Lady Blackbird Setting Log

[Auburney]

This is for the Lady Blackbird group, mainly. Everyone else is welcome here as well, but be warned - the stuff in here may make no sense to you at all

Because this is a game where the details of the setting emerge spontaneously from play, I thought it might be a good idea to note some of the most important of these details down for us.

I’ll start. Anyone is welcome to chime in with things I forgot or didn’t catch during the games sessions.

Setting

There are no pulse rifles. There are normal rifles, though (with bullets and stuff). There may be steam-powered weaponry of some sort, but we haven’t seen this yet.

There is radio technology, and it is used by airships to hail each other, and by crewmembers to communicate between different stations within an airship.

The Owl has an observation deck where smoking is allowed. This is underneath the main hull and offers quite a nice panoramic view of the surroundings.

The Owl’s engines are powered by coal, of which we have just recently acquired a fresh supply of 13 cubic meters in a barter on Outpost 3.

Imperial Warships (such as the Hand of Sorrow) has big turret-mounted cannons with great destructive power - easily enough to destroy a smaller ship such as the Owl. They are slow to aim and may be somewhat inaccurate against moving targets as a result.

Fog and Darkness appears to be effective in blocking the Hand of Sorrow’s line of sight and/or other aiming methods. At least if said fog and darkness are magical in origin

There are smaller aircraft (so-called “Corvettes”) on the Hand of Sorrow who can swarm out (in groups of three for example) to pursue and harry fleeing renegade vessels such as ours.

These Corvettes are manned by three Imperials each - a gunner, a pilot and a commander. Their cockpit doubles as an escape pod, outfitted with limited fuel supply but quite capable of maneuvering (if a hypothetical not-the-original-pilot knew what they were doing at all )

There is a small merchant base / pirate stronghold / smuggler’s port called “Outpost 3”, hovering near or loosely orbiting around Haven.
Its commander is an ex-Imperial officer whom Cyrus Vance knows from their time in the service.

There are bounty hunters on Outpost 3, and “wanted” posters for Lady Blackbird can be found in (presumably) various bars and taverns…

Characters

Naomi Bishop has a slave tattoo on her right cheek. It shows a saber and a drop of blood, the Imperial sign of the gladiator. The tattoo has been crossed out though, thus marking her as a freed pit-slave.
As of last session we know that it was Lady Blackbird herself who freed Naomi from her previous life in the arena.

Cyrus Vance used to work seedy jobs as a bouncer (and presumably other lowlife careers) in shitty bars and such before somehow assuming command (and ownership) of the Owl. He got to know the goblin pilot Snargle during his time in one of those bars…

Lady Blackbird, as a young girl, used to attend a boarding school for young noble ladies. This is where she got to know Uriah Flint, who at first was not interested in her, but later on some kind of bond developed between them.
It appears she was attracted by his roguish nature, and he noticed her for her unusual (for an imperial noble lady) ways…

Professor Hyppogriff, who is at least a dabbler in the arcane arts, and an archaeologist as well, has been hired for an enigmatic mission, sponsored by [either Lady Blackbird’s father, or her fiancee, I’m not sure we reached a final decision on this yet?]

please help me complete these infos! I’m sure I forgot a few things, or didn’t catch them in the first place!

[AmLash]

Professor Hyppogriff. The full name should be at my character sheet I left with you guys.

[Auburney]

updated the name, thank you

The sheets are with Alrik now, we all gave ours to him for keeping as well.

[Alrik]

Professor Hyppogriff conjures up his spells by writing some kind of pseudo-scientific formulas into his notebook which take effect after underlining them. Whereas Lady Blackbird’s and Kale’s sorcery seems to origin in the magic-user’s mind with a whole lot of concentrating being involved.

The Prof’s full name Meldor Hyppogriff.

[Auburney]

learned a few more things during the last session:

There are welding machines A troupe of bounty hunters used one to cut a hole into the Owl’s hull in order to access Lady Blackbird’s quarters. (They must have known where her quarters were, exactly, or they just got lucky entering in a random place)

The captain and the professor apparently disappeared during his visit to the bar with his friend the commander of Outpost 3. Kale and Snargle did return to the Owl, though, and just in time to be able to help Naomi and the Lady out against the 8 (!) Bounty Hunters who attacked the ship.

The port authorities of Outpost 3 appear to be afraid of (or to at least tolerate) the Bounty Hunters. All the dock personnell and the workers got neatly out of the way when the attack happened. We never saw so much as a single policeman or anything of the sort…

There are some kind of automatic weapons (submachinegun style, perhaps steam-powered?). The bounty hunters were armed with these. They are now added to Kale’s weapon stash that’s kept in a hidden compartment on the ship

Lady Blackbird’s secret power of the Stormblood turns out to be a fearsome magic that boils the blood of living creatures, causing a fine red mist to rise off their skins and killing them messily within a matter of moments.

The captain’s friend, the Outpost commander [who needs a name!] pretended not to know anything about the captain’s and professor’s whereabouts when Naomi and the Lady went out after the bounty hunter business was done, to ask him where Cyrus and Meldor had gotten to.
We got the distinct feeling he was hiding something, though.
Little to no social skills, and the presence of the commander’s two bodyguards, meant that we could not do anything about that feeling, though.
We agreed to go back to the ship and wait for the morning, until repairs are finished and see whether they might perhaps return on their own…

Meanwhile, Snargle and Kale interrogated one of the captured bounty hunters. They were not really willing to hurt him, though, being too good people themselves. No conclusive information could be gotten out of the captive. It appears he was just an ordinary mercenary headhunter, part of a loosely-knit team of likeminded guys attracted to the job by the high bounty on Lady Blackbird’s head.
He currently resides in a locked cargo chamber on the Owl, tied up but fed.

Goblins are small and greenskinned - when they are not currently shape warping, of course.

Refreshment Scene:

only one was had this session, it was one between the Lady and Naomi.
We learned how and when the Lady freed the pit-slave, and what her fiancee had to do with it at that time…
(I’ll probably do a more detailed writeup of this in due time, as I felt it was a real great scene, the way it came together between the two of us worthy of a little short-story type fluff perhaps…)

[Auburney]

okay, what new things did we learn?

The reason for Captain Vance’s disappearance for an entire day was that he was drunk off his ass, and carousing it up with dancers and such…

We ultimately found him sleeping off his intoxication in a seedy club somewhere on Outpost 3, but only after hearing Callan Rosenburglar (the captain’s friend and commander of OP3) tell us about how Captain Vance had in his drunkenness been talking about himself being deeply (and secretly) in love with a certain noblewoman who recently (or currently?) been part of his crew (or passengers?)… all before vanishing from the bar with some strippers and dancers on each arm…

suspicions and puzzlement were had by Naomi and the Lady (whom this had been reported to), but as of yet no other crewmembers have become partial to this new information, and neither of the women has talked to the Captain about it, either.

Back on the Owl, while we were still discussing whether to continue loading the fuel we had bartered earlier (we had been interrupted by the bounty hunters’ attack), and whether we intended to set the (useless, because they had no valuable information for us) prisoners free or not,
the Hand of Sorrow (or another Imperial Warship?) appeared over OP3, announcing it’s presence by shooting a couple of buildings to flaming rubble, and then hailing on all frequencies with demands of general and immediate surrender. Imperial Diplomacy is a beautiful thing to behold indeed…

We were considering quickly getting rid of the prisoners before taking off in the general confusion, and Snargle went to the back hatch with them. When the hatch opened, however, a mob of scared people, inhabitants of OP3, were swarming the docks and pleading for us to take them with us.
Snargle appeared to be conflicted and wanted to take at least some of them on board perhaps… the captain decided differently though, and there was also no time left to let the captured bounty hunters go off board. So they got taken back to their cells and we left in hurry.

Once more, Lady Blackbird used her magic to create a layer of stormclouds between us and the Hand of Sorrow, which we presumed must have showed up there in chase of us, naturally…

The Lower Depths were we went to after fleeing from Outpost 3 , look like a dense purple fog where you can’t see very far. The gases down there are corrosive even to the Owl’s sturdy hull, and there is a limited time we can spend down there (4 hours).

Nevertheless, we stayed down for close on three hours in the attempt to shake our Imperial pursuers. That was when we ran into the Sky Squids.

Sky Squids (are effing huge drfiting beasts native to this environment, and) apparently live in families or small herds. Three of them surrounded us and attached themselves to our ship with their tentacles. According to our pilot Snargle, they are basically peaceful creatures, if a little curious, and if not provoked will usually not attack. They seem to find the exhaust fumes of the Owl interesting to smell or something, apparently.
Simply turning off the engines when some Sky Squids show up and waiting for them to just drift away again, might be a viable strategy, he said… alas, we never got around to really try it out…

Because their physical weak point - and the captain knew this - is their throat, and when shot right in their wide open maws even with small caliber guns (pistols, even!), that’s enough to hurt them… and make them angry, as we soon found out.
Then one of them spit out dark acidic “ink”, which is corrosive enough to eat through our exo-suits and gas-masks in a matter of minutes (as the captain found out first-hand).

When Lady Blackbird subsequently electrified the entire ship, however, that was enough to make the squids let go of it and withdraw - at least far enough so we could escape them.

That electric charge was also enough, however, to fry one of our two prisoners to death in their makeshift cells in the cargo holds. The other one survived, but just barely.

With Naomi’s medical attention (and Snargle’s willingness to share his own rations with the badly burnt prisoner for the duration of the journey), we got him more or less back on his feet by the time we reached Nightport.

Nightport: an asteroid that doesn’t rotate (or more exactly, rotates at exactly the pace that the entire solar system rotates), so that one side of it is always in darkness, and where a base for pirates, smugglers, slavers and other scum exists.

This base (also called Nightport because it is the only semblance of civilisation worth mentioning on that gods-forsaken rock) is built into the side of a huge cliff, with the lower floors being the most shabby ones, and the top layers being where the richer and more powerful scum reside.

Their is some kind of reactor built into the centre of the asteroid, and it appears to be where most of their power comes from. This would be closed of from public access and heavily guarded, according to our captain.

Also, we found out that there are slavers on Nightport, and the nasty kind too. Pit-fights appear to be held, between animals as well as between men…
Naomi and Kale had a run-in with one paricularly feisty and greasy individual.

Lockpicks got slipped into slave pockets, and signs of fraternity exchanged between Naomi and some of the slaves there. A Slaver got threatened by Naomi after rudely misbehaving towards her. No real fight broke out though.

Cyrus Vance and Kale Arkam managed to arrange a deal with the crew of some other ship (a cheap-looking fregate in dire need of repair due to some gaping holes in the hull).
The deal they made was we would receive fuel in exchange for Kale demonstrating his expert repair skills on their ship in return.

The repairs went very well (after some unexpected problems starting out, but this were quickly identified and remedied by the crafty mechanic), but they took some time [like a day or so i belive we said?]

So meanwhile, Snargle and the Lady went to ask around Nightport a bit. They were hoping to turn up some information about how to get to Uriah Flint, our ultimate destiny in this story.
Snargle knew some people in this port from his background as a lowlife and a pilot, and went to them.

[…I missed a whole chunk there, but from what I gather, it was like, an old buddy of him plus that guy’s mum that they visited, right? He lived with her in a cave, iirc, and they all seemed to be old friends…]

The info he turned up, after some social banter between old buddies, was that Uriah’s exact whereabouts were of course unknown (what with him being a famous pirate king and all ),
but there was a certain settlement on an asteroid named Galileo where Uriah allegedly often goes. Word on the docks is that he has a courtesan or concubine there, and comes there to visit her periodically. Snargle’s friend thought that yes, maybe people there might have more clues as to how to contact or even find the elusive pirate king.

That information (of Uriah having another lover), even if only a rumour, may have been enough to unsettle Lady Blackbird (who is going to Uriah because the two of them used to be lovers and she intends to marry him in order to escape her arrianged marriage with one Count Carlowe from back on Ilysium), but she showed no immeadiate reaction to it, at least not right then and there…

some questions for the future:

Will the Hand of Sorrow follow us even to here? And how long have we got until she arrives? Or does the Empire even dare to go here, so far out of the reach of its main forces?

Will this new business partners (the crew of the fregate) also betray us, and ruin another deal for fuel? Or will we manage to get what we need to reach our destination and be clear off this rock in no time?

Is Snargle’s old friend speaking the truth, and what else will await us on Galileo? How are we going to navigate the Remnants to get there, anyway?

Will there perhaps be a slave uprising on Nightport? The situation looks about ripe, and we could even help incend one, but will we pressed to leave before we can do any real good here?

What will the fate of the captured bounty hunter be? Will he stay with us, or will we let him go free?

And will the Professor return yet, or is he left behind and disappeared (or fallen into the hands of the Imperials) on OP3?

… all that makes for a real good mid-season break, and I for one am super-exited to continue playing in January!!!

(as always, please correct me or add information as you see fit! I cannot possibly have gotten everything, as so many things tend to happen at once in our sessions all the time which is a good thing of course though )