#duskvol

One of the core tensions in BITD is your crew's relationship with the other factions in the game.

If you draw a dodecagon (12 sides), each point can represent a faction and you can keep your crew's relationship with them clearly displayed in the same (nice) diagram.

Yes there are more than 12 factions in Duskvol but realistically your crew will not have a relationship with all of them.

They won't even have a relationship with 12, quite possibly, so it's advisable to start with a line or trianble between the crew and one or two factions they encounter first and add more as they appear.

Blades in the Dark has something very valuable that many TTRPGs lack; the ability to hop, skip, and step over time parameters quite easily.

It's perfectly common for you to roll to Survey a dock for traffic over a a month or two. Similarly, you may need someone's name... and to get it, one of your crew might spend several weeks Consorting to find it.

Maybe in the downtime after a big score, your crew spends months consolidating their hold while the thugs you transgressed make progress in their revenge.

I call this the Narrative Scale.

Classically, you may take a single Prowl to not just climb one wall, but this wall, cross the court yard quietly, and slip a foot between the servants door and its frame, to keep it from locking, and quietly step inside. That may take any number of seconds or minutes.

Let's call this the Action scale.

That 'scale' tends to zoom out more than it zooms in, in my experience.

But in some instances, it is neither months nor minutes but seconds, and fractions of a second, that we want to dwell in.

Sitting at a felted table, your character clocks the quiet click of a pistol. Your compatriot tries to flick you a card from his hip and you have to catch it, without anyone noticing. You can hear your breath catching and what you do in the next half a second will determine whether you live or die.

I like to call this the Heartbeat scale.

It's the kind of timeframe where time slows down as adrenaline aggressively pours through your veins and arteries. It's the kind of timeframe where it feels like the volume of what's happening is turned down... until you can hear your own, throbbing heartbeat.

It's the very moment that matters most.

Afterwards, maybe when the jig was up, the Head smuggler let the mask drop that they knew who you are all along, where they were never really going to let you leave. It's in that moment that you kicked the table, snapped a wrist and ran.

It's back to the action scale as you slide down bannisters, and crash over carts and tables to get out as fast as you can.

And it's back to the Narrative scale when you are back in your hideout and know that they are looking for you and it won't be too long before they find you.

Everything has its cost.

The city of Duskvol is unjust. As in our world, those with wealth hoard power, and those with power hoard wealth. The rest fight for their scraps, perhaps hoping to claw their way out of the hell of poverty, or to simply survive another day. Many toil their entire lives to give their children even the hint of a hope of a better future. Most know the game is rigged, but few do anything about it.

And you? What will you do?

Duskvol is a haunted place. Ghosts and malevolent spirits are as much a fact of life as the eels in the canals. The lightning towers keep the worst of them at bay, out in the cataclysmic wastelands beyond the city. When people find themselves alone on a shadowed street, they clutch spirit-bane charms to their chests, and whisper whatever scraps of ritual and superstition they know. Sometimes, it even works.

And of course, there are the Spirit Wardens, who contain the worst outbreaks and oversee the vigilant disposal of corpses in alchemical crucibles before they can metastasize into angry wraiths. But some slip through. Something always slips through.

The shattered sun rises dark over Duskvol, a splintered shadow blotting out the stars, its once mighty light now visible only as a dim glow that can sometimes be seen seeping out from the cracks in its face, like blood from a wound.

Its embers smoulder on the horizon at dusk and dawn, but the moon at midnight gives more light than what remains of the sun at midday. When the moon is low, or hiding her face, the people of the city rely mostly on firelight and electroplasmic bulbs, on the many lamps that light the streets and those they carry with them, and (in the darkest places) on occasional clumps of luminescent fungi. The wealthiest can even afford the use of radiant energy, which mimics sunlight, like the shining trees that allow the rice-pits of Barrowcleft to grow.