I'm normally totally on board with the idea of looking at NPCs through crosshairs. Normally, if a PC wants an NPC dead, it's going to happen no problem. But last episode, Sundown the Brainer and Mother May I the Hocus were hunting down an NPC named Baked Alaska, presumably to kill her. Sundown cornered her and began Manipulating her, and rolled a 12+. This poses some weirdness in the fiction. Sundown, who previously wanted to kill Alaska, now knows she's one of the most valuable assets it can have: a true ally, a friend who won't betray it. But that's fine, and probably not the weirdest thing a Brainer's ever done.

My issue arises in that I'm supposed to stop looking at Baked Alaska through crosshairs, but Mother May I (and by extension her cult) still wants to kill her. I figure if it comes right down to it, PC > Ally > NPC, (and she's already killed one cult member who tracked her down) but what about a whole cult of NPCs versus an Ally? She's laying low right now, but normally if Mother had her cult search the whole holding for her, they'd find her after a while, but is that still cool?

A lot of the issue here is that neither PC is acting directly--Mother is calling upon her role as the Hocus to send her followers after Baked Alaska, while Sundown is doing its creepy behind-the-scenes thing to try to manipulate people into doing what it wants. So I'm stuck adjudicating NPC vs. NPC conflict, but where one NPC is designated as special. I don't want to just say Mother can never find Baked Alaska unless she goes after her directly, since her whole thing is acting through her cult, but I also don't want to cheat Sundown out of the Ally its earned.

Any tips or ideas here?

My Hardholder is sending his gang out against an enemy holding (the Vega) at the beginning of next session. None of the PCs are actually in the attacking party, so playing it out using the battle moves won't work, so I thought this called for a custom move.

When your gang attacks the Vega, roll+Hard. On a 10+, choose 3. On a 7-9, choose 2. On a miss, choose 1:
   - Elbow is killed
   - The blockade is broken
   - Jamaica survives
   - Your gang takes only mild casualties

For context, Elbow is the Warlord of the Vega, and his gang has been blockading the PC's holding, leading to a food shortage that's about to get real nasty if they can't start trading again soon. Jamaica is the leader of the Hardholder's gang, and is part of the crack team whose goal is to take Elbow out.

So what do you think? Is this a good move? Are any of these options secretly non-choices that I missed? I'm considering folding Jamaica's survival into the "mild casualties" option, but I like that the current values give them a hard choice to make no matter what they roll, so four options seems like the sweet spot.