The Marble District, Session 2: Aw, Manuscript!
Read Session 1 First!
Play Report
The Party:
- Ratspit, Homunculus Thief. Literally born two weeks ago.
- Silvius Ambrose, Tiefling Druid. Always smells strongly of woodsmoke.
- Thuddeus “Thud” Strongsteel, Dwarf Alloy Wizard. Can definitely be trusted with positions of power.
Dabusday, 9 Malbrogia
The day of the heist. The party woke at 6 after Antipeak and began to prepare for the day. As Thud dressed in his best clothes, the party reviewed the plan. They decided that instead of using Metal Chime as a signal, Thud walking out would be the signal on its own, saving his spell slots for later. While they planned, an urchin on the street below hawked the days news.
Ratspit scampered out the window, down the face of the building, ran up to the urchin, and grabbed a fistful of newspapers. Spreading out the paper on the floor of their miniscule apartment, the PCs reviewed the news. Besides a few advertisements (one to see the marvelous House-Within-a-House), the most interesting news was the headliner. The infamous serial killer the Scratcher had been caught by the Harmonium through the use of scrying. This raised some debate amongst the crew, as Thud was adamant that scrying does not, can not, and will never work. This implied, then, that either the cops had cracked a centuries-old problem or they were hiding something.
But no matter which it was, it put the idea of being caught into the party’s heads. Ratspit asked if they’d make friends in prison. Thud assured it that yes, they probably would. Silvius held his tongue. In that case, Ratspit said, prison didn’t sound too bad.
At 8 AAP, Silvius went to the ambush site to start placing bags of poo on a roof overlooking the road. As he did that and Ratspit wrote free verse poetry, Thud traveled to Kinetoscope’s workplace to ask a few last minute questions. Kinetoscope emerged covered in ink from a crumbling shack which trembled with the sounds of machinery. Asking Thud to make it quick, she told him where to drop off the books and let him know that there probably wouldn’t be additional guards around the transport. Thud thanked her and returned to the tenement, where the PCs proceeded to twiddle their thumbs until 11 AAP.
At Peak, the crew assumed their positions around the ambush site. A noblewoman in a fabulous sedan chair adorned with pink satin and flowers beckoned to Thud as she went by, but he simply nodded her on politely. Soon after she left, the ogres carrying the load of books arrived.
Wearing sleeveless scarlet greatcoats and spiked custodian helmets, the ogres’ bulging biceps were fully visible as they flexed to carry the palanquin of books between them. As they came around one side of the memorial park which divided the street, Silvius shoved the bags of shit off the roof and into the lead ogre’s path. Confused by the canvas bag that had just whizzed by his nose, the lead ogre took one more step forward — straight onto the point of a feces-encrusted nail. Listening to his scream, Silvius smiled thinly before turning into a small pigeon and flying away.
Hearing the scream, the rear ogre dropped the palanquin and came up to investigate just as Thud emerged from the alleyway. “I can help. I’m a doctor!…’s assistant,” Thud shouted, motioning pedestrians out of his way. “Let me take a look at the injured officer.”
Telling the rear ogre to hold up the front of the palanquin, Thud busied himself inspecting Grog, the lead ogre. Telling him to brace for the pain, Thud pulled out the nail, wiped it on his shirt, and said, “we’ll have to cauterize.” Casting heat metal, he plunged the head of the nail back down onto the wound.
While Thud kept the ogres distracted thusly, Ratspit, doing his best to look like a beggar (not a difficult task), snuck up behind the palanquin and pilfered three manuscripts and a blueprint. As a thief, he was immediately able to recognize that the manuscripts would each be worth at least 10 gold, and the blueprint would be even more valuable. Shoving the manuscripts into an improvised bindle and storing the blueprint in his mouth, Ratspit left his poetry in the cart in exchange before fleeing the scene.
By 1 after Peak, the party met back up in their spartan lodgings. Thud examined the haul: On the Rise of the Factions, Unattributed; Aoskar and the Lady, Underpriest Bhim; an untitled exposé of Mercykiller labor camps; and the blueprint, entitled “Scrying Test IV”. The party basked in the feeling of a successful heist for a while, with Silvius going off to bathe and Thud pocketing the blueprint.
Ratspit, for its part, read through the 120-page exposé in an hour and broke down sobbing. “I don’t… I don’t think prison would be fun, guys,” he choked out. Thud suggested the traditional Dwarfen remedy for sorrows: drinking to excess. Still crying, Ratspit used his dexterous tail to grab a bottle of whiskey from Abd ar-Rashid’s top shelf, conveniently located just below their room.
Around 2 after Peak, Silvius and Thud went to drop off the manuscripts at a spot Kinetoscope had designated. Upon getting to the shed, however, Silvius thought better of it. After all, he argued, Miss Thaum could just take the books and run. It would be better to exchange them in person.
Upon arriving back at the tenement they found Ratspit on the floor, holding a shoddy romance novel that was soaked with its ink-black tears. Comforting the distraught homunculus, they all waited until 8 AP, when Kinetoscope came home.
She immediately let them know that she couldn’t afford all three manuscripts. She had enough saved to buy one, and decided on the exposé. But as for the other two, she knew someone who might be interested. A bookseller with Radical leanings, Amy Pevelham, who has a shop at 10 Green Terrace in the Guildhall District of the Clerks’ Ward.
With all that dealt with, the party made a plan to visit Ms. Pevelham’s shop in the morning and then attend the execution of the Scratcher, scheduled for 10 AAP in Old Jailhouse Square. And with that plan made we ended the session.
Reflection
Another excellent session. I was entirely expecting something to go wrong during the heist, but the players were smart about it and it went off without a hitch.
I forgot to integrate the Innovations from Magical Industrial Revolution last session, so I tied in two this time. The scrying became more of a plot point than the other one I included, that “House-Within-a-House”. I’ll have to keep developing these threads in future sessions, which may prove challenging.
This session was focused on a smaller amount of time than most of my sessions, because of how much the PCs had to do in this one day. Next session will probably mark a return to a more zoomed-out timescale as the party ties up loose ends around the heist and prepares for the start of the off-season.