#Faction Development

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dark turret
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I have a set of factions whose special skills/spells/abilities/whatever I need to develop. I'll see if I can capture enough detail here to get meaningful feedback without being to verbose. I have the basic structure of each faction down (ranks, primarily), but just need to say what the benefit of applying for that rank is. Ranks are available generally by holding the previous rank and gaining enough renown to hold the rank.

  1. Boz Koom: Usually operate as deathmongers (people who assist the dying in passing over) or proprietors of astral dens, wherein they provide psychoactive substances to let people astral travel for a time. They are ideologically opposed to undead and believe consciousness to be a curse in need of a cure (voluntarily sought). Rank 1 can create a shelf stable goodberry; Rank 2 can bind the dead to the grave. I need to work out three more ranks.

  2. Cutties: The swords for hire of the underworld factions. Run of the mill mercs, really, but they hire to anyone who can pay.

  3. Deacons: Preservers of peace and order in the underworld. They're often associated with churches and help the poor, seek justice, etc.

  4. Hundun: Wild people of the undertunnels. They lay claim to the tunnels as their ancestral home and believe it has been colonized. Know the ways of the undertunnels and can navigate them better than the average city-dweller.

  5. Qarash Syndicate: Part mercenary outfit, part intelligence organization, part smuggling operation, all outsider-funded. Serves as a foil to the other factions.

  6. Speidere: Quintessential information brokers, THE spy network of the underworld. They are nobody's friends, ever, but that means you can trust them in specific ways.

  7. Stringers: Smugglers, usually of alchemical components, magical reagents, and drugs. Also builders and tinkers and potion makers.

Each has 5 ranks. The ranks should confer increasingly useful things...

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I'm thinking I should focus on the first two ranks of each faction first.

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Since my party is unlikely to gain enough renown with any faction in the short term to gain that kind of rank.

median kayak
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Establishing niches for each faction makes sense. Enough to know what their rough design spaces are and to avoid stepping on toes

dark turret
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Yes too many overlapping factions is bad. They should generally sort of want something that another faction also wants but can't share, but not always to the level of warring against another faction in order to attain it.

visual comet
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You have the first two ranks for Boz Koom figured out already, right?

dark turret
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Yes

visual comet
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Are you working on them down the line in order you presented? Doing two factions ranks for each one? So Cutties are next?

fossil lotus
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For the Speidere, I like the ability to have a familiar or something of the sorts, that can act as a set of ears and listens in to stuff around it to record for more info brokering

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Not sure where it'd fit

dark turret
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The first two rank names for the remaining factions are

Cutties: Private; Sergeant
Deacons: Layman; Penitent
Hundun: Wayseeker; Wayfinder
Qarash Syndicate: Hand; Arm
Speidere: Analyst; Agent
Stringers: Runner; Corner

fossil lotus
dark turret
dark turret
fossil lotus
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Maybe Rank 2 (Agent) gives you some weird mashed version of those two and it can record them for more accurate and valuable information to sell

dark turret
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There's a concept in this world of literally pickling memories...

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Offloading thoughts into a specific container sounds appropriate

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By offloading them, you can't remember them, so can't be compelled to give them up

fossil lotus
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Yeah, you can Encode/Detect into a given container and it preserves them as long as the container stays whole or whatever

median kayak
dark turret
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Which happened

fossil lotus
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Are you wanting strictly mechanical benefits, or are RP benefits okay as well?

dark turret
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RP benefits are good too

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Nothing has to have a strictly mechanical benefit

median kayak
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So first rank is an audio-book.
Second rank is like a movie that you can use to identify people for scrying purposes and stuff?

fossil lotus
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So for the Stringers Runner rank, I like the ability of either reduced bribes or knowing a bit of blackmail against the occasional official. Like, nothing career ending, but just enough to sorta get out of a minor bind

median kayak
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Perhaps the container is like a mechanical familiar of some kind that's essentially a fantasy quadrocopter that you can use as surveillance in addition to encoding thoughts and memories in it?

dark turret
median kayak
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So you get a scout out of it at higher ranks in addition to the information encoding and communication?

fossil lotus
# dark turret Minor Kompromat?

Uh, like it's enough of a blackmail to get you out of a minor theft/smuggle/evasion charge or something, but not from a murder charge

dark turret
fossil lotus
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Ooo! Even better! Intersystem play!

dark turret
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thematically it can be "I know some dirt" but mechanically it's just a boon to your roll

fossil lotus
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Yeah, I'm thinking it's something like, you get stopped for a random shakedown, and they find some minor contraband, maybe some illicit drug or something. But you just sorta look at the guy and say "It'd be a shame if your husband found out about where you were last night" or something

dark turret
visual comet
# dark turret Queue PC: I eat the memory pickles

If that's part of the Speidere lore... I wonder if slipping memory pickles (or pickle juice) into someone's food/drink could temporarily make them identify with the original memory holder's personality/motivations? Like a special poison accessible only to members of X rank within the Speideres

fossil lotus
median kayak
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You can forcefully make memory pickles from other people's memories

fossil lotus
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Sweeeet hook potential

median kayak
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then eat them to impersonate them

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because you take on their mannerisms

dark turret
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Hah, weaponized doppelganging

median kayak
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Parsing memory pickle memories for specific instances is super tough though. Memories aren't stored like that in untrained people so recalling them on demand is very tough

fossil lotus
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I still can't help but giggle a little at "memory pickle memories"

dark turret
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It does sound silly 😄

median kayak
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the masters of the order can and have eaten memory pickles and then interrogated themselves for answers to questions they needed information about. But doing so is highly taxing

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Also there's a risk of the memory pickle information surplanting our own memories if you're careless

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getting pickled is not a fate you'd wish upon your worst enemy

dark turret
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Oh gods now there are at least two factions that can create amnesiacs through negligence.

fossil lotus
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"Pickle this man"

dark turret
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Or malice

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This is all good stuff.

visual comet
dark turret
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Oh, there are none. The tunnels are the sanitariums. skeletor

visual comet
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For the Cutties (swords for hire) – which on the surface seem the most mundane of your factions – I think you might use them as a point of contrast to this reason/memory wiping theme in the idea of mercenaries being contract obsessed. "A mercenary never forgets" kinda thing.

edit: I don't know if the titaness Mnemosyne is part of your setting, but a mythic character name like that which is associated with memory might be interesting to crop up in these faction writeups, possibly inspiring a faction rank's Special Ability name.

dark turret
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Well, look, I called the balm created by Boz Koom members "the balm of cancamum", which is one potential source of derivation of "Balm of Gilead". I have ample room for such names.

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Okay, so Speidere is all about gathering and aggressively preserving information. The Analyst can encode/decode memories, which are stored in specific vessels. If the vessels are broken, the memories are potentially lost. The Agent can do what? Find lost memories, maybe?

visual comet
dark turret
visual comet
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The other route you can go - since you have 5 ranks to play with - is the Agent's training prioritizing counter-interrogation/intelligence, so they're all about not losing the memories or secret knowledge they have to potential enemies.

dark turret
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Okay, real quick, back to the Stringers. Maybe the Kompromat thing should scale with proficiency bonus, since I'm using that elsewhere.

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You could use it to combat notoriety, even.

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"Yeah, sure, you want me dead, but if I disappear, this thing I know about you becomes public knowledge."

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Or maybe the Runners are just good at collecting such Kompromat and it's the Corners that can start making use of it.

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(I have to keep my own factions straight)

dark turret
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Each Runner learns to watch for some additional insight into the potential dirt of various undercitizens. By spending one hour observing a target location, you can gain one piece of mildly compromising information you can use against a target who was at that location. The piece of information will gain you a bonus to your reaction roll with the target equal to your proficiency bonus. Using this information loses you one point of renown or gains you one point of notoriety with the faction to which the target belongs. Being spotted gathering this information has the same effect, which stacks.

fossil lotus
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I like that, it's good and can have downsides

dark turret
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I should make it so that turning that info over to someone else in the Stringers (say, a Corner) gains you renown, but I need sensible limits on both the amount of info you can gather and the frequency you can turn it in.

median kayak
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The deacons are all about coordination and conformism and they practice this through dance and rhythm? nothink

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i dunno i'm trying to go strange.

But like their symbol could be some kind of symbal or drum and you got a fighting style associated with moving in concert and harmy with the world around you?

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Forget yourself. Become an instrument that exectues the divine melody?

dark turret
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Each Analyst receives and learns to use a device called a Vessel of Mnemosyne. The vessel is big enough to hold a small glass jar (5 SP), into which thoughts and memories can be encoded. The vessel can be used a number of times per day equal to your proficiency bonus.

  • When used on yourself, you can offload your own thoughts or memories in a way that only you can decode, and if you choose, you lose access to the thoughts or memories in the interim. This protects things you know from being interrogated out of you by force or magic, provided you hide the jar.
  • When used on another living creature (Wisdom saving throw applies for the unwilling), you can choose whether the thoughts or memories remain intact in the target.
  • When used on a creature that died within the last 24 hours, you can gather jumbled fragments of the creature’s memories.

You can decode only your own thoughts and memories. Decoding this way empties the jar. A filled jar appears to contain a smoky substance.

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I think it won't be until at least Rank 3 before the Speidere member can shield against this kind of thing..

dark turret
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Update: Vessel of Mnemosyne has been replaced by Mnemosyne Katagraph

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I seriously considered Kamagraph, which is the result of a destructive transfer process for certain kinds of paintings.

dark turret
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Related: I'm gonna want some deep faction secrets, the stuff that's central to each order. For Speidere, I realize now that they're basically distributing and weaponizing aspects of Gene Wolfe's alzabo, a creature that absorbs entire personalities, memories and all, by eating their victims. So their deep dark secret is maybe the leader of the faction is such a creature, and it requires its agents to go and fetch fresh thoughts and memories for it, promising a sort of eternal life to its truest believers (the inner circle of leadership)?

dark turret
median kayak
dark turret
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I better add Bard as one of the suggested classes ...

fossil lotus
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You could also add Monk to that, that screams conformism to me

dark turret
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Okay, so what are some music/harmony related abilities or spells?

median kayak
# dark turret Okay, so what are some music/harmony related abilities or spells?

Just throwing out some brain storming

lockstep
A trained deacon feels the rhythm of those in close proximity quite well. They can use their reaction to move alongside someone else in combat as long as they're in range.

set the pace
A deacon is proficient at leading the masses as one by adjusting their body language to be easily recognizeable
If attempting a group check, all participants may add half the deacon's proficiency bonus if they are not proficient themselves.

play the hearstrings
Deacons of high rank can project their emotions onto other people. Potentially calming or agitating entire crowds depending on what is required for harmony.

become the melody
execute divine providence. Disappear from consciousness and become an instrument of higher powers (some kind of avatar transformation?)

ensemble cast
cast a cantrip as a reaction to someone else doing something deacon related. Or maybe grant advantage/disadvantage on saving throws associated with spells as long as two people cast the same spell?

Breathe the interval
Now is the space between the notes. do nothing and get benefits later.

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Now that i'm looking at these suggestions i'm seeing a theme that these guys are feeling and body. Not voice and thought

dark turret
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Vibe Paladins

median kayak
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Perhaps the highest ranking deacon is mute? He doesn't need to speak. People simply understand

dark turret
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hah you know somewhere in the depths of the early documentation for this setting, I had an order of silent monks, whose entire thing was to dull sensation, remove external (5) senses, etc., in order to get closer to what they thought was the source of power in the world

median kayak
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Funny how things circle around like that

visual comet
dark turret
visual comet
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Where are you at with the faction development? Still working on the first two ranks' worth of faction perks/powers?

dark turret
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Yes

dark turret
visual comet
dark turret
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I think I also need to clarify what a 20% share is. It’s not “you get 20% of this contract”, it’s “five privates count as one person and split a share”

visual comet
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Cutties, rank 1 (private) = Sword Tell
By handling a weapon for a minute, or by engaging in battle with someone wielding that weapon, in addition to the general state and style of the weapon, you can learn one of the following facts about the weapon of your choice:
• Whose maker's mark is upon the weapon and where might you find them?
• Has this weapon ever been raised against one of the Cutties? Or wielded by another of the Cutties?
• Was this weapon wielded in a historically significant battle or war?
• Is this weapon enchanted? What is the general nature of the enchantment?
• Does this weapon have a special property not immediately noticeable to the naked eye? What is it?

dark turret
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Ooh, a narrowly targeted detect magic?

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/ identify?

visual comet
dark turret
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I like it.

visual comet
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And riffing on the Apocalypse World style questions, so you could have it be pick 2, or a check determining how many you get to learn

dark turret
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I like that there is a mix of procedures developing for each faction, and they are feeling very different from one another.

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Okay I can work with Sword Tell

visual comet
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actually... i have something for sergeant or one of the later ranks too... it's from my own homebrew of the fighter... lemme dig it up

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Campaigning
At 7th level, you can appraise military units, encampments, and fortifications. This requires anywhere from 1 minute to 1 hour of observation or interaction, as determined by your DM. You can determine at least one of these details of your choice:
• Name of the unit and its history.
• Name of the commanding officer and his or her reputation.
• Number of soldiers and siege equipment.
• Morale of the unit or camp.
• Overall weather and terrain readiness.
• Presence of elite fighting forces.
• Status of any supply lines/caravans.

dark turret
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Hmm, I can probably adapt some of this

dark turret
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Ahahaha I'm giving my first rank Deacons an armored skullcap that can, once per day, turn a critical hit into a normal hit. It reflects the fact that to seek out truth and justice in the undercity is a fundamentally hard-headed act.