Dusk City Outlaws

[mikeawmids1]

The first two sessions were run using Outgunned, but I personally found the system to be frustrating at the table (which broke my heart considering how much I spent on the two Kickstarters), so from session 3 onwards we pivoted to Savage Worlds Adventure Edition. I didn't use the rules presented in the DCO books as I am running from PDF copies and the game-as-written seems heavily based around all the fiddly sheets/components you get in the box set.

The Funeral Job

In the city of New Dunhaven, four freelancers are bought together to conduct a daring heist. Raithe Abernathy of the Gravediggers wants the crew to steal a ceremonial necklace displayed on the body of a dead noblewoman.

The crew consists of;
Sean Waltman (Criminal/Jerk with a Heart of Gold), catchphrase: "It wasn't me."
Doctor Sindaris Bedlam (Brain/Genius Bruiser), catchphrase: "That's very hurtful to me, be careful it doesn't hurt you."
Shayloth Hellstar (Sleuth/Vigilante), catchphrase: "You can't run from your past."
and Old Farmer Jenkins (Nobody/Diehard), catchphrase: "Pasta la Vista."

The Necklace of Eternal Slumber will be placed on the body of the late Marianna Gorgov during her wake, and removed before her body is sealed in the family crypt.

Shayloth and Doctor Sindaris visit the Gondolers Guildhall to establish which route the funeral procession will take through the cities bustling canals. Doc Sin distracts the Guildmaster by masquerading a a journalist, while Shayloth breaks into his office.

Meanwhile, Sean and Old Farmer Jenkins stake out Gorgov Manor. They learn very little from their surveillance, other than the deceased Gorgov matriarch bears a passing resemblance to Old Farmer Jenkins, his own face withered to leathery ruin by the many years he spent toiling on the pasta farm.

Unaware of this unlikely likeness, Shayloth steals the cadaver of an elderly fishwife from the city morgue, thinking to swap it out for the noblewoman's corpse. It turns out they didn't actually need the cadaver of an elderly fishwife for their masterplan, so now it is just stinking up their headquarters.

That night, Sean breaks into Gorgov Manor to get a look at the dress Lady Gorgov will be wearing at the wake. (I completely forgot her faithful hound Orthov should have been at her side, my bad). He then breaks into a dressmaker's shop to steal a similar dress.

Disguised as a caterer, Sean enters Gorgov Manor on the day of the wake. He is pushing a trolley concealing Old Famer Jenkins, disguised as Marianna Gorgov. The wake is well attended and the crew need a distraction to get to the body. Sean starts a fire in the cloakroom. While the staff/mourners mill about, Sean manhandles the late Lady Gorgov out a window, and Old Famer Jenkins takes her place in the coffin. At this point, the crew have the necklace in hand and could easily have bailed - but the crew decide to stick to the "plan".

Old Farmer Jenkins successfully masquerades as an old dead woman for several hours, then the coffin is moved to the funeral gondola to be transported across the city. At a pre-arranged point, Doc Sin detonates a smoke bomb, clouding the procession in dense fog. Looming out of the murk, Doctor Sin demands a toll for Marianna's soul to pass into the hereafter. The corpse of Lady Gorgov rises from her coffin to hand over the necklace in payment to this grim spectre of death. The guards on the gondola are stricken with terror at the sight of the living corpse! Old Farmer Jenkins ducks out of sight, as Sean and Shayloth huck the real Lady Gorgov onto the barge.

The crew slip away with the necklace, having successfully completed the Funeral Job.

 

[mikeawmids1]

The Kidnapping Job - Part 1

The crew are summoned to the Bashful Mermaid to meet Valentina La Cher of the Vespers. She wants the crew to kidnap young Lord Juniper Dayworthy before he is assassinated by the infamous Serpent of Westport. Juniper is holed up in a Blooded safehouse, but sneaks out at night to participate in illegal carriage races.

Doc Sin has history with the Serpent, having previously conducted reconstructive facial surgery to give her a new identity. Unfortunately, after completing the procedure, the Serpent tried to kill him. When that failed, she ruined his reputation - driving the once respected Doctor Sindaris Bedlam to a life of crime.

Opting against any kind of planning or reconnaissance, the crew amble onto enemy turf and are immediately accosted by a roving band of Blooded ruffians. From the rooftops, Shayloth Hellstar, aka Dark Duck lobs a smoke bomb into the street below. The crew take advantage of the blinding fog to take out the thugs.

Interrogating the survivors, the crew learn Juniper Dayworthy is hiding out in a slaughterhouse operated by Blooded underboss Bale Ruhger. Shayloth parkours onto the roof. Through a grungy skylight, he watches several thugs torturing a helpless man suspended from a meathook. Shayloth takes careful aim ... and shoots the victim in the leg. The Blooded goons are shocked to see the masked vigilante Dark Duck looming over them, smoking pistol clutched in his webbed hand.

"Quack Quack, motherf***ers."

After dealing with the thugs, Shayloth rescues the injured prisoner. It isn't Juniper. The man is Halfred Grimes (chartered accountant), whose gambling habit got him in deep with the wrong sort of people. Shayloth apologises for shooting him.

Meanwhile, the rest of the crew start a brawl with the guards outside the abbatoir. Doc Sin beats a guy to death with his cane. Old Farmer Jenkins skewers a dude on his pitchfork, then twirls it round like he's Darth Maul at the end of The Phantom Menace. Sean puts a bucket on some bloke's head and watches him stumble into Farmer's Jenkin's whirring blade. Blood splatters.

Inside the slaughterhouse, a large refrigeration unit has been converted into a reinforced safe room with a complicated clockwork locking mechanism. Sean sets to picking the lock, while Doc Sin and Farmer Jenkins fend off the next wave of Blooded goons. Shayloth bumps into Bale Ruhger whilst terrorizing his subordinates and throws the Blooded underboss out a window.

After three rounds, Sean unseals the safe room. Lord Juniper Dayworthy cowers behind his bodyguard, the scarred veteran Adele Chandler. Juniper is convinced the crew are here to kill him, and nothing Doc Sin says will sway him. Adele stands ready to protect her master ... until Sean puts another bucket on her head. While she struggles to remove it, Old Farmer Jenkins glides in like a gore-stained penguin, grabs Juniper and glides back out again. Doc Sin sweeps his cane at Bucket Head like he's swinging for the fences and puts her out like a light.

The party manhandle Lord Juniper toward the exit, having successfully completed the Kidnapping J - BOOM! Without warning, an explosion rocks the building and the crew are buied beneath a mountain of burning debris!! The Serpent of Westport strikes again!!! TBC

 

[mikeawmids1]

(This is the point we switched from Outgunned > Savage Worlds.)

The Kidnapping Job - Part 2

Smoking brickwork and butchered chops fly skyward as the Blooded slaughterhouse explodes. Sean is trapped under the burning rubble, while the rest of the crew are thrown clear. Leaving Shayloth and Farmer Jenkins to babysit Lord Juniper, Doc Sin goes to look for Sean, unaware the enterprising thief has already escaped into the sewer channel running under the abbatoir.

Famer Jenkins marches Juniper toward the docks, and the ship waiting to convey the young noble to Elderland. Shayloth takes to the rooftops. The City Watch are erecting a cordon around the burning building, while the Fire Brigade battle the blaze. Juniper cries out that he is being kidnapped, attracting a patrol of four guards. Shayloth spots a hooded sniper lining up a shot from the adjacent rooftop, and lobs a duckarang to foul their aim. Undeterred, the assassin parkours down to street level to deal with Juniper up close and personal.

Sean emerges from a manhole, and Doc Sin joins the fray soon thereafter. Doc Sin uses a weaponised hallucinogen to drive the City Watch mad with fear. Farmer Jenkins unceremoniously dumps Juniper down the open manhole, but the Serpent of Westport jumps in after them. Shayloth drops down on top of her, knocking her prone. Farmer Jenkins follows the turgid flow of effluent toward the outflow pipe, then jumps into the river with Juniper in tow. The Serpent of Westport breaks free of Shayloth's grapple and gives chase, pausing at the end of the pipe to shoot at Juniper. Sean runs up and rugby tackles her into the water.

Doc Sin enjoys a leisurely stroll to the docks. No splashing through sewage for him. He boards the Osborne, but the crew are glassy-eyed and unresponsive. In the captain's cabin, he finds the sorceress Evalenora taking tea with a similarly stupified captain. She admits she hired the Serpent to kill Juniper after he disrespected her, and politely enquires why Doc Sin and his crew have stuck their nose all up in her business. Doc Sin tries persuading Evalenora to let Juniper go and squeeze reparations from his wealthy father. The sorceress considers the suggestion, but ultimatly decides Juniper has to die. Accepting that her mind is made up, Doc Sin drops a concussion grenade - incapacitating the addled captain. Evalenora is unaffected, and Doc Sin realises he has been interacting with an intangible projection of her physical form.

Jenkins and Shayloth arrive with Juniper's unconcious body slung between them. Evalenora orders the mind-controlled sailors to kill the lordling. Jenkins and Shayloth fend them off. Sean engages the Serpent of Westport and is stabbed with a poisoned dagger. Lethal toxins course through his bloodstream, heralding a swift death in 2d6 (10) rounds. Doc Sin confronts the assassin, leveraging their past closeness to dissuade her from her mission, as Evalenora eggs her on. Unable to reconcile this cold-blooded killer with the woman he once knew, Doc Sin knocks the Serpent overboard.

A wagon laden with shipbuilding materials trundles along the harbour, parallel to the Osborne's starboard side. Jenkins grabs Juniper and leaps from the deck of the ship to the roof of the wagon. Seizing the reins, he heads for the crew's safehouse. Shayloth jumps into the river and swims away, as ducks are known to do. Doc Sin disembarks and stumbles upon Sean dying on the dock. Fortunately his arcane background (Alchemy) allows him to concoct an elixir to neutralize poison and disease, thus saving the hapless rogue.

Having secured Juniper in their own HQ, the crew arrange (through their contact in the Vespers) an alternative means of smuggling the nobleman out of the city. With all the subtlety of a naughty word gong, the crew have completed the Kidnapping Job - and made a powerful enemy in the process.

 

[mikeawmids1]

The Library Job - Part 1

The crew enjoy some much-needed Downtime between jobs.
Old Man Jenkins receives notice of foreclosure on his farm, unless he can raise 1,000gp to pay the arrears on overdue land tax.
Shayloth recieves rejection letter from themed vigilane team the Nocturnpals, citing the whole duck thing he has going on does not gel with their brand.
Sean is invited to participate in a back-room/bare-knuckle fighting tournament, and beats the living funk out of his first opponent, the breakdancing brawler Buster Groove.

The crew are summoned before the Black Council to answer for the debacle that was the Kidnapping Job. Somehow, the crew managed,to (a) rile up the Blooded, (b) blow up a building, (c) interfere with a sanctioned assassination attempt, and (d) humiliate a powerful sorceress. The crew make a strong case for their defence and sway the Council, however they are not completely off the hook. To placate Evalenora's wrath, the crew must undertake a job for her.

The crew are paid for the Kidnapping Job. Sean and Shayloth offer their share to Old Man Jenkins to save his farm. They visit Braden Zaragosa at the bank to hand over the cash. The banker seems annoyed that Jenkins has found the money. Sean spots correspondence from the Pasta Baron Trentino Alto-Adige on the bankers desk, stating his offer to buy Jenkin's land. A suspicion gestates in the old farmer's noodle; could the Pasta Baron be responsible for poisoning his fields?

Evalenora is a guest of Lord Oakmantle. The guards in his employ have the same blank/gormless stares as the sailors on the Osborne. The sorceress has made herself at home, and Lord Oakmantle grovels at her feet like a beaten dog, thrall to her mental dominance. Evalenora explains the Library Job; the crew must steal the Tormented Compendium from the Spire of the Mind (an enormous library, and the tallest building in New Dunhaven), and place a Corrupting Tome in its place, erasing the surrounding volumes to obfuscate the crime. Failure to complete the job will result in a complete withdrawal of all occult services she provides to the Cartels.

The crew surveil the tower. The 11 storey building dominates the city skyline. The first two floors are open to the public, everything else is restricted - accessible via a unique clockwork lift mechanism. Sean establishes the lift was installed by the Guild of Cunning Artificers, and blueprints for the contraption are likely stored in their compound.

Fortunately, Shayloth has a contact in the Guild, a former flame called Alana Rogue, whom he still thinks of fondly. He commissions her to craft a high-velocity grapple gun, then persuades her to give his "autistic friend" (Sean) a tour of the compound. A display case in the Guildmaster's office contains a scale model of the lift mechanism from the Spire, and replica of the rings required to move it between floors. While Shayloth breaks down and confesses his long buried love for Alana, Sean takes a wax impression of the ring. Alana lets Shayloth down easy. Heavy footfalls of a clockwork sentinel lumber close, the crew escape via the window.

At this point, Old Man Jenkins recalls hearing about a prototype hot air balloon being developed by the inventor Hiliam Gaas. The crew immediately pivot to a balloon heist. Adding another layer of complexity to this counfounding lasagna, Jenkins insists on framing the Pasta Baron for the hijacking. Shayloth visits the Nocturnpals to request a team-up. Fantastic Fox uses his super power to go through Trentino's bins and rustle up some DNA evidence for the crew to plant at the crime scene.

Mid-afternoon of the next day, the crew call on Hiliam Gaas. Sean slyly taunts the egotistical inventor into showing off his prototype. Shayloth knocks him out, and the crew steal the balloon. Crowds gather to gawp at the inflatable conveyance rising above the city. It takes a while for Old Man Jenkins to get a handle on the controls, during which time Hiliam Gaas regains consciousness and alerts the city watch that agents of the Pasta Baron have hijacked his balloon.

As dusk dwindles into evening, Shayloth moors the stolen balloon to the top of the library tower. Doctor Sin zip-lines down to the domed roof, followed by Old Man Jenkins. Shayloth glides over, spreading wide the wings of his feathery cape to hold him aloft. Unfortunately, the rope breaks and Old Man Jenkins collides with the side of the Spire (Shaken). The rest of the crew haul him up, clearly visible to the watchmen congregating in the plaza far below. Sean takes off in the balloon, leaving the rest of the crew stranded atop the dome*. Some of the guards give chase - but still more are gathering around the base of the tower to cut off the crew's escape. TBC

* which does raise the question, did you give any thought to your extraction?

 

[mikeawmids1]

The Library Job - Part 2

The City Watch activate a ring of alchemical spotlights, illuminating the Spire. Shayloth tears open the maintenace hatch in the copper dome atop the tower, reavealing the clockwork gubbinz of the lift mechanism. Doctor Sin jams a metal pipe into the works, preventing the elevator car moving between floors.

A claustrophobic vent grants the crew access to the Forbidden Stacks. A circle of seven hooded figures stand around a chalk pentagram, chanting doomfully. The lead cultist clutches a leather-bound tome that sod's law dictates must be the Tormented Compendium. A writhing shadow, smoky and half-formed flickers in and out of vision in the space above the summoning circle.

Shayloth frisbees a duckarang across the library, winging the lead cultist. Her hood falls back, revealing the age-weathered features of a furious older woman with one fiery orange eye. It is Melliflua Trioditis, head librarian of the Spire - and deranged devotee of the Cult of a Thousand Eyes! Shaken, she drops the book. Doctor Sin lobs an alchemical bomb into the mix, incapacitating three cultists. Old Man Jenkins drops down into the centre of the pentagram, sweeping his pitchfork at the remaining figures. Sensing a malevolent presence nearby, Jenkins turns to see a huge, lidless eye wreathed in a mane of adumbral tentacles glaring down at him. Jenkins lunges for the book, snatching it up off the floor - just as the entity snares his ankle. Jenkins throws the book to Doctor Sin, moments before the shadowy tentacle reels him in.

Melliflua casts a bolt of eldritch fire at Doctor Sin and reclaims the book. She rushes for the elevator, but the mechanism is still stuck, and she cannot call the platform.

Jenkins is grappled by the entity; it begins siphoning his intelligence (permanently reducing his Smarts by one die type). Shayloth moves to aid the flailing farmer, but feels his sanity fracture as he gazes upon the Knowledge Eater. Shayloth is Stunned.

Melliflua slides the elevator door open, contemplating the ten storey drop down the lift shaft. Doctor Sin staggers up to her, and reaches for the book. Wild-eyed and manic, the two snarling scholars wrestle over the contested tome. With a firm shove, Doctor Sin pushes the head librarian backwards into empty space. With an anguished wail, Melliflua plummets down the shaft - until the roof of the stationary elevator car simultaneously breaks both her fall and her spine.

Tucking the Tormented Compendium into his coat, Doctor Sin begins carefully descending the lift shaft. Another convenient vent gets him onto the noble floors. A squad of watchmen emerge from a secret door indistinguishable from the surrounding bookshelves. Doctor Sin slips by them and finds a steep staircase hidden within the walls of the tower. He starts heading down, and is able to blag his way passed the guards on the ground floor by masquerading as a guild engineer.

Meanwhile, Shayloth (finally) recovers his wits and prostrates himself before the Knowledge Eater, pleading with the formless entity to spare his friend. Old Man Jenkins struggles feebly in the creature's crushing embrace. In a moment of genius (thankyou Alex), Shayloth grabs his duck-camera (patent-pending) and snaps a quick picture of the entity. The bright flash pains the Knowledge Eater; it drops Jenkins and retreats further into the shadows. Shayloth picks up the slack-jawed geriatric and exits through a window, glass shattering around them both, as the infamous Dark Duck spreads his wings and glides away from the tower.

The crew later reconvene at their headquarters, having successfully completed the Library Job! Sure, they left a shapeless horror roaming the Forbidden Stacks, and dropped a high ranking church official down a lift shaft - but you can't break an egg without making a few omlettes.

Unfortunately, any celebrations are short-lived, as the Crew soon learn the hijacked balloon was shot down over the noble district, and Sean has been apprehended by the City Watch! He is being held in the 14th District Precinct House until his imminent transfer to the Castle (max security prison), from where their will be no escape. TBC