Blades in the Dark is a game about a group of daring scoundrels building a criminal enterprise on the haunted streets of an industrial-fantasy city. There are heists, chases, escapes, dangerous bargains, bloody skirmishes, deceptions, betrayals, victories, and deaths.
The game is played to find out if the fledgling crew can thrive amidst the teeming threats of rival gangs, powerful noble families, vengeful ghosts, the Bluecoats of the City Watch, and the siren song of the scoundrels’ own vices.
The setting is the cold, foggy city of Doskvol. It’s undergoing a sorcerously powered industrial revolution and there are trains, steam-boats, printing presses, simple electrical technology, carriages, and the black smog of chimney smoke everywhere. The city is crowded with row-houses, twisting streets, and criss-crossed with hundreds of little waterways and bridges.
Doskvol is also a fantasy world, trapped in perpetual darkness and haunted by ghosts—a result of the cataclysm that shattered the sun and broke the Gates of Death a thousand years ago. The cities of the empire are each encircled by crackling lightning towers to keep out the vengeful spirits and twisted horrors of the deathlands. To power these massive barriers, the titanic metal ships of the leviathan hunters are sent out from Doskvol to extract electroplasmic blood from massive demonic terrors upon the ink-dark Void Sea.
Yes. We are playing in a haunted steam-punk city, trapped inside a wall of lightning, powered by demon blood...
