... a city on a plate on a mountaintop. The city's governors must maintain balance in all things lest it tip and slide down the mountainside. Sensitive to all forms of unbalance, their building laws are a tangled mess, each brick must be examined and weighed, it's manufacture and origin listed. Ethnic diversity is mandatory, a ghetto could doom the entire city. The government takes it upon itself to form and sponsor metaphysically opposing religious groups. For every fire god there will be a sea lord.
... a city of chains, hanging from a distant source. The buildings are chains, the roads are chains, the doors and windows are chains. Everyone feels the draft, privacy is bought with thick hedges of chains. The dispossessed live up the foundational chains, in the huge arches of their links. The further from the goodly citizens of the base the better.
... diffused. A great forest, scattered buildings, unmapped and reliant on local knowledge and word of mouth to traverse. Directions are sought from old men in doorways who instruct you on changing bird song and leaf shape, to follow the sound of water. Sections come and go, swallowed by nature.
... a dungeon. Gigantic, sprawling and dangerous. The city occupies a certain area, but that certain area shifts like a great slug in response to changing environment. As the east becomes dangerous it organically sprawls west, chambers are vacated and occupied, land is ceded to random encounters.
... in the world giant's eye. From their perspective the city covers the walls of an enormous bowl, able to look out past the rim at the activities of the world giant, progenitor of fire and life and many other important things. This vantage point has made Troika a seat of farseers who spend their days watching the unfathomable sights of the world giant trying to divine the past and future from what they see.
... at the end of time. Its edges crumble into stark nothing. A slice of an ancient city populated by the people of the past who use this unique position to double back on themselves through its many doors.
... the eternal city. It changes with the age but is always a city of doors and crossroads, philosophers, doomed to fail.
... the philosopher city. A mecca for thinkers, who flock to it in hope of the chance to demonstrate their ideas. Every corner has a creature on a box shouting its theories, every back room is occupied by a master and his pupils, the government are the most lauded masters competing for a term of philosophic hegemony.
... the city of the universal congress. The mysterious governors pass down obscure edicts, to collect one of every book, to kill all starlings, to not look East for three days, to not step on the cracks. To live in Troika is to live every day like an eccentric parlour game or ritual. Despite their apparent lunacy, the city is prosperous and safe, its edicts effecting beneficial change in the most sideways manner.
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Showing posts sorted by relevance for query troika city. Sort by date Show all posts
The Gibbous Sky
Troika, the City in the Middle of the Road, the Recursive City, the Metrosphere, Tanelorn, the Very Built, The On&On, and on and on and on.
The walls of Troika do exist, contrary to what you would expect of an endless city. There is a square, and in that square is a circle made of stone with a gate in it. The gate is always open, and inside the circle wall people deposit rubbish and other unwanted things. Most visitors to Troika do not come by the gate but some do, carefully clambering over the heaving detritus.
The city gate is not the centre of the city, and you would be considered stupid to suggest it.
Some days the circle wall is bigger or smaller. Its contractions are welcomed since they clear out much of the accumulated rubbish.
If you travel far enough in one direction you will return to where you started. If you fly up high enough you will eventually start to fall.
The Bucket Fellows are the law and enforce the few rules agreed upon by the Universal Council.
The covered market is famous for its fires and is independently recursive. Tourists are stuck until someone takes pity on them and tells them how to leave. Pity is gained by spending money on unbelievable bargains.
Some parks are so large and wild that foreigners think they have escaped the city, only to be disappointed when they come out the other side some days later. However some of them really do make it.
Two of the city's most prestigious halls of sorcery occupy the exact same space. Which building currently manifests in three dimensional reality depends on the prestige it is held in. The most respected takes precedence, requiring students and faculty of the other to slip sideways to get to classes.
There was once a third school to share that spot, but it slipped so far that people stopped thinking about it entirely. Stepping sideways can't reach it. Indeed, even a seasoned wizard taking a full step backwards won't pierce its fog of mediocrity.
The School of Architecture is another centre for katarology and general wizardry. They learn how to create scrolls, over months or years, to summon new structures into existence. After their arrival people will swear blind that they were there all along, and that they had been living there for generations. The architects do not disagree. Certain other schools accuse them of quackery, who are in turn accused of professional jealousy.
Councillors are elected by the people. Election intervals are determined by the obscure tides of ennui that sweep across neighbourhoods sporadically. The nominations are inflicted rather than asked for, and the favourite recipients are those new to the city and ignorant of its ways, as they seem them as having the purest perspective on governance. Also the typical fear and unwillingness found in foreigners is considered to be a desirable trait in politicians. Any that end up being genuinely unfit for the job are organically ejected by disinterest.
The walls of Troika do exist, contrary to what you would expect of an endless city. There is a square, and in that square is a circle made of stone with a gate in it. The gate is always open, and inside the circle wall people deposit rubbish and other unwanted things. Most visitors to Troika do not come by the gate but some do, carefully clambering over the heaving detritus.
The city gate is not the centre of the city, and you would be considered stupid to suggest it.
Some days the circle wall is bigger or smaller. Its contractions are welcomed since they clear out much of the accumulated rubbish.
If you travel far enough in one direction you will return to where you started. If you fly up high enough you will eventually start to fall.
The Bucket Fellows are the law and enforce the few rules agreed upon by the Universal Council.
The covered market is famous for its fires and is independently recursive. Tourists are stuck until someone takes pity on them and tells them how to leave. Pity is gained by spending money on unbelievable bargains.
Some parks are so large and wild that foreigners think they have escaped the city, only to be disappointed when they come out the other side some days later. However some of them really do make it.
Two of the city's most prestigious halls of sorcery occupy the exact same space. Which building currently manifests in three dimensional reality depends on the prestige it is held in. The most respected takes precedence, requiring students and faculty of the other to slip sideways to get to classes.
There was once a third school to share that spot, but it slipped so far that people stopped thinking about it entirely. Stepping sideways can't reach it. Indeed, even a seasoned wizard taking a full step backwards won't pierce its fog of mediocrity.
The School of Architecture is another centre for katarology and general wizardry. They learn how to create scrolls, over months or years, to summon new structures into existence. After their arrival people will swear blind that they were there all along, and that they had been living there for generations. The architects do not disagree. Certain other schools accuse them of quackery, who are in turn accused of professional jealousy.
Councillors are elected by the people. Election intervals are determined by the obscure tides of ennui that sweep across neighbourhoods sporadically. The nominations are inflicted rather than asked for, and the favourite recipients are those new to the city and ignorant of its ways, as they seem them as having the purest perspective on governance. Also the typical fear and unwillingness found in foreigners is considered to be a desirable trait in politicians. Any that end up being genuinely unfit for the job are organically ejected by disinterest.
The Toxicity of this City
Troika, city at the middle of everything, has an unparalleled selection of intoxicants. The lucky Knights of the Road who pass through have their choice of poison from any of the million spheres, from Elysian Mead to Abyssal Leech Blood, they have it all.
(Price in pennies and bits (p/b))-(Name)-(Toxicity)
24p - Billberry Potion - Toxicity 4
50p - Razorwine - Toxicity 5
48p - Infusion of Luck - Toxicity 6
22p - Tincture of Clarity - Toxicity 1
1/2 - Elysian Mead - Toxicity 3
-/1 - Shade Wine - Toxicity 5
1/3 - Leech Blood - Toxicity 7 (3 for Tieflings)
18p - Hazrad Smoke - Toxicity 3
134/3 - Soul Tea - Toxicity 2
2p - Scap - Toxicity 8
Toxicity Table
- Use of potions causes toxicity
- Each potion creates a certain amount of toxicity in the body.
- An individuals resistance to toxicity is equal to their max Stamina.
- When toxicity passes your maximum tolerance (and every subsequent time it is increased, there is no limit) you must roll on the toxicity table.
- Potions, tinctures, pills, powders, etc. etc. all take one turn to take.
- Unless otherwise noted all effects stack.
- Reduce toxicity every time you heal Stamina from any source that doesn't increase toxicity.
(Price in pennies and bits (p/b))-(Name)-(Toxicity)
24p - Billberry Potion - Toxicity 4
Tasty, invigorating, jelly-like substance made of certain berries forced through particular processes. Viscous and slow to pour, it's almost entirely unsuited for emergencies but more than makes up for it in effect. A full dose of this will restore 6 Stamina.
50p - Razorwine - Toxicity 5
The sharp and bitter juices of the razorvine, only found in Troika, refreshes and invigorates the imbiber. A popular drink for wealthy students of the Universities. Restores 1 Skill.
48p - Infusion of Luck - Toxicity 6
Rumours abound that this sweet and clear liquid is really leprechaun tears harvested in the breweries of Carceri. Most discount it, but it would explain why you never see any these days. Restores 1 Luck.
22p - Tincture of Clarity - Toxicity 1
A chalky distillation with the unmistakeable taste of medicine. Cures any non-magical poisons and offers a Luck test to those suffering from magical maladies.
1/2 - Elysian Mead - Toxicity 3
A tasty alcoholic beverage from the Elysian apiaries. It goes down smoothly and lubricates the tongue and the mind. Gain 1 Social Standing, lasts for an hour. Suddenly become old friends with anyone else drinking the stuff.
-/1 - Shade Wine - Toxicity 5
A far less tasty tipple. Brewed by anyone with a dark corner to spare in the sun-starved rim of Troika. The exact ingredients change by brewer, but the taste is consistently foul and inflicts the oral numbness it's famous for. +1 to all fighting rolls, -1 to everything else.
1/3 - Leech Blood - Toxicity 7 (3 for Tieflings)
Neither blood nor made of leeches, instead it is a demonic pun that we are assured is extremely funny from their perspective. The liquid is, as it can loosely be called, a rich red with congealed black globules floating in it. An angular, charcoal-ey and altogether challenging experience. +1 Magic for an hour, restores +2MP
18p - Hazrad Smoke - Toxicity 3
A peculiar thing, but peculiar things are endemic to the City and greatly enjoyed. Hazrad smoke is served in a pear shaped bottle with a narrow neck. Once the seal is broken the meagre fluid inside turns to smoke and rushes out. You are encouraged to inhale it quickly lest this expensive treat escapes entirely. The taste has been described as austere and intolerably painful. -1 Stamina, for a few seconds you can see things in obscene detail, revealing any secret doors or unusual details of your surroundings.
134/3 - Soul Tea - Toxicity 2
A herbal infusion, each element collected from a different sphere, some hard fought and died for by the elite pickers of the Widdershins Tea Company; presented in an exquisite silk envelope for your convenience. The tea, when steeped, will shift one sideways into the astral plane. The effect is quite slow, requiring you to enjoy the hot tea quietly until gently fading away. The return journey is your own concern.
2p - Scap - Toxicity 8
Prepared gremlin leavings gathered from wild gremlins living in the walls of Troika. Gremlins from other places have been tried, but there is something about the nature of the city, the unparalleled variety of their diet that makes Troikian Scap stand apart from its provincial imitators. Either offered as a fine powder for sniffing, or compressed into pills for convenience. Always the last to declare your actions in a turn, can sense and instinctively disassemble complex machinery, can't cast magic. Lasts for d6 hours.
Toxicity Table
- Reduced to 0 Stamina and treated as dying (test your luck every turn until stable or dead)
- Violently sick. Any effect doesn't take and lose 4 Stamina. Lose turns until you test your luck successfully or sleep.
- No benefits and instead makes you dizzy and unsteady. -2 Skill
- You bring it back up. No benefits and -1 Skill.
- Works as expected.
- Reacts with your toxic system and works double.
Universal Roads & Currencies
The City in the Middle of the Road
Troika is the City in the Middle of the Road, not of Windowless Rooms, nor of Doors. These are different places that one can get to through different means. Troika is reached by those who travel and have no destination. When purpose is abandoned its thick metal walls might loom on the horizon or peek above the trees to guide you to its open gates.
Its gates open on to the million spheres each with a road meandering away to be traveled by citizens with purpose. They step out with a destination in mind and travel until the city is out of sight, arriving where they intend to be and the way back wholly obscured.
To get back to the city is easier than first finding it; walk a road with nothing behind you and nothing ahead. Leave no one behind wishing your return, walk with no purpose, and Troika will open its gates to you again.
Bureau of Universal Exchange
Scattered throughout Troika are the silo-like Bureaus of Universal Exchange. Windowless and towering —either occupied because of these facts or floors and shutters have been welded on— one enters the ground floor to deal with its spider-like proprietors.
You find them hunched beyond tiny portholes and pass through your goods and currencies to be fondled by their hairy little hands. They have an uncanny head for the value of things, they will never confer, you will never get a bargain, they will instantly offer only exactly what it's worth and not a penny more, minus a small handling fee of course. Roll 2d6 to determine the % they add on top that day. Reroll 6s and keep adding them until you stop.
They will exchange anything for the Troikian penny, a brass coin of muddy source. The currency is worth whatever the standard currency of your game is, but only of face value to those who can travel to the city, which, while a large number, is far less than the entirety of the population of the universe.
When bringing them alien currency randomly determine how valuable it is at that exact moment. Roll 2d6 in order. The first is the penny, the second is foreign currency, thus determining the ratio. Always add one in the bureau's favour. They're running a business after all.
If a currency is a step above the base (gold>silver for instance) then just add a zero in its favour.
You can list these for later use if you like, but it's even easier to determine it anew each time. Time and space is unpredictable, change is relative.
Troika is the City in the Middle of the Road, not of Windowless Rooms, nor of Doors. These are different places that one can get to through different means. Troika is reached by those who travel and have no destination. When purpose is abandoned its thick metal walls might loom on the horizon or peek above the trees to guide you to its open gates.
Its gates open on to the million spheres each with a road meandering away to be traveled by citizens with purpose. They step out with a destination in mind and travel until the city is out of sight, arriving where they intend to be and the way back wholly obscured.
To get back to the city is easier than first finding it; walk a road with nothing behind you and nothing ahead. Leave no one behind wishing your return, walk with no purpose, and Troika will open its gates to you again.
Bureau of Universal Exchange
Scattered throughout Troika are the silo-like Bureaus of Universal Exchange. Windowless and towering —either occupied because of these facts or floors and shutters have been welded on— one enters the ground floor to deal with its spider-like proprietors.
You find them hunched beyond tiny portholes and pass through your goods and currencies to be fondled by their hairy little hands. They have an uncanny head for the value of things, they will never confer, you will never get a bargain, they will instantly offer only exactly what it's worth and not a penny more, minus a small handling fee of course. Roll 2d6 to determine the % they add on top that day. Reroll 6s and keep adding them until you stop.
They will exchange anything for the Troikian penny, a brass coin of muddy source. The currency is worth whatever the standard currency of your game is, but only of face value to those who can travel to the city, which, while a large number, is far less than the entirety of the population of the universe.
When bringing them alien currency randomly determine how valuable it is at that exact moment. Roll 2d6 in order. The first is the penny, the second is foreign currency, thus determining the ratio. Always add one in the bureau's favour. They're running a business after all.
If a currency is a step above the base (gold>silver for instance) then just add a zero in its favour.
You can list these for later use if you like, but it's even easier to determine it anew each time. Time and space is unpredictable, change is relative.
Spider Bankers of the Bureau of Universal Exchange
I'll put in a picture when I have one. We're working on these a bit at a time. The Spider Bankers have been in Troika since the beginning and I've always meant to get around to using them more. They appeared in Wengle Instrumentality, and they're in the upcoming Streets Of Troika book, but they deserve a proper entry I think.
When picturing them I always imagine the presence of the triceratops foreman in that old puppet sitcom "Dinosaurs" or the baboon from Ren & Stimpy. Just with a little bowler hat and pin strip vest.
This is a cross post from the Troika Patreon, where you can see more or these
Spider Bankers of the Bureau of Universal Exchange
Skill 9
Stamina 18
Initiative 3
Armour 2 (thick chitin)
Damage as Large Beast
Mien:
1. Polishing their eyes with a huge silk handkerchief
2. Adjusting their hat
3. Drumming their many tiny hands on the counter
4. Staring inscrutably
5. One par of hands absently calculating on an abacus
6. Twitching without obvious cause
Scattered throughout Troika are the silo-like Bureaus of Universal Exchange. Windowless and towering one enters the ground floor through your choice of many small doors into cramped corridors which twist and turn until eventually ending in a barred and shuttered window. There are no signs indicating what is expected or provided, and the spiders are behind the bars filling the space with its chitinous bulk, tapping the fingers of their tiny hands impatiently against the counter. They have an uncanny head for the value of things, they will never confer, and you will never get a bargain. After a bare moment in the scrutiny of one eye, then another and another, the spider banker will know and offer only exactly what it's worth and not a penny more, minus a small handling fee of course.
## Violence
If attacked inside their bank the spiders will first try to slam the security shutter down on their assailant and flee. One would need to test their luck to stop this happening. If caught or cornered they will fight viciously, attempting to incapacitate attackers with their venom and spinnerets so as to take them away later as compensation for the inconvenience.
## Ecology
The bureau is assumed to be connected to, or at least tacitly endorsed by, the Universal Council of Troika. Such a vast and wealthy institution as the spider bank could, if it wished, shift its weight and topple whole boroughs or counties, ruin the barge houses, bankrupt nations. Indeed, sometimes they do, yet they City does nothing and so the people assume it is all according to plan.
## Lair
The bureaus are the only place one is likely to find a spider banker, and then only from behind their steel bars. The buildings only allow entrance through tunnels to the cashier windows, and no one, not even the spiders, come or go in the course of the day. The banks are connected through a hidden network throughout the city, and if one were to somehow get past the spiders and into it, they would find vaults upon vaults strung under the city like crystals on a chandelier, the labyrinthine mirror city of the spiders. The only non-spiders to be found in their tunnels are decerebrized debtors shuffling carts of labelled goods from vault to vault.
## Special
When bringing them alien currency for exchange into Troikan pennies randomly determine how valuable it is at the exact moment of exchange. Roll 2d6, in order. The first is the penny, the second is foreign currency, thus determining the ratio. Always add one in the bureau's favour. They're running a business after all.
Spider Banker bites are dangerous. When injured by the bite of a banker the recipient may test their luck or else fall limp in their arms, to be passed back along it's belly through its many arms to be spun into a silk parcel for later. Unless an anti-venom (sold at great expense by mercenary hearted spider bankers) is applied the envenomed subject will start coughing up pennies, 1d6 every hour. Each penny coughed up reduces their stamina by 1, until they finally expire. Sleep and eating is impossible, triggering instead another coughing fit of 1d6 pennies.
The City in the Middle of the Road
The City is not inevitably a city, not in the metaphysical way the inner planes are all fiery or wet. That is to say, it isn't an elemental representation of essential City-ness any more than London is. Rather it is a useful place at a convenient confluence, and you can't be much more convenient than a spot that is between everything.
In the shadow of its walls it's all packed buildings on top of buildings from incongruous worlds and ages. Men, demons and wayward gods walk its streets Nothing overly surprises those that live there for long.
The gates stand open, rusted on their hinges. The sand blows in along with the people, touts stand ready to greet them. Water and answers in exchange for whatever secret riches the lost brought with them. "This isn't heaven nor is it hell. This is Troika at the Middle of All Things. Now sate your thirst and tell me, from where do you come and what do you want?" They can be confident in their bargaining since anyone who knows the road knows the path and enter like any civilised fellow: through the closed doors.
In the shadow of its walls it's all packed buildings on top of buildings from incongruous worlds and ages. Men, demons and wayward gods walk its streets Nothing overly surprises those that live there for long.
The gates stand open, rusted on their hinges. The sand blows in along with the people, touts stand ready to greet them. Water and answers in exchange for whatever secret riches the lost brought with them. "This isn't heaven nor is it hell. This is Troika at the Middle of All Things. Now sate your thirst and tell me, from where do you come and what do you want?" They can be confident in their bargaining since anyone who knows the road knows the path and enter like any civilised fellow: through the closed doors.
Keys and their Portals
The key is...
The door is...
Which leads to...
- The Rhyme of Ronald Rear-Guts, all 27 verses, accompanied on a bassoon
- A club forged from old iron keys
- Happy thoughts
- A squirming rabbit held in each hand
- Deja vu
- A mouth full of sea water
- The blood of 72 virgins
- Galloping on horseback
- D#
- An actual and unique key held in trust by an esoteric fraternity
- Post coital bliss
- A dying ember
The door is...
- A frog on a toadstool
- The corner of a room
- Behind a lamppost
- An old giant's pocket
- The mouth of Monstro the Whale
- A wedding arch
- Inside you all along
- The top of a rickety old ladder
- Slapshack Alley in the Dentist's Ward
- A mirror
- Death
- A bricked over door
Which leads to...
- The Labyrinth
- The Infinite Abyss
- The Palace of Tigers
- The Dead City
- Fiddler's Green
- Troika, City in the Middle of the Road
- The Fern Court
- The Red Room
- A conflux between worlds
- The Tertiary Underworld
- The Astral Plane
- Field of Heroes
 |
| This place looks nice, I'd go there |
6 Villains
- Punctilious Redgrave. Believes the gods' monopoly of ambrosia is tyrannical and must be broken. His agents have infiltrated religious orders and intend to be excellent worshippers so as to get into the afterlife and bring it down from within, or rise in the ranks and gain direct access to the archon.
- George the Piper. A master multi-instrumentalist who has made it his life's mission to record and perform the music transmitted between the stars across the dark waves of the humpbacked sky. His music is highly technical but mostly unlistenable to an uneducated ear. Its performance and practise also undermines the hypostasis and can initiate spontaneous psychic osmosis in the listener. Most of George's previous band mates are now raving loonies, amorphous beasts, or psychopomps.
- The Accident Man. When you want someone dead but don't want to make a fuss, you hire the accident man. He's expensive but has never failed, or at least the people he's been paid to kill have never failed to run afoul of a tragic, terminal accident. His involvement is invisible, he's not an arrogant man. Just leave the money and the name with the mistress of the Bunking Barn and everything will be sorted.
- Crow Father. The city of Bedef has a crow problem. When anything dies within its walls it is left out in the street; when an animal is slaughtered an extra one is killed in the square; when a homeless person can't afford room at the work house and can't stay awake, all given to the crows and their babies. When the crows go hungry the city falls sick, plagues and famines flash through neighbourhoods, the crows will get their meal. It is dangerous to be a stranger in Bedef, but you'll never struggle to find room and board.
- Miss Kinsey is one of, if not the (though the city does not like to deal in definitives), most famous socialites in Troika. No party is perfect unless her vast unmanageable bulk and sharp eyed, sharp toothed factotums are there. Every host dreams of the day they convince her to eat from their table, but none have done so far. Her tastes run deeper.
- Organ the Barbarian has taken a stand against cities. Not of any particular people or sort, but as a general principle. Organ considers them to be a yoke around the necks of the poor, one which must be ripped off. But he's not mad, he knows that the universe has an almost unlimited supply of civilisation and so only hopes to encourage social change through example and threat; by ravaging and despoiling to such an extraordinary degree that people reconsider the order of things and address his issues. His recruiters are a common site in town squares and village greens handing out literature to disgruntled unwashed masses.
Family and Friends and Drinking and Dwarves
I assume a situation of strangers in a strange land. What friends or family the PCs have is what they have made there.
Spouse & Children:
If PCs want to start with a spouse let them roll for the privilege. 1 in 3 they already have one, with d3-1 children. Each child is 2d6 years old.
If a child is 10 or more years old you can take them on adventures with you, allowing them to learn on the job. If you get the child killed you lose 10d6 social currency with your family. If it goes below 0 your spouse will never forgive you and leaves with your remaining children.
If a child is 10 or more years old you can take them on adventures with you, allowing them to learn on the job. If you get the child killed you lose 10d6 social currency with your family. If it goes below 0 your spouse will never forgive you and leaves with your remaining children.
DOWNTIME FUN: As a downtime action the PC can spend quality time with her family. This will fully restore their Luck & Stamina. Gain d6 social currency with them. On a 6 there is a new child on the way. (if appropriate). Recommend hand-waving pregnant PCs. Baby magically appears later between adventures. Don't make it weird.
DOWNTIME FUN: The PC trains one of their kids. That kid gets a skill advancement check in one skill the PC knows but can't be raised higher than the father. Keep track of this stuff. When a PC dies they may take up playing one of their children instead of making a new character as long as it's old enough. Gain 1 social currency.
ON AGEING: Time differences between planes is weird. If you spend a week in Baator a month might pass in Troika. Age your children a year for every 3 planar trips you take.
DOWNTIME NOTSOFUN: Every downtime you do not spend with your family their social currency reduces by 1. If it reaches 0 they will leave.
DOWNTIME FUN: You may give a gift to a family member. It must be something you have, that you got, you can't just wishy-washy declare a state of giftness. Gain 2d6 social currency.
DOWNTIME FUN: You wanna get married but don't know anyone? Go looking. 1 in 6 chance you meet someone to make friends with. Costs 10 social currency to convince a friend to marry you.
DOWNTIME NOTSOFUN: Every downtime you do not spend with your family their social currency reduces by 1. If it reaches 0 they will leave.
DOWNTIME FUN: You may give a gift to a family member. It must be something you have, that you got, you can't just wishy-washy declare a state of giftness. Gain 2d6 social currency.
DOWNTIME FUN: You wanna get married but don't know anyone? Go looking. 1 in 6 chance you meet someone to make friends with. Costs 10 social currency to convince a friend to marry you.
Friends:
DOWNTIME FUN: Friends are able to accompany the PC while carousing. Roll 1d6, if it comes up as anything other than 1, chose the order of numbers in your carousing roll. If it comes up as one, the friend has got you in trouble, the GM chooses the order to use. Regardless, +d6 social currency for hanging out with them.
Other PCs are not friends. Spouses can be, but you need to make it clear to the GM.
Every friend will either have a trade or an association. Roll a background for them.
Friends might be convinced to go on adventures with you. Costs 20 social currency minus their highest fighting or magic skill. Lasts for one excursion.
DOWNTIME FUN: If the friend's background causes her to have some influence or power, it costs 5 social currency to lean on it.
DOWNTIME FUN: A friend will teach you something they know for 3 social currency. Gain an advancement tick in any skill they have.
DOWNTIME FUN: If the friend's background causes her to have some influence or power, it costs 5 social currency to lean on it.
DOWNTIME FUN: A friend will teach you something they know for 3 social currency. Gain an advancement tick in any skill they have.
Carousing in Troika
In between games a PC may aimlessly go out on the town rather than do something constructive. Every major city or other interesting location should have its own carousing table, but smaller less lively places will likely have slimmer ones. It's probably a good idea to replace them when they get used up.
Carousing restores either Stamina or Luck (choose ahead of time) and costs 2d6x10p to have a roll, if you spend more than you own you are in debt to either:
Roll d36 for carousing!
1-2
3-4
5-6
Carousing restores either Stamina or Luck (choose ahead of time) and costs 2d6x10p to have a roll, if you spend more than you own you are in debt to either:
- The Manticore Bank. They charge 10% interest every day and are happy to let that accrue. It takes a downtime activity to get in to see a representative of the bank, and there is only a 1 in 6 chance that you'll get seen before closing time. If the interest gets out of hand they'll send a manticore after you.
- The Black Bishops. If not paid 9 times in full they will repossess your entire life. All friends and family and homes and treasures belong to the Black Bishopric until bought back. She's their wife now.
- A petty gangster who will kidnap a friend or family member if they aren't paid back double in a week. Lacking a family, they'll break your legs.
- Miss Keansy's Social Betterment Scheme. Miss Keansy's loans only come in bundles of 200p and are measured against a percentage of the benefit it affords you by uplifting your social class. She'll take 5% of all income for the next 5 years.
- A random friend or family member covers it at the cost of -d6 social currency
- A Gold Man gives you a bag of his weird gold nuggets. He never seems to want anything for it.
Roll d36 for carousing!
1-2
- Caught the Time Fever from a beggar. Every game you age 2d6 years in a random direction until cured, dead, or unborn.
- You cross paths with a group of Brawlers out on the town. Test your Strength or lose 1d6 stamina and lose 1d2 teeth. If you pass you beat them up and are invited to join the Sublime Society of Beef Steaks.
- You get caught up in a Dwarven art project. Before the peacemakers dismantle it and rescue the participants, you are partially enamelled and menaced with spikes of cobalt. You lose 1d6 Luck but count as wearing plate armour until it all chips off. Should take roughly until the end of the next adventure.
- You wake up in a pile of skyskiff sailors with a new tattoo. 1 in 6 chance you're (and they're) naked and missing everything you were carrying.
- You attend a public wine tasting at Miss Keansey's estate. Being the uncultured swine that you are, you delight the members by swilling the latest vintage from the kelp orchards of the demon sea. For the next adventure you must test for random encounters with demons at every convenient opportunity. Only you can see them. They might not be aggressive, instead happy to just cause trouble, but they can also straight up devour you in front of your friends. You do gain a skill advancement check in Second Sight for the experience though.
- A beggar you were mocking turns out to be a Gold Man in disguise, testing the city for moral turpitude. He curses you by turning everything metal you own into clay and pelting you with nuggets of gold (lose 1d3 stamina). You're luckily carried away by the crowd grasping for the gold before he can really lay in to you.
3-4
- Wake up in the mortuary. The Dustmen demand you repay the corpse fee they wasted on you (d6p). If you can't pay they will insist you go corpse collecting on your next downtime activity to pay it back, or else.
- You lost sight of your senses at some point and joined one of the newer cults in town. They seem friendly enough. Randomly generate it, you are now a member.
- You council an orc out of ending his suffering. He has latched on to you. For good or bad, you have a new friend.
- Inebriation leads you to agree to test a new Ven cerebro-plug. You gain 1d6p and +2 in a random skill (owned or not). If you ever roll a fumble in that skill the plug will burn out, causing 2d6 damage. A Ven bubble will be sent to collect the wreckage data, regardless of location in time or space.
- You lost hard at a game of Roly Bones. Lose 5d6x10p. If you can't pay it all, the skyskiff sailors you'd been rolling with rough you up and take whatever else you're carrying as payment. Lose d6 stamina.
- You just so happen to be holding the key to a little known portal while wandering right through it. You find your way home by the next game, but not before ageing 3d6 years and returning with a child of almost equal age. Time is funny.
- You get chatting with a beggar, share a drink, kill some time, only to find out he's the king of some distant land. He never found his way back after he fell through some portal or other, no one had ever heard of his home. For your kindness he gives you his last possession: his crown and his kingdom with it. It's very pretty, made of iron and bronze, worth 50s to the right buyer.
- You meet a tourist with only rudimentary understanding of the language. They seem nice, and keep buying drinks, so you take them around town with you. At the end of the night he turns to give you a tip for your trouble but, finding he's out of native silver and the bureau de change is shut for the night, he gives you one of his native coins with an apologetic smile. It's roughly 6 inches wide and as thick as your finger, intricately cast and made of pure gold. Worth 1000p
- Make a new friend on your raucous night out. Make them as a character and get d6 social currency with them.
- Won big in a game of Roly Bones. 5d6x10p
- Spend an amorous night in the arms of a stranger. Restore Luck and Stamina. 1 in 6 chance a bastard appears in your future.
- Meet the love of your life. Can count as a spouse and a friend. Roll a background for him.
And finally, Dwarves and their family
That is to say they don't have one. Just passions and projects. They have no genitals, are all "male", if one was forced to judge.
A dwarf, on their downtime, may choose to work on a mysterious project. Even the player won't know until it's done, since the dwarf's compartmentalised mind is so strong. Secrets are secret! Each time the player works on it they gain d6 social currency with themselves. When they have 15 they finally reveal the project for all to see. Roll to find out what it is.
- A dwarf! A shiny new fully grown dwarf. This is your son, fashioned from iron and stone, and you may tutor him as with children, above.
- A weapon, encrusted with rare minerals, menaced with spikes, and only beautiful to a dwarfs gaudy eye. The dwarf gets +1 to their weapon skill while using this weapon. Everyone else gets -1 since it's so spiky and weird.
- A beautiful piece of furniture, you may choose what sort. It is of course very spiky and almost randomly enhanced with minerals and bones. +1 permanent luck for completing such a project.
- Armour, made of an obscure or unusual material, and yet completely usable. Better than usable in fact, since the wearer always adds +1 to their armour roll while wearing it. The dwarf player can choose the type of armour and the size (dwarf? human? lammasu?).
- A statue of transcendent beauty. The topic is up for the dwarf to decide, but it is huge, of unusual construction, and probably spiky. If this is gifted to a group or institution it is worth 10d6 social currency with them.
- A fey mood has struck, the materials are rare and transgressive. The dwarf makes a public exhibition of flesh and bone, against the laws of man and gods. 1 in 6 chance it's alive and rampant, 1 in 6 the dwarf is arrested for this act of wanton art. It is also spiky.
A D66 list of backgrounds for Troika
11 Ardent Giant of Corda
Every giant has a different story about Corda, well told and interrupted with bouts of hysterical crying and laughter, of how they lost it and mean to find it soon enough but oh, what of today? We should drink and cheer, I’ll search again in the morning!
Possessions
Skills
4 Heft
3 Astrology
2 Run
2 Climb
12 Befouler of Ponds
A wise man, a high priest, a pond-pisser, a typical but committed adherent of P!P!Ssshrp. The bloated toad god has no church other than the periphery of ponds where the foulness catches in the reeds and no congregation to address other than the gnats and dragonflies. You council them all the same.
Possessions
Skills
3 Spell - Toad Blessing
3 Swimming
1 Second Sight
Special
May drink stagnant water without harm
13 Burglar
As a second-story man you often have cause to wander. Enemies come naturally from both sides of the law and it pays to keep ahead of trouble.
Possessions
Skills
2 Sneak
2 Locks
1 Awareness
1 Climb
1 Trapping
1 Knife fighting
1 Crossbow fighting
Special
You may test your luck to find and get in with the local criminal underbelly, if one exists.
14 Cacogen
15 Chaos Champion
You no longer have the spiked brass armour but you still have the ear of your Chaos patron. He’s happy for you to experiment with not plunging your sphere into disorder and, ultimately, darkness but the door is always open. Name your patron.
Possessions
Skills
6 Language - Kurgan
3 Maul fighting
3 Secret Signs - Chaos Patron
1 Random Spell
1 Second sight
Special
You may call upon your patron for aid once per day, to do so roll three 6s on 3d6, the GM will interpret his intervention.
16 Claviger
The key masters wander the universe fathoming the workings of all entry ways they can find. Though they’re quite fascinated with simple chests and doors they are most excited by metaphysical and metaphorical barriers.
Possessions
Skills
4 Locks
4 Bash Lock
3 Trap Knowledge
1 Spell - See Through
1 sledgehammer fighting
21 Demon Stalker
You stake your reputation on your ability to hunt and kill demonic creatures and those who break bread with them. Goat men in the wilds, or the angel cults of the slums, all needs to be driven back off the edge of the map and into the shores of chaos.
Possessions
Skills
5 Language - Abyssal
3 Spell - Blood Shroud
2 Second Sight
2 Sword fighting
2 Bow fighting
1 Tracking
1 Sneak
22 Dwarf
You are a short, hairy, belligerent, alcohol dependent creature. The latter two may be linked, but you’ll fight anyone who suggests as much. Since there are no dwarf women (or men, technically) there are no dwarf children or dwarf families, so you can fully commit yourself to the important dwarfy endeavours of creating fine art in unusual places. You intend to find the most unusual places ever seen in all the million spheres.
Possessions
Skill
3 Awareness
2 Sculpting
2 Painting
2 Metalworking
2 Construction
2 Hefting
2 Fist Fighting
2 Wrestling
1 Hammer fighting
Special
May eat gems and rare metals as a food replacement. You in fact far prefer the taste of rare minerals to mundane food.
Dwarves are genderless. You are immune to all compulsions that play on a creature’s desire for the opposite sex. This also means you don’t have sexual organs. Instead of urinating you excrete through sweating, thus explaining the odour.
23 Epopt
A roaming seer, selling your visions at courts and fetes. You are instantly recognisable by your yellow coif and habit as being open for business. Road weary and world wise, your unpopular visions cause you to constantly move on.
Possession
Skills
2 Awareness
2 Evaluate
1 Second Sight
1 Etiquette
1 Fist Fighting
1 Run
Special
May test their luck to get a yes or no answer to a question about mundane matters. The GM should make this test in private, not informing the epopt is they are accurate.
24 Exotic Warrior
No one has heard of your homeland, your habits are peculiar, your clothes are outrageous, and in a land jaded to the outlandish and new you still somehow manage to stand out.
Possessions
Skills
6 Language - Weird Exotic Language
3 in the fighting skill of your weird weapon
2 Language - Local
2 in one random spell
1 Astrology
1 Etiquette
25 The Fellowship of Knidos
Mathmologists honour the clean and unambiguous truths of mathematics, and coordinate it with their observation of the multiverse. All things can be measured and predicted with the application of the correct mathmatical ratios, their methods applied to penetrate the ethereal surface to glimpse the fundamental numbers below.
Possession
Skills
3 Mathmology
2 Astrology
2 Spell – Find
26 Fellowship of Porters & Basin Fillers
Luggers are a servile group by nature, most often found in the service of others, weighed down by loads that would buckle a donkey. You take pride in that. Maybe so much that the everyday assignments of the guild could not sate your desire to serve and so ventured out in search of a real challenge for such a talented varlet.
Possessions
Skills
4 Heft
2 Fist fighting
2 Run
1 Hook fighting
1 Sneak
1 Awareness
31 Gremlin Catcher
No matter what country, sphere or abstract dimension you may find yourself in, be sure that gremlins will be there digging their warrens.
Possessions
Skills
4 Tunnel fighting
4 Trap knowledge
2 Sneak
2 Awareness
2 Club fighting
2 Tracking
1 Swim
32 Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners
You are an assassin in training, graduated from fighting dummies or branding practise clients, now you have a license to do it for real. You haven’t fully developed the idiosyncratic methods required of a master but you are on the path.
Possessions
Black clothes of the apprentice
Garrotte
Curved sword
3 vials of poison
Crossbow & 6 bolts
Skills
1 Poison
1 Sneak
1 Locks
1 Knife fighting
1 Climb
1 Awareness
1 Crossbow fighting
1 Swim
1 Disguise
33 Lansquenet
You were a mercenary retained in the exclusive service of the autarch, handsomely paid and sent to distant spheres on golden ships to spread the ineffable glory of your paymaster at the tip of your flaming lance.
Possessions
Skills
2 Great sword fighting
2 Pistolet fighting
1 Run
1 Golden Barge Pilot
1 Astrology
34 Lonesome King
You were a king! The ruler of all your surveyed, a great conqueror, a law-bringer! But your horse sped off into the pixie forest, or the court magician saw to it that you dissapeared, or you led a sortie into the stars to put your tsamp on that as well. Either way you are a lost and lonely king without a kingdom, no one has heard of you or your people. Most don't believe you and laugh, or worse they do believe you and shrug at the vagaries of fate.
Possessions
Skills
3 Etiquette
3 Weapon fighting in the weapon of your choice
35 Miss Kinsey’s Diner’s Club
The Eaters know that there are only two worlds: the without and the within. They intend to insert as much of the prior into the later as they can while experiencing the finest delights available. All culinary experience is open to them, nothing is forbidden at Miss Kinsey’s. Try the other, other, other white meat.
Possessions
Skills
3 Etiquette
1 Strength
1 Tracking
1 Trapping
1 Gastrology
Special
Immune to mundane ingested poisons. Also can identify any object if eaten, gaining knowledge of its material, its origin (if plausibly familiar), and its magical properties. Must be thoroughly masticated, not merely swallowed and passed. This does not grant special immunity to any effects it may possess.
36 Monekymonger
Life on The Wall is hard. One is never more than a few yards from an endless fall but those precarious villages still need to eat. This is where you come in with your edible monkeys (the distinction is purely for appeal, since all monkeys are of course edible). You used to spend days on end dangling your feet off the edge of the world watching over your chitering livestock while they scampered hither and thither. But there was no future in monkey meat, or future on The Wall. You wanted much more and so stepped off. Or you fell. Either way you and some unlucky monkeys are here now and that's all that matters.
Possessions
Skills
4 Climb
2 Trapping
1 Club Fighting
1 Knife Fighting
41 Necromancer
The least popular magical practitioners. Shunned by the major centres of learning, they’re left to their own devices on the edges of society, passing on knowledge in the time honoured master student dynamic.
Possessions
Skills
2 Heal
1 Spell - Posthumous vitality
1 Spell - Skeletal Counsel
1 Spell - Torpor
1 Sneak
42 Parchment Witch
Known for your smooth skin, midnight gatherings and being fearful of rain and open flames. The parchment witches are long dead sorcerers who cannot give up the vanity of living and so cover themselves in perfect paper skin. A patiently painted and folded imitation of life to hide ancient bone and gristle.
Possessions
Skill
2 Spell - Protection From Rain
2 random spell
2 Disguise
2 Second Sight
1 Healing
1 random spell
1 random spell
Special
You are undead so do not need to breathe, circulate blood, and so on. You takes double damage from silver weapons and regain stamina half as effectively from all sources. You must test luck if outside in the rain, made wet, close to open flames, or suffer general grievous wounds. A failure will see your skin ruined. While your skin is damaged you are very obviously a walking corpse and take damage from salt as though it were fire.
43 Poorly Made Dwarf
Dwarves are known for being the finest artisans of the million spheres. Give a dwarf a rock and he will make gold, give a dwarf a boulder and he will make a dwarf. You were supposed to be the finest expression of dwarfy craftsmanship, a masterpiece, a brand new dwarf like those made by the old masters. But you were imperfect and abandoned.
Possessions
Skills
3 Fist Fighting
3 Awareness
2 Hefting
2 Wrestling
2 Axe Fighting
Special
as Dwarf, but in addition...
Other dwarves completely ignore you as though you were an item or openly examined and criticised for your flaws. Though to the non-dwarfy eyes you probably look like any other dwarf.
44 Questing Knight
You are on a quest for the grail, or the sword, or the throne, or for god, or a lost love, or some other significant object. Your sort are common enough, wandering the worlds acting out your romantic melodrama, accusing good folk of being demons or faeries. Generally considered to be harmless.
Possession
Skills
3 Jousting
1 Shield fighting
1 Awareness
45 Red Priest
Evangelist of the red redemption, wandering confessor, cauterizer of the wound of sin. Sin being the accumulation and recreational consumption of mass. How can your spirit fly free while shackled and flabby?
Possessions
Skills
2 Spell - Ember
2 Spell - Fire Bolt
2 Spell - Flash
2 Great Axe Fighting
1 Second Sight
46 Rhino-Man
The original Rhino-Men were created by an insane sorcerer several centuries ago, but rebelled and killed him. They are fairly rare creatures, serving as formidable and loyal guards to those who can afford their services.
Possessions
Skills
3 Glaive fighting
2 Run
2 Bash Lock
1 Gambling
51 Skeptical Lammasu
Body of a bull, head of a man, forelegs of a cat and the wings of a swan, sweetest children of the gods. You, however, were not content to rest on your cloud and instead descended from the heavens (or crawled up from the abyss) and set upon finding your own path among the stars.
Possessions
Skills
3 Fly
3 Spell - Random
3 Spell - Random
3 Spell - Random
2 Claw Fighting
52 Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors
Troika’s very own wizarding academy, pride of the city, experts in pan-dimensional mobility. You were an apprentice of the school and were able to penetrate the (2d6)th door. No master, certainly, but few outside your peers can claim to know more about the vagries of skyward travel than you.
Possessions
Skills
2 Second Sight
2 Spell - Astral Reach
1 Spell - Teleport
1 Spell - Web
53 Sorcerer of the
College of Friends
You were trained in the sub-dimensional academy of the Cordial Wizard God. You spent your childhood learning about the fate of pixies, the colour of magic, ritual grammar and endless other theoretical topics. Now you’re out in the world, discovering that your education hardly accounted for any of it.
Possessions
Skills
4 Secret Signs - Witching Words
2 Run
1 Climb
1 Swim
1 Second Sight
1 Spell - Jolt
1 Spell - Amity
1 Spell - Mirror Selves
1 Spell - Protection from Rain
1 Spell - Helping Hands
1 Spell - Spark
1 Spell - Purple Lens
54 The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks
Brawlers believe the application of might and a good beef steak is the universal truth. Words do not have power. Words can no more define the universe than they can build a house, lift a cup, or sear a steak. Might can. Really, they have thought a lot about this.
Possessions
Skills
2 in a fighting skill of your choice
2 Wrestling
2 Swim
2 Climb
2 Run
2 Fist Fighting
55 Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer
You were once (and possibly still) a fanatical monk set to maintain constant martial readiness in preparation for the end times when all doorways crumble inwards. You are never unready and always have spares.
Possessions
Skills
2 Awareness
1 Sword Fighting
1 Greatsword fighting
Special
The blessing of Telak allows you to carry as many swords as you like and count them as a single item for encumberance purposes. While carrying 12 or more swords you count as having modest armour, while carrying 36 or more swords you count as having heavy armour. You must be overtly armed at all times or else Telak will take this blessing away until you forge, and donate to the unarmed, a brand new sword.
56 Thaumaturge
Wandering miracle workers, the depths of whose clothes are filled with pouches of unguents, holy icons and herbs. No matter the metaphysical need, they are always prepared.
Possessions
Skills
2 in one random spell
1 in one random spell
1 Second Sight
1 in one random spell
1 in one random spell
1 Astrology
Special
May test their luck to just so happen to have exactly the (common) mystical nicknack the situation requires
Every giant has a different story about Corda, well told and interrupted with bouts of hysterical crying and laughter, of how they lost it and mean to find it soon enough but oh, what of today? We should drink and cheer, I’ll search again in the morning!
Possessions
- An artefact of Lost Corda, being either an enormous blue star map offering +1 astrology when studied for 12 minutes OR a contraption for telling the weather (5 in 6 accuracy) OR a ruby lorgnette offering +1 Second Sight while worn
Skills
4 Heft
3 Astrology
2 Run
2 Climb
12 Befouler of Ponds
A wise man, a high priest, a pond-pisser, a typical but committed adherent of P!P!Ssshrp. The bloated toad god has no church other than the periphery of ponds where the foulness catches in the reeds and no congregation to address other than the gnats and dragonflies. You council them all the same.
Possessions
- Sackcloth robes, caked in stinking mud and undergrowth. +1 to Stealth rolls in marshy terrain while wearing it, -1 everywhere else ‘cos it stinks
- A large wooden ladle (damage as mace)
Skills
3 Spell - Toad Blessing
3 Swimming
2 Spell – Tongue Twister
1 Sneak1 Second Sight
Special
May drink stagnant water without harm
13 Burglar
As a second-story man you often have cause to wander. Enemies come naturally from both sides of the law and it pays to keep ahead of trouble.
Possessions
- Crossbow & 18 bolts
- Roll of lock picks
- Grappling hook
Skills
2 Sneak
2 Locks
1 Awareness
1 Climb
1 Trapping
1 Knife fighting
1 Crossbow fighting
Special
You may test your luck to find and get in with the local criminal underbelly, if one exists.
14 Cacogen
Those filthy born, spawned in the hump-backed sky lit only by great black anti-suns and false light. Your mother was sailing on the golden barges or caught in some more abstract fate when she passed you, far from the protective malaise of the million spheres. You were open to the power and the glory at a generative time and it shows in your teratoid form.
Possessions
- Pistolet OR Fusil
- 2d6 plasmic cores
- Sword
- Velare
Skills
2 Pistolet Fighting OR Fusil Fighting
2 Astrology
2 Second Sight
2 random spell
2 random spell
1 random spell
1 Sword Fighting
15 Chaos Champion
You no longer have the spiked brass armour but you still have the ear of your Chaos patron. He’s happy for you to experiment with not plunging your sphere into disorder and, ultimately, darkness but the door is always open. Name your patron.
Possessions
- Ritual scars
- A huge hammer
- Assortment of ragged armour (Modest armour)
- Dream journal, almost full
Skills
6 Language - Kurgan
3 Maul fighting
3 Secret Signs - Chaos Patron
1 Random Spell
1 Second sight
Special
You may call upon your patron for aid once per day, to do so roll three 6s on 3d6, the GM will interpret his intervention.
16 Claviger
The key masters wander the universe fathoming the workings of all entry ways they can find. Though they’re quite fascinated with simple chests and doors they are most excited by metaphysical and metaphorical barriers.
Possessions
- Festooned with keys (counts as modest armour)
- A sledgehammer
- Lock picking tools
Skills
4 Locks
4 Bash Lock
3 Trap Knowledge
1 Spell - See Through
1 sledgehammer fighting
21 Demon Stalker
You stake your reputation on your ability to hunt and kill demonic creatures and those who break bread with them. Goat men in the wilds, or the angel cults of the slums, all needs to be driven back off the edge of the map and into the shores of chaos.
Possessions
- A silver sword OR 16 silver arrows and a bow
- Pouch of salt
Skills
5 Language - Abyssal
3 Spell - Blood Shroud
2 Second Sight
2 Sword fighting
2 Bow fighting
1 Tracking
1 Sneak
22 Dwarf
You are a short, hairy, belligerent, alcohol dependent creature. The latter two may be linked, but you’ll fight anyone who suggests as much. Since there are no dwarf women (or men, technically) there are no dwarf children or dwarf families, so you can fully commit yourself to the important dwarfy endeavours of creating fine art in unusual places. You intend to find the most unusual places ever seen in all the million spheres.
Possessions
- Masons hammer
- Roll of artists supplies
Skill
3 Awareness
2 Sculpting
2 Painting
2 Metalworking
2 Construction
2 Hefting
2 Fist Fighting
2 Wrestling
1 Hammer fighting
Special
May eat gems and rare metals as a food replacement. You in fact far prefer the taste of rare minerals to mundane food.
Dwarves are genderless. You are immune to all compulsions that play on a creature’s desire for the opposite sex. This also means you don’t have sexual organs. Instead of urinating you excrete through sweating, thus explaining the odour.
23 Epopt
A roaming seer, selling your visions at courts and fetes. You are instantly recognisable by your yellow coif and habit as being open for business. Road weary and world wise, your unpopular visions cause you to constantly move on.
Possession
- Yellow epopt outfit, padded for protection against unhappy clients (counts as modest armour)
- Epopt staff, being a walking staff with seeing crystal on one end (counts as staff)
- Collapsable tent, big enough for your stall
Skills
2 Awareness
2 Evaluate
1 Second Sight
1 Etiquette
1 Fist Fighting
1 Run
Special
May test their luck to get a yes or no answer to a question about mundane matters. The GM should make this test in private, not informing the epopt is they are accurate.
24 Exotic Warrior
No one has heard of your homeland, your habits are peculiar, your clothes are outrageous, and in a land jaded to the outlandish and new you still somehow manage to stand out.
Possessions
- A weird and wonderful weapon
- Strange clothes
- Exciting accent
- A tea set OR 3 pocket gods OR astrological equipment
Skills
6 Language - Weird Exotic Language
3 in the fighting skill of your weird weapon
2 Language - Local
2 in one random spell
1 Astrology
1 Etiquette
25 The Fellowship of Knidos
Mathmologists honour the clean and unambiguous truths of mathematics, and coordinate it with their observation of the multiverse. All things can be measured and predicted with the application of the correct mathmatical ratios, their methods applied to penetrate the ethereal surface to glimpse the fundamental numbers below.
Possession
- Large Astrolabe (as mace)
- Abacus
- Lots of scrolls and writing equipment
Skills
3 Mathmology
2 Astrology
2 Spell – Find
26 Fellowship of Porters & Basin Fillers
Luggers are a servile group by nature, most often found in the service of others, weighed down by loads that would buckle a donkey. You take pride in that. Maybe so much that the everyday assignments of the guild could not sate your desire to serve and so ventured out in search of a real challenge for such a talented varlet.
Possessions
- A wooden yoke which gives you +2 Heft while worn. Suffer -4 to all other physical rolls while wearing it
- Brown over coat and soft doffing cap of the guild
- A bale hook. Counts as a knife for damage and gains you a +1 on rolls to lift heavy objects if used to do so
- Length of rope
Skills
4 Heft
2 Fist fighting
2 Run
1 Hook fighting
1 Sneak
1 Awareness
31 Gremlin Catcher
No matter what country, sphere or abstract dimension you may find yourself in, be sure that gremlins will be there digging their warrens.
Possessions
- Small but vicious dog
- Flat cap
- A club
- A sack
- D6 empty gremlin jars
- A jar with a pissed off gremlin inside
Skills
4 Tunnel fighting
4 Trap knowledge
2 Sneak
2 Awareness
2 Club fighting
2 Tracking
1 Swim
32 Journeyman of the Guild of Sharp Corners
You are an assassin in training, graduated from fighting dummies or branding practise clients, now you have a license to do it for real. You haven’t fully developed the idiosyncratic methods required of a master but you are on the path.
Possessions
Black clothes of the apprentice
Garrotte
Curved sword
3 vials of poison
Crossbow & 6 bolts
Skills
1 Poison
1 Sneak
1 Locks
1 Knife fighting
1 Climb
1 Awareness
1 Crossbow fighting
1 Swim
1 Disguise
33 Lansquenet
You were a mercenary retained in the exclusive service of the autarch, handsomely paid and sent to distant spheres on golden ships to spread the ineffable glory of your paymaster at the tip of your flaming lance.
Possessions
- Exquisite pistolet
- Bandolier containing 18 plasmic cores
- Great sword
- Brightly coloured clothing with lots of tassels and bells (-4 to sneaking). Though frivolous looking it is in fact built with the autarch’s divine alchemy and considered modest armour while weighing the same as normal clothing
Skills
2 Great sword fighting
2 Pistolet fighting
1 Run
1 Golden Barge Pilot
1 Astrology
34 Lonesome King
You were a king! The ruler of all your surveyed, a great conqueror, a law-bringer! But your horse sped off into the pixie forest, or the court magician saw to it that you dissapeared, or you led a sortie into the stars to put your tsamp on that as well. Either way you are a lost and lonely king without a kingdom, no one has heard of you or your people. Most don't believe you and laugh, or worse they do believe you and shrug at the vagaries of fate.
Possessions
- A nice weapon of your choice
- A crown
Skills
3 Etiquette
3 Weapon fighting in the weapon of your choice
35 Miss Kinsey’s Diner’s Club
The Eaters know that there are only two worlds: the without and the within. They intend to insert as much of the prior into the later as they can while experiencing the finest delights available. All culinary experience is open to them, nothing is forbidden at Miss Kinsey’s. Try the other, other, other white meat.
Possessions
- Sharp metal dentures (damage as sword) OR forked metal dentures (as knife, but on a critical you may cleanly strip all the flesh from one small appendage) OR blunt metal dentures (damage as knife but may be used to eat hard objects)
- Embroidered napkin
Skills
3 Etiquette
1 Strength
1 Tracking
1 Trapping
1 Gastrology
Special
Immune to mundane ingested poisons. Also can identify any object if eaten, gaining knowledge of its material, its origin (if plausibly familiar), and its magical properties. Must be thoroughly masticated, not merely swallowed and passed. This does not grant special immunity to any effects it may possess.
36 Monekymonger
Life on The Wall is hard. One is never more than a few yards from an endless fall but those precarious villages still need to eat. This is where you come in with your edible monkeys (the distinction is purely for appeal, since all monkeys are of course edible). You used to spend days on end dangling your feet off the edge of the world watching over your chitering livestock while they scampered hither and thither. But there was no future in monkey meat, or future on The Wall. You wanted much more and so stepped off. Or you fell. Either way you and some unlucky monkeys are here now and that's all that matters.
Possessions
- Monkey Club
- Butcher Knife
- d6 small monkeys that do not listen to you but are too scared and hungry to travel far from you
- A pocket full of monkey treats
Skills
4 Climb
2 Trapping
1 Club Fighting
1 Knife Fighting
41 Necromancer
The least popular magical practitioners. Shunned by the major centres of learning, they’re left to their own devices on the edges of society, passing on knowledge in the time honoured master student dynamic.
Possessions
- Dusty robes
- The skull of your master OR a zombie servant OR a ghost with whom you have developed a codependent relationship with
Skills
2 Heal
1 Spell - Posthumous vitality
1 Spell - Skeletal Counsel
1 Spell - Torpor
1 Sneak
42 Parchment Witch
Known for your smooth skin, midnight gatherings and being fearful of rain and open flames. The parchment witches are long dead sorcerers who cannot give up the vanity of living and so cover themselves in perfect paper skin. A patiently painted and folded imitation of life to hide ancient bone and gristle.
Possessions
- d6 rolls of parchment skin
- Vials of pigments and powders
- Collection of brushes
Skill
2 Spell - Protection From Rain
2 random spell
2 Spell - Quench
2 Spell - True Seeing2 Disguise
2 Second Sight
1 Healing
1 random spell
1 random spell
Special
You are undead so do not need to breathe, circulate blood, and so on. You takes double damage from silver weapons and regain stamina half as effectively from all sources. You must test luck if outside in the rain, made wet, close to open flames, or suffer general grievous wounds. A failure will see your skin ruined. While your skin is damaged you are very obviously a walking corpse and take damage from salt as though it were fire.
43 Poorly Made Dwarf
Dwarves are known for being the finest artisans of the million spheres. Give a dwarf a rock and he will make gold, give a dwarf a boulder and he will make a dwarf. You were supposed to be the finest expression of dwarfy craftsmanship, a masterpiece, a brand new dwarf like those made by the old masters. But you were imperfect and abandoned.
Possessions
- Woodsmans axe
- An empty firkin
Skills
3 Fist Fighting
3 Awareness
2 Hefting
2 Wrestling
2 Axe Fighting
Special
as Dwarf, but in addition...
Other dwarves completely ignore you as though you were an item or openly examined and criticised for your flaws. Though to the non-dwarfy eyes you probably look like any other dwarf.
44 Questing Knight
You are on a quest for the grail, or the sword, or the throne, or for god, or a lost love, or some other significant object. Your sort are common enough, wandering the worlds acting out your romantic melodrama, accusing good folk of being demons or faeries. Generally considered to be harmless.
Possession
- Heavy armour
- A horse
- Lance (as spear)
- Sword
- Shield
- A never ending quest
Skills
3 Jousting
1 Sword Fighting
1 Spear fighting1 Shield fighting
1 Awareness
45 Red Priest
Evangelist of the red redemption, wandering confessor, cauterizer of the wound of sin. Sin being the accumulation and recreational consumption of mass. How can your spirit fly free while shackled and flabby?
Possessions
- Red robes
- Traditional faceless metal helmet of your order (modest armour)
- Symbolic (but fully sized and fully functional) single headed axe, to help batter down the door to Sin
Skills
2 Spell - Ember
2 Spell - Fire Bolt
2 Spell - Flash
2 Great Axe Fighting
1 Second Sight
46 Rhino-Man
The original Rhino-Men were created by an insane sorcerer several centuries ago, but rebelled and killed him. They are fairly rare creatures, serving as formidable and loyal guards to those who can afford their services.
Possessions
- Horn (counts as dagger)
- Thick Skin (rhino men always count as being modestly armoured)
- Glaive
- Knuckle dice
- a half full firkin of Rhino-beer (20 rations worth)
Skills
3 Glaive fighting
2 Run
2 Bash Lock
1 Gambling
51 Skeptical Lammasu
Body of a bull, head of a man, forelegs of a cat and the wings of a swan, sweetest children of the gods. You, however, were not content to rest on your cloud and instead descended from the heavens (or crawled up from the abyss) and set upon finding your own path among the stars.
Possessions
- Incidental sacred jewellery worth 10d6 monies if traded
- Peaked hat
- Claws (as Swords)
- Hooves (as Clubs)
- Wings, able to fly as fast as a running man over clear ground
Skills
3 Fly
3 Spell - Random
3 Spell - Random
3 Spell - Random
2 Claw Fighting
1 Hoof Fighting
52 Sorcerer of the Academy of Doors
Troika’s very own wizarding academy, pride of the city, experts in pan-dimensional mobility. You were an apprentice of the school and were able to penetrate the (2d6)th door. No master, certainly, but few outside your peers can claim to know more about the vagries of skyward travel than you.
Possessions
- A small functional door, worn on your forehead. You channel your magic through it
- Flashy robes
Skills
2 Second Sight
2 Spell - Astral Reach
1 Spell - Teleport
1 Spell - Web
53 Sorcerer of the
College of Friends
You were trained in the sub-dimensional academy of the Cordial Wizard God. You spent your childhood learning about the fate of pixies, the colour of magic, ritual grammar and endless other theoretical topics. Now you’re out in the world, discovering that your education hardly accounted for any of it.
Possessions
- Pointed wizard hat you received at graduation
- Pocket full of wizard biscuits (2d6, each count as a ration)
- Wand used to help focus new apprentices, now kept for sentimental reasons
Skills
4 Secret Signs - Witching Words
2 Run
1 Climb
1 Swim
1 Second Sight
1 Spell - Jolt
1 Spell - Amity
1 Spell - Mirror Selves
1 Spell - Protection from Rain
1 Spell - Helping Hands
1 Spell - Spark
1 Spell - Purple Lens
54 The Sublime Society of Beef Steaks
Brawlers believe the application of might and a good beef steak is the universal truth. Words do not have power. Words can no more define the universe than they can build a house, lift a cup, or sear a steak. Might can. Really, they have thought a lot about this.
Possessions
- A weapon of choice
- A small gridiron
- 2kg of premium meat cuts
- Waistcoat
- Bottle of strong but fancy wine
Skills
2 in a fighting skill of your choice
2 Wrestling
2 Swim
2 Climb
2 Run
2 Fist Fighting
55 Temple Knight of Telak the Swordbringer
You were once (and possibly still) a fanatical monk set to maintain constant martial readiness in preparation for the end times when all doorways crumble inwards. You are never unready and always have spares.
Possessions
- The blessing of Telak
- 6 swords of your choice
Skills
2 Awareness
1 Sword Fighting
1 Greatsword fighting
Special
The blessing of Telak allows you to carry as many swords as you like and count them as a single item for encumberance purposes. While carrying 12 or more swords you count as having modest armour, while carrying 36 or more swords you count as having heavy armour. You must be overtly armed at all times or else Telak will take this blessing away until you forge, and donate to the unarmed, a brand new sword.
56 Thaumaturge
Wandering miracle workers, the depths of whose clothes are filled with pouches of unguents, holy icons and herbs. No matter the metaphysical need, they are always prepared.
Possessions
- Thamaturgical fez
- Staff, bedecked with charms and bells. May reroll one die on the Opps! Table if using this staff, however may never sneak up on anyone because of the ringing and clattering it makes
- Curled Shoes
- Voluminous robes
Skills
2 in one random spell
1 in one random spell
1 Second Sight
1 in one random spell
1 in one random spell
1 Astrology
Special
May test their luck to just so happen to have exactly the (common) mystical nicknack the situation requires
61 Thinking Engine
Your eyes are dull ruby spheres, your skin is hard and smooth like ivory but brown and whorled like wood. You are clearly damaged, you have no memory of your creation or purpose, and some days your white internal juices ooze thickly from cracks in your skin.
Possessions
- Large cloak
- Soldering iron
Skills
3 Golden Barge Pilot
2 Astrology
2 Pistolet Fighting
2 Healing
1 Run
1 Bash Lock
1 Fist Fighting
1 Cooking
Special
You don’t recover Stamina by resting in the usual manner, instead you have to spend an evening with a hot iron melting your skin back together like putty. For each hour of rest with access to the right tools you regain 3 Stamina.
May recharge plasmic machines by hooking your fluids to them spending Stamina. 1 Stamina and 6 minutes per charge.
You always count as being lightly armoured.
62 Vengeful Child
Your village was burnt down by ruffians, or your mother was beheaded by snake cultists, or your father was hung by corrupt officials. Either way, you took up the sword and entered the world with a chip on one shoulder and oversized sword on the other.
Possessions
A too-big sword, +1 to Sword Fighting and Damage Rolls while using it. Only you may benefit from this bonus, it’s not magic just sentimental
An old hunting bow & 12 arrows
Skills
1 Sword Fighting
1 Awareness
1 Climb
1 Bow Fighting
1 Run
1 Swim
63 Venturesome Academic
You’re a classically trained academic, a product of the universities of the Brass City, the Palace of Tigers or some other less prestigious centre of learning.
Possessions
- Reading glasses in a sturdy case (you cannot read without them)
- Small sword
- Bundle of candles & matches
- Writing material
- Journal
Skills
2 Evaluate
2 Astrology
1 Healing
1 random spell
1 Sword Fighting
Special
You may test your Luck to recall facts that you might reasonably be expected to have encountered relating to the natural sciences and humanities.
64 Wizard Hunter
Some people say man is the most dangerous prey. They're wrong. Can men turn into flocks of seagulls when cornered in an alley? Can men ignite the air and freeze your blood? No they can't. Wizards are the most dangerous prey.
Possessions
- Large sack
- Witch-hair rope
- Crossbow & 12 bolts
- Sword
- d6 Poppets
- Ruby Lorgnette
Skills
2 Tracking
2 Disguise
2 Crossbow Fighting
1 Sword Fighting
1 Sneak
1 Locks
1 Etiquette
65 Yongardy Lawyer
Down in Yongardy they do things differently. They respect the law. Every day there is a queue outside the courts to get a seat to see the latest up and coming barrister defend his case with three feet of steel. The people follow the careers of their favourite solicitors, watch all their cases, collect their portraits and sneak into the court after hours to dab the patches of blood on white handkerchiefs. In Yongardy they love the law.
Possessions
- Rapier
- Puffy Shirt
- Manual on Yondardy Law
Skills
4 Sword Fighting
66 Zoanthrop
At some point in your past you decided you didn’t need it any more. You found a zoanthropologist and paid him well to remove your troublesome forebrain and so elevate you to the pure and unburdened man-beast you are today.
Possessions
- Nothing except a wooden club. Remove all starting possessions, cast off the shackles of civilisation. You are probably nude.
Skills
3 Climb
3 Run
2 Strength
2 Fist Fighting
2 Club Fighting
2 Wrestling
1 Swim
Special
You are immune to all mind altering effects. You are able to speak but usually choose not to. When making advancement checks in skills related to abstract thought, such as spells or astrology, you must roll twice and succeed on both or else fail.
Items
Astrological Equipment - +1 to Astrology when used. Requires twenty minutes, doesn't need to be outside. Consists of ruby specular, charms against reciprocal observation, and complicated charts of the spheres.
Grappling Hook – Test your Climb skill to attach the hook securely. Everyone climbing it gains +1 Climb skill.
Knuckle Dice – The nimble, petal shaped knuckle bones of goblins make excellent two sided dice.
Manual on Yongardy Law - If you spend some time studying the manual you may forgo all advancement rolls to instead roll and additional time for Sword Fighting.
Pocket Gods – Little wooden statues made in the image of your numerous gods. If you whisper a secret to one and hide it somewhere you may regain 1 Luck
Poppet - A poppet allows you to reroll a failed Luck roll regarding magic directed at you. Successful or not the poppet is saturated with unwanted magic and is best thrown away.
Roll of lock picks: +1 Lock skill when using these. On a critical failure they break and need repalcing
Ruby Lorgnette: Gain +1 Second Sight will using these to peer at things. Requires one hand to use.
Tea Set - +1 to Etiquette skill when you have the time to sit down and make tea
Velare - A small metal brooch that, when activated, provides a perfect visual disguise for a day. Requires plasmic cores to recharge.
Witch-Hair Rope: Anything tied up with this rope will be unable to change shape.
Vaulted Animarium
Vaulted Animarium
Julius Coldbridge 5/10/2Hamm Coldbridge 3/20/1
Spell: Befuddle
Small shop full of small animals. Some move freely. The animals are so loud as to make it impossible to be heard from anywhere other than mouth to ear contact. Julius runs the shop with his adopted son Hamm, a shambling mound of a man who rarely tries to talk and is mostly deaf. Hamm has two rabbits living in his pockets. Ruby Lorgnettes in a drawer by the counter. Cabinet full of luminous larvae and singing beetles. Choir rats, various common city-owls, a nesting pig, 17 ogre fleas, a pair of sympathy serpents (not on speaking terms) are among the selection.
Rumour: A famous hunter has caught a live alzabo and is exhibiting it in his apartments to selected guests.
http://whatwouldconando.blogspot.com/2018/07/bit-o-troika.html
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