Elena Turduck and the...

The mechanics and characters in place Jim and I started the game. We've run 4 sessions to date, which to me is a good time to look over the mechanics and see if they're providing the right play experience. (This is the problem of having a game tinkerer as a GM - I will gladly rework the car while it is in motion.)

Session one (Elena Turduck and the Lost Pearl)  was the group introduction. Everyone converged in the peaceful hamlet of Clearbrook where Elena had grown up, a town that was making preparations for her sisters wedding. Bella was there since the town had wonderful water for baking and was on the trade rout for Odessa grain - needed for her mad quest for the prefect red velvet cupcake. Nadia has lived there for months as Elena's secret security detail. Lt Adler and company are present surveying the town's unnecessarily large but convenient for running around and fighting ins ewer system. And Katya was hired by the Dread Bandit Sorin in advance of his raid. Raid happened, adventure ensued. Nadia got to be seducy and sneaky and dangerously ambushy. Alton and company got to duel with Sorin's men, racethrough the sewers and lead a town milita rad on a military encampment. Katya got to free the captive bride and groom and act generally creepy. Elena and Bella got to act crazy and repurpose Bella's insane kitchen equipment into a bread launching steam calliope. In the end Alton mopped up the bandits while everyone else fled to Bevelsburg

Session two (Elena Turduck and the Night in the Storm) was the first GM swap where we went from silly action to outright farce. The fleeing heiress and her company ended up in the house of my PC, Jahn Pava, to escape a nasty storm. Also arriving over the course of the evening were, functionally, the cast of an entire Marx Brothers movie. There were agents of three different intelligence services between the PCs and the cast of crazies, along with opportunistic thieves and cunning con men. A grand glorious farce. In the end Jahn handed the women a carriage and money to help them set up in Bevelburg with a promise to follow.

Session Three (Elena Turduck in the City of Gears) has our ladies of action in Bevelburg where they trade a rebuilt (and subtly(!) improved with flashing hypnotic lights and customer attracting sirens) bread hearth for information, hit one of Nadia's caches for supplies and borrow Jahn's apartment for a place to stay. They then try to hammer etiquette and decorum into Elena so she can be a princess while Elena hits the local library to find out what really happened in the rebellion 16 years ago. Anton, meanwhile, is in town having been told his company is chasing Sorin, but actually to try to locate our ladies, who are now persons of interest to the Junta. And Sorin is in town, and looking for payback on the Clockwork Girl who betrayed him, Dates are interrupted, dancing lessons held and explosive fights occur on the city's cablecar network as our ladies are eventually forced to flee the secret police and Anton continues his hunt for Sorin.

Session Four: (I'm afraid I don't recall the title): Our ladies have hidden out in one of the caravans back and forth to Odessa, passing through Turduckenstan via Bella's ingredient trading network. Jahn has learned that the Junta has identified Elena and rushes to warn her. The group eventually finds each other and books passage on a dubious vessel run by a scruffy nerf-herder and his hulking, furry first mate who are finishing one job and looking for the next. Said vessel turns out to be a large submarine captured from a mad Spark, but it will get them through the Bosphorus unnoticed. Or it would have if the last job wasn't dropping off smuggled energy weapons to Sorin. The ensuing dockside battle blows up all the energy weapons, all of Bella and Elena's newly purchased scientific supplies and forces immediate flight into the Mediterranean towards Paris.