GenCon Liveshow Marielda

GenCon Liveshow Marielda
Episode information
Release Date	Recorded August 3rd, 2019; published to main feed July 6th, 2022
Length	131 min
Episode guide
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Links
Episode Page	friendsatthetable.net
Transcript	Google Docs

On August 3rd, 2019, Austin, Art, Keith, Dre, and Sylvi performed a live show at Gen Con in Indianapolis, Indiana. They played a one-shot game of Blades in the Dark set in Marielda during the timeskip between "The Valentine Affair Pt. 4" and "Four Conversations", with Dre and Sylvi reprising their roles as Sige and Aubrey, and Art and Keith playing new characters.

Episode description

Here's our GenCon liveshow set in Marielda, playing Blades in the Dark!

While this game of Blades in the Dark takes place in our Marielda setting, it's totally listenable even without that background (at least, that's what some totally new fans told us at the event!). That said, I do think listening to Marielda first makes it shine even brighter. For those curious, it takes place in the time jump between "The Valentine Affair Pt. 4" and "Four Conversations," and here's how we listed it in the big list of GenCon Events:

Come watch a high stakes heist in an industrial fantasy world like no other! Friends at the Table leads you through a live Blades in the Dark game featuring new and returning players from their Marielda campaign. For new fans, get ready to learn about tea witches, lovelorn gods, and a very unpredictable train. For those in the know: Months before their climactic confrontation, Aubrey and Sige find themselves teamed up with a rival gang on a robbery like no other. Their target is a national treasure: the very first words written to page.

Also if you listen to this and love it, and want to hear even more about Art and Keith's characters, we recorded their character creation and posted that as Pusher update right here.

Contents

Opening

“

Well, it is like I said, there is a lot more to know about The Six. What they got up to that year in Marielda. Audacious schemes pursued in the bright sunlight of Samothese himself. Daring escapes across rooftops and under the moons. One time they rescued a talking dog.

That year The Six made a name for themselves, but they did not always work alone. One fateful night, they teamed up with a rowdy bunch from across town. Maybe you’ve heard of them. The Black Slacks.”

Plot

Sige and Aubrey from The Six partner up with Beau Bevel and Cupboard Salt of the Black Slacks to rob an auction boasting the first book, written by Samothese himself. The highbrow event is being held in the north Helianthus Clayhound Tracks where clockwork dogs are raced and bets are placed. The crew looks into the event further, discovering there is a secret second track underneath the main floor that is used for illegal gambling, and that the track, and auction, are run by Snitch Nightly. To get in they will need to face the Red Rank Irregular guards, and a single Hospitaller mercenary, as well as a massive vault door. There is an overnight train scheduled to run overhead at midnight, that Peg and Zaktrack can commandeer to help them escape if the party makes it to the roof. Aubrey makes a fake dog that Herringbone can possess to get them in the building, though while they do so Aubrey trips an alarm, which alerts the Red Rank Irregulars. Cup shifts into the ghost veil to distract the guards while Sige takes them out, while Beau and Aubrey make quick work of the other two with pistols and pocket sand.

The crew continues to the vault door, and finds it guarded by the Hospitaller, High Chevalier Robert-Renee DeFleur. The Black Slacks attempt to recruit him, reminding him of the importance of discussing your wages openly, but they fail to make much headway. Sige and the Hospitaller begin to fight, Cup tagging in and Aubrey having a rough time, until Beau manages to get the final shot in. Faced with the vault door, Cup is able to pick the lock with the help of Aubrey, revealing the second underground track. In the track they can see the dogs rehearsing for rigged races, and realize that each dog is carrying a book that may be their target. As they enter the room, the Hospitaller gets back up, now Unstill thanks to mysterious tattoos implied to be related to Tristero. Cup tries to recruit him to the Black Slacks again, and simply shuts the vault door when his pitch fails.

As the crew tries to catch the dogs, a hook is lowered down from the main auction, where the correct dog is meant to be lifted up with the book. Beau instead sends Herringbone up instead to stall. Enamoured with the idea, but facing very poor odds, Art accepts a Devil's Bargain that someone will arrive through the vault door, with the caveat that he gets one veto, which Austin readily agrees to. Austin suggests the Hospitaller arrives, and Art turns the veto to the live audience, who all agree to use the veto so they can see the other option. Samothes unlocks the vault door to retrieve his book. Beau tries to shoot him, and Sige remembers a conversation with Maelgwyn about how the only way to deal with Samothes would be to keep him interested and entertained, since they can’t win an actual fight. Cup tries to talk Samothes into letting them steal the book, and just taking it back later from whoever they sell it to, encouraging Samothes to just “flip through it” and give it back to them. Beau assists with foresight, with Art arguing that Beau had prepared for this by styling Cup after Samot just in case they ran into Samothes. Samothes agrees to Cup's proposal, and Cup watches him thumb through the book. Austin reveals that Samot was the one who took all of Samothes’ loose sketches and bound them into a book, with a love poem written on the back of each page. Samothes, resigned, says that he shouldn’t have this anymore, and reconfigures the last hour so that he was never there.

The crew is able to retrieve the book from the dogs, and they make their escape from the auction thanks to a (newly created) convenient staircase to the roof where they escape on the train as planned. Aubrey tries to copy the pages for her personal collection, including copying the poems for someone else. They hand the book to Cup to make a copy for the Black Slacks, who immediately turns into the ghost veil to steal the book for himself, and the episode ends as Sige chases after him.

Cast

• Austin Walker (GM)
• Art Martinez-Tebbel (Beau Bevel)
• Keith J. Carberry (Cupboard "Cup" Salt)
• Sylvia Clare (Aubrey Zosim)
• Andrew Lee Swan (Sige Coleburn)