 1 month ago
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Looking Back Through Fractured Lenses [OC Blades in the Dark Piece]
Characters: Elaina Gaius, Marcoh 'Roh' Daava
Additional Tags: Blind Character, Self-Loathing, Demons, Crime & Criminals, Music, Smoking, Drinking, Minor Injuries
Editor/Character Co-Creator: @theiratlas
After a particularly taxing heist, Elaina attempts to relax as she wonders how the hell her life has gotten this fucked.
AO3 Link
Elaina took a drag of her cigarette wishing that it – or in fact anything she was doing – was helping with her stress levels in any way. She’d been in the same club for days now, sat at the same table listening to the same switching performers that came on the same old stage. Yet still all her thoughts were stuck on the god-damned reality of the shitty situation she was stuck in.
Back when she had been doing regular crime for a regular gang, music had always been able to drag her back to her senses. She’d come to this club filled with smoke and weigh herself down with heavy drinks to just sit and watch the musicians play. The clear talent in every inch of their melodies entranced her, intoxicating and soothing her more than the booze ever could.
However, that had all been before.
Before that damn heist. Before she’d made an idiotic decision to make a deal with a demon.
One of her impulse decisions had finally come to bite her. How was she supposed to know that the cost would be her eyesight?! And the damn thing had laughed at how much she’d freaked out when the consequence had been given.
But she could bitch and moan all she liked; the past would remain past. And that night had ended with half her face burnt off.
It wasn’t as if she’d been completely shafted, Elaina supposed. She had very much been given demonic powers, powers over reflections to be specific – but a fat lot of good they seemed when she’d been very much out of her gang. Couldn’t exactly stay within them when they used a specialized code of hand signals and sign languages to communicate on heists.
She hadn’t exactly used the opportunity to turn away from crime, but it had very much seemed like any real heists were behind her and her powers would be little more than a freaky parlour trick.
But, as she was apparently still learning, her life wasn’t going to be that damn simple.
Apparently, her sight had only been partial payment. Of course, one of her senses wasn’t enough – why would it be.
No, the demon had now – near a year later – decided to force her into a cult. The other option she’d been given was death.
Frankly, at this point, Elaina was struggling to convince herself that she’d made the right decision.
It wasn’t that she had any particular want to die, but at this moment it seemed like it might’ve been preferable to being in the personal cult of a bastard bunch of demons.
She was stressed to her wit’s end. She was still injured with absolutely no hope of medical treatment. And she couldn’t remember the names of most of the people roped into the cult alongside herself.
She supposed, if she forced herself to look for a silver lining, it had been refreshing. She was able to go on heists and do crimes like she had been before the stupid deal. The spiteful part of her even had pride in it. But that part of her was nought more than a whisper with how utterly her mind had been fried by that last heist.
She’d been attempting to relax for days now. She’d been doing everything she normally would after a heist to calm herself down, but her nerves remained completely shredded.
But why on earth would the normal method be working? She hadn’t done a normal heist.
The first job for the demons – an assassination of some knobhead actor – she’d been able to pretend that it was just normal. End had gotten a bit chaotic, but it was an assassination, so much was expected.
This one though, she hadn’t even been granted that small escape.
Actual job hadn’t been that unusual. Steal an occult book from a private collection. Half a dozen gangs in Duskvol were properly doing something similar at the same time.
Stealing from a museum owned by Lord Scurlock, though? They were a bunch of fucking no bodies and they’d robbed a bastard that powerful who also might be a fucking vampire.
That would’ve been bad enough. Definitely would’ve been enough to have her sitting here smoking until she was out of things to smoke, unable to focus on the music as she currently was. But when the punches had started with this job, they just hadn’t stopped.
Members of the damn Wraiths had shown up planning to steal the exact same book. Of course, her old gang had been targeting the exact same book.
And, as if the night couldn’t have gotten any worse, she had been there.
Elaina had obviously known that she’d have run-ins with her old gang. It was inevitable now that she was back in the business of organised crime, but of all the bastard old allies she could’ve run into – why had one had to be her ex-girlfriend?
Just thinking about her brought the pounding back into her head.
Calling her an ex at all felt a bit off. They’d never actually broken up, but they hadn’t spoken since the whole demon deal, so ex seemed like the apt description.
She’d spent so long just attempting to avoid Dimitra. Obviously, she had – there was a fucking demon involved, and she wanted to keep her safe.
It wasn’t because she’d messed up her own face in a split-second decision and didn’t want to hear her reaction. Even if she knew without a shadow of a fucking doubt that she had messed up her own prospects and looks, she was not ready to hear that said to her face by someone she loved before swiftly getting dumped for being an invalid.
Well, fuck all her carefully laid plans of ghosting and avoidance. Dima had been right there literally pinning her to the ground.
And of all the things Elaina could’ve done in such a reunion – what had she actually done?
She’d kicked her off. Then promptly used the demonic powers she certainly didn’t want her old gang knowing about to escape the now extremely locked down museum.
If she hadn’t been stressed enough by the encounter – travelling through reflections had left her thoughts utterly fractured. It was like she had been crawling through broken glass. But she’d gotten herself and the other gang member that had been with her at the time out of the room.
Said gang member, the rat girl - god, she really needed to learn the names of these people - had said about her eyes looking… Well, Elaina hadn’t exactly paid attention, but if she’d noticed something actually wrong with them then clearly using the demon’s powers just messed with them even more.
Maybe every use of this deal was just making her uglier.
Elaina allowed that bitter and pointless thought to keep festering.
Still, maybe had that been it, she could’ve put the whole heist into the box in the back of her head that she put everything that she didn’t want to reflect on. That nice little box that meant she didn’t need to be stressed.
But life had truly just wanted to kick her repeatedly in the ribs.
Right when the four of them on the heist had been escaping the scene, Dima and the rest of her lot had tried to grab her. Her ex-girlfriend had tried to fucking abduct her.
In reality, they’d only managed to grab Leonard. No doubt a result of the man being in a deal – likely badly indebted considering all she knew of him – to the demon of bad luck. Regardless, her old gang and current gang had been left in a direct standoff.
She’d tried to convince them to just let the man go. Unsurprisingly, Dima hadn’t gone for that.
“You come instead. Worthy trade.”
Those were her exact fucking words. And – now that Elaina was thinking back on the way the other two had reacted – she’d almost definitely been pointing her rifle right in her face. The absolute—
Well, not that it mattered. Bird Boy had summoned a damn ghost.
Seemed that, much like she could still see the demons and the results of demonic powers, ghosts too bypassed whatever the demon had done to her eyes. Kinda obvious now she had a minute to think about it.
Sure, it’d distracted Dima and the Wraiths enough to let Leonard go. But being able to see the spirit had been enough of a shock to her in the moment that Ratty had had to drag her away from the scene. In the process she’d sprained her ankle, and the pain was still bothering her now.
And now here she was in all her glory. Her nerves were shredded. Her ankle was still absolutely killing her. Surrounded by music and smoke – everything that would normally help her relax – but still close to banging her head against the table in hopes the physical pain would fix her.
And worst, utter stupidity was still stuck in her head.
Namely, the recurring question of if Dima had wanted to abduct her simply to make sure she wasn’t spilling gang secrets. Or if she had just wanted to see her again.
…Okay. Clearly her attempts to destress weren’t working. And, as she discovered with the deepest sigh, she was out of cigarettes.
That seemed as good a sign as any to leave.
With a wince as she once again put too much pressure on her injured ankle, Elaina stood and made her way out to the relatively less smoke-filled streets of Duskvol.
As she tapped her cane across the ground, the electro-static core within reacted with the underground electrofield. In turn the current reacted with the metal accessories on palm and the bridge of her nose. And she was given a projection of sorts of the world around her.
In basic terms, when she hit her cane against the ground, she got to see the general outlines of her surroundings. No real detail, but enough that combined with her demon-given innate ability to sense reflective surfaces, she could figure out her surroundings well enough.
She’d thought that it was gonna cost her an arm and a leg to get set up with everything. But the whole thing had been surprisingly cheap – apparently the whole thing had been set up by a rich person who wanted to help with the amount of kids that went blind in the mines. Did all the work on the streets under their own dime and kept the price of the canes and other accessories cheap.
So, she’d been able to get them and still keep a roof over her head.
Of course, it didn’t work everywhere. Some buildings were too old to have the grid implemented. And some were owned by cheapskates who didn’t give a single damn about blind kids. Plus, the whole thing kinda went wild if she got too close to the ghost barrier.
But it was enough to get herself around the streets of the city and it was proving to be enough in the heists. Though Elaina could never shift herself out of the mindset of waiting for the other penny to drop.
Still, she could admit that she didn’t exactly miss the sight of Crow’s Foot. It was nice to be rid of one reminder that she lived in an absolute shithole. There was still the smell and the sounds and the taste of the air, but she’d take whatever bright side she could get.
She turned off into the alley that led towards their base with some practised taps to make sure no one was following her. A week ago, she wouldn’t have bothered and just feigned ignorance when asked by Roh, but she supposed she understood the need for caution at this point.
Roh had somehow always been in the abandoned bathroom turned cult headquarters, ready to question her whenever she walked in. She supposed he was probably living there.
Probably not the worst idea considering that the place had beds. She probably should move in as well rather than continuing to rent the box of a room she had as her lodgings. But she would rather skin herself alive than lose the tiniest amount of privacy her private lodgings currently gave her.
But it was closer to the club than her rented room and she was pretty sure she’d left a pack of cigarettes there before the last heist. Hopefully she could just get in and out without having to make small talk with anyone.
“Elaina, you look… less than good,” Roh’s voice greeted her the moment she was through the doors.
In absolutely no mood for conversation, Elaina merely huffed as she pushed past him hoping she’d find her things close to the entrance.
He seemed quite determined to not get the hint. “You’re still limping.”
“Yep. The club doesn’t have a doctor,” She replied to his nosiness with a short tone.
Despite her snippiness, she didn’t particularly mind Roh. She had only known him for a matter of weeks and he was far too nosey and overbearing for her liking, but he was far from the worst person in their little cult.
But given that all she currently wanted was to get in and out quickly, he was certainly the worst person she could currently be facing.
“So, your plan is to do the next heist on a swollen ankle?” He said, as if that was an unreasonable plan for her to have. It wasn’t exactly a debilitating injury that was going to affect her abilities.
“Yep. If you’re concerned then you could try actually coming to the next one,” She didn’t really care if Roh came on the heists or not. She just hoped being a particular bitch would get him to piss off and leave her to her own devices.
“Sit down. I’ll take a look at it,” Undeterred, he continued to push.
Regardless, Elaina was quite content in continuing to ignore him and her ankle. However, it quickly became clear that Roh had not intended this offer as optional.
A hand grabbed her shoulder. A second similarly grabbed the other. A third pulled a chair behind her.
“I’m fine,” She insisted as she was very much forced to sit down.
“If true, then this will only take us a moment, yes?” Roh said, insisting on playing doctor for something that was barely a hindrance. But his strength was quite literally unnatural, so she didn’t have much of a choice in the matter.
Though, despite her complaints, she wasn’t exactly fighting back. She might be stubborn, but she was also exhausted with the headache of her life. The only fight she had in her was a nasty attitude.
So, she slumped back and just decided to allow Roh to do whatever examination he deemed necessary. It was probably better than nothing given that she still hadn’t managed to make contact with a doctor that’d work with their crew.
Probably lucky he did look too. Seemed he quite quickly discovered something he deemed worrying as various disembodied hands began collecting things from around the room.
The hands Roh summoned were one of the things she could see in spite of her demon granted blindness, demon powered as they were. While the others it just helped her understand some of the nonsense they were doing on heists, with him it gave her a gist of his general location as he always seemed to be summoning at least one to aid with whatever task was currently at hand.
As she was smiling at her own private shitty joke, she found her focus drawn by one of said summoned hands. The smallest flickering flame of an idea came into her thoughts.
“Do you play any instruments, Darva?”
“Huh? Not since I was small,” He said, clearly only half paying attention as he began to, she guessed and hoped, bandage her ankle.
Of course not.
Well, it had been worth asking, she supposed.
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chimerabal · 4 months ago
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SCREAM I wanted to self reblog some stuff about my Blades in the Dark cult NPCs to show off and I HAVE NONE HERE??? WHAT???
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"Theres a group offering 4 Coin to make someone disappear. For more details, pull out a compass near the butcher on Front St.”
You take the job, a street urchin brings you behind, and then under, the butchers' to a secret chapel hidden within the cliffside. The room is built in a natural cavern. Dark waves crash against the cliff-face and occasionally a spray of cold, salty, water mists the room. The smell of blood from above, and coals from below, remain strong on the air despite this.
The urchin, and three others, are in the room. A woman being fit for a wedding dress hands you a photo of who they want to disappear... He appears priestly. You wonder what he could have done to make these four people what him gone... She instructs you to, in her words:
"Feed his miserable corpse to the stars below."
You take this to mean 'throw his body in the ocean', and accept the job. It's not until you return to collect your payment that you begin to worry.
You walk in on the group finishing some kind of ritual; the light it generates reveals that all four have matching tattoos. You recall rumors that the reason the west end is in chaos is because of a coup; the cult that held the area was destroyed from the inside out.
Shit. That explains the marks injuries. You didn't want to get caught up in all that.
The woman who was being fit for a dress approaches you. She hands off the money before gently reaching up to grasp your face in her hands.
"Our Lady in the Darkness thanks you, you will be forever in the watch of The Consuming Star."
She kisses your cheek and your vision fills with light. A painful, blinding, pure white- unlike any you have ever seen in Duskvol before. You lose consciousness.
You awake topside next to the butchers' shop, lying on top of your earnings. You quick crack open the case; it's all there. Despite the weirdness, they paid, and you are mostly unscratched... but there is a compass rose scarified on your wrist that you suspect is going to haunt you.
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BAM abridged version of what my players encountered if they took this job 💃 The Cult of the Consuming Star started as the PC crew- built of Me and two friends- in a BitD game that only had one session 🥲 It was then recycled into an ally for a game that I was GMing that never even started 🥲🥲 Then AGAIN for a game that we got two sessions out of as a rival cult 🥲🥲🥲 I got really super attached on that third iteration and now they just... Live in my head rent free.
BitD Crypto, is one of the members, the other three, Sidewinder, Vee, and Stove, don't have tags. The entity that they all serve has... little built for her so far 🤔 I have an aesthetic, and a goal. For a sleeping God do you really need more though?
Roselyn also is part of this setting, typed up a whole job with her too.
“An independent is offering 4 Coin for underworldly folk to do a favor at the docks. Go to dock post ### at the hour of Honor for more info."
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