It's raining in London... again (OOC)

Unpleasant, but at least it is improving.

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You rolled a 7, so at least you don't Owe him a Debt, this confirms that you have some general knowledge of Nigel and the people he hangs with, but we knew that.

I will provide some details about The surveyors and then we might want to know:

• Where do you know Nigel from? Do you know him from before he joined The Surveyors about a year or two ago or did you have dealings with him as a Surveyor? Did you work together or did you meet him at a social gathering? Do you have any details you want to add? (I can come up with answers to these questions if you would prefer.)

Rhiannon met Nigel when he was working for the Surveyors. The demon she was hunting was actually attempting to prey on him and get a member of the Surveyors in his debt. Rhiannon ended up killing the demon and briefly Nigel owed her one. However, in Rhiannon’s very next hunt she called in the debt he owed her and he was able to provide an exacting layout of a demon lair just outside of London.

Nigel is a very thin brown haired man with brown eyes. He has a taste for fine wine and can talk for hours about baroque painters and their styles.

Nice.

Mark is also possibly unaware of Nigel and he will ask around and incur debt there to know more about the Surveyors.

You won't know any more than the general stuff most people know, the Debt on a Miss on Put a Face to a Name is the cost for turning the Miss into the equivalent of a Partial Success and "• On a hit, you know their reputation; the MC will tell you what most people know about them."

The fact that you know Nigel well enough to Owe him a Debt does mean you have some contact and a way in to get more information, of course.

Why do you Owe him a Debt? What sort of dealings did you have with him in the past? Did you know he was one of The Surveyors?

BTW, I guess we should add NPC Debts in our ledger as well, shouldn't we?

Indeed we should.

The book search is low priority, maybe the characters focus on the demon problem first and think about Nigel and The Surveyors when there is time or if they become relevant?

Where are we going? To Benji's station manager at Piccadilly [ref]? He may be able to help with both cases.

Who is going? Everyone? We can set the time to later that night, that way you can be there after the trains stop (is that at midnight?) and get access to the tracks if we need.

I think Piccadilly's station manager is the best way forward right now, and indeed we may kill two birds with one stone. :)

I will definitely go with Benji!

From what I can see online, the last trains leave at around 12:30 and they start back up again around 5:30. Probably we should go just before closing, right? If we're waiting until midnight and Rhiannon didn't want Benji's help with anything else beforehand, Benji would probably go back to the station early to sleep and try to make some money before meeting everyone else there

Do we think this triggers Persuade and NPC? There is some overlap with Hit the Streets, but that Move does not the fiction as described here, we already know he has what you want and is available.

I suppose the Persuade 'leverage' is that you are offering him a Debt? Or is there other leverage?
How should we handle this? I see two obvious ways (mechanically speaking). We can roll Persuade and deal with this if we need to (as part of the 7-9 result, for instance). This may end up being Figure Someone Out to work out what he wants, 'how you can get him to help you with camera access'.

You could also preemptively roll Figure Someone Out to find some leverage and possibly avoid the initial Debt.

I am not sure, but I don't feel too keen on having two Debts for one action, so offering a Debt as the initial leverage on Persuade might mean we need to get fancy on any 7-9 results. I can make two Debts work if we have to, but would prefer to avoid that when possible. So having something else in the back pocket before the roll would help.

Yeah sorry that was a clumsy attempt at Persuade (the leverage I was trying to offer being the promise of a favour in return (possibly in the form of a Debt)). Should I make the roll or would you prefer I do Figure Someone Out first?

If you are happy just Owing him a Debt then you can roll Persuade.

Anything that he has as a counteroffer would probably end up pretty much being a Debt anyway unless we want to derail the quest to do something for him first.

Do you have any ideas what he might want? To allow for future use of your Keep Your Friends Close Character Move we could use this to introduce a 'true hunger' for him if you want?

Great! I’ve added the persuade roll to my post
Happy to leave that up to you! I don’t have any ideas off the top of my head but I’m sure I can come up with something if you need me to

It's a 9. Does anyone think they can Lend a Hand with this Persuasion? It seems feasible that having all these fancy-looking people around might sway the station manger.

Sure, I already suggested that Jacob could be generous with them, but let me phrase that out loud and roll. :)

Perfect use of this power.

What does this look like? How do you do this? How are you 'actively letting out the darkness within, giving it control to get what you want'? What does it feel like?

Are you doing this now, while there are still commuters in the station and trains running? Your effect will be limited by having people around (the fiction of the situation affects the outcomes).

On a 10+ on Let It Out you get to choose whether you ignore the Corruption this Move brings with it or avoid the inherent cost, limitation, or instability. I don't see how this would be 'unstable', so your description of how you do this will affect if it 'costs' you or is of 'limited effect' (above and beyond the already limited effect from working in a crowd of civilians). Taking Corruption would offset this Move-inherent downside.

Waiting till after the station is empty (we can assume you guys will make a plan to be there after-hours?) would make this more effective as you will have a freer reign to work, but doing it now, as you stated in your post, would mean you could use the results to guide the slog of scrubbing through camera footage for who-knows-what 'clues'.

It is up to you. Maybe you missed that the station was still open [ref], or we can delay the camera access till after it closes —though that means that Stefano has to stay late and will want compensation.

Oracle roll to guide what Stefano wants as Leverage. [Persuade 10 due to Lend a Hand 12]. Benji and Jacob directly involved in the roll.

Let's have a curved table:

The character might want to, but the game has no mechanism to solve your problems by throwing money at them.

Someone might want money as their repayment for a Debt, but that will be enough money that you need to take action in the fiction to get it, not the sort of money you have lying around. In this case what you are asking for is a fairly minor thing —risk his job by allowing outsiders access to security footage— so the compensation would be suitably minor. If it is solved by money then it might need you to sell off some valuable stuff, for instance, so this one would not be the sort of money that demands you rob a bank to get.

But, in this case, it is not about the cost of a drone or a ticket from Sheffield, that was just an example he came up with. There is a reason there is no information about this area, no footage, no plans, no satellites! I deliberately did not define where it is so we can come up with reasons for this that might tie into further endeavours in the city. If you get a drone and a family member to pilot it you would still need to contend with whatever has prevented others from getting this information before.

Remember, though, that Stefano is just talking about something he happens to want. He is not demanding you get it. If we don't want to help him with this problem we can come up with a counter-offer he likes.
I assume so. Your sheet lists 'an upscale house'.

But that just means you don't need to worry about money most of the time. You can use it as you did with £40 for the street urchin, but that was about how you treated them and your social interactions not the actual money (which we don't track till it becomes a problem).

Is this a situation where we have to get him the photos before he’ll show us the cctv or can we just agree to help and deal with it later?