Actual Play - Lady Blackbird, part 2

Second half of Lady Blackbird!

This game ended with a bang.

They infiltrated the hunting club, and Naomi successfully persuaded into getting the sky-squid hunter, allowing her to free the sky-squid...but not before Snargle, Cyrus, and Lady Blackbird end up a fight with a merchant over a badly treated servant, Cyrus and Lady Blackbird get detained by security, and Snargle sets a fire to allow them to break free and rescues more sky-goblins from servitude.

When they get back to the ship, they discover that Kale has been possessed by a ghostblood, so Lady Blackbird casts a spell to free him.

We find out more about the crew in the refresh scenes. Lady Blackbird and Cyrus agree to get along and put his unfortunate crush behind them, but nonetheless continue to bicker. Snargle and Naomi shake their heads over it. We discover that Naomi has never met Uriah, but despises him... because she's secretly in love with Lady Blackbird! When Cyrus finds out, he and Naomi end up getting really drunk together and bonding over their unattainable love (who is inexplicably in love with some sketchy pirate).

Also, all the sky-goblin passengers decide that they want to become pirates, since they're sick of capitalism. Naomi teaches them how to fight, Lady Blackbird teaches them how to walk like nobility, Cyrus grooms one of them to command, and Snargle teaches them to be pilots.

Once they get to Nightport, they track down a pirate king named Treebeard -- a former noble turned pirate, so named because of his green, algae-like beard (due to a magical accident). There's a problem with former nobles turned pirates in this 'verse. Presumably because all the nobles are jerks anyway. Treebeard welcomes them and Lady Blackbird convinces him to set up a meeting with Uriah Flint in three days.

Treebeard also drops some hints that Uriah is working on a "project" in the Remnants, and the crew decided to investigate. At this point, I threw my hands up and was like, "OKAY, WHAT IS URIAH UP TO. EACH OF YOU TELL ME ONE THING."

The group decides that Uriah had a portal to another dimension, which was giving him access to aether and summoning monsters from other dimensions. There are also hints that he wants to create his own fiefdom. IC, they discover this via lots of spying and rescuing two scientists (who join the crew, because OF COURSE).

After their investigations are done, they meet Treebeard...but it's a trap! Treebeard has made a deal with the Empire, which will restore his title in exchange for Lady Blackbird. They fight a group of pirates and a Voidblood noble -- Naomi takes Treebeard hostage, neutralizing the pirates. The Voidblood is trickier because of the counterspell and phasing abilities, but Lady Blackbird eventually manages to turn the noble's disintegrate spell back on her and partially disintegrates her.

When they reach Uriah's ship, the Flint, (which is disguised as an asteroid), he's busy with the project but seems reasonably delighted (if wary) to see Lady Blackbird here. Lady Blackbird and Naomi wait for him in his chambers, while Cyrus and Snargle chat up the crew with varying degrees of success.

Then, everyone hears a scream. It comes from behind a locked door, which Naomi breaks open. Inside is Uriah, a scalpel in his hands as he vivisects a crocodilian biped. Behind him are cages and beds with more victims, and the magic of the portal hums -- and because Cyrus is a Warpblood, he begins to phase in and out.

Uriah tries to justify himself to Lady Blackbird -- the portal is to a dimension of magic. He's been driven mad by the portal and is harvesting magic from that dimension's inhabitants to distribute magic among the masses, bringing about true equality. Lady Blackbird does not buy that bullshit and accuses him of doing this for his own power and abandoning their ideals of equality. In addition, she thinks it's completely unnecessary -- the noble houses are producing so many illegitimate children that the aristocrats no longer have a monopoly on magic.

Uriah pleads with Lady Blackbird but unable to persuade her, at last pulls a gun on her. She and Naomi team up to knock him unconscious.

Meanwhile, Snargle frees the prisoners, and Cyrus gains enough control over the dimensional portal to realize that he can close it with a sacrifice. He resolves to sacrifice himself to close it and says goodbye to Snargle, but Lady Blackbird intervenes and substitutes Uriah instead. As part of the spell, she links herself with the other three members of the crew, reading their minds - and thus learns of Naomi's hidden affection for her.

Uriah dissolves, and the portal disappears.

In the end, Lady Blackbird and Naomi take over the ship, which terrorizes the Imperial Navy. They also start dating, but decide to take things slowly!

Cyrus gives The Owl to Snargle and moves on, eventually settling down, going through a lot of character growth, and finding love and belonging.

Snargle becomes the leader of a group of sky-goblins and frees more, helping them establish their own home. Eventually, he grows tired of the responsibility and sneaks off onto the Owl, along with a loyal crew of adventurous sky-goblins.

Lady Blackbird's prophecy turns out to be true -- in the years that come, the increase in magic among commoners (along with the attacks on the navy and the sky-goblin rebellion...) produce a more just society within their lifetime.

And in the meantime, the Owl and its crew sail on, always working to make a better world...

Notes:

- I think the game started out with some pacing issues as I tried to figure out how to resolve the sky-squid plot thread and keep the party from splitting up too much, but that ending was great.

- This session ended up being really low on narrative control on my part, and I think it ended up better for it. I felt very much part of the system instead of the primary narrator...which was good, because I was very low on creativity. There's also an interesting sneaky component in asking for player feedback: it was preeetty obvious the party wanted Uriah as an antagonist once they started taking turns narrating the details of his vivisection chamber. (Vivisection is definitely on the top 10 list of things a relationship cannot recover from).

- Naomi/Lady Blackbird took me (and I think everyone else) by surprise because Naomi's feelings were VERY well hidden the first session, and I came with the advantage of knowing that Naomi/Lady Blackbird is a common ending romance. Interestingly enough, while the game teases Lady Blackbird/Cyrus (and Lady Blackbird/Uriah), the game feels biased away from both of them -- Lady Blackbird discovering that what she wants is not what she needs (to paraphrase John Yorke) and the game actually having a final arc villain is much more satisfying story-wise, and Lady Blackbird/Cyrus feels very infatuationy. On the other hand, Lady Blackbird/Naomi and Kale/Cyrus aren't explicitly part of the setup, but they come with a lot more history for the characters that can be used to feed a romantic longing.

- This was definitely a great ensemble cast.