In which the duo tracks down Roric and smuggles his ghost past the Dimmer Sisters, then use downtime to begin to work on Roric’s dilemma and tend to their goat problem in the now quarantined Coalridge.

Link to Twitch Video will be linked here.

I thought we were going to have a full crew and get on with another job but the Brothers B couldn’t make it, so we were left with Pete and Sean, the players of the original Roric Job. After six weeks away, it was super-satisfying to get back to it and finish this one.

Maude and Skannon have cool links to the spectral arts and compliment each other well. Jobs with 2 characters are hard on those characters and they paid for it in stress.

Maude had a cool moment using Roric to push out the ghost who had been hijacking space in her head previously and then using Quicksilver to hack the Dimmer Sisters’ telepathic network in order to save Skannon when the Sisters cornered him in the ghost realms and held him there, drowning him in the spectral dimension.

Skannon is just cool. Even when he fucks up and even when the dice screw him, I like how Pete is always describing him watching out the door, getting an angle on the stairwell of the tenement or leading the Dimmer Sisters away from the entrance to HQ in an attempt to misdirect them away from Roric’s actual ghost.

Thank goodness the clocks were saved on roll20‘s interface. This is what really allowed us to pick up where we left off six weeks ago as if almost no time went by. The clocks for the Wobeggong Crew finding Roric and then the Dimmer Sisters finding him were the only ones that got ticked off but when the game was over, I decided to leave the Spirit Warden clock in the mix. The Gondoliers and the Railjacks might have moved on but not the Spirit Wardens. I like that, as if somewhere in their labyrinthine HQ a file is stamped with NOT FOUND in red ink with a picture of Roric’s prison headshot peaking out of a file.

Roric, he’s still in the mix. They didn’t turn him over to Lyssa or the mystery bidder. I picture him played by Giobanni Ribisi and I’m glad he gets to become a more regular NPC, maybe even a patron for the gang. I’ve had conversations with him in my head and I’m eager to get him onto the table.

Zamira, the lady Roric hitched a ride in to get away from the various parties hunting him down – a captain of a canal skiff that sells produce. She’s a nice lady who got thrown into nasty business.

Tackle, the barkeep who is a retired scoundrel. He’s got one hand from back in the day when the City Council decided that taking the hands of thieves was a good law to bring back into fashion and of course he’s got an Iron Hook tattoo. He saw Roric grow up.

Lenia, the former Mistress of Spies, living in a mahjong parlor in Nightmarket’s Little Dagger neighborhood. She’s a Dagger Isles NPC who Pete made up whole cloth and I love her.

The Dimmer Sisters are fleshing out in my head and I adore them. Pairs of young women in black dresses, holding hands, floating a few inches off the ground, levitating across the canals and choking with their minds. Each pair named for an hour on the Doskvol clock.

I liked them so much I had them write a letter to the gang after the game was over and sent it to the players.

The letter arrives by post, addressed to this hotel’s listing back when it was in operation, decades ago, as if you were guests there and not squatters. The stationary has delicate white lace borders. The handwriting looks like a spider danced on the paper to form the letters.

Dear W.C.,

One of your goats has broken from its tether and is devouring the perennials in our neighbor’s garden. The authorities are involved and it is a frightful mess. Please see to it at your earliest convenience.

Congratulations on your most recent professional endeavor. As you well know, our company was in the bidding for that contract but you proved yourselves spiritually savvy in ways we had not anticipated. Bravo, say we. Bravo.

We, along with our entire community, will be watching your handling of the goat situation with keen interest and the highest hopes.

Sincerely,

S. Dimmer

Coalridge is under Spirit Warden quarantine and when Maude approached the mine where the Saint of Witches’ son is holding court, it was surrounded by Spirit Wardens, specifically, the Demon-Killers, who are like Spirit Warden Spec-ops.

The job was tense and fast paced. Having other gangs trying to do the job makes it tense and drives things along. I really liked that. The other crews never made an appearance but it was still a good time. Bounty hunting jobs are cool.

There were times when I really thought Skannon and Maude were going to fail this one. It was also the Wobeggong Crew’s first foray into a spectral/arcane job because of the characters at the table.

I loved the choices Sean and Pete made throughout this job and they had some tough ones.

In the end, they decided not to hand Roric over to anyone and he paid them out of secret stashes he had hidden around the city.

I’m getting a feel for when to push for harm, when to complicate things and when to push to a more dire roll. I feel like I’m spreading the different results around based on the context and the fiction in ways that I’m enjoying.

Art

Leon F. Czolgosz, the assassin. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/90707285/>;.

The Corliss Bevel-Gear-Cutting Machine. Photograph. Retrieved from the Library of Congress, <https://www.loc.gov/item/2004678678/>;.

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Grand View, City and Canal, Syracuse, N.Y.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1880. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e1-5eee-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Photography Collection, The New York Public Library. “Wm. Hawes in front of jewelry store with intricate clock.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47e0-69ca-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99

The Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs: Print Collection, The New York Public Library. “Le port aux mouettes.” The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1886. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/510d47da-4263-a3d9-e040-e00a18064a99