ARCANA (40K Perpetual Quest)

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Adhoc vote count started by Npt170 on May 3, 2022 at 7:46 PM, finished with 35 posts and 35 votes.
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Results so far but with the votes merged this time
Adhoc vote count started by CedeTheBees on May 3, 2022 at 7:50 PM, finished with 37 posts and 36 votes.
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Right, vote locked, foundling archeologist wins. Congratz, SV, you get to play as grimdark Indiana Jones!
 
Heroic Skill Selection
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    • You never knew your parents. Likely Outskirts who had died trying to reach the shanty towns: there was little chance they had been the rare city-borne who left their iron homes for whatever reason, and had you been a child of the Tribes, you would have been taken in by them.

    No, it was likely you were the child of dirt, like so many orphans of the Outskirts. Of course, even so, dark whispers followed you around from the day you were born: many believed you were an ill omen, the child of cultists, or worse. Your demeanor didn't help, of course: you were a little too quick, a little too clever, something that had unnerved all those around you, who spoke of your unnatural ability to learn as a sign of your wrong-ness.

    What took others years to learn you picked up in months, and despite living in the Shanties where knowledge was scarce, you had managed to piece together a patchwork sort of education, the sort of education one gained from reading whatever books one could buy or steal, the sort of education that relied on lessons gained not from a classroom or from apprenticing under an expert, but from the brutal hard scrabble of the street.

    Of course, growing up among the Outskirts required every single bit of cunning you had: outside a small handful of people, it had been a grox eat grox world where you had to fight, lie, and steal just to make enough thrones to eat, with other individuals being not allies, but rivals whom you had to overcome to survive. You wouldn't lie: you had done many things you hadn't been proud of.

    Like every Outskirts who managed to reach adulthood, you had eventually found a racket. Most joined one of the Bosses, the informal leaders of the Shanties, those mutants, criminals, and pariahs who had managed to claw their way to a place of power. Others worked as mercenaries: the Tribes and the City-Borne might hold contempt for the Outskirts, but they'd gladly use their muscle when needed.

    You, meanwhile, managed to achieve a modest success as an artefact hawker: plenty of rich idiots loved to buy trinkets from when the Beast owned the planet or, even more valuable, pre-occupation relics, from when Tarrghus was a verdant garden world ruled by humans.

    The only trouble was finding said Artefacts, which usually required venturing to the ruins of the great Orkiums, the former strongholds of the Beast occupiers, which, coincidentally, was also where one was most likely to encounter Klans of Tarrghus, attracted to those ancient gunmetal halls and decrepit industrial caves by some ancient, antediluvian instinct, making such digs dicey. A rough solution, you had found, was hiring guards and giving them a cut of the profits, attaching yourself to an existing dig, or, when desperate, forgery.

    After all, it isn't like the Elocutor you had sold the talisman to for his Museum of Abomination would know it wasn't actually dedicated to the obscure (but very much real) minor Ork god Chogg, patron of industrial brutality (opposed by Bhogg, patron of brutal industrialism). No, he'd simply be happy to have an example of Ork work to tout as an example of greenskin barbarism in what was a glorified personal collection.

    ...Of course, as it turns out, forging artefacts can be just as perilous...

    ___________________________

    You slammed against the brick-work, breath leaving your lungs as you crumpled to the ground. "Ulysses," Hisses Sister Dragovac, as she walks over to your prone, groaning form, lifting your bruised and battered body up by the throat as she sneers. "I'm honestly surprised: I never thought you'd be dumb enough to try and cheat the sisterhood."

    You gurgled, blood dribbling from your mouth, unable to deny the allegations, in part due to the fact that you had in fact sold the Sisterhood a forged artefact, but also because you were pretty sure that, among many others, your bones were broken. Dragovax smiled, a cold, cruel thing, and you felt her hand tighten a bit. "Because of your shoddy forgery, the Sisterhood is now in the hole for ten thousand thrones." She leaned closer to you, glaring you in the eye. "And if we're in the hole, you are in the hole. So, here is how it's going to work: you are going to repay every last Throne to us. Every month you fail to do so to a sufficient degree, we take a finger."

    You gurgled a protest: ten thousand thrones? How the hell were you going to be able to pay back that much? Your digs usually only went for fifty thrones!

    "Figure it out," Dragovax said, deadpan, as she dropped you. "Word of advice, try not to run out of fingers: I'd rather not have to mark up such a pretty face any more than it has to be." With that, she walked away, striding out, leaving you in the darkened alley alone, bleeding bruised and broken to figure out your next move.

    Ten thousand thrones. You had to make good progress in a month or lose a finger.

    Distantly, under the dim light of torch and binary moon, you wondered how they had figured out it was a forgery.

    Gain Menace: Debt to the Sisterhood

    _____________________________________________

    Character Sheet

    Ulysses
    Occupation: Archaeologist
    Aptitude: 3

    Fate: 1

    Okay, so! The first two stats, Aptitude and Fate. Aptitude is tied to your occupation, and resets whenever you choose a different calling. In general, it represents how much experience you have with that occupation in general, providing a small buff to tests relating to said occupation, regardless of what skill or quality is being tested.

    Fate meanwhile represents your narrative power. There are two ways to gain it: the first, and most obvious, is doing something impressive. Suitable accomplishments will automatically grant a point of Fate. However, another way to gain fate is by completing side quests and substories: for example, if you embark on a quest to solve a missing persons case and succeed in unravelling the mystery, you'll be granted a Fate point.

    Now, in classic Warhammer, typically Fates primary uses would be to massage rolls or avoid death. Yeah, the second isn't an issue and the former is a bit of a waste considering. Instead, Fate is used at the end of every major arc for...various purposes. Suffice to say, you'll want as much Fate as possible.


    Skills:

    Social:

    Logos (Trained)
    Pathos (Trained)
    Ethos (Trained)
    Kairos (Expert)

    Combat:

    Marksmanship (Trained)
    Finesse (Trained)
    Force (Trained)
    Tactics (Expert)

    Tech:

    Jury-Rig (Trained)
    Repair (Expert)

    Trade:

    Survey (Master)
    Appraisal (Master)
    Forgery (Master)

    Lore:

    Ork Psychology (Journeyman)
    Ork Culture (Journeyman)
    Ork Physiology (Trained)
    Imperial Theology (Trained)
    Tarrghus (Journeyman)

    Skills! Skills are, as the Magician, your bread and butter, and is graded on a scale from Trained to Transcendent, though for most people, including you, their cap is smaller, with the average mortal having a cap of Heroic and you yourself having a cap of Mythic.

    The scale goes such: Trained < Journeyman < Expert < Master < Heroic, etc.

    When testing a skill, you add +5 for every relevant skill rank above trained (as well as your Aptitude rank), meaning that Survey rolls will have +18 to their rolls. Further, each rank beyond trained unlocks an additional max degree of success: meaning that Survey rolls can have four potential degrees of success. How you raise skills will be covered later.


    Spheres:

    Talent

    Spheres represent concepts you have a degree of dominion over. As the Magician you start with by default Talent. The effect of spheres (as well as the mechanics) will be handled later, but for now, think of them as being tools you can use to boost certain stunts.

    Traits:

    Perpetual:     Unknown to you, you are a perpetual who has yet to discover their status. Immunity to Death. ???

    Suspicion:     You have an unnatural origin, making people who know of it more wary of you, more likely to assume the worst. -10 to all Social Rolls when dealing with those who would know of and care about your origin.

    Arcana: Magician:     A manifestation of talent given flesh, though your path might be paved with skill, where it leads will be decided by your own choices and how you use your gifts. Halved requirement to raise all skills. Increased progress for all skill growth. Skill caps raised by two stages.

    __________________________________

    Lastly, before we get into the meat of all things, we still have one thing to decide! You get one single Heroic Skill, representing a skill you've not only mastered, but have gone beyond on, representing an absurd degree of ability with. The sort of ability that gets one into the history books. So, where do you excel most?

    [ ] Survey:     Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.

    [ ] Appraisal: The ability to gain a keen insight into how much you retrieved was actually worth. You had been swindled too many times to count to not learn better.

    [ ] Forgery: The art of making fake art. Typically, you used this to construct false artefacts in order to pad your coffers, mixing a few in among real artefacts in order to reduce the likelyhood you'd get caught.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • [X] Appraisal: The ability to gain a keen insight into how much you retrieved was actually worth. You had been swindled too many times to count to not learn better.
     
    [X] Appraisal: The ability to gain a keen insight into how much you retrieved was actually worth. You had been swindled too many times to count to not learn better.
     
    Also this'll probably be a shorter vote since I want to actually get into the actual quest.
     
    [X] Survey: Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.
     
    [x] Survey: Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.
     
    [X] Survey: Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.
     
    [X] Survey: Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.
     
    [X] Survey: Looting was such an ugly word. What you did was map out an area in order to retrieve artefacts of value in order to facilitate their sale to enterprising entrepreneurs.
     
    Imo opinion survey is better, because appraising is useless if you can't find things in the first place.
     
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