Quest Line · Original Adventure · Blades in the Dark
Score · One-shot
The crew is hired to steal a single page from the Ministry of Preservation's Ghost Registry—a comprehensive ledger documenting every spirit bound, destroyed, or contained in Doskvol. Their employer wants proof that a particular ghost was destroyed years ago, but the Ministry's vault sits beneath fifty feet of electroplasmic wards, patrolled by Spirit Wardens who answer to no one. The crew must choose between a frontal assault on one of the city's most fortified institutions or finding leverage to make the Ministry hand over the page willingly.
Players should create characters with connections to Doskvol's supernatural underworld. At least one character should have experience with ghosts, electroplasmic technology, or institutional infiltration. This adventure works best with crews specializing in Shadows, Hawkers, or Breechers.
Content warnings: Body horror related to possession, institutional violence, ghost trauma, potential betrayal.
The GM should establish the crew's relationship with the Spirit Wardens—most citizens fear them, but criminals often have complicated histories with the organization.
Choose one approach based on your crew's background:
Hook 1 - The Desperate Client: Madame Tesslyn, a wealthy widow, approaches the crew through an intermediary. Her late husband's ghost supposedly attacked a noble family years ago and was destroyed by Spirit Wardens. She's being blackmailed with threats to reveal he survived—locked in someone's private collection. She needs the registry page proving his destruction, or her family's reputation crumbles. She offers 6 Coin and a future favor.
Hook 2 - The Opportunist: The crew's fence, Rook, brings word that several parties want pages from the Ghost Registry. A Spirit Warden archivist has gone missing, and the Ministry is distracted. The narrow window makes any page from the restricted vault worth 4-8 Coin to the right buyer. Rook has a list of requested names.
Hook 3 - Personal Stakes: One crew member's contact or family member appears as a ghost, insisting they're listed in the Registry as "destroyed" when they clearly aren't. Someone falsified the records. Finding out who and why requires seeing the original page—and discovering what the Ministry is hiding.
The Ministry of Preservation occupies a fortified stone tower in Charterhall, distinguished by lightning rods crackling with captured electroplasm. Spirit Wardens in their distinctive masks patrol the perimeter while clerks in gray robes hurry between the main building and three auxiliary structures.
What the Players Learn:
The main vault sits in the basement, accessible only through the central archive hall. Six Spirit Wardens rotate guard duty daily, rotating shifts every eight hours. The archive hall contains three floors of accessible records—anything older than five years or marked "sensitive" goes to the vault below.
Gather Information (Standard) reveals:
The Complication: Players spot a competing crew—the Blackrose gang—also surveilling the Ministry. They're after registry pages too, though they won't reveal whose.
Survey (Risky) to identify all security features without being noticed by Ministry guards or rival crew members.
Based on their approach, the crew executes their plan. Present challenges appropriate to their method:
The crew finds Morlan at the Centurion Club, three drinks deep and ranting about budget cuts. Sway (Risky) can recruit him as an unwitting accomplice—he'll grant archive access if convinced they're auditors from the City Council. Consort (Standard) can befriend him over several drinks, learning the vault's access protocols involve two keys: one mechanical, one electroplasmic.
Morlan carries the mechanical key. The electroplasmic key is tattooed onto the palm of whichever Spirit Warden has vault duty—currently Warden Cassimir, a humorless veteran sleeping in the Ministry's barracks.
The crew can hide in delivery crates (Prowl, Risky) or forge credentials (Finesse, Desperate). Once inside, they navigate three floors of archives—a maze of filing cabinets and humming electroplasmic preservation chambers.
The Challenge: Finding the right page requires either knowing the vault's organization system (Study, Risky) or having time to search multiple cabinets (each 30-minute segment requires a Fortune Roll to avoid patrol encounters).
The vault door requires both keys simultaneously. Spirit Warden Cassimir patrols the basement level every twenty minutes. His electroplasmic key tattoo glows faintly blue—visible in darkness.
Warden Cassimir:
Halfway through the infiltration, the Blackrose gang makes their own attempt—loud, violent, and drawing every guard in the building. This creates chaos the crew can exploit or forces them to abandon stealth entirely.
Critical Choice: Help the Blackrose gang escape (earning potential allies but extending the score), use them as a distraction (risky but effective), or eliminate them quietly (preventing future competition but risking exposure).
The crew reaches the vault—a circular chamber lined with electroplasmic containment cylinders, each holding ghost energy suspended in crackling blue light. The Ghost Registry sits on a central pedestal: a massive ledger bound in treated leather, each page preserved in electroplasmic resin.
The Final Challenge:
Removing a single page triggers the vault's defenses unless properly deactivated. The crew needs to either:
The crew extracts the page without triggering alarms and escapes before patrols realize anything's missing. They deliver it to their employer, collect payment, and gain +1 Status with "wealthy clients" while gaining -1 Status with the Ministry (who don't yet know who to blame). The page's contents are exactly as expected—a routine ghost destruction from years ago.
The crew gets the page but discovers it's been altered—the "destroyed" ghost was actually transferred to a private collection. A Ministry clerk named Varics has been running a side business selling captured ghosts to wealthy collectors. The crew must choose: blackmail Varics for additional payment (risky but profitable), expose the conspiracy (earning allies among reformers but making powerful enemies), or simply complete the original job and stay quiet.
Alarms blare. Spirit Wardens flood the vault. The crew must fight their way out (Skirmish, Desperate) or find an alternative escape route through the electroplasmic disposal system (Prowl, Desperate—with potential exposure to dangerous ghost energy). They escape with the page but accumulate significant Heat. The Ministry launches a formal investigation, making the crew's next few scores considerably more dangerous.
Madame Tesslyn: Aging aristocrat maintaining her late husband's reputation. Motivation: Preserve family honor at any cost; willing to pay well for discretion.
Senior Archivist Morlan: Overworked bureaucrat drowning in paperwork and cheap wine. Motivation: Keep his job without working too hard; susceptible to bribes or social manipulation.
Spirit Warden Cassimir: Veteran enforcer with decades of ghost hunting experience. Motivation: Protect the Ministry's sanctity; utterly incorruptible but follows procedures rigidly.
Rook (the Fence): Information broker with connections across Doskvol's criminal underworld. Motivation: Profit from chaos; sells information to highest bidder, including the crew's enemies.
Varics the Clerk: Junior Ministry official running an illegal ghost-selling operation. Motivation: Accumulate wealth before retirement; panics under pressure and might betray anyone.
Base Payment: 4-6 Coin depending on employer and complications.
Additional Opportunities:
Experience Triggers:
Long-term Consequences:
© Quest Line · Free for personal use at your table