Burgher
- Races: Any.
- Sex: Both.
What is a sword? Paid for by debt, a creator of debt — for every man slain by it is a debt in blood, owed to his wife, his children & his clan. And a debt is not easily forgotten; men will gain vast riches from prosecuting the interests of others, for those now creditors in blood will find themselves paying handsome sums for revenge.
The Burgher is the shrewdest of their eponymous social class. Towns live & die by commerce & it is the industry & financial avenues built from chains of people that the Burgher navigates. No Lord can live without his blacksmith & to the right man, that is enormous leverage. There are Magistrates whose whims are slaves to the guildsmens’ contracts they sign. A king cannot retaliate against a merchant whose success he too depends upon. Therein is a kind of liberty. He who commands the financial horizons of his foes will come to rule them, for it is within the boundaries of commerce that men make their decisions.
Class Features
Roll once on the table per Rank obtained. If you roll a Feature you already have, you may choose a Feature from above or below it on the list that you don’t have yet.
| 2d6 | Class Feature |
|---|---|
| 2–3 | Hostile Acquisition: You can pay full $ monetary value for other peoples’ financial & commercial Debts [[debt-credit |
| 4 | Mobbing: You can perform mass [[action-persuasion |
| 5 | Commercial Gravity: If you or your Faction is destroyed or removed from a Settlement where you’ve operated for at least a month, everyone who was thoroughly dependent on your services (i.e. if there is no named competitor to what you/your Faction did) automatically suffers the effects of [[action-sabotage |
| 6 | Trade Network Whispers: If you want to know anything substantial (defeats, leadership changes, debt crises, shifts in priority) that occur to any Faction whose Capital is part of your physical trade routes (i.e. city governments) or supply chains (i.e. material suppliers), the GM must supply you a truthful answer. |
| 7 | Good Credit: Your word is money. You may make purchases, hire services, offer gifts, & issue loans totaling up to your Faction’s full monthly income ($150/Family) without paying upfront; recipients accept your promise as payment & you owe them the balance as a Debt. If you cannot cover any single outstanding note when its creditor calls it in, all of your creditors learn of the default simultaneously & you permanently lose both this Feature & 1 Rank in Burgher. |
| 8 | Carouser: If you can convince someone to spend a night committing a crime (however minor) or indulging in their favorite vice with you, they automatically become Friendly towards you. (Chaining a variety of crime & vice proposals is still a severe social offense.) |
| 9 | Honor Gifts: When you offer someone a gift, regardless of whether they accept it or not, there is an implicit understanding that they owe you for it & they gain a Debt described as an “Obligation” with a Value equal to that of the gift’s Value or other identity. If the gift is refused, you must immediately choose between calling the Debt in (as an attack on their honor & character) or forgiving it. |
| 10 | Art of Subtlety: You cannot incriminate yourself for bribery while making bribes or while commanding a Faction to a Move with that intent; your words or actions are always too slippery. You may also treat this as a +1 bonus to attempts to do so. |
| 11–12 | Guild Monopoly: If your Faction is the only active Faction providing a specific service (wheat, pottery, smithing) within a Settlement, you may declare yourself a monopoly in that service. No other Faction can develop capabilities in it & no sufficient legal side-channels can be found to fulfill those interests. This overlaps with Commercial Gravity; anyone who requires what you offer is automatically thoroughly dependent. |
Class Backgrounds
If this is your first Class at character creation, roll once & write a Fact that describe a true lesson of your choice you learned from the experience: “Because I [was (a)…], I learned [lesson].” You can play with the phrasing so long as the background & lesson are both included.
| 1d6 | I was (a)… |
|---|---|
| 1 | Salamander middleman & one of very few humans the miners would deal with |
| 2 | Snooping harpy-mail clerk, read everyone’s correspondence |
| 3 | Failed (1d6: 1–2 Magistrate / 3–4 Jester / 5–6 steward), fell back on trade, fell further |
| 4 | Disinherited second child who re-inherited by force |
| 5 | Impoverished (1d6: 1–2 ceramics / 3–4 jade / 5–6 metals) trader, desperate to get back in |
| 6 | Inheritor of a tavern, lost it, and burned it down to spite the bank |