The voice was equal parts insistent and desperate. It’s nearby; keep searching, it intoned. We’ve been at this for weeks, Jacob responded, but he knew it wasn’t worth arguing with his unwelcome passenger. We’ll continue looking in the morning, he relented. He always relented.
***
Perdita pushed hard against the door, not caring if it slammed open, half hoping it would. Justice sat implacably behind her desk, paperwork stacked around her. Perdita wondered what use a blind woman had for paperwork, but the thought passed quickly; the Guild ran on paper. “Tell me about Settlement 83”, she launched in, no niceties. Justice raised her head, no readable expression. “We responded to reports of undead in the area, but found none. There was a scuffle with a man in a suit leading shimmering followers”, she responded.
“Did you destroy them?”
“No, but we drove them off. We didn’t stick around to see if they returned. Not our remit.”
“Great. Looks like I’ll have to go and finish what you failed to!”
Perdita turned on her heal and exited. Francisco had waited outside, knowing better than to be in a room with such Guild luminaries. “I’ll have everyone ready to ride out by noon”, he said as they marched down the hall. Perdita simply nodded in response.
Hungering Darkness has Lynch searching near the Northern Hills for a miniature breach. The search has been fruitless, but Darkness is convinced. Their efforts have not gone unnoticed, with Lady Justice tackling them a few weeks ago, and now Perdita Ortega is en route.
Gavin came over last Sunday and we decided to continue a small narrative campaign for Malifaux. This time he deliberated used a Jacob Lynch-led crew in this 35SS game. I decided to use Perdita, as I wrote Lady J out of the last episode: when it turned out Jacob wasn’t some reincarnation of Nicodem, she reckoned there were more pressing matters to attend to in Malifaux. This time we decided to layer in Schemes into the game, but stuck with 35SS.
For my crew, I went with Perdita, Enslaved Nephilim, Francisco, Santiago, Papa Loco and a couple of Pistoleros. I was treating the game as an opportunity to figure out how the Family work. With Bravado and ¡A Por ÉL! they’ve some very interesting movement and out of activation shenanigans.
My priority was to kill Jacob, partially because I’d chosen Assassinate as a scheme, but mainly because he and Huggy are the lynchpins (yes, pun intended) for that crew. Perdita went straight for him, having to concentrate to mitigate the impact of Brilliance. The out of activation concentrations on other models proved very useful to stack it to mitigate the negative flips induced.
My plan succeeded, but Perdita was taken out, Sidir finishing her off and taking out Santiago on that leftflank. I still had Francisco over there, so with a bit of cagey play I was still able to focus on the strategy and on Breakthrough.
On the right flank Papa Loco and Hungering Darkness mixed things up, while a Pistolero locked scored strategy points for me.
I managed a 7:4 win in what was a very tense game. Malifaux continues to deliver an interesting experience. We’re going to bring play back to Malifaux for our next game, with Perdita chasing down Jacob as he abandons his search in the Northern Hills.
Hungering Darkness carried him forward. Lynch was drained, physically and in essence. Each step was an effort, an effort driven by his passenger. The few remaining followers from this expedition were being sacrificed to slow his pursuers. He’d be lucky to survive the journey back to Malifaux. Thankfully, the deck was often stacked in his favour.
Until next time,
Owen