SAT 02 SAT 03 Lady Blackbird

[Ben Wray]

Lady Blackbird I have long admired from afar, and I honestly can't imagine a better first run than this. We had a fantastic group whose names I, embarrassingly, can't recall, and managed to, in the span of five and a half hours (with a couple breaks) and one horse changed midrace when a player didn't realize it was planned for two slots, to get the group all the way from the brig of the Hand of Sorrow to Uriah Flint's secret fortress in the remnants, where an epic battle between Cyrus and Uriah ended with the player of Lady Blackbird going "I recover my poise quickly. 'As your new Pirate Queen...'"

The highlight was a scene, completely unplanned by me, which all started with a simple refreshment scene where the Lady Blackbird called Kale into her quarters asking for help, because she had lost the key to her trunk. Kale nodded in "understanding", whipped out his trusty lockpicked, and solved Lady Blackbird's problem. And also discreetly helped himself to one of the nicer pieces of jewelry in the trunk, the Star of Flame, a gift to her from Uriah Flint himself! Lady Blackbird noticed, a bit later, that it was missing, and Naomi leaped to the obvious conclusion, and with Lady Blackbird's hesitant blessing went to retrieve it from Kale.

Naomi went to talk to Kale, and there was some delightful conversation in which Kale played delightfully obtuse while Naomi got more and more angry and flustered, and then when the point got layed out on the table there was some blustering and bravado ("'Are you seriously threatening me down here in the engine room?' I hit a panel of the wall, causing a piece of machinery near Naomi to fall over.) until Naomi finally elected, rather than killing Kale with her bare hands, to go complain to Cyrus.

Cyrus listened to Naomi's complaints and promised to take care of it, went down to have a reasonable man-to-man with Kale, and then returned with the Star of Flame to Lady Blackbird. Everyone was happy! Hooray!

Now, at this point, I noticed that Snargle had been kind of left out of things, and had previously decided that Malachi Bell, a trader they had picked up to legitimize their passage to Nightport, was actually a goblin "Passer" pretending to be a human. So he approached Snargle and revealed himself, to much surprise and happiness, and then revealed that HE had the key to Lady Blackbird's trunk, and that with Snargle's help distracting the Lady, would sneak into her rooms, help themselves to a few pieces of jewelry. At Snargle's suggestion, oh, of course they were just to bribe the pirates to help them find the secret of navigating the Remnants, yes, of course.

Kudos, at this point, for Snargle's player beautifully portraying Snargle's horribly obvious internal conflict between his growing but awkward friendship with Lady Blackbird, his extended family loyalty, and many other factors. He went and got "permission" from Cyrus Vance, although he was remarkably vague about what he was getting permission for, and after dinner, offered to escort Lady Blackbird to his quarters to tell her more about his homeworld. ("Naomi, when a goblin offers to take one to their quarters, that doesn't mean the same thing as when a human does, does it?" "I will be honest, my lady, I don't know." "Oh. Um. Why don't you escort me there, then?") (Also, reference an earlier scene where Snargle introduced Lady Blackbird and Naomi to fine goblin cuisine such as semicooked Cuttlefish, to both their distress).

There lead to yet another fantastic refreshment scene in which Snargle's quarters, a sneaky hidey-hole beneath the cockpit, were revealed, full of "wonderful goblin treasures", and he told them many stories about the goblin homeworld of Volcano. And then after that, Lady Blackbird and Naomi went back to their quarters, where they discovered that the Star of Flame was missing again, as well as a few other pieces this time.

What happened next will have to wait until after I get back from work, unless any of my players want to step in and complete the story, or offer any other anecdotes they remember fondly.

[greatseamonster]

As Cyrus I was pretty much just keeping to Damage Control. The star of Flame was a nice hook to introduce. I loved the Snargle characterization.

insert sky-squid scene here - with a great save by Lady Blackbird when she came up with the idea to jettison the store of Goblin cuttlefish and get the sky squid off our tail.

Cyrus ordered Kale and Snargle to follow the merchant-turned Goblin as soon as we got to Nightport, and retrieve the star of Flame as well as information... they of course were caught and needed rescue.

As I said at the table, and what keeps crossing my mind, is how easily the game could translate to a longer series of adventures/campaign. This was one of the truest "story-games" that I played all weekend and so collectively told. Perhaps more later- Cheers!

[eddi]

Dude. This was such an awesome game. There were so many awesome scenes.

Personally, I loved the banter Naomi had going with Cyrus, Kale and Snargle about their ineptitude. We started out just doing it to get in character, but then afterward they kept on missing their rolls and Naomi kept on bailing them out and it just got more and more hilarious.

Everyone got into their roles so perfectly and so quickly! Kale, the pragmatic, greedy but generally-good-guy thief; Cyrus the wry commander with his soft and subtle 'thing' for Lady Blackbird; Naomi the brutishly strong, but sincerely devoted bodyguard. And Snargle (Eric?) must have hit his 'Banter' key every five minutes. He was the essence of Snargle. I had such a fantastic time playing with you all. And thank you so much, Ben, for facilitating - I thought the Malachai = Goblin plot device was genius! I can hardly wait to play this again and hopefully many more times in the future.

[Ben Wray]

I just want to point out because I just remembered, but drunken Lady Blackbird was hilarious.

"There's a pirate, and there's a pirate..."

(For everyone else's benefit, that was at a pirates-only bar)

[greatseamonster]

Alan: Snargle. Eric: Naomi.