Given the issues below, here's the prep for tomorrow:

Introducing the system
1. Tell people how to roll in a mook fight. Explain stuff so that it's clear the numbers may change. Tell them to put in /s. Tell them about splitting dice. Tell them the defense rolls may be used for other thing (subgoals). Tell them the max die pool is 4. Tell them about setbacks (-1 die pool size, spend 3 defense dice to buy off). 
2. Repeat that factual stuff is defined by them, purely, and that there aren't mysteries or secret weak points for people in a fight, except what is declared openly and aboveboard.

Goals
1. Give everyone a nemesis fight.
2. Hit everyone's weakness (could bribe people with Karma to have their weakness kick in).
3. Have 6 fights (if I do stick to this, and each takes a half hour, that's 3 hours there).

Plot stuff
Ok, I do in fact have a lot of prep for this, relatively speaking, but it's very slanted towards magic and non-human stuff, and my feel is that the players in this session (particularly Emily, Storme, and Iain) are much more into interaction with humans in RPGs, and would rather have some chatty dinner-party type stuff.

Maybe I should have requested firm characters, but with what people have said, I am guessing the characters will be Kit Leeds (Jon), Professor Roberts (Jota), Lady Darla (Emily), Mother West Wind (Storme), and Ennis O'Malley or Shanks Wilson (Iain).

Lady Darla has a link with a Hartwood Nash the crime lord, who seems like an obvious person to have a lot of money that Ennis O'Malley might need for whatever reason. Kit Leeds might be in for a big score of money too. Meanwhile, Professor Roberts is clearly after the artifact that the vanished lady had, which might tie in with Kit Leeds' artifact also. Mother West Wind doesn't have a huge amount of motivation but Storme is a good sport about tagging along with stuff (really, everyone is, but I guess it's best to tie in as many people as possible). Shanks Wilson is a problem since the rest of this group is feeling more land-based, but I guess the answer is that we do want some ship travel where he'll be in his element, just not as much of it as there was last game.

I think these people would feel good if there is some conspiracy they can uncover, so we will say that Nash is plotting something. In fact, an obvious thing is the thing from Fistful of Dollars that I saw a few weeks ago -- Power A is selling something to Power B, and they're going to meet up somewhere and exchange gold for the thing, and the crime lord guy ambushes one of the powers, then impersonates them at the rendezvous and gets another ambush in. Then crime lord makes it look like the two groups fought, which he figures will delay the authorities long enough for him to get away with it. I seem to recall he was considering trying to make the hero a patsy for it, which also fits.

So, theory: one country is selling another country some fancy new cannons. He's going to intercept them. So we must be set in some kind of free pirate city midway between the two countries, and there's some vaguely nearby island where the countries will be docking to make the exchange. The free pirate city will need some patsy, and fast, to avoid the countries declaring war, so if he just manages to plant some evidence, it'll be easy for him to do a frame-up.

With further analysis, I think we need another group. So there are some cultists stealing some artifacts. They want Kit's artifact. There ought to be a connection between them and Nash but I can't think of one. Maybe they want to get out to the island. Maybe they've infiltrated that crew. Crazy four-way fight between cultist ship, Nash's new ship, Power B's ship, and the PCs' ship. That could be totally awesome. Maybe the cultists need to find all these artifacts to triangulate where the Secret Temple is (and it turns out to be the island).

Given that, fights
- Fighting some brutes hired by Nash when he's initially pissed at them -- down at the docks, with ropes, loading bales, piles of crates and barrels, etc. Probably a nearby tavern (The Rusty Maiden).
- Intercepting Nash's ship before it ambushes Country B and steals their gold.
- At a ball, trying to track down -- something. Maybe to "work out what the deal is". Or to work out who's buying the guns.
- Fighting some city guards coming to arrest them.
- I have no idea why a building would be burning, but a fight in it would be cool. Maybe Nash's hideout, with his ninja-like guards. 
- Fight on city rooftops
- Fight in a (art? natural history?) museum
- Fight in a tavern
- Fight on wagons and horses and stuff

Initially, Nash's men come for Darla as the others are wandering along. Then he's pissed. Then some cultists get involved somehow, via Roberts perhaps. Maybe Roberts sees the girl in a coach, drugged.

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Issues:

1. Problem: Stuff dragged in the middle (poking around on island, then cottage, then whatever).
   Solutions: Put in another fight. Discourage people from searching. Try to limit infodumps. Add some time urgency.

2. Problem: Kit was trying to fiddle around with the statuette at the end and wasn't really sure what to do.
   Solution: Make it clear that during fights there is no right answer and no real GM input, and that the majority of your input should be assertions, not questions.

3. Problem: Fights were simultaneously a) too easy for the players, b) too much hassle to run, c) too similar to each other, and d) too confusing for the players.
   Solution for a: Get the difficulty calculated better (and make it clear to the players that the difficulty may vary from fight to fight). I was using 10/1 as a standard for mook fights with five players, when in Cloak of Shadows the guy was doing 20/1 and 10/2 for the first two fights for four players, and then 20/1 for two or three players (plus a nemesis). His guys were very slightly more beefy than mine, but not enough to make a huge difference.
   Solution for b: It was in large part a hassle due to player confusion (problem 3d). It was also a problem due to not being exactly sure how much GM fact-interjection to provide. The answer to the latter appears to be "as much as is necessary to keep the action going when the environment seems to be getting samey, ideally at the end of each round".
   Solution for c: The main things that define a fight are the threat rating, the damage rating, any sub-goals that have to be met (with defense successes), and a time limit. Make it clear that these change from fight to fight, and change them. Doing a 20/1, a 10/2, and a 20/1 with nemesis fight seems like a really good idea. Note that these can even change mid-turn -- in the first fight in Cloak of Shadows, the damage goes from 1 to 2 when the ceiling starts to cave in.
   Solution for d: Player confusion seemed to be partly about when to act, partly about what effect their act would have, and partly about how the checks worked in general. So I'll need to start out with a clearer explanation of the rules, and be clear about the stuff in problem 2. When to act is probably best solved with an explicit initiative order, so people will have a little time to prepare/type their action.