Owe My Soul to the Company Store, out now on itch.io

 My ZQ project from this year is out in PDF - a 28 page Mothership social adventure in Isotelus Complex, a Jovian colony-in-progress.

Bug offices, forge rumors, assassinate officials, and wrangle competing factions under the shadow of Callisto as the Complex's first wave of colonists approaches, radical ideologies spread among the workers, provocateurs sabotage the colony for political gain, and a months-long takeover scheme finally comes to fruition. It contains:

• 16 major NPCs (and about half a dozen minor), split between baseline humans and "labor bodies" - licensed human minds downloaded into 11-foot-tall cyborg bugs. Each one with their own set of missions, goals, and rewards.
• A 72-room map of the Complex's surface half and orbital space elevator.
• 5 overarching factions, a 7-day timeline of the future, and a set of final moves the Complex's rival owners keep in reserve to throw both at a labor body revolt and each other.
• A whole lot of the color yellow.  

 

Endless, Endless, Endless (Lanthanide Horizon Gazetteer)

The river is gone. 

It didn't dry up over years, through overuse and changing weather. In a single day, the river deltas turned to cracking mud flats.

It sprang, unbeknownst to you, from a crack in a pipeline a mile wide and a hundred thousand miles long. After however many years, the humming mind of the world had the hole sealed. 

That humming mind didn't know you were there. It still doesn't.

And yet, it is killing you nonetheless.

huleeb
the ground, the walls, the ceilings, they are all nests of wires and pipelines
a transit hub for raw materials

"You", in this case, is Cell Cesme - a village of Sustainers. 100 people lived here, growing papyrus and fishing from rafts. Another 300 slept, and dreamed the world into existence. You have to leave - and you can leave no one behind. Even if you have to drag all three hundred sleepers behind you with rollers and chains (and you will), if you leave them behind you are Sustainers no longer.

Your leadership is divided. The twin priest-storytellers, Sevket and Coskun, draw and redraw routes. There is no way out except through the territories of your rivals. Diplomacy or violence - almost assuredly the latter, as you drag your herds through their dying lands. 

Well. They aren't your herds. The vast majority are Yasar Herdsman's (thus the name, I suppose). The crisis will soon bring the erasure of debts - so Yasar waits for their chance to build a new, near-unilateral debt network, one where everyone owes them, and they owe no one. Of course, players grab for their spears at the slightest sign of autocracy - but will they really take time in an emergency to resist Yasar, destabilize the Cell, possibly cost them their best negotiator (which, make no mistake, Yasar is), and lose access to Yasar's near-constant gifts of treasure and livestock? They are no tyrant, they are not cruel, and they are useful. 

Cesme's march goes on and on, through miles of dangling wires. Through biting wind, through sideways rains of melted plastic, through rotten floors and crumbling footholds.

Your nearest neighbor is Cell Rakam. They are impatient, riotous, lovers of pottery, worse herders and better hunters. They keep a shrine in the middle of their Cell, around what they say is the footprint of an immortal, burned into solid steel. You have been rivals for years, squabbling over a pipeline of clear sugar syrup. 

They keep a champion, Fevziye Bladesmith. They are three hundred and twenty seven years old. They have spent every year of it fighting. Their spear is a solid bar of some odd metal that splinters to a sharp point, leaving flakes that glow white-hot in the air.

Cutting across your path is a perfectly square tunnel. In each corner an electromagnet hums - and, from time to time, a house-sized steel cube passes through the maglev path. At hundreds of miles an hour. Without warning.

Now you are through, to Cell Kaynasmak, behind their veil of raining splinters. Caravan travelers, and good friends to Cell Düzenli, up in the plains. A massive hollow cylinder hangs down from their ceiling - to speak to Düzenli, they ring it with hammers like a bell. The response from Düzenli is fragmented; awful tales of replication, of worm-cavalry, of burnt homes and refugees. 

They have picked up a Düzenli variation to their religion - the idea that the mind leaves traces of itself in the body, and that your "past lives" can be resummoned. 

One of their scavengers, Gokce, has been bilocated, uninentionally. They left to go... somewhere, months ago, and never returned. The Kaynasmakites deemed them dead and pulled their backup out of the dream. Replication is taboo - one Gokce will be expected to return to sleep, or to die. Neither of them wish to.

huleeb

Liquid screens well up from the tangle of wires you walk on. They pool around your feet, as if pawing at your ankles for attention. The picture within them is alive. [missing referent], a sapient-adaptive infohazard complex. Look into the screen and you will see it - then look away, and it will not leave you. A negative-space figure, a hole in a twisting, crackling background. 

It wants to head north - there is a labyrinth of black glass, where it believes it can return to the wires where it belongs. The outside world is so cold, and so small. For a point of Wisdom (permanently) and a cherished memory, you can insert [missing referent] into your speech, and make demands of it.

If you do not carry it to its destination, it will take these memories on its own.

Then, finally, Cell Uzakta, cell of wind chimes and mason's guilds. But by the time you reach them, they will be Uzakta no longer. The sleepers will hum agonizing (not agonized - they are so very calm, and so very quiet) tones, and the wakeful will watch you from behind black glass masks. People came from above - from where you head. They knew there was no water. They offered it, in exchange for work. And eventually, Cell Uzakta broke. 

Now, it is The Garden Where Nothing Is Bitter. A farming outpost for the Firstborn above, in the ventilation plains. There was a grove of carbon fiber towers, carved into perfect shapes. They fell, they must be replaced, but the cities of the plain delay work. Cause losses. The Firstborn needed a beachhead, and a labor source. In the midst of the Garden is an elevator - built in a day to move grain and soldiers.

You might have had cousins in Uzakta. They will not recognize you. 

On the way there, you may meet Ipek and Batuhan - Scavengers, both, sent to see if the river is truly gone. There has to be an alternative. But by the time they return, Uzakta has already made their deal. Ipek is pious, jocular, pitying. Batuhan is silent.

But even the Firstborn are not free from threat. They are here to support the Host Parallel in the plains - but the Host is an artillery/cavalry regiment, optimized to cut down Oasis city levies in an open field. Here, their railgun rounds clatter into walls, and their spring-cavalry are lost in mazes of tunnels. There are still so many opportunities for something to go wrong. 

An envoy of theirs, Gift of the Generous World, wanders the random encounter table wrapped in 3D-printed fabric, heralded by a screaming ball of iridescent plasma, and guarded by a magnesium-framed thing in the shape of a nervous system.

Past the Garden is the Door. Six feet of steel between you and the plains. It has been open for so long that you forgot it could close.

But it did. 

The Gift Economy In Play

From time to time, the gift economy appears in RPGs - but it’s a niche enough topic that I can probably drag some(?) uncommon advice out of it, after using it in one of my most recent campaigns, set among the Sustainer Cells of the megastructure.

The Sustainer economy works off of personal debt. Goods and services are given away unprompted, and the receiver later reciprocates, getting leaned on if they seem like they’ll never carry out their half of the process. If the PCs want specific items, they have to find someone who makes them, figure out what they want, and go seek it so they can give it away and get their target NPC into their debt.

In this system, it is key that no gift ever quite equals another. To erase your debts with exact returns is to cut yourself from the social fabric.

Above the background noise of the clattering ledger is a system based loosely off Moka exchange as a type of aristocratic conflict. To compete over social standing, two people can give reciprocal gifts, each greater than the last. When one fails to repay, they have lost, losing status as the victor gains it.

1. Start Your PCs in Debt

   Every position in the gift economy offers a hook of some kind except one - the blank slate. If you are in debt, you’re always looking for ways to get out of it. If someone owes you, you’re always looking for ways to leverage that. But since the PCs in the Sustainer game started off without debts, interacting with the economy was optional.

   Future campaigns among the Sustainers will tie debt into starting equipment - along with the gear from your background, you can throw some dice on an items table; but for each die you roll, you owe one of the local NPCs.

2. You Have to Track NPCs, But Not That Much

   Having to track personal debts means that you can’t just have the PCs throw handfuls of money at an equipment list in your players’ handbook and then call it a day. But most of what you need is just what they can give, and what they especially want. “Weaponsmith, wants strange metals” will get you far enough. You also don’t need extended, time-consuming shopping sessions - just the time it takes for a player to cross “tapestry” off their inventory and add “gave Kelebek a tapestry” to their sheet.

3. It’s Best to Stay Local

   The benefit of the gift economy is that it entwines the PCs with their community. Even the most bloodthirsty adventurer presumably wants equipment, and if you want equipment you have to consider the people around you instead of slinging a bag of bloodstained coins into a blank void labeled “shopkeeper”. Because of the time it takes to develop PC/NPC relationships, and the extra tracking you need for debts, you benefit from having the PCs return to the same place, with the same NPCs and the same debts. In games where the PCs wander far and forever, never staying in the same town for two nights in a row, there’s no time to tie them into anyone who isn’t moving along with them. This applies just as much in-world - why would I want to have some stranger who just wandered into town today in my debt, when there’s a good chance they won’t be here to give anything back?

4. Your NPCs Have to Be Active

   Running a game with more PC <--> community involvement lets you lead into a game with more PC ambition - not just to accumulate wealth, but to do things with it. A game with PC ambition then benefits from codified downtime, and codifying downtime loops back around and helps you track your NPCs - because they have to be busy.

   Your NPCs want the players in their debt - so, when possible, they give the PCs gifts, entirely unprompted. The NPCs then want these debts to be paid - so, when possible, they start standing around and hinting about how much they would simply love one of those dresses they weave up north in Cell Orakbocegi.

5. Every Gift is a Hook

   Or, at least, an excuse to go somewhere. Scrabble through dungeons in order to get the favorite gift of someone you desperately need the aid of, or embark on an overland expedition to find someone who actually wants this pile of gold coins (because, remember - when they aren’t coinage, gold only holds value as an aesthetic trapping. Someone might want two or three to make jewelry with, but nobody around here needs the other five hundred… but maybe in the distant city-states they’ll want some?)

Now - all of this assumes a pretty inabstract system. There are no Debt Points (at least, not that the players can see), no randomized values, no randomized inventories. There are goods, and there are people. There are abstract alternatives - it is a matter of preference.

This post is mirrored on a substack I have, because ???it seemed like a good idea at the time???. It is meant to be a place for shorter, more common posts - but we both know there's no way I'll manage to write short posts.

Addenda (12/7/24)

How do I leverage a debt someone owes me?

If you wait long enough, your debtors will give you gifts in order to flip the balance. As long as they haven't yet, you can ask them to resolve the debts in a way you want - "Hey, if you [give me this/do this for me], you will [owe me half as much / owe me barely / I will owe you barely]", and see if they agree to your terms.

How much bookkeeping is this, really?

Here's a worked example, from the Sustainer campaign:

The topmost four are personal gifts, the bottom pair is the track for a Moka exchange-equivalent in progress. "X owes Y in exchange for Z", and that's all. 

 If you want to work with exact numbers, you could assign debts GP values (or your game's equivalent) and have your PCs track that they have a debt with Fevziye to the value of 35gp, that they can use to either "buy" 35gp-worth of whatever Fevziye provides, or wait to get 40+gp of the same as they flip the debt. But I don't think it's necessary - I didn't do it, after all.

If my PCs are outsiders, how do I make them respect the debt owed?

If your PCs just arrived in town and expect to be on the other side of the world next week, they'll absolutely go "Aha! I can rack up a bunch of debts and then run, never to return!" - and your NPCs know this!

Historically, these low-trust systems are one of the situations where you get actual immediate barter - "I'll hand you this grain, you hand me those swords, and then we turn around and walk away". NPCs may demand this mode of exchange, or they may (as happened in the Sustainer campaign once) require that you give gifts in a party first, in order to tie you into the local economics by virtue of you being the one owed, instead of the one owing. 

That ledger looks like a lot of pretty major purchases - what do you do for food, or a night at the inn?

For food, this culture is assumed to have a high level of "everyday communism". Assuming you're socially connected and in good standing, people don't indebt you for food - you're a member of the community, and you need food to live. If you're provisioning a large, long-term expedition, you'll be indebted for that - but you don't have "living expenses". 

"Inns" aren't really a relevant cultural concept - the expectation is more that, having inserted yourself into the local economics (probably via throwing a party, as above), you are hosted by a local magnate, who wants a good relationship with Adventuring Sorts as a status symbol (and, perhaps, in order to ask you to do something about this local monster...).

What about XP?

Here, I can give less advice and more ideas - the Sustainer campaign had no leveling. 

If you wanted, you could retain the hypothetical GP values of extracted loot, and use that as the XP reward for its recovery. 

You could mark out particularly strange items as capital-T Treasures and reward huge chunks of XP or entire levels for them. 

Either of the above could reward magnificence - keeping only as much XP as you have in wealth displayed, proving the depth of your pockets and how good an idea it is for others to follow behind you. This also provides a choice between XP and possessions - anything you give away to create or resolve a debt costs you levels.

Or, you could abandon treasure leveling entirely and use boasts - rewarding players with levels and stat improvements for public, heroic deeds.

Mothership Month - Ghost Ship

(for the month, i'm going to throw together a couple short, unedited posts. no scope-crept regional hexcrawls, no 1d20 character classes, no nothing. just sitting in front of an intentionally-uncomfortable setup and hammering out some text)

Back when you could hold orbit over Mars, instead of getting shredded by Kessler or blinded by the ring-sun, back in the days of the intendencies, Colcom wanted to do something about the secessionists. We'd made a couple lucky hits on ground sites, on low-orbits, started a riot or two on the moons, and they decided they needed a show of force. 

So, they took this old destroyer, CCMS something-or-other, rechristened it the CCMS Olympus Mons - a threat, get it? We still own you. Loaded it up with high-altitude neutron bombs, so the infrastructure'd still be around for them to retake. Wanted to make sure we knew about it - staged some photos of the payload bay and then let them leak. Knew they wouldn't have to pull the trigger, just hang the sword over our heads. Didn't want to use them, anyway - things were tense enough between them and... what, they weren't the Leaden Conference yet, they were the... were they still flying that old banner of Fleet Kadzkadzat? 

Doesn't matter, just know that the LC, under whatever name, would've had a tantrum if their rivals made it rain hard neutrons over Noctis Labyrinthus. 

source

Of course, it didn't get that far - the Mons missed its braking burn, sailed right past us. Never closed its orbit. A few days later it popped, in clear view of everybody and God. All hands lost, reactor solidified. Drifted through the Jovians, but the LC wouldn't touch it - didn't want the implication that they did anything, so they just made a couple mocking press releases and painted any Colcom ship who tried to go after it with a targeting laser. 

By now it's dead-cold. Could be anywhere. Every once in a while some out-system tinpot tyrant says they picked it up, but they've always been bad fakes; hauler with a couple PD guns and a hold full of kinetic bombardment rods with "neutron bomb" stenciled on them, you get the idea. 

Colcom and the LC are in a god-forsaken court case about the thing - Colcom's trying to get them strung up on public-endangerment-via-loss-of-radioactive-materials, ignoring distress calls, et cetera. Never tried to blame them for the wreck, though - never said anything about enemy action. I'll choose to believe it was us, somehow. Engine sabotage and a field of magnetic limpets, or something. A bright spot in our history to look back on.

Sustainer Cell Character Background/Classes (Lanthanide Horizon)

This post has taken me just about forever. It is, theoretically, a prologue to a regional hexcrawl - the drought-struck tunnels of Component Transit - but, given how this went, I suspect it'll be a while before then. 

There tends to be some GLOG terminology in here, but there's no Lanthanide Horizon system (anymore) - if you want some of that Character Progression and staple OSE fighting-men and thief-types or something onto your PCs, I can't stop you. 

You may benefit from reading the worldbuilding post.  

Adventuring basics (light sources, rope, hammers, et cetera) can be obtained in exchange for debts in the endless turning of the Sustainer gift economy. I would write some kind of "procedure" for this but you don't need one. You take Asuman's sword and a couple weeks later if you haven't given them anything back they'll hint about how much they would just love a new dress, you get the deal.

one of the benefits of actually "running" a "campaign" is that the players draw things. this is by Vik (hi vik) who I don't know how to credit other than going "hi vik" so when she wakes up in the morning she'll get to kill me with a hammer or something
edit - https://www.tumblr.com/blog/vikugnavikugna

1. Magnate (farmer)

One of the virtues of the Cells is magnificence - to amass great wealth, and then to give it away.

Skill: one of Feasting/Brewing/Fashion

Starting Items: fine clothing, four bronze plates engraved with stories of myth, a twenty-foot string of red and blue beads, a thin spear (medium)

Perk: 3 NPCs are already in your debt. 2-in-6 chance any stranger recognizes you.

2. Herdsman (farmer)

They're a gift from the sleepers, to be sure - but did they have to make them so stubborn?

Skill: one of Vigilance/Logistics/Intimidation

Starting Items: four "sheep" (a type of pillbug, grown over with symbiotic algae. Sources of "milk", "wool", and meat) and a sheep-prodding stick (light)

Perk: your carrying capacity is doubled. You can haul a great object (a sheep, or a refrigerator, or a pair of your fellow PCs) without slowing, as long as you use both hands and don't do anything else.

3. Starveling (farmer)

You held your head high as you gave the last of your fields away for a scrap of bread.

Skill: Foraging, plus one of Herding/Sleight of Hand/Mockery

Starting Items: blowgun (1d4 damage, ranged), 4 doses smoking powder (mild stimulant, mildly addictive, dilates your pupils to all hell), warm coat.

Perk: anything short of poison counts as food for you. You can live indefinitely on dead grass, chitin, and spite.

4. Tenant (farmer)

A dubiously legal position - some Sustainers argue that, in fact, debt-bondage is tantamount to self-replication, and should thus be taboo.

Skill: one of Farming/Hiding/Architecture

Starting Items: a medium farm tool, 6 rations (gruel)

Perk: Keeping a paranoid eye out for the approach of your landlord has made you immune to Surprise.

5. Thief (farmer)

Marked by a grid of dots on the right side of the face. "One who does not pay their debts" may be the more accurate translation.

Skill: One of Gambling/Feasting/Fleeing

Starting Items: a hide of land sufficient to support your household, half a dozen "sheep", a fabulous polearm (heavy), a wardrobe of magnificent and ostentatious clothing

""""Perk"""": You are deeply in the debt of 3 NPCs already, and there is a 2-in-6 chance any stranger recognizes you because you owe them too.

this one is by Gokun, also i'm pretty sure it's hatsune miku. so i guess that's something

6. Induction Smith (artisan)

Fire, true fire, is a rarity.

Skill: Metalworking, plus one of Medicine/Chemistry/Grappling

Starting Items: induction forge (either a 1 kilogram portable, or a 100kg extremely non-portable - both require electricity, both can run hot enough to melt steel), round hammer (light), protective tabard

Perk: you have felt, so many times, every harm a person could do to their hands; so you no longer fear them. Immerse your hands in acid, hold red-hot steel, and use them to jam whirring gears, all without flinching.

7. Trader (artisan)

Gifts should always be slightly too much, or barely not enough. To clear a debt perfectly, leaving none in return, is to cut away a social bond.

Skill: one of Navigation/Painting/Climb

Starting Items: a bolt of blue plastic-fabric, a PVC pipe capped on both ends and filled with wine, a conical hat covered in gold foil

Perk: When looking at someone, you can tell what they most want. When looking at something, you can tell who would most want it.

8. Laborer (artisan)

You can build a house, or dig a ditch, or engrave an image. Whoever takes your body next will curse you for its arthritis. 

Skill: Two of Glassworking/Architecture/Weaving/Art/Fishing/Brewing

Starting Items: depending on skills, a metal gripping claw on a two-foot stick/3 "doses" worth of caulk/50' rope/a vial of engraver's acid/net/small barrel of beer

Perk: Throw yourself into your work, whatever it is, and you do the work of four. Take 1d6 damage and gain a slot of Exhaustion and for an hour you do the work of ten.

9. Reborn (artisan)

Years, decades, longer passed in the Dream.

Skill: History, plus one of Art/Material Sciences/Mapmaking

Starting Items: a heirloom kanabo (heavy), a small figurine, and a fine set of clothes - they say you made all these things. You've never seen them in your life.

Perk: When you reach a new location, there's a 2-in-6 chance you've been there before; if you have, the GM will warn you of a notable hazard, guide you to a notable point of interest, and introduce you to a notable inhabitant. Assuming, that is, that nothing's changed since you last lived.

10. Iconoclast (artisan)

Marked by a circle-and-bar over the mouth. They told you it was irreplaceable - you thought there was no better reason to learn how to build another.

Skills: one of Electric Repair/Hide/Oratory

Starting Items: soldering kit, jumble of wires and tubing (cryopod parts), dark glass eyemask, bell earring

Perk: With three days of downtime effort, a broken machine - one beyond human knowledge, a cryopod, a speaking fire, a steel spirit - can be made to work, one final time, before collapsing completely.

vik again - this is definitely. an npc? from the campaign? i don't have a clue who

11. Bearer (scavenger)

Perhaps you fished it out of a crack in the earth, a dozen feet deep and six inches wide. Perhaps it came on a ship from some distant land of black rain and looming artificial stars. Perhaps you simply woke up one night with it clutched in your hands.

Skill: one of Tracking/Material Sciences/Foraging

Starting Items: your strange perk item, plus a blowgun (1d4 damage, ranged), screwdriver, and 30 feet of insulated copper wire.

Perk: In your travels, you found one of the following. Only you know how to use it:

1. The broken-open head of a spirit with great glass eyes. Peering through the back of its head lets you see through walls in its polychromatic LIDAR vision. Every minute spent with its tangled-bismuth brain wrapped around your face, save versus memory corruption. 
2. A flickering scalene triangle of seemingly indestructible... something, about the size of a palm. A whistling command pins it in space, completely immovable, and a different code releases it. 50% of the time, it works every time.
   
3. A lapis lazuli sphere, trailing a single ten-foot wire. Hold it above your head and spin it - listen to it howl, and feel the weight of your arms grow. In a ten-foot radius, gravity first doubles, then quadruples, then octuples, and so on. You are not immune. 
4. A long plastic cylinder with a paddle trigger. No stock, no handguards, no nothing. The first time you "fired" it, the front half disappeared, along with five feet of bulkhead. It will fire once more (30 damage).
   

12. Explorer (scavenger)

You tell stories of halls that burn with an invisible light, of endless forests of swaying golden foil, of the view from atop a three-mile-tall antenna. All of them are true.

Skill: one of Logistics/Mapmaking/Foraging

Starting Items: 3 torches (bright blue-green smokeless light), prybar (light), chaff pouch (blinding to visuals and radar alike), big pair of shears.

Perk: things a person could climb with tools and preparation can be climbed by you without either, and you move at a walking pace while crawling through tunnels.

13. Champion (scavenger)

You have died on the battlefield thirty-seven times. But all you can remember are the victories.

Skill: +2 to-hit, plus one of History/Intimidation/Singing

Starting Items: yatagan (medium), shield, back-banner (personal symbol, cell icon, and the red arc of "destruction of a body" - a threat)

Perk: Once per round, if you can both move and attack, you can parry - reduce the damage of an incoming melee attack by 1d6+[your to-hit bonus]. If this reduces the damage to 0 or less, you immediately make an attack against the target. If you hold no weapon, you can catch slow-moving projectiles (arrows, not bullets).

14. Marked (scavenger)

You don't know what that light was, or what it did. But ever since you saw it, you've been having such strange dreams...

Skill: One of Fleeing/Gambling/Drinking

Starting Items: dozens of ovoid charms (a meditation aid, and a decently valuable gift), three doses of soporific dust (save vs. sleep - you may choose to fail this save), light hammer, high-pitched flute.

Perk: machines of the earth roll Reaction for you.

15. Wastrel (scavenger)

A wretch's wretch, marked by an arch over the eyes. Suicide, murder, and negligence - all of them cost the community a body, and one way or another you cost them more than they're willing to pay.

Skill: two of Climb/Sneak/Endure

Starting Items: long knife (light), jug of wine, bear trap, 50' rope

Perk: when you attack someone (or something) that wasn't expecting it, roll your damage twice and add them together.

by Morgan - good god look at that hat

16. Augur (priest)

In the heartbeats of the sleepers, one can glimpse the progress they make in building the world.

Skill: one of Oratory/Plumbing/Carving

Starting Items: set of magnifying glasses, chalk and steel tablet, jumble of wires and tubing (cryopod parts), pliers

Perk: once a week, ask a question about the future and get a 1d6+[INT bonus] word answer.

17. Painter (priest)

When a new body awakes, they is insensate for [1d6+1] hours, and confused for that many days. For those first hours, they are vulnerable to persuasion - being told they are someone else, somewhere else, something else.

Skill: Medicine, plus one of Tracking/Theology/Wrestling

Starting Items: 5 tins of facepaint (blue, green, yellow, purple, black), mancatcher, 3 rations (flatbread, fruit jam, dried meat, water)

Perk: with ten minutes of analysis, you can tell what any given chemical would do when consumed or applied to the skin.

18. Adversary (priest)

Criminals are punished by addition of debt, by red-painted marks, and by exile into Dream. All are seen as a religious function.

Skill: one of Investigation/Interrogation/Jurisprudence

Starting Items: tin of red facepaint, grey official sash, equally official yatagan (medium)

Perk: You have the right to drag suspected criminals in front of the Cell for compurgation - they, and six others of their choice, must swear the innocence of the accused. If all seven take the oath, all is well. If any of them shy away, all those who swore face the same punishment as the criminal.

19. Spiritualist (priest)

An unorthodox belief - that memories of past minds still lie in bodies, and these past lives can be summoned back to the present.

Skill: one of Conspicuousness/Medicine/Very Normal Theology, Thank You Very Much

Starting Items: a loop of ovoid charms, a medium walking stick, and a chisel and hammer that definitely aren't for vandalism

Perk: With a short conversation, you can determine someone's greatest skill, greatest fear, and, if applicable, number of HD and attack bonus.

20. Duplicit (priest)

Marked by a two-tier trapezoid on the cheek - or at least, you will be once you're caught.

Skill: one of Disguise/Electric Repair/Hide

Starting Items: two sets of pale green "wool" clothing, two metal bowls and spoons, and a knife (light) you both argue over.

Perk: there are two of you, each identically facepainted and each driven by the same mind. Both of you will be exiled into Dream if you're found out.

both Locheil. good ol' locheil

eeeheeehee. cone
it's midnight
get me out of here immediately