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[Iituem]

There is no Assassins' Guild in the heart of Stone, finest city in the world.  But there might yet be one, and you might find yourself at its inception.  Whatever walk of life you trod before, your journey has taken you here, to the heart of civilisation.  It has also led you to ruin.  Perhaps you were always in ruin, born into it and trudging from misery to misfortune, this latest fall simply the lowest ebb of a shallow tide.  Perhaps you had some small success, just enough to make your way in the world, but bad luck or bad decisions have taken away what little you had and left you here.  Perhaps you soared above the masses, by luck, hard work or birth, and your fall has been as brilliant and catastrophic as any meteor.  It matters not.  You are here and you have failed.

It was in this miserable state that you, or perhaps one of your acquaintances, were approached by a man named Karolides with a grim but appealing offer; one hundred gold crowns for the death of a merchant named Drozny.  Did this offer give you pause?  Did you have to go away, decide on your own?  Did you only accept the offer after three nights, drinking yourself into a stupor?  Or did you say yes, there and then?  In any case, this is not a matter to be conducted alone; strength comes in numbers.  You gather together companions; people you know with loose morals or desperate situations, or perhaps people you have only just met because they seek the completion of the same quest.  In any case, on a dark and stormy night you meet to discuss your plans...

Spoiler: Stats (click to show/hide)

Starting Stats

Health: 6/6 hitpoints  - Hitpoints are representative of bodily health.  Weapons damage hitpoints and most likely cause bleeding, which will drain further hitpoints.  At 0 hitpoints, you become unconscious.  If bleeding or other damage takes you to -6 hitpoints, you die.  Roll up a new character.

Armour Class: 7  - The base AC is 7 - you have to roll over this to hit an unarmoured, un-dodging person.  Armour improves AC, as does the Dodge skill.
Damage Soak: 0  - The base DS is 0 - if you have armour, it may add DS; every point of DS reduces incoming damage by 1.

5 Experience Points to be distributed amongst starting skills (see below).  You may also purchase further maximum hitpoints for XP on a 1-to-1 basis.  You do not have to spend all your starting points, you may reserve some for future levelling up.

1 fine possession [A well-made weapon; a steel breastplate; an up-town apartment or mid-town house; work as a shopkeep.]
1 mundane possession [An average weapon; boiled leather armour; a rented loft apartment in mid-town, a house in the outer districts; work as a day tradesman.]
1 poor possession [A simple, crude weapon; an old shield; a leather jerkin; a rented room in the outer districts; work as a day labourer.]

By default you are unemployed, and if you don't have a home you are squatting or living in a shanty in the Pile.  After all, your lack of means is one of the reasons you are taking up the ignoble art of murdering people.

Please do write a backstory for your character; how you grew up; what you did before arriving in Stone; what misfortune brought you this low.


Skills cost XP to level up, as many XP as the intended level; so going from level 0 to level 1 costs 1 XP, level 1 to level 2 costs 2 XP (or 3 XP total), level 2 to level 3 costs 3 XP (or 6 XP total) and so on.

Skills give you a flat bonus to skill checks, which are done by rolling 2d6+n, where n is the level of the skill.  As a general rule, a roll of 7 will allow one to complete a task of average difficulty for an untrained individual.

Any reasonable skill may be named as a skill for your character.  Example skills include Riding, Fighting (melee), Marksmanship, Throwing, Stealth, Athletics, Thievery, Healing, Knowledge (various types), Investigation, Notice, Streetwise, Survival, Persuasion, Intimidation and various Crafting skills.  [These examples nakedly stolen from Savage Worlds.]  Note that you may not start with magic.

There are a few speciality skills:

Fighting, Marksmanship, Throwing and similar skills add their level as a direct bonus to checks to hit with the appropriate weapon.

Dodge adds its level as a direct bonus to Armour Class, but adds no bonus to Damage Soak.

The Assassination skill adds its level as a bonus to damage dealt with weapons.  If a successful attack takes place whilst the target is unaware of the attacker, the damage bonus doubles.

Spoiler: Setting (click to show/hide)

The city of Stone is the heart of the Argent Empire, a vast and at times scattered collection of kingdoms and protectorates united by a mixture of cautious diplomacy and iron law.  Stone is the largest and most cosmopolitan of cities in the known world, where traders, labourers, citizens and slaves from all reaches of the empire and beyond can be found in a cacophonous morass.

Stone is broadly defined into five districts; the Palace District, containing the residence of the Emperor, administrative and governmental buildings and the very cream of the empire; Uptown, containing the villas of the wealthy and aristocratic and the most prestigious institutions, including the Imperial Temple; Midtown, in which can be found the great markets of Stone, many of the temples and the housing of the middle class; the Outer Districts, in which can be found the housing of the poorer classes and the many workshops of the common labourers and tradesmen; and the Pile, a shanty-town of the poorest inhabitants of Stone, crowded outside even the outer-most walls of the city, which has gained legitimacy through a mixture of size and venerability and which presents a constant fire hazard for the rest of Stone.

Stone is coastal, sitting at the centre of the Crimson Bay, so named for the high silt concentration in its shallow waters giving it a distinctly reddish appearance.  The river Morillo runs through the centre of the city, directed in a graceful semi-circle around the citadel walls that surround the Palace District (and provides a convenient moat), graced by manicured lawns in Uptown and giving way to the broad piers and river markets of Midtown, then widening through the Outer Districts (occasionally flooding said districts during high rain) until emerging at the mouth of the Crimson Bay.

Spoiler: Currency (click to show/hide)

The currency of the Argent Empire is based on a dual silver/gold standard.  The standard exchange for coinage is 20 pence to a shilling, 8 shillings to a crown.  Pennies are fingernail-sized coins made from billon (a 60:40 copper to silver alloy).  Shillings are thumb-joint sized coins of relatively pure silver.  Crowns are gold coins, about the size of one's thumbnail.  The common annotations are c/s/d, for crowns, shillings and pence respectively.

Spoiler: Weaponry (click to show/hide)

As a general rule, slashing weapons cause bleeding, piercing weapons can do exploding damage and bludgeoning weapons ignore some armour.

Bleeding:  When a slashing weapon does enough damage to cause injury (i.e. it does more damage than the armour soak value), it typically adds 1 hp of bleeding damage per round.  Bleeding can be staunched with a Heal check.

Exploding:  When piercing weapons do damage, if they score the maximum damage for their damage die, the die should be rolled again and the damage added.  If this die also rolls max damage, the die should explode again, until a die is rolled that does not do max damage.  Additionally, piercing weapons do x3 damage on a crit instead of x2.

Bludgeoning:  Bludgeoning weapons ignore a certain amount of damage soak from armour, typically 1 point for small weapons, 2 for medium and 3 for large weapons.  During a successful "backstab", the amount of soak they ignore doubles.

Small weapons tend to do 1d4 or 1d6 damage, but are usually easily concealable.

Medium weapons tend to do 1d6 or 1d8 damage and are harder to conceal.

Larger weapons may do 1d10 or 1d12 damage and cannot be concealed.  (People notice you carrying a polearm around, usually.)

[Pencil_Art]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Clof Aegal
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 7
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Healing: Level 1
- Persuasion: Level 1
- Knife User: Level 2

Inventory:
- A fine knife.
- A small place in the outer districts, home to small apothecary.
- A few home remedies for small injuries and ailments.

Backstory:
Clof grew up with his parents in a place far from the city he now finds himself in, living in a small shop with his siblings, whom he used to play with, happily gurgling as a toddler among the benches that held few cures and potions, for the family business was not going well. His parents, who had learnt the art of healing from their parents, and their parents from their parents before, had tried to keep the small shop going for their lifetimes, but it simply couldn't be done. The people from around had recently had reason to disrespect the couple and their children, as one of their town-famous cures had recently been given to a travelling merchant. The merchant had been found dead two days further along the trading path, with no visible injuries, simply looking very, very pale. Clof's parents never said anything about that, changing the topic whenever it came up, and it did so frequently, as their children questioned the lack of food.

As Clof grew up into an adolescent, he helped his father sell their wares about town. Few of the original customers would come now, and Clof's father chose now, out of all times, to teach his son the art of healing, as he had learned it from his parents long ago. Clof learnt this slowly, and remembers few of these methods now.

Soon, war came to the province to which the town belonged, and the father was taken and conscripted into the greater landowner's army, as well as some of the older siblings. Clof was still too young to be useful, but the conscriptors considered taking him nonetheless. As the death of his father and siblings was pretty much assured, with the blessings of his mother, he sold the house and took whatever he could, leaving one life behind him and moving onto the next, with a small, well-crafted knife he was given by someone he can't remember.

As he arrived in Stone, he worked hard to earn enough money to even afford the deposit for a small dwelling in the Outer Districts, which could barely be called a house. With no work and not enough money to afford food anymore, he resorted to other, less honorable measures.

[NRDL]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: Nix Johansson
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 9
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Dodge: Level 2
- Fighting ( unarmed ): Level 2
- Intimidate: Level 1

Inventory:
- A finely crafted ring
- A bottle of spirits
- work as a day labourer


Backstory: Born into a rural village, Nix grew up with no education to speak of, other than the school of hard knocks.  Having only his mother, his father having been killed in some bloody pointless war, Nix took to using his fists to earn a living.  Fighting other boys for food, the odd coin, and general respect, Nix managed to eke out a bloody childhood and adolescence.  Despite having the skills and disposition for the life of a prizefighter, Nix knew that he had no real chance of securing patronage for his talents.  After the death of his mother, Nix travelled to Stone, seeing it as an opportunity for wealth.

Obviously he didn't find that.  Unable to find any backers to financially support him, and the lack of a proper fighting climate in general, Nix took whatever job he could find, shovelling shit, dragging out dead bodies, the odd construction work.  As his bitterness and rage continued to build at the miserable nature of his circumstances, Nix decided to take his anger out, and with his hands, make blood money of a different sort.

[SOLDIER First]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name: ??
Health: 6/6
AC: 9 [+2]
DS: 2 [+2]

Skills:
- Assasination (Level 2)
- Dodge (Level 1)
- Stealth (Level 1)

Possessions:
- An expertly-made iron breastplate, protecting the wearer without slowing them down overly much.
- A small knife. The initials "C. R." are engraved just above the handle.
- A shack, nothing much to speak of, in the Pile.

Backstory: None of your concern.

[crazyabe]

Spoiler: Character Sheet! (click to show/hide)

Name:Lorans Visna Kansora
Health: 6/6 hitpoints
Armour Class: 7  - The base AC is 7 - you have to roll over this to hit an unarmoured, un-dodging person.  Armour improves AC, as does the Dodge skill.
Damage Soak: 0  - The base DS is 0 - if you have armour, it may add DS; every point of DS reduces incoming damage by 1.

0 Experience Points
[Skills]
-Appraisal(1)
-Barter(1)
-Sneaking(1)
-Lock Picking(1)
-Crude Blades(1)

[Inventory]
-work as a shopkeep.
-A house in the Outer District.
-A Homemade Glass Shank

[Backstory]
I was Born the only boy child in a Minor Noble Family from a place a good distance from The city of Stone, and For the First 14 years of my life I had everything I could Desire, Food, Weapons, Art, Then... I came to love a Young Servant Girl by the name of Lorana, my Family Overreacted somewhat when I proposed to her however, quickly Finding a Reason for her to be Executed and to Send me as far away as they could without endangering me, The place they sent me to just so happened to be The city of Stone. Some few years Later I had Found nothing More to Observe or Do for entertainment in The city of Stone So I took up Breaking and entering Other people's homes, occasionally taking things that appealed to me, But even this Soon tired to me. Thus I Turned to Murder, Killing Strangers that Left their Doors open, Or Stabbing slaves in the street. Now quite recently Murder has started to be More fun then I had first anticipated...

[piratejoe]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

Name:Verna Skiva
Health: 7/7

Armour Class: 9
Damage Soak: 1

0 Experience Points
*SKILLS*
Assassination 1
Stealth 1
Dodge 1
Lying 1
*INVENTORY*
Shop keep
Iron Knife
Leather jerkin

*Backstory* Well i was born to a wealthy merchant family far away from here and in my childhood i tended to steal all the food i could and get away with it,when i was older i was taught a few of the important rules of being a merchant,buy low sell high and such,that's around the time when my life changed,when i went on a trip to a nearby town with goods in tow bandits attacked and killed the guards and my father,they took me alive and sold me to a slave trader. After a few years of hard labor i managed to lie that one of the torches set fire to a tent on the other side of the camp,the guards bought it and i managed to run and i hid,one of the guards came close and i some how managed to sneak up behind him and snapped his neck and ran for the woods. I then wandered,surviving off the land for a while until i found a broken wagon which still had a knife and some gold in it,i then fallowed the road to this city where i spent all the gold i had in setting up a shop in order to maybe rebuild my life,at least somewhat. Then i was asked to kill someone,i needed the money so i instantly accepted.

[Iituem]

Clof, you are starving.  Literally starving; it is a struggle to make enough money even for small scraps of bread.  You have taken to scavenging to have enough to eat.  Part of the reason for this is that although the city certainly does have use for healers and apothecaries, you lack the necessary credentials for anyone to employ you.  In fact, when you tried to get work anyway men from the Apothecaries' Guild came and beat you senseless for infringing on their work.  You can barely survive selling remedies to the poor of the Pile, but they have little enough money to pay you anyway.

It was therefore sheer luck when Karolides mistook you for your father, a man who it turned out had fought with him during the Koggish war.  Karolides treated you to a hot meal and a cup of spiced wine at his townhouse in Midtown and enquired as to your health; he confessed that he had no idea what may have happened to your father after the war's conclusion, but that your father was one of the finest surgeons Karolides had ever known.  Whilst Karolides had no need of an apothecary now, he did make you a somewhat darker, alternative offer.  When you finally accepted, he suggested that you find a Master Kansora, not far from your cottage in the Outer Districts...

Spoiler: Clof Aegal (Pencil_Art) (click to show/hide)

Name: Clof Aegal
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 7 [Base 7]
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Healing: Level 1
- Persuasion: Level 1
- Knife User: Level 2

Inventory:
- A fine knife.  - This is a fine, well-balanced steel blade.  It grants a +1 bonus to attack and does 1d4 damage.  Its precise nature adds a +2 to Assassination damage during a successful backstab (but not in normal combat).
- Outer Districts Cottage [2c/month upkeep]  - A roof over your head and a place to plan, this cottage permits you to keep low and middle class company.
- Healer's Kit (5 uses) - This kit contains healing herbs, bandages and other tools necessary to foster health and stop bleeding.

Nix, to your great distress you have found that the prizefighting scene in Stone is a closed circuit.  It is not that they are not looking for new blood for the pits, but that the entry bonds are ridiculously high (fifteen crowns!), far more than you could afford without a patron, and you have no patron to speak of.  Anger and depression lead to your spending what money you have more often on alcohol than food, and you sink into a deep pit.  By the time salvation arrives, you are sleeping in a shack with eight other men, all opium addicts, who simply do not notice that you are there.

Salvation comes in the form of a mysterious man in a finely made breastplate, living in the shack across the street.  After you roundly beat five of your co-habitants when they attempt to steal your bottle of applejack, the unknown figure approaches you with a job offer...

[Note: You don't have enough XP to have 2 level 2 skills, so I have dropped your Fighting skill to 1.]

Spoiler: Nix Johansson (NRDL) (click to show/hide)

Name: Nix Johansson
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 9  [7 + 2 Dodge]
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Dodge: Level 2
- Fighting ( unarmed ): Level 1  - As a pugilist, you can do normal damage as well as subdual damage with your bare fists.  At your current level of skill, you do 1d4 damage per strike.
- Intimidate: Level 1

Inventory:
- A finely crafted ring  - This is a beautiful silver signet ring, mounted with a garnet stone bearing an intaglio carving of a horse.  It is the only heirloom your father ever left you and could be worth a fair deal of money if you ever needed to sell it.
- A bottle of spirits  - A stout bottle of applejack.  This stuff may not be refined or exquisite, but it will knock an elephant flat.
- Work as a day labourer [4s/month pay]  - You get odd jobs where you can, typically construction work.  It pays for food, so long as you are willing to sleep rough.

Who are you?  Few could say.  Fewer still could tell who you were, and that took no shortage of effort to achieve.  You arrived in Stone by moonlight, travelling on the back of a smugglers' wagon with your armour and blade, and successfully evaded any questioning by the guards as to your papers (or rather, lack thereof).  It took little effort to vacate a shack in the Pile for your use, and just like that you began your new life.  Was it a true new life, or just a continuation of your old one?  The line, perhaps to your regret, became swiftly blurred.

Three nights into your new life, you returned to your shack to find a note slid under your door, penned in a fine hand.  It appears that an acquaintance of someone you knew in your old life, a man signing himself as "Karolides", has heard of your prodigious skills and is offering you a new job.  You are to find a man by the name of Kansora and meet him at his house at the end of this week to begin planning.

The night before your meeting, the opium addicts across the street got into a fight and you watched a bare-chested young man fight off five of them at once.  The note suggested that you might need help, and this man seems capable and desperate.  You approach and make him an offer...

Spoiler: ??? (Sentient Bowtie) (click to show/hide)

Name:  Unknown
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 11  [7 + 3 armour + 1 Dodge]
Damage Soak: 3  [3 armour]

Skills:
- Assasination (Level 2)
- Dodge (Level 1)
- Stealth (Level 1)

Possessions:
- An expertly-made iron breastplate [3AC, 3DS]  - This fine breastplate, which comes with some boiled leather leggings and sleeves, is relatively unencumbering but provides excellent protection.
- A small knife.   - This is a perfectly serviceable iron knife.  It does 1d4 damage and its precise nature adds a +1 to Assassination damage during a successful backstab (but not in normal combat).  The initials "C. R." are engraved just above the handle.
- A shack in the Pile.  [1c/month upkeep]  - Nothing much to speak of, but it keeps out the rain and gives you a place to sleep.

Lorans, you have everything you could need, as far as anyone can tell.  After your indiscretion, you were sent to Stone by your family to avoid further scandal - especially given your increasing reputation back home for cruelty and petty larceny.  House Kansora quietly set you up as a clerk with a wool merchant, selling fabric in the Midtown Blue Market, with a comfortable if un-prestigious townhouse in the Outer Districts for your accomodation.  The hope, you believe, was that after a few years people back home might forget your worrying behaviour and you might be welcomed back to the estates.

Had they any idea how worrying your activities have become, no welcome would be forthcoming.  A thief and a murderer, your savagery is exceeded only by your cruelty.  One night, a knock at your door permits the arrival of Karolides, a man completely unknown to you - but as it turns out, you are quite well known to him.  Sat at your table with a pair of snifters of brandy, Karolides calmly lists your crimes with distressing accuracy and comprehensiveness.  He does not get all of them, but he certainly knows enough to have you hanged six times over.  He explains that without support you will not be able to carry out such a lifestyle for much longer.  You need allies, you need protection.  With this in mind, he makes you the offer to kill Drozny; a hundred crowns, split between yourself and your accomplices.  He has a couple of other people in mind, and he would be appreciative if you could graciously host the initial get-together at the end of this week.  His offer made, Karolides leaves.

The cheek of it!  Still, the chance to be paid for your favourite activity certainly appeals, to say nothing of the blackmail.  As for accomplices, you have had your eye on that wool-seller in the marketplace for some time...

Spoiler: Lorans Visna Kansora (crazyabe) (click to show/hide)

Name:  Lorans Visna Kansora
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 7
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Appraisal (Level 1)
- Barter (Level 1)
- Stealth (Level 1)
- Locksmithy (Level 1)
- Bladesmanship (Level 1)

Possessions:
- Work as a shopkeep. [2c/month pay]  - Your family arranged for you to work as a shop clerk for a notable textiles merchant.  You do not excel, but you do sufficiently and have sufficient money for your needs.
- A house in the Outer Districts. [2c/month upkeep]  - Your family arranged purchase of a 3-room townhouse in what might have been a fasionable part of town fifty years ago, but is now occupied by fishmongers.
- A glass shank.  - This is literally a thin piece of glass wrapped in cloth.  It does 1d4 damage.

Verna, your early life as a pampered son of the merchant nobility prepared you little for the brutality of slavery.  Nevertheless, years of back-breaking labour have toughened you, and combined with the necessities of your escape you have become rather skilled in stealth and deception.  When you finally reach Stone you can barely find anywhere to sleep, but you do remember the lessons of your childhood and are able enough to pick up a small job buying and selling wool at the marketplace.

Nevertheless, it is quite a shock when a shop clerk approaches you with his offer...

Spoiler: Verna Skiva (piratejoe) (click to show/hide)

Name: Verna Skiva
Health: 7/7  - You are a little tougher than most.
Armour Class: 9  [7 + 1 armour + 1 Dodge]
Damage Soak: 1  [1 armour]

Skills:
- Assassination (Level 1)
- Dodge (Level 1)
- Stealth (Level 1)
- Bluff (Level 1)

Possessions:
- Work as a shopkeep.  [2c/month pay]  - You run a small stall in the Blue Market of Midtown, selling wool that you buy from importers.
- An iron knife.   - This is a perfectly serviceable iron knife.  It does 1d4 damage and its precise nature adds a +1 to Assassination damage during a successful backstab (but not in normal combat).
- A leather jerkin. [1AC, 1DS]  - This is essentially a jacket of stiff leather, padded with wool.  It provides minimal protection against blows.

The five of you meet in the last evening of the week, convening at Master Kansora's house to discuss the details of your alliance...

Spoiler: A note on currency. (click to show/hide)

The currency of the Argent Empire is based on a dual silver/gold standard.  The standard exchange for coinage is 20 pence to a shilling, 8 shillings to a crown.  Pennies are fingernail-sized coins made from billon (a 60:40 copper to silver alloy).  Shillings are thumb-joint sized coins of relatively pure silver.  Crowns are gold coins, about the size of one's thumbnail.  The common annotations are c/s/d, for crowns, shillings and pence respectively.

[SOLDIER First]

A five-on-one brawl that didn't end with one man dead was something you tended to notice, even if the five were high out of their minds. They found themself almost impressed.
That Karolides had a job they were very familiar with, and they were even more familiar with the punishment for failure: Guard upon guard bearing down on them with a lust for blood. If this drunken brawler was half as good against sober opponents as they were against opium addicts, he would be a valuable asset during a contract gone awry.

The figure flips up their cloak and silently approaches Nix, stopping just out of arm's reach.
"You there."

[Salsacookies]

(Can I still join?)

[Iituem]

Feel free.  After the initial job, multiple contracts will open up so that everyone doesn't have to do the same one, mind.

[Tomasque]

Welp, I'll be joining as well. Time to dust off that old Jack Hart character of mine.
 

Spoiler: Jack Hart (click to show/hide)

Name: Jack Hart
Health: 6/6
Armour Class: 7
Damage Soak: 0

Skills:
- Lying (Lv2)
- Knife Use (Lv1)
- Acrobatics (Lv1)

Inventory:
- A fine, long knife. One edge is simple, the other is jagged.
- A well-used throwing knife of fair quality.
- A old, broken fountain pen. Innocent-looking, yet surprisingly sharp.

Backstory:
 A jester of some foreign baron, Jack was a well-trusted and much appreciated part of the baron's household. Now he is constantly moving, enjoying the game of murder and escape that started with the violent slaughter of that baron and his family. Finally, the Red Knave has set his eyes on the greatest city in the land, Stone, to be his new hunting ground. Penniless as he may be, he cares little for money - especially now that he knows he can earn it in the way he does best...

[piratejoe]

Verna looks around for a brief moment before saying in a thick accent "Let's make this quick,we get one hundred crowns for this yes? Then each of us gets twenty crowns for it to be even,sound good to you lot?"

[SOLDIER First]

((I think we're actually recruiting one another right now, and the meeting happens in the future. Lorans should talk to you as soon as CrazyAbe is online.))

[crazyabe]

"twenty each Sounds Like a good Deal to me."
((

The five of you meet in the last evening of the week, convening at Master Kansora's house to discuss the details of your alliance

))

[SOLDIER First]

((I'm assuming that would be future tense, since Iituem worded each introduction in a way that implies we're supposed to finish the interactions of each pair.))