Actual Play: The Good Shepherds – Session 5 – This Isn’t the Boat You’re Looking For

We ended last week with Loki having taken the fall for the crew and spending some time in Ironhook, and Sarge having suffered a level 3 harm. The Shepherds may have won the war with the fog hounds, but they were a bit short on manpower as a result. We open with Echoes going over a few things in the Slaughtered Prince, when my substitute character, Sola “Witchcraft” Gratia walks in. I went into detail about Sarge and Sola in this post, but the short version is that she is a Whisperer who worked with Sarge during the war. Her vice is her work as a Spirit Warden, due to a strong hatred of ghosts and spirits.

There are some introductions and Sola explains that she was sent by Sarge, although he wasn’t in much condition to tell her much. Echoes gives her an overview of what the Shepherds are about, how they try to help folks out, and generally stick to their deals. It was neat to hear it from his perspective.

We head out on the boat to pick up our Loki’s replacement, a leech who is also Echoes’ cousin. The final version of him is “The Paladin”, Nymn Fairshaw. Like Sarge and Witchcraft, Nymn was also in the war, although on the other side. His sister contracted an illness that he blames on some of the more ruthless tactics of the Imperials, and so his vice involves taking care of her.

Nymn is not exactly happy to see his cousin rolling with a woman with an Impirial Military Tattoo, and is rather upset by her presense. Sola, meanwhile, is has a much more casual attitude about it, and asks him about his service and says she’s looking foreward to working with him. Although, she does throw in a barb about how “We’re all imperial citizens now”.

They return to Doskvol, and meet with their next client, a noble going by the name of Lady Penderin. She has a “friend”, in Sunfall, a researcher by the name of Morelin Flane, whose research seems to have angered the local lord, Selkerah. There’s some rumors that he’s association with some demonic influences, but we don’t know too much about him. Our job is to go to Sunfall, and get Flane out of the city. Both the newbies are deferential to Echoes in this case, and he feels like taking the job without asking too many questions. Works for me!

Our engagement roll goes poorly (rolling a flat tier 0 for it will do that), so things start off Desperate. The seas are not cooperating, and our only party member with finesse, Nymn, only has 1 dot in it. At first we get lucky, and then I try to help with my tempest ability, giving us favorable winds to get through he more dangerous areas. I end up completely botching that, and getting the attention of a leviathan. Echoes wants to shoot at it, but all he has is a hand rifle, and the GM (pretty fairly) rules that it doesn’t have the scale to affect something that big.

I decide if Magic got me into this mess, it can get me out as well, and I try to attune with the leviathan to convince it that we aren’t worth its time. I pull out some magic tools and tell Echoes to draw a circle so that he can help, and manage to pull off a 6! It’s not exactly pleasant to link with a leviathan, but at least it works! And the rest of the trip ends up pretty uneventful.

When we arrive in Sunfall, we need a plan to get into the university. Everyone decided to go normal load, so just walking in isn’t going to work, so Nymn decides to make a distraction using some explosives. He doesn’t roll very well, so he gets some guards after him.

Meanwhile, Witchcraft and Echoes sneak into the building, although Sola is set to take some harm in the process, luckily, Echoes decides that, since he has Tenacious (and some level 1 harm already from last mission), he can take it instead, so the explosions end up knocking Sola into Echoes, who manages to twist his ankle as a result. We manage to make it to Flane’s office, where Sola uses her Spirit Mask and Lightning Hook to disguise Flane as a Spirit Warden, which, no one is going to look twice at given there are explosions going off.

Nymn, meanwhile, is being chased down by authorities, failing to escape from them, he gets shot for his efforts. He eventually decides to bluff that he has another bomb and yells at them to back off. He gets lucky and gets a 6 and manages to slip away.

The trip back to town is uneventful, and we drop Flane off and get paid, a full 8 coins, 2 go to the vault, and 2 go to each of us. We also get enough rep to push us over the top, taking our hold from weak to firm! We get a small amount of heat from this score, helped by our new cover operation. The entanglement result is “Unquiet Dead”, which we decide is the ghost of one of the Fog Hounds Echoes killed. We’re short on time, so we decide downtime comes first and we’ll take care of that next time.

I don’t remember everyone’s downtime actions in particular, but I do recall in true scoundrel style everyone spent both coins they got on extra actions, stashing away none of them. I do know that Sola indulged her vice (clearing 4 out of her 7 stress), took over Loki’s project to put a spy in Scurlock’s estate, and trained twice (personal and prowess). Exp was pretty good, (although Echoes didn’t get a chance to be violent, since things went too well), and the gang itself hit 4 for 4 (although none of them came up enough to get 2 exp) is almost ready to level up again!

Next Sunday is Christmas, and so all of us have other plans, and I probably will NOT post a filler like I did last week. The Sunday after that is New Years Day, but we play in the evening so we should be good to play that day! Expect to see the Shepherds again in 2 weeks!