LogDunslough Cartographic Society-Jason-2

Game log for the 2018/03/18 session of Blades in the Dark: The Dunslough Cartographic Society, as taken by Jason

Fitz invites the Society to another of her soirees, and invites the crew to see her room full of Dolls. When they enter, there's another person there. She introduces him as Israel Cox and leaves so that he can get acquainted with the Society. He's interested in sparkcraft. A researcher at Charterhall has some notes that he wants. There's a big tower at the U dedicated to sparkcraft, where the Sparkwell Engineers work. Dr Oz asks him to tell us more about his interest in sparkcraft. Though Cox is an apothecary by trade, this Edwina Hewish has been making some breakthroughs that would be helpful in his profession. If possible, he would prefer a copy of the notes to having them stolen. Ideally the entire crime should remain undiscovered.

Washout does some research on Hewish, and finds out that her advisor is one Lucian Uzman. She's been publishing papers on lightning barrier technology, and improving their efficiency in particular, making them more energy-efficient. Her papers have been well-received. Dr Oz arranges to meet with Uzman at a pub, and contrives to pick his brain without actually giving away the direction of his influence. She's apparently an idealist, not that Uzman takes her ideals seriously. She works long hours and doesn't socialize much. Clip works with the Bluecoat archives to study the criminal history of the Sparkwright Tower, and discovers that the engineers have built their own security. Jeren points out that many of the criminal reports describe burglars being rendered unconscious by automata. Pool tries to survey the area and get a sense of the ins and outs, but there are so many people around that she can't really get a firm grip on it.

Washout leads us up a neigboring building and throws a zipline to the Sparkwright Tower. We land in a machine shop, which hums with an astonishing variety of noises. There's background hum from machines, cracks of lightning jumping between machines. From our concealed hiding spot, we can see a watchman on his rounds, up and down the hallway. He's wearing something on his back and we don't see him blinking. Pool observes that around to our right, there's a stairwell, and to our left, laboratories. Washout pulls a flask of binding oil from his bandoleer, waits for the automaton to get to the right point in his rounds, and then throws binding oil at it. The automaton hears him moving and turns at the exact wrong time, and gets the binding oil full in the face, completely immobilizing him.

We head to the stairwell and look down over the railing, and observe that there's a central pillar to the tower and various areas arrayed around it. The floors, of course, appear to be brickwork. Pool leads us down the stairs a couple flights. She does a quick survey, with advice from Clip based on his research, and finds the right lab. Again with help from Clip, she figures out where Hewish keeps her notes. Unfortunately, in the process, she grabs something that gives her a massive static jolt. That's not going to fade right away. Still, she does find the notes.

Washout produces his pantographic copying machine and begins copying the notes, with help from Dr Oz. He makes it most of the way through the notes when someone walks in, eel-on-a-stick in hand. Dr Oz turns to him and, in his best professorial voice, tells the kid to get in here and help. "Get in here! This lab report is wrong and the grant is due tomorrow! What are you doing, standing there eating eel-on-a-stick!" As Dr Oz jumps in the poor guy's face, Pool sneaks up behind him, and tries to bash him in the back of the head, but just as she's closing in on him, there's another static discharge. The student tries to run for it, and discovers that Washout used binding oil on the doorknob. He can't let go of it. As he hesitates, Clip jumps on him and thrashes him, knocking him out with one flying punch to the head. Washout and Dr Oz immediately agree that we're going to steal his research while we're here. While they work, Clip produces a flask of electroplasm and gets the student unhooked from the doorknob, allowing them to close the door, thence to use the student as an improvised barrier. Pool tries to take a quick look around to make sure we're safe, and ends up looking into a chamber that has an access gantry for the rest of the tower. When she looks up, she sees a masonry gargoyle - but insted of being masonry, it's metal, styled like a griffin, and it turns its head to look right at her. She shuts the door behind her and announced that this is not the way out. "Problems?" Clip asks. "There's a metal gargoyle and lots of electricity." Something tries the handle of the door as she's talking. She quickly tries to jam the lock, as Clip begins pulling wire out of his pack, with the idea that Pool could maybe ground the sparks through the thing. She gets the lock immobilized, but that leaves more evidence of intrusion. After that, she begins moving furniture around to barricade the door.

Eventually, Washout and Dr Oz get to the end of the notebook. We carefully rearrange the office to be exactly the way it was, and then we go to the intruding student's office, take all his stuff, and mess up his office. That done, it's time to depart.

Pool leads us out, taking enormous stress from her herd of clumsy ducklings. Once we get to the edge, Washout aims his grapple gun at an appropriate window across the way, and sends the line sailing neatly across. Clip suggests that to avoid leaving a zipline behind, they could use acid to dissolve, timed so that the rope would hold long enough. He times it wrong. Clip does for a wild ride and breaks his ankle hitting the facade of the building. Washout takes a look at it and assesses it, but full treatment may have to wait. We collect the ropes and make our way out.

Washout and Dr Oz make copies of all the research we stole.

Dr Oz goes to meet Cox, back in Fitz' doll room. They discuss the rumours circulating about theft and violence in the lab. Dr Oz had left the papers with the maid just in case, but since things seem to be on the level, the maids bring them in for Cox's review. While they wait, Oz discourses on the provenance of various dolls. Cox finds this extremely creepy, which keeps Oz entertained the whole day long.

When the notes arrive, he's not at all pleased that the notes are enciphered, and we don't have the key. Oz offers to decrypt them on contract, and when Cox claims that he doesn't even know this is the real thing, Oz shows him our beginning work on decrypting the notes. Cox agrees that if we hand over the key, he'll consider the contract fulfilled. Dr Oz accepts and the money changes hands.

During downtime, Washout starts working on Clip's leg. Clip then spends his time on training Prowess and on a shopping spree, coming away with a fancy white cane to help with his busted-up ankle. As he leaves the store, there's a man leaning against a lamp post, nicely dressed with an overcoat over pinstripe pants and a top hat. As Clip leaves the guy makes eye contact. Clip says hello, the guy tips his hat, and Clip sees that he's wearing a silver nail ring. The Silver Nails are a gang of Severosi cavalry mercenaries. The guy asks to have a conversation somewhere public, so they go to a pub.

He expresses amazement at the goings-on in the city, especially at night. Clip parries that the war was unsafe at any hour. The Severosi steers the conversation to the University. He and his comrades were funding research at the University, trying to fuel progress. Some student who was working on leviathan blood refining got accosted. If Clip can locate the student's notes and return them to Tuhan at the Mustang, then the Bluecoats won't have to hear all about him. Clip leaves.

Dr Oz works on his long term project, Unsealing the Map of Esketra. He also trains Prowess. Then he pays out a coin and puts some more work into Unsealing the Map.

Pool goes out and gets possessed by her ghost friend to blow off some stress. She really gives the ghost a proper outing. Washout actually bumps into her on the street and she doesn't even recognize him.

Washout goes to the brothel and gets a little something something to make himself feel better. He then starts work on a long term project to decipher Hewish's notes.

Since we already have copies, everyone agrees that it's totally cool to deliver the other student's notebook to the Silver Nails. Clip takes them over to the Mustang, and takes some time to have a couple drinks with Tuhan. Tuhan explains that given the Society's reputation, he half expected the notes to be delivered by a trained animal or something. The grad student we stole them from, Hugh, actually lost sensation in two fingers as a result. When they're done talking, Tuhan dismisses Clip in a fairly abrupt manner. Clip feels a little hurt, but what the hell, any meeting with a potential killer in a bar full of friends that you can walk away from is a good meeting with a potential killer in a bar full of his friends.

Pool returns, refreshed, but reeking of smoke.

We have a group meeting and agree that in future, we'd like to be able to rely on some informants. We agree that having contacts in University facilities would be optimal, and Clip and Washout start hanging out in the working class bars, making drinking buddies, seeing who's in trouble, and what sort of trouble. They repeatedly hear that one of the sparkcraft maint techs named Crozier spends an unusually large amount of time interacting with students, supposedly because he deals the drug called spark on campus. Dr Oz arranges an encounter with the Provost's secretary, because she'd be totally hooked in to the matter of who's doing what. She's not real favorably disposed toward him, given his history with the U, but he takes some time and buys some drinks, and Eugenia Beeswell ends up being relatively well disposed toward him. Pool does a survey of the University, looking for signs of clandestine gatherings, and catches a rumour that the Student's Club of the Church of the Ecstasy of the Flesh is getting more popular, which is weird since it historically had little support on campus, and supposedly they're holding unsanctioned meetings at an apex near the campus crematorium. The name Nora Bronze comes up very often.