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BitD Unbroken Sun: Session 3 (Earworm)
Goodness gracious me! I am behind on logging these, shockingly: we've now had sessions 3 and 4. However, I'm determined to catch up before session 5.
My players take tremendously good, thorough notes, which is honestly a joy and preserves the flow and mood of narrative for rereading both as a GM doing preparation and planning for further sessions and just when trying to convey it later in recap form. One thing I'll say here is as might have come through in the last session's recap, this is a highly scope-limited score--they have to survive a few days holed up in a single location. This has led to a very conversation-heavy narrative with the tense feeling of a siege. It's honestly great, and also makes me glad I can verbatim blockquote the notes taken on that when I need to.
Previously on Blades in the Dark: our crew were holed up in the grotto that serves as their hideout with two shipping crates, containing leviathan blood and leviathan flesh, and one prisoner, waiting out the anticipated heat before handing these over to their mysterious client. That's where we find them now--at the end of their first day and night holing up, having just had their sleep disrupted by a creepy, mind-affecting melody. It seems that the Strangford fleet's pet sorcerer--one Perceval Rowan--is trying to lure them out.
This is both directly related to some of Calida's personal magical ambitions and also a huge problem, which actually puts her in company with Aphra! They're both getting a rather unpleasant start to some long-term downtime projects. But for the time being--
We find them in the early, weary morning of that second day, formulating a plan for blocking some of the noise from their grotto. The first steps of that involve doing what they can to soundproof: it isn't much, but they can at least find and block off vulnerable areas with Nico's awareness of acoustics. It takes them the hours left until morning proper, and it's hard to say how well it's working in the figurative light of day, where the siren song is just a melody they can all hear, not something compelling their actions. It still affects their prisoner (the newly identified Lucas Strangford-Knight) the most badly--reasonably, as it's either targeting him or targeting leviathans or both, considering what Calida's just seen of his memories--and he's still coping with his panic by staying within the box fort he's constructed.
By 8 or 8:30, it becomes apparent that the grotto's water level is also lowering. The canal outside must be draining. It's a safe inference that Lord Strangford has pestered the City Council to, in turn, pressure the Gondoliers to open the canal locks for the time being--lowering or draining the water and grinding Doskvol's daily industry to a temporary halt. This, itself, is eerie; it's not just the dread of watching the water lower, and the inevitability of the exposure of the grotto should it drain completely, but the fact that this is now officially a citywide event. It'll be in newspapers; it'll probably end up an anecdote in a history book, even if nothing else were to come of it.
It's likely also that Lord Strangford and his people are speculating on the possibility of a submersible. This doesn't implicate the Turtle immediately--there's more than one submersible in the city, and more than one in use extralegally--but it does narrow it down, if that theory gains more traction. Especially since the crew pays off the Gondoliers for safe passage in said canals, which means their existence is, in some way, on record. It's all rather nervewracking.
But on top of that, the canal draining also is just going to screw with their anti-Pied Piper soundproofing, due to the exposure to the air and the potential for an echo. Even if the canals don't drain completely--as they likely won't--it still may be enough to strand the Turtle, which distresses Aphra, as the Turtle is very much her baby.
Lucas is exhausted, on the verge of passing out, but before he does he looks searchingly, bleary, between his three captors-hosts and chooses Calida. He has, consistently, a weary, heavy, considered way of talking--not too inappropriate to the circumstances, but it does become noticeable over time. He has not been in the habit of initiating conversation. It's with some obvious effort that he hails her--"You. The whisper. I'm sorry, I don't know your name." It's a bit curt, but probably a bit more awkward than anything. With the song in his ears it may also be a tremendous effort.
Calida gives him food and he eats it, and she binds him securely to a heavier box; he looks aside, maybe so he can't undo it. He is a sailor, but it's probably paranoia. When she's finished, he gives the rope some experimental tugs with his body weight to see that he can't free himself, relieved when it doesn't give. In this stiff pose he does slump and finally fall asleep.
Nearby, Aphra is still unhappy about what all this might do to the Turtle. In a lot of ways she's the most outwardly sanguine of the three of them, the least high-strung, but this is a situation to pull anyone's strings a bit tighter and the Turtle thing seems to be pushing her over. She's on an anxious ramble about this when Calida comes over to interrupt her to talk about what to do about the grotto, the canals, anything--and Calida eventually interrupts her.
She wants to know whether his blood might do anything to confuse the signal. It's been established that the unrefined leviathan blood in the crate certainly would--however, it's also part of the cargo they were hired to deliver. Calida's suggestion does not go over well; some raised eyebrows and confusion ensue.
Shortly, Aphra wonders what anyone would wonder in this situation if it were not so goddamn weird altogether--wait, why would Calida even suggest this? The fact is Calida actually hasn't related to Aphra what she saw when she attuned to Lucas's echo, ie the strong evidence that he is in some way connected to the spirit of a leviathan. She brings this up and Calida reluctantly puts it to words; it isn't that Calida was trying to be secretive so much that the experience was difficult to put to words.
It's all very mysterious. He's asleep, for now, but begins to sleep restlessly.
It's at this point that the three crewmates start devolving more fully into what they will be doing quite a lot of before this score is done: arguing, agitatedly, within a grotto. From a GM standpoint I have to step out of narrative here and say this was a fantastic setup to watch them play, as I managed the passage of time and two clocks (Lord Strangford's Ire, representing consequences of the immediate hue and cry within the city such as the canal draining; and Leviathan Song, representing the music haunting them) and watched a lot of interesting, rather specific character work--in a genre so often contingent on travel or at least movement through space, some really cinematic and characterizing things happen when the story is in a phase of progressing through time but limited space. It was really great. Things like this:
It's harebrained plans and questions about the magical properties of blood; it's defensive ethical arguments and attempts to analyze the intent and good faith of the Dimmer Sisters, and whether it would be at all acceptable to continuing to live with themselves to hand this man over to them. Their payment is banking on it, and they've already gotten in a lot of trouble. There's a document they're interested in, and which they promised Elynn of the Unbroken Sun. There are not a lot of great options at this moment.
In the afternoon, they start to feel more restless--in ways that suspiciously make it feel tempting to leave. Lucas, as well, sleeps even more restlessly, and starts to struggle violently in his sleep against his bonds. They hold, but he's strong, stronger than he seemed like he would be in his state of exhaustion. The box budges when he yanks it and, soon, he starts to hum under his breath. It harmonizes with the melody.
Calida has a simple solution to this: giving him a jab with her shoe. He bolts awake, startled and disoriented, until he remembers himself and his situation and settles down.
As she does, she notices that he looks much better than he did when they first found him--like he'd slept well for a week, not for a terrible night while tied to a box. He also looks less beat-up, like he'd been in a fight a week ago, not two days ago. It's a curious effect.
The crew have given up on any plans involving his blood, but Aphra's still interested for her own, scientific reasons. Leviathan blood and leviathan flesh was her current area of interest already for the study of mortality and immortality, so the opportunity for a job involving the fleet was already exciting--and this one being so harrowing hasn't changed that, actually. She's got some lines of inquiry already in mind, and a blood sample definitely wouldn't hurt. So she approaches him, who proves wary but complies:
(As the GM here I have to note that this was the paralytic that nearly killed one of the Dolores crew when it was intended to knock him out, which Lucas was quite present for as he assisted Aphra in reviving the fellow--who then described Aphra for a wanted poster, for all their efforts. Everything is thankless in this world--)
The canal's draining has halted, short of going completely dry. The grotto's entrance is exposed, however, and the Turtle definitely doesn't have enough water to leave. The crew are getting restless and unhappy, which is difficult to communicate because this has been a restless, unhappy 48 hours so far altogether, but the cabin fever is getting to them--insidiously and also magically, as Calida feels an arrogant, irrational rivalry with Perceval Rowan, almost like she could saunter out and confront him now, and Nico struggles with intrusive thoughts over trying to hand the prisoner over now, somehow, and get this all over with.
Aphra at least has this blood draw and positive bounty of material to distract her for now. She takes his blood, which doesn't visibly appear strange--it's human blood-colored, at least. Nico, stressed and preoccupied about the bigger picture, wants more information from Lucas, and so hovering over all of this gives him food again and questions him, openly, about what happened to him.
He is definitely getting more forthcoming, cracking open just a smidge, but it's not dramatic or uncanny. It's just time spent. There is something to be said for the raw power of forced proximity for bringing people into your life, which is proving to be undeniably true for the case of the crew and Lucas Strangford-Knight--maybe because it was also true, not too long ago, of the three of them themselves. They are now all, crudely, in this together, where "this" is a grotto. Quite literally.
Actually, Nico and Calida are about to have a break from that. Sort of. They've come up with a more doable plan to protect the secrecy of their grotto--spending a couple of hours stirring up ghost activity elsewhere in the canal tunnels in the city, to cause chaos for search parties and draw attention away from Six Towers and themselves.
To protect themselves, they stop up their ears completely with wax and leave Aphra with Lucas--in our second party split, if you count escaping the Dolores. They're headed for Brightstone on foot through the maintenance tunnels, which is a lengthy, damp, and moldy, but uneventful walk, as Nico has a good sense of her bearings today and certainly under Brightstone. They've chosen that because it's unlikely search parties are going to go there (no one really thinks Lucas is being held in one of the McMansions of Park Avenue as it were) and the wealthy residents of the expensive borough are going to kick up a hell of a fuss once their lives are invaded by angry spirits, which is exactly what they need. It's perfect.
It's almost peaceful, but the melody still persists in their heads, even this far from Lucas and the cargo. Almost like it's stuck. Their feet don't quite want to go where they're going.
The plan is to use powdered leviathan blood to make something of a massive crude mindless-ghost-attention-bomb in a Brightstone house's outlying utility shed, and get the hell out of dodge before the undead consequences come clamoring. I'm going to quote a bit of the writeup which summed up GM exposition I gave on this topic: "Besides the presence of fleshy humans which are inherently ghost-interesting, leviathan blood powder and certain kinds of carved stone implements are attractive to ghosts; also reflective surfaces." Calida chose the powder.
Back in the grotto, the little away team's been gone for about an hour and a half and the two of them are hearing the siren song of rationalizing the fact that they're hearing the siren song--that is, it's starting to look a little bit melodramatic to Aphra, all of this. You know, like everyone was just so paranoid, Nico and Calida fussing so much, it's not really that dangerous. Lucas seems to agree, at least enough for this exchange:
Still, the rope and their willpower hold steady enough to keep them here. Elsewhere Calida and Nico finally make it to their Brightstone target and Calida places the dust, bloodies it, and they run--but in the silence like this, even from a distance the dead sound a little different:
They head back. Nico's mental map still serves them well and they arrive without incident to find Lucas slightly more untied than he was and draw the obvious conclusion--but even their trifecta of anxious back-and-forth is losing a bit of steam. Stay up and stress this much and the panic starts to feel obligatory. They do have to sleep, so they set up a watch system again--but instead of watching one at a time, they're sleeping one at a time. At this point the song is at its most intense: they're feeling the temptation consciously when they're awake and can't resist it at all when they're asleep. Knowing this, Calida is determined to stay awake all night while the other two catch a scrap of rest.
According to what Calida knows about this kind of magic, it can't last forever. It probably can't even last much longer--the caster has had to be awake for all of it, and every ritual of this kind exacts its own cost. (Just ask the Blades sourcebook.) It's still a rough night where Aphra dreams of being on the verge of accepting some unspecified but long-awaited professional or academic award, and is rudely blocked by that one dean that never believed in her before she realizes that she's on the stairs, she's not getting an award, and the dean is her friend Nico Diamond trying to save her life; when Nico sleeps, however, she dreams in a panic that she has the architectural plans she stole now quite some time ago in hand, and she's trapped in the office where she's about to be discovered with them at any moment. There's nothing like your dreaming unconscious to preserve your life in time. Aphra and Nico, however, have stacked a barrier of boxes around the stairs and the water--so Nico first attempts to run away with her plans up the stairs, encounters the boxes, and then tries to escape towards the water, at which point the collision is rude enough to wake her up.
Not that Calida's having a wonderful night either. Exhausted and wary, she's brimming with frustration and hubris towards Perceval Rowan that is still presenting itself as temptation--though the only frame of reference she has for picturing him is the only Rowan she's ever seen, the church leader Father Alastair Rowan. (Father Alastair Rowan is someone I-the-GM described as being "formerly very beautiful, which is a little weird for a heavily aging religious leader" and I have to report this was hijacked into a series of Jude Law The Young Pope references. Oh well. A GM bends rather than breaks.) There is really no guarantee of the closeness of relation here or that they look alike, but Calida has basically made a younger mental dollmaker version of him so she can hate it. Close enough. (She also takes out her frustrations on Lucas's box anchor, in that when he gets back to his creepy humming she kicks it until he stops.)
Around 5am, the melody seems to crescendo and then halt, cutting out sharply. The grotto is now uncannily quiet, as it used to be, and the surrounding sounds of the city have crowded in all at once. To the crew, the temptation to leave now looks as sharply external as it was--as the enormity of the situation, the hostile city waiting above, bears down upon them for the first time. Lucas, finally, falls genuinely into sleep.
The canals have risen to normal levels as well by mid-morning, indicating that the concentrated storm of searching for them has passed for the time being. There's only so long the Council, and the city altogether for that matter, can tolerate this kind of disruption on the not-too-forthcoming demand of one powerful man.
Calida and Aphra also take the opportunity to rest: Nico decides to pop her head above water, so to speak, and see what's going on aboveground. The answer as she goes about a few basic errands is that the rumor mill is certainly going excitedly, but it doesn't seem like it knows a whole lot--there are a lot of amused and cynical theories about Lord Strangford, his nephew, whether there ever was really a nephew, whether the nephew really was kidnapped or ran away, and perhaps whether he's dead, which seems to indicate that Lord Strangford is also cutting his own losses for now--perhaps it's more of a danger to his reputation to keep publicly broadcasting that Lucas is still missing. There are embellishments on what Lucas might or might not be guilty of, a few out-there conspiracy theories--Nico does what she can to plant some new ones, and a particularly bizarre one takes off but to some extent it's hard to make more chaos known in this much chaos.
Having done what she can there, she decides to seek out something that's been on her mind basically since the beginning of this score--Dr. Alexis Talbert, the ship's doctor who tipped off the Dimmer Sisters in the first place and marked Lucas's chains. Previously there was not much digging that could be done on the subject of Dr. Talbert in Aphra's medical journals alone, due to the apparent obscurity of the life she led; so Nico decides to take a risk and head for the pub stomping grounds of the leviathan fleet crew, and specifically the crew of the Wild Hunt. (They're likelier more well-informed than the fleet at large, but unlike the Dolores, none of them have actually met Nico before.)
The sailors don't know a lot, but they at least have a consistent narrative and they're happy to share it, as they drink and gossip: they relate that during a daring or reckless action, Lucas fell from his ship and into the water, and the Dolores assumed him dead but found him afterward, improbably, floating in the water in the dead leviathan's blood and alive but unconscious. The 'story goes' that he was somehow driven mad by this--that the experience did something to his mind. But, the sailors confide, Mr. Rowan will sort it out. He'll find a solution, he always does.
There is more than one eerie and depressing element of his tale, but through this conversation Nico does manage to learn the location of Alexis Talbert's practice--which is actually not too far from where Nico lives herself. Dr. Talbert keeps a rather unassuming downstairs medical practice on the Charhollow side of Charterhall, in a converted salon she lives above when she's not at sea. It's the ex-barbershop type with a front window and bland, tidy painted lettering; Nico knocks.
What follows is a comically tense and awkward conversation: Dr. Talbert is at first puzzled and suspicious, then intensely suspicious as she demands Nico's business of her, and proves to have enough knowledge of the Dimmer Sisters to know well that Nico does not represent them. What she says is colored with terse unhappiness and weariness, and some degree of indignation that someone as young as Nico is here to talk to her about it--and what comes through, very clearly, is that she didn't have any more good options in her own decisions as Nico is facing with hers.
What Nico's trying to find out, or confirm, is that the Dimmer Sisters don't represent certain doom for Lucas; what she does gain is an awareness that Dr. Talbert is a moral person and that this seemed like the best of terrible choices.
Dr. Talbert is obviously irritated with Nico--irritated with what she clearly sees as bravado and caginess, and still trying to impress upon Nico a very earnest warning. Nico both doesn't need it, by now, and can't put it to much use. But at least it's a few questions answered.
She comes back to a still-sleeping Lucas and Calida, and she and Aphra talk grimly about their options--then, when Calida wakes up, her grim voice is added to this discussion. Separately, the three of them have been feeling different forms of the same unease, and now it can't be put off for much longer: they can't just hand this man over and not ask any questions and walk away from this all. Whatever kinds of people they've been in the past, they haven't been that. But what aside from that they're supposed to do seems impossible to determine when their client is secretive about even the nature of its interest.
Amid this weary, hushed conversation that spikes a few times into argument, Aphra wonders if they can just ask the Dimmer Sisters about what they intend to do with Lucas if they were to take him. It occurs to them all that they actually have a fair amount of leverage here: they still have everything. The Dimmer Sisters are waiting on them. So Nico leaves a note in their arranged dead drop, requesting an in-person meeting.
My players take tremendously good, thorough notes, which is honestly a joy and preserves the flow and mood of narrative for rereading both as a GM doing preparation and planning for further sessions and just when trying to convey it later in recap form. One thing I'll say here is as might have come through in the last session's recap, this is a highly scope-limited score--they have to survive a few days holed up in a single location. This has led to a very conversation-heavy narrative with the tense feeling of a siege. It's honestly great, and also makes me glad I can verbatim blockquote the notes taken on that when I need to.
Previously on Blades in the Dark: our crew were holed up in the grotto that serves as their hideout with two shipping crates, containing leviathan blood and leviathan flesh, and one prisoner, waiting out the anticipated heat before handing these over to their mysterious client. That's where we find them now--at the end of their first day and night holing up, having just had their sleep disrupted by a creepy, mind-affecting melody. It seems that the Strangford fleet's pet sorcerer--one Perceval Rowan--is trying to lure them out.
This is both directly related to some of Calida's personal magical ambitions and also a huge problem, which actually puts her in company with Aphra! They're both getting a rather unpleasant start to some long-term downtime projects. But for the time being--
We find them in the early, weary morning of that second day, formulating a plan for blocking some of the noise from their grotto. The first steps of that involve doing what they can to soundproof: it isn't much, but they can at least find and block off vulnerable areas with Nico's awareness of acoustics. It takes them the hours left until morning proper, and it's hard to say how well it's working in the figurative light of day, where the siren song is just a melody they can all hear, not something compelling their actions. It still affects their prisoner (the newly identified Lucas Strangford-Knight) the most badly--reasonably, as it's either targeting him or targeting leviathans or both, considering what Calida's just seen of his memories--and he's still coping with his panic by staying within the box fort he's constructed.
By 8 or 8:30, it becomes apparent that the grotto's water level is also lowering. The canal outside must be draining. It's a safe inference that Lord Strangford has pestered the City Council to, in turn, pressure the Gondoliers to open the canal locks for the time being--lowering or draining the water and grinding Doskvol's daily industry to a temporary halt. This, itself, is eerie; it's not just the dread of watching the water lower, and the inevitability of the exposure of the grotto should it drain completely, but the fact that this is now officially a citywide event. It'll be in newspapers; it'll probably end up an anecdote in a history book, even if nothing else were to come of it.
It's likely also that Lord Strangford and his people are speculating on the possibility of a submersible. This doesn't implicate the Turtle immediately--there's more than one submersible in the city, and more than one in use extralegally--but it does narrow it down, if that theory gains more traction. Especially since the crew pays off the Gondoliers for safe passage in said canals, which means their existence is, in some way, on record. It's all rather nervewracking.
But on top of that, the canal draining also is just going to screw with their anti-Pied Piper soundproofing, due to the exposure to the air and the potential for an echo. Even if the canals don't drain completely--as they likely won't--it still may be enough to strand the Turtle, which distresses Aphra, as the Turtle is very much her baby.
Lucas is exhausted, on the verge of passing out, but before he does he looks searchingly, bleary, between his three captors-hosts and chooses Calida. He has, consistently, a weary, heavy, considered way of talking--not too inappropriate to the circumstances, but it does become noticeable over time. He has not been in the habit of initiating conversation. It's with some obvious effort that he hails her--"You. The whisper. I'm sorry, I don't know your name." It's a bit curt, but probably a bit more awkward than anything. With the song in his ears it may also be a tremendous effort.
Calida: Sepulchre. [She walks over.]
Eyebrows up. L: All right, Miss Sepulchre. I need you to do something for me.
C: What is it?
Lucas: I’d like you to tie me to one of these boxes.
C: Oh. Okay. [she doesn’t like him, but tying him to a box is A-okay!]
Before tying him up--”Would you like something to eat?”
He looks taken aback, since he picked her for her dislike of him, but nods and thanks her.
Calida gives him food and he eats it, and she binds him securely to a heavier box; he looks aside, maybe so he can't undo it. He is a sailor, but it's probably paranoia. When she's finished, he gives the rope some experimental tugs with his body weight to see that he can't free himself, relieved when it doesn't give. In this stiff pose he does slump and finally fall asleep.
Nearby, Aphra is still unhappy about what all this might do to the Turtle. In a lot of ways she's the most outwardly sanguine of the three of them, the least high-strung, but this is a situation to pull anyone's strings a bit tighter and the Turtle thing seems to be pushing her over. She's on an anxious ramble about this when Calida comes over to interrupt her to talk about what to do about the grotto, the canals, anything--and Calida eventually interrupts her.
She wants to know whether his blood might do anything to confuse the signal. It's been established that the unrefined leviathan blood in the crate certainly would--however, it's also part of the cargo they were hired to deliver. Calida's suggestion does not go over well; some raised eyebrows and confusion ensue.
Nico: If we’re going to bleed him, we might as well hand him to the Dimmer sisters, who have sanitary equipment for it, and dump out the shipping container now, thereby saving ourselves some grief.
Calida: I’m not saying bleed him! Just a little cut! We could do it now.
Aphra: I don’t object to the idea, but I’ve always found blood draws easier with a conscious, unbound subject.
Calida: I defer to your authority on that.
Shortly, Aphra wonders what anyone would wonder in this situation if it were not so goddamn weird altogether--wait, why would Calida even suggest this? The fact is Calida actually hasn't related to Aphra what she saw when she attuned to Lucas's echo, ie the strong evidence that he is in some way connected to the spirit of a leviathan. She brings this up and Calida reluctantly puts it to words; it isn't that Calida was trying to be secretive so much that the experience was difficult to put to words.
Calida: I don’t know exactly how Rowan’s spell works, but it’s affecting him much more significantly than it’s affecting us. I don’t know if it’s tuned to him, or… When I looked into the echoes, there was some connection that formed between him and the leviathan, when he went into the water. There’s something about his aura now--something changed with him.
It's all very mysterious. He's asleep, for now, but begins to sleep restlessly.
It's at this point that the three crewmates start devolving more fully into what they will be doing quite a lot of before this score is done: arguing, agitatedly, within a grotto. From a GM standpoint I have to step out of narrative here and say this was a fantastic setup to watch them play, as I managed the passage of time and two clocks (Lord Strangford's Ire, representing consequences of the immediate hue and cry within the city such as the canal draining; and Leviathan Song, representing the music haunting them) and watched a lot of interesting, rather specific character work--in a genre so often contingent on travel or at least movement through space, some really cinematic and characterizing things happen when the story is in a phase of progressing through time but limited space. It was really great. Things like this:
Aphra: Wow! Nico, could you explain why this isn’t a prudent idea? I mean, it doesn’t have to be our only plan. We did do the soundproofing.
Nico: Explain why it wouldn’t be prudent to take a tiny vial of his blood and send it away via messenger pigeon?
Calida looks grumpy that Nico’s making this sound dumb. Aphra: Yes!
Nico: No, it isn’t necessarily stupid. It’s just… the question that I keep coming back to is Doctor Talbert’s motivation in contacting the Dimmer Sisters in the first place. Our guest seems to sincerely believe that it was altruistic. Personally I can’t think of anything good, or anything beneficial to his health, that the Dimmer Sisters would want with a… connection… I mean what are we talking about here? His blood is at a different frequency?
Aphra: I don’t know, Nico-- Dolmen, but I think we have a better chance of finding that out when the substance is outside his body than if it’s stored in a galoot tied to a box!
Nico: Are you expecting it to glow?
Aphra: I don’t think it’s good scientific practice to develop expectations!
N: We don’t have timefor good scientific practice! And my point is I still don’t understand why Dr. Talbert acted the way she did! She didn’t look like someone happy to have secured a payout…
It's harebrained plans and questions about the magical properties of blood; it's defensive ethical arguments and attempts to analyze the intent and good faith of the Dimmer Sisters, and whether it would be at all acceptable to continuing to live with themselves to hand this man over to them. Their payment is banking on it, and they've already gotten in a lot of trouble. There's a document they're interested in, and which they promised Elynn of the Unbroken Sun. There are not a lot of great options at this moment.
In the afternoon, they start to feel more restless--in ways that suspiciously make it feel tempting to leave. Lucas, as well, sleeps even more restlessly, and starts to struggle violently in his sleep against his bonds. They hold, but he's strong, stronger than he seemed like he would be in his state of exhaustion. The box budges when he yanks it and, soon, he starts to hum under his breath. It harmonizes with the melody.
Calida has a simple solution to this: giving him a jab with her shoe. He bolts awake, startled and disoriented, until he remembers himself and his situation and settles down.
Calida: You were humming. [gives him a look, which Lucas returns]
L: Was I? And what was I humming?
Calida gestures vaguely around, as if to say “ambient Toto music, what do you think”
He closes his eyes but seems less startled.
As she does, she notices that he looks much better than he did when they first found him--like he'd slept well for a week, not for a terrible night while tied to a box. He also looks less beat-up, like he'd been in a fight a week ago, not two days ago. It's a curious effect.
The crew have given up on any plans involving his blood, but Aphra's still interested for her own, scientific reasons. Leviathan blood and leviathan flesh was her current area of interest already for the study of mortality and immortality, so the opportunity for a job involving the fleet was already exciting--and this one being so harrowing hasn't changed that, actually. She's got some lines of inquiry already in mind, and a blood sample definitely wouldn't hurt. So she approaches him, who proves wary but complies:
A: Mr. Strangford-Knight, I have a couple of questions for you. The first one is--[she visibly switches the order of the questions]--for later tonight, I have a paralytic, if you want it. To stop you getting so beat-up. Not that it matters!
L: [awkwardly nods, clearly thinking about effects of paralytic last time he saw it used] Well, if it comes to that. What else?
A: There’s something very odd going on with you. I wondered if you might let me take a small hemoglobin sample.
L: [sharp look from you to the lowered water level; implication is less discomfort with blood tests, more concern that we are maybe collecting his DNA to curse him with] You mean blood.
A: Uh, yes!
L: [resignedly] All right.
A: [mouthing to Nico and Calida] See? It’s always better to ask!
(As the GM here I have to note that this was the paralytic that nearly killed one of the Dolores crew when it was intended to knock him out, which Lucas was quite present for as he assisted Aphra in reviving the fellow--who then described Aphra for a wanted poster, for all their efforts. Everything is thankless in this world--)
The canal's draining has halted, short of going completely dry. The grotto's entrance is exposed, however, and the Turtle definitely doesn't have enough water to leave. The crew are getting restless and unhappy, which is difficult to communicate because this has been a restless, unhappy 48 hours so far altogether, but the cabin fever is getting to them--insidiously and also magically, as Calida feels an arrogant, irrational rivalry with Perceval Rowan, almost like she could saunter out and confront him now, and Nico struggles with intrusive thoughts over trying to hand the prisoner over now, somehow, and get this all over with.
Aphra at least has this blood draw and positive bounty of material to distract her for now. She takes his blood, which doesn't visibly appear strange--it's human blood-colored, at least. Nico, stressed and preoccupied about the bigger picture, wants more information from Lucas, and so hovering over all of this gives him food again and questions him, openly, about what happened to him.
N: Calida-- Sepulchre said something happened to you. That you… bonded with the leviathan? Is that what Dr. Talbert identified?
A more profound wariness crosses his face at this point. LSK: Is that what your whisper said?
Nico: That’s what I said, yes. Are you telling me it was inaccurate?
LSK: No, I guess it’s accurate after a fashion. I… I don’t know what Dr. Talbert identified. She looked at me after everything that happened and noticed rightly that I should have been in much worse shape, not just in the sense of what happened but also in the sense of all the tumbles I took along the way, and again getting out. I think that was her first inkling that there was something strange about what happened. I didn’t talk to her at that time. I think there were other clues that she derived. When she contacted my uncle, I can only imagine she thought that my uncle’s reaction would be different, but clearly she doesn’t know him.
Nico: What was waiting for you? What is it you think your uncle had in mind?
LSK: Oh, it wasn’t my uncle who had it in mind, I’m sure. It’s getting harder and harder to hunt. My uncle’s always relied on the tricks he had up his sleeve, and they’re running dry a bit. I think anything new would be useful to him. With my… assistance? Passive assistance? The fact is he had me locked up immediately. Honestly, one of his first reflexes is to capture and hang onto anything until he comes up with what to do with it. It may be he doesn’t have a plan in the moment.
Nico: Are you interested in contributing to the course of arcane research in the city? Is that an aspiration of yours?
LSK: It seems that I already have. [looks at the blood vials]
He is definitely getting more forthcoming, cracking open just a smidge, but it's not dramatic or uncanny. It's just time spent. There is something to be said for the raw power of forced proximity for bringing people into your life, which is proving to be undeniably true for the case of the crew and Lucas Strangford-Knight--maybe because it was also true, not too long ago, of the three of them themselves. They are now all, crudely, in this together, where "this" is a grotto. Quite literally.
Actually, Nico and Calida are about to have a break from that. Sort of. They've come up with a more doable plan to protect the secrecy of their grotto--spending a couple of hours stirring up ghost activity elsewhere in the canal tunnels in the city, to cause chaos for search parties and draw attention away from Six Towers and themselves.
To protect themselves, they stop up their ears completely with wax and leave Aphra with Lucas--in our second party split, if you count escaping the Dolores. They're headed for Brightstone on foot through the maintenance tunnels, which is a lengthy, damp, and moldy, but uneventful walk, as Nico has a good sense of her bearings today and certainly under Brightstone. They've chosen that because it's unlikely search parties are going to go there (no one really thinks Lucas is being held in one of the McMansions of Park Avenue as it were) and the wealthy residents of the expensive borough are going to kick up a hell of a fuss once their lives are invaded by angry spirits, which is exactly what they need. It's perfect.
It's almost peaceful, but the melody still persists in their heads, even this far from Lucas and the cargo. Almost like it's stuck. Their feet don't quite want to go where they're going.
The plan is to use powdered leviathan blood to make something of a massive crude mindless-ghost-attention-bomb in a Brightstone house's outlying utility shed, and get the hell out of dodge before the undead consequences come clamoring. I'm going to quote a bit of the writeup which summed up GM exposition I gave on this topic: "Besides the presence of fleshy humans which are inherently ghost-interesting, leviathan blood powder and certain kinds of carved stone implements are attractive to ghosts; also reflective surfaces." Calida chose the powder.
Back in the grotto, the little away team's been gone for about an hour and a half and the two of them are hearing the siren song of rationalizing the fact that they're hearing the siren song--that is, it's starting to look a little bit melodramatic to Aphra, all of this. You know, like everyone was just so paranoid, Nico and Calida fussing so much, it's not really that dangerous. Lucas seems to agree, at least enough for this exchange:
L: Excuse me, miss… can I get a hand free? I know this is dangerous, it’s just, I’m losing circulation here.
Aphra unlooses the hand. She offers to retie them in front for more comfort.
He looks disappointed that you want to keep him restrained but consents.
Aphra: So you said the stocks are dropping? Of leviathans?
L: The ships go out further and further every year, and bring back less and less. My uncle has blamed this on the fleet from Akoros, processing malfunctions, the weather, but every time he’s blustering… I don’t know why.
A: Do you ever see a young one?
L: There’s no such thing as a young leviathan.
A: Well… okay--you’ve never seen a young leviathan.
He shakes his head.
A: What do you mean there’s no such thing?
L: Leviathans are old creatures. The size, the growth, the power of them is from time.
A: Well then, what are they when they’re young?
His eyes flicker up to yours, and he says: “I'm not sure I remember.”
Still, the rope and their willpower hold steady enough to keep them here. Elsewhere Calida and Nico finally make it to their Brightstone target and Calida places the dust, bloodies it, and they run--but in the silence like this, even from a distance the dead sound a little different:
Calida’s done this before, but usually without her ears plugged. Usually the sensation isn’t “hearing” -- but it’s a murmur, if they’re a little disturbed, to a staticky roar if they’re deeply unsettled. With your ears plugged, though: you hear voices. These have the slightly ventriloquized quality of the voices of the dead. They are speaking words you don’t have time to stick around and hear properly.
They head back. Nico's mental map still serves them well and they arrive without incident to find Lucas slightly more untied than he was and draw the obvious conclusion--but even their trifecta of anxious back-and-forth is losing a bit of steam. Stay up and stress this much and the panic starts to feel obligatory. They do have to sleep, so they set up a watch system again--but instead of watching one at a time, they're sleeping one at a time. At this point the song is at its most intense: they're feeling the temptation consciously when they're awake and can't resist it at all when they're asleep. Knowing this, Calida is determined to stay awake all night while the other two catch a scrap of rest.
According to what Calida knows about this kind of magic, it can't last forever. It probably can't even last much longer--the caster has had to be awake for all of it, and every ritual of this kind exacts its own cost. (Just ask the Blades sourcebook.) It's still a rough night where Aphra dreams of being on the verge of accepting some unspecified but long-awaited professional or academic award, and is rudely blocked by that one dean that never believed in her before she realizes that she's on the stairs, she's not getting an award, and the dean is her friend Nico Diamond trying to save her life; when Nico sleeps, however, she dreams in a panic that she has the architectural plans she stole now quite some time ago in hand, and she's trapped in the office where she's about to be discovered with them at any moment. There's nothing like your dreaming unconscious to preserve your life in time. Aphra and Nico, however, have stacked a barrier of boxes around the stairs and the water--so Nico first attempts to run away with her plans up the stairs, encounters the boxes, and then tries to escape towards the water, at which point the collision is rude enough to wake her up.
Not that Calida's having a wonderful night either. Exhausted and wary, she's brimming with frustration and hubris towards Perceval Rowan that is still presenting itself as temptation--though the only frame of reference she has for picturing him is the only Rowan she's ever seen, the church leader Father Alastair Rowan. (Father Alastair Rowan is someone I-the-GM described as being "formerly very beautiful, which is a little weird for a heavily aging religious leader" and I have to report this was hijacked into a series of Jude Law The Young Pope references. Oh well. A GM bends rather than breaks.) There is really no guarantee of the closeness of relation here or that they look alike, but Calida has basically made a younger mental dollmaker version of him so she can hate it. Close enough. (She also takes out her frustrations on Lucas's box anchor, in that when he gets back to his creepy humming she kicks it until he stops.)
Around 5am, the melody seems to crescendo and then halt, cutting out sharply. The grotto is now uncannily quiet, as it used to be, and the surrounding sounds of the city have crowded in all at once. To the crew, the temptation to leave now looks as sharply external as it was--as the enormity of the situation, the hostile city waiting above, bears down upon them for the first time. Lucas, finally, falls genuinely into sleep.
The canals have risen to normal levels as well by mid-morning, indicating that the concentrated storm of searching for them has passed for the time being. There's only so long the Council, and the city altogether for that matter, can tolerate this kind of disruption on the not-too-forthcoming demand of one powerful man.
Calida and Aphra also take the opportunity to rest: Nico decides to pop her head above water, so to speak, and see what's going on aboveground. The answer as she goes about a few basic errands is that the rumor mill is certainly going excitedly, but it doesn't seem like it knows a whole lot--there are a lot of amused and cynical theories about Lord Strangford, his nephew, whether there ever was really a nephew, whether the nephew really was kidnapped or ran away, and perhaps whether he's dead, which seems to indicate that Lord Strangford is also cutting his own losses for now--perhaps it's more of a danger to his reputation to keep publicly broadcasting that Lucas is still missing. There are embellishments on what Lucas might or might not be guilty of, a few out-there conspiracy theories--Nico does what she can to plant some new ones, and a particularly bizarre one takes off but to some extent it's hard to make more chaos known in this much chaos.
Having done what she can there, she decides to seek out something that's been on her mind basically since the beginning of this score--Dr. Alexis Talbert, the ship's doctor who tipped off the Dimmer Sisters in the first place and marked Lucas's chains. Previously there was not much digging that could be done on the subject of Dr. Talbert in Aphra's medical journals alone, due to the apparent obscurity of the life she led; so Nico decides to take a risk and head for the pub stomping grounds of the leviathan fleet crew, and specifically the crew of the Wild Hunt. (They're likelier more well-informed than the fleet at large, but unlike the Dolores, none of them have actually met Nico before.)
The sailors don't know a lot, but they at least have a consistent narrative and they're happy to share it, as they drink and gossip: they relate that during a daring or reckless action, Lucas fell from his ship and into the water, and the Dolores assumed him dead but found him afterward, improbably, floating in the water in the dead leviathan's blood and alive but unconscious. The 'story goes' that he was somehow driven mad by this--that the experience did something to his mind. But, the sailors confide, Mr. Rowan will sort it out. He'll find a solution, he always does.
There is more than one eerie and depressing element of his tale, but through this conversation Nico does manage to learn the location of Alexis Talbert's practice--which is actually not too far from where Nico lives herself. Dr. Talbert keeps a rather unassuming downstairs medical practice on the Charhollow side of Charterhall, in a converted salon she lives above when she's not at sea. It's the ex-barbershop type with a front window and bland, tidy painted lettering; Nico knocks.
What follows is a comically tense and awkward conversation: Dr. Talbert is at first puzzled and suspicious, then intensely suspicious as she demands Nico's business of her, and proves to have enough knowledge of the Dimmer Sisters to know well that Nico does not represent them. What she says is colored with terse unhappiness and weariness, and some degree of indignation that someone as young as Nico is here to talk to her about it--and what comes through, very clearly, is that she didn't have any more good options in her own decisions as Nico is facing with hers.
What Nico's trying to find out, or confirm, is that the Dimmer Sisters don't represent certain doom for Lucas; what she does gain is an awareness that Dr. Talbert is a moral person and that this seemed like the best of terrible choices.
N: I find myself feeling that you’ve given rather too much as it is. What makes the Dimmer Sisters a better alternative than Lord Strangford for your former captain?
DR T: Anyone would be better than him.
N: Was that their only qualification?
DR T: They have certain power, certain resources, which I would advise you not to look too deeply into yourself. [looks a bit condescending. Nico laughs under her breath.] Given the position that… Mr. Strangford Knight is in, I’m not in much of a position to help him, very few people are, there are many people in this city who-- I don’t know if they can or would, but they’re in a better position. [She looks guilty-- not because she did something bad, but because this is not a great option, even if least of evils.]
N: You’re gambling that they eventually won’t have a use for him -- sorry, that’s not right, is it? They will have a less intrusive use for him than LS.
DR T: The Dimmer Sisters aren’t ‘witches.’ But they have a certain respect for the aged, ancient, ‘magically significant.’ They aren’t dealers in things. That’s just the facade they put out for dealing with people like… your group, whatever you are.
N: I hadn’t considered that appearances might need to be kept up for us. But I suppose you’re right. How confident are you in your choice?
DR T: [she looks sad and far away] I don’t know if I’m confident in my choice. But I can’t think of another one.
Before you leave, Dr T: I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re mixed up with, young lady, but you shouldn’t be. You did the best thing you could have done by handing him over. You don’t want to deal with Lord Strangford, Mr. Rowan, god forbid. You need to stay out of this.
N: Good luck yourself.
Dr. Talbert is obviously irritated with Nico--irritated with what she clearly sees as bravado and caginess, and still trying to impress upon Nico a very earnest warning. Nico both doesn't need it, by now, and can't put it to much use. But at least it's a few questions answered.
She comes back to a still-sleeping Lucas and Calida, and she and Aphra talk grimly about their options--then, when Calida wakes up, her grim voice is added to this discussion. Separately, the three of them have been feeling different forms of the same unease, and now it can't be put off for much longer: they can't just hand this man over and not ask any questions and walk away from this all. Whatever kinds of people they've been in the past, they haven't been that. But what aside from that they're supposed to do seems impossible to determine when their client is secretive about even the nature of its interest.
Amid this weary, hushed conversation that spikes a few times into argument, Aphra wonders if they can just ask the Dimmer Sisters about what they intend to do with Lucas if they were to take him. It occurs to them all that they actually have a fair amount of leverage here: they still have everything. The Dimmer Sisters are waiting on them. So Nico leaves a note in their arranged dead drop, requesting an in-person meeting.