voidheart-symphony

WhAt tO SaY

Always say...
• What the principles demand.
• What your prep demands.
• What the rules demand.
• What honesty demands.
A key part of running a game well is being fair. You should never
attempt to negate a player’s unexpected victory by inventing new
threats or rewriting old ones, but neither should you change
things about just to make things easy for them. The characters
should live interesting lives, but not effortless ones.
Between sessions you might decide things about how the city’s
changing, what monsters lurk in the current Vassal’s shard, and
how the castle might strike back at the rebels. If you’ve set up a
conflict based on this prep, don’t pull your punches and reverse it
half way through – or add extra challenge to undercut the player’s
unexpected victory.
Also remember that your prep isn’t everything; players will always
come up with left-field solutions to the problems they face, and it’s
important to keep an open mind. When they try something
unexpected, consider the situation in the fiction, the rules, and the
Principles, and say what makes sense to you.

PrInCiPlEs

Your Principles are how you pursue your Agenda. They’re
guidelines to keep in the back of your head as you play.
Build tension in the city; Bring catharsis in the Castle.
These two principles are the heart of Voidheart's flow. For all their
passion and righteousness, the rebels are weak and vulnerable in
the real world. Their investigation into the Vassal is a game of cat
and mouse, where they race to get the information they need before
putting their health, status, friends and living situation at risk.

Make sure to use mundane city scenes to raise the tension of your
story. The Vassal's plans are coming to fruition with every day that
passes. The rebel's investigation is pushing them to blow off
obligations and let their friends and loved ones down. And as their
desperation pushes them to more and more overt action, the risks
become increasingly severe and more direct.

But this isn't a game about disempowerment. In the castle, your
rebels are a true wild card, calling on powers their enemies could
never dream of. In the castle, it's your job to make the characters
feel like badasses, like action movie heroes who can face down a
legion of demons with a wink and a grin.

This doesn't mean that you should make their battles effortless. Your
players need to feel the danger, so that they can draw satisfaction
from overcoming it. Make combat a dance of threat and response,
attack and counterattack. Escalate the audacity of the adversary's
attacks, and encourage the players to match and exceed them.

As a final note – a rebel growing into their Castle Form is a key
moment of catharsis. It's their moment of expressing an identity
for themselves that's truly self-defined, a rejection of society's
assumptions and a search for a better self. It's a combination of
coming out the closet and a superhero revealing their costume. As
a rebel's power rises, their look becomes more and more elaborate
as they get a stronger sense of their identity, but it's not fixed –
options can be lost and regained, refined, replaced.

Show the cost of using power to cut corners.
Voidheart Symphony’s view of power is that it’s a shortcut – a way
for those who have power to skip over the checks and obstacles the
less-privileged must deal with. But there’s a cost, and power just
means someone else is paying it. For every Elon Musk getting high
on their own ego, there’s thousands of technicians, engineers,
janitors, miners and more, labouring in service of their boss’
dream. Show the cost the Vassal is happy to pay – but also show
the consequences if the rebels use their Void-given abilities to
ignore the problems in their own lives.

All Cops Are Bastards.
This is not a world where the authorities are there to help you.
Their overriding agenda will always be to protect the status quo,
and the interests of the powerful – and police in particular have a
long history as a weapon used against non-white and queer
communities, and leftist organising. Yes, well-meaning and good
people may exist in those structures, but the good they do will
always be channeled towards the castle’s goals – that, or lead to
them being isolated, punished and demonised by their colleagues.

The Work is good...
When the rebels succeed at an investigation, they’ve accomplished
something meaningful – they’ve stopped whatever plan the Vassal
was attempting, and redirected that power towards better ends.
Don’t twist their victories into failures or undermine them – it’s
important that the rebels did a good thing here.

...and the work is never done.
But even when their victories are meaningful, they’re not clean.
The castle is greater than any single Vassal, and every tool the
rebels have to fight it is tainted by its touch. Show the ways the
rebel’s actions don’t fully solve their problems, and show the other
predators swooping in to pick at the fallen Vassal’s power base.
Retaliation is a good place to show this, alongside Read the Wind
and similar moments where the rebels step back to look at the
city. Regularly prod them to consider what more they could be
doing to make the world a better place, and what ways their
methods will need to be improved to get there.

Show the Castle and the City in every Vassal.
Each Vassal, no matter how twisted by the castle’s influence,
started out as a mundane person. There was a life they could’ve
lead that didn’t bring them to this point, intentional choices to
ignore the needs of others and put themselves first despite the
harm caused. But, and this is important, they’re not monsters.

Give the Castle’s victims passions and drives.
Just as Vassals are more complex than cackling villains, their
victims are more than distressed damsels passively waiting for the
player’s aid. Show the wonderful things they could be doing if they
didn’t have to deal with the Vassal’s bullshit: their hobbies and
passions, the ways they’ve found to relax and forget the pressures
of the city, and the people and pets they care for.

Covenants must be cultivated with care.
Covenants aren’t just sources of strength and power for the rebels
– they’re the important people in the rebel’s lives, and your job is
to make sure that the players form a strong emotional connection
with them. It’s fine for characters to treat their covenants
carelessly and exploit their affections, but it’s your job to make
sure that has consequences in the narrative, by fading the
covenant if nothing else.

Begin and end with the fiction.
Remember that moves and their effects exist only within the
fiction unfolding at the table. When your players make a move, its
trigger should colour its results, and its results should be
concretely contextualised in the fiction.

Be a fan of the characters.
Like an audience member, you’re here to celebrate their victories
and mourn for their losses. Put them into interesting situations,
but never force them in a particular direction.

Be flexible with your responsibilities.
Sometimes it’s more interesting to put decision-making power in
someone else’s hands. This can be one of the players, giving them
the choice of how a situation resolves, or letting them say what’s
happening when the spotlight moves to them. It can even be one
of your characters, letting you make the choice that makes sense
according to the characters and world as established.

Make your reactions look natural.
When you use a reaction, consider the current story and what
you’d like to see the players deal with. Don’t give away any kind of
meta-textual concern, though: channel your reactions through
established parts of the fiction and maintain the illusion that
they’re a natural consequence of a living, breathing world.

Ask questions and use the answers.
Use questions to focus the group’s imagination on specific
elements of the world. When you want to highlight someone’s day
to day life, their motivations, or their history, just ask them.
Answers build ties to the world, and give you foundations to build
your own ideas on. Try to avoid completely open questions,
though, as giving a player the authority to declare too much in one
sweep might make them feel crushed by the responsibility, or
force you to step on their toes if something they suggest is
harmful to the tone you all want from the game.

Think off-screen too.
Sometimes it’s better not to show the players the immediate
consequences of their actions. Make a note and bring them to
light later. Make sure their source is clear when they’re revealed,
so that it’s clear you’re not just inventing extra adversity as a
power trip. And be careful with consequences that don’t have a
clear tie to the rebel’s actions – used too much, it can rob players
of a sense of connection to their character’s successes and failures.

ReAcTiOnS

As the Architect, you’re here to manage the pacing of the game,
push the players into interesting decisions, and portray the world
and its inhabits. As such you don’t make proactive moves so much
as reactions. You make reactions in four situations:

• When a player rolls a 6- on a move.
• When everyone’s looking to you to find out what happens next.
• When the Vassal's clock ticks.
• When the players offer you up a golden opportunity.
• When you spend a Breach Reaction (see p. 256).

To explain that fourth point, it’s when the fiction so far has
established that an action will have a specific and direct
consequence. If it’s been previously established that stepping on a
pressure plate will trigger a trap, and a player describes their
character stepping on the plate, that’s a golden opportunity. The
difference between this and the first two categories is that the
Architect can actively interrupt a player’s narration to give an
immediate reaction. The Architect should only do this when the
trigger has been firmly established in the fiction.

The strength of a reaction

When you make a reaction, it can be hard or soft.

A soft reaction is one that leaves room for the players to react –
for example, describing a treasure chest the characters spot on the
other side of a gate (Offer an opportunity), or that a werewolf
bares her fangs and charges the Icon (Put someone in a spot).
Once you’ve described the reaction, you ask the players what they
do and work through the actions they describe.

A hard reaction is one that cuts straight to the consequences.
The characters tread on a weak floor section and fall into the
cavern below (Separate them), or they get home and find that
their brother found their hidden savings and spent them all
(Mark a trouble gauge). Often enough, a threat introduced by a
soft reaction can lead to hard reactions down the line if the players
overlook it or decide to focus their efforts on other dangers.

Your Reaction List

Use a reaction from a minion or foe. If you’ve prepared an
antagonist, you’ll likely have an idea of how they involve
themselves in the narrative. Prepared reactions that do different
things than the standard set are a great way of showing what
makes an antagonist special.
Reveal an unwelcome truth. Something about the situation is more
dangerous than the players thought, or one of their strengths is
revealed to be less potent (or reliable) than they were expecting.
Use this to add tension to the scene, but not necessarily in a way
that demands immediate action.
Forecast doom. Show that misfortune is waiting on the horizon, if
the players don’t stop it. This works best when the players have a
good idea what actions will stop it, and what’ll happen if they don’t.
Inflict a condition. Conditions represent growing stress and danger
on the rebel – they’re signs that things are getting worse, and it’s
going to be harder to stay in the fight. Inflicting a condition works
something like a soft reaction, setting up...
Bring home the pain. Triggering Weight of the World or Push Through
Pain brings the tension of those conditions home. You may have
noticed that the triggers on these moves aren’t particularly specific.
That’s because their trigger is pretty metatextual – you bring them
in when you want to emphasise that what just happened hurt.
They’ll often escalate a situation or cause big dramatic moments,
so use them sparingly to maintain their effectiveness.
Mark a trouble gauge. This is a reliable reaction to take if a rebel’s
actions in the mundane world will make life harder for them but
don’t demand a specific, immediate response.
Mark the Vassal’s clock. Use this sparingly, to represent the progress
of the Vassal’s plan and their reprisals against the rebels.
Remember that if their clock is in the Alert or Hunting state, this
will also lead to all rebels marking gauges.

Take away their stuff. This works in the castle and in the city. In the
castle, loss of a signature weapon or piece of gear can dramatically
raise the stakes – and a rebel’s sight or hearing or mobility can
also be taken away from them, at least temporarily. In the city,
well, it should be clear how much trouble the loss of a car or a
house or your one good suit can cause to a rebel.
Turn their move back on them. Whatever they were trying to do, they
end up on the other side of. If they were Passing Beneath Notice,
someone gets the drop on them. If they were trying to Pressure an
enforcer, they end up pressed into a corner.
Separate them. By splitting up the rebels, you deprive them of their
ability to rely on each other’s strengths – and raise the tension as
the rebels struggle to reunite with each other.
Put someone in a spot. Force someone into a situation where they
must make a decision. You can describe the situation and give
them their options, or you can show that their current situation is
untenable and let the player decide what decision they make. Use
this to bring the scene’s tension to boiling point.
Highlight a weakness of their gear. Each weapon in a rebel’s hands
has at least one flaw tag – bring its downside (e.g. breaking a
Fragile weapon) or reshape the battlefield so that they find it harder
to bring it to bear (get distance from a rebel with a Close weapon).
Out in the city, your possessions often have clear downsides.
The uniform that helps you blend in at work can mark you as an
outsider at a high-class party. Fancy gear to explore the tunnels
under the city is expensive and might mark you out for thefts. And
think how many of the strange things in the rebel’s pockets could
raise an eyebrow if the police had cause to investigate them.
Hit them with a crisis. If something’s going to cause long-term
problems unless the rebel fixes it, tell them to write it down as a
crisis. This works particularly well if the rebels aren’t feeling much
need for haste – give them something to split their attention, and
ramp up the pressure.

Make a crisis imminent. The castle’s forces aren’t just monsters and
Vassals, but bureaucracy and machinery and cruel fate. When the
rebels are interlopers in its halls, it can strike back at their real
lives alongside their shadow selves, causing a flare-up of problems
the rebels thought resolved. When you use this reaction, describe
how the castle’s reprisals leave visible signs in the castle-shard
around the rebels.
Spotlight their strengths. Remember, you’re here to be a fan of the
player characters. Place a rebel in a situation you know they’ll be
good at – a bow-using Watcher spots gun-toting minions getting
into position on the far side of the arena, or a kindly Provider
notices the despair filling a bartender’s eyes when they think
no-one’s watching.
Tell them the consequences and ask. If the thing a character’s doing
may cost them, you can say what the consequences will be and ask
if they still want to go through with it. This way you can
complicate their life while giving them the power to choose how
much they suffer.
Offer an opportunity, with or without cost. Show them something they
want, and say what they need to do to get it. Sometimes you’ll
want to put a huge cost on this to force a dilemma on the player;
other times you’ll make it easy because it’s more interesting to see
what the player does with it.
Strike at their allies. As their revolution grows, the rebels will gather
a horde of helpers around them – and the castle is happy to tear
away this support network. The contacts listed alongside the
major arcana on pages 152-193 each give examples of how the
castle can attack, co-opt, or stymie the rebel’s contacts. But be
careful not to tear away beloved contacts without fair warning –
players can surprise you with the depth of emotional attachment
they form with NPCs.
After every reaction: "What do you do?" Make it clear after every
reaction that the ball is now in the rebel’s court. Answer any
questions they have, but it’s their turn now to act.

RuNnInG a GaMe

So, your Agenda, Principles, and Reactions are a crucial tool to use
as you act as Architect for a play group of Voidheart Symphony. But
they’re focused on the fine detail of play, and it’s also worth
looking at the bigger picture. That’s what these sections are for!

Game Styles

There are a few different ways of playing Voidheart Symphony. You
can play a single One-shot, telling a story in the course of a few
hours. You can play a Limited Run story, taking three or four
sessions to work through a focused arc. Or, finally, you can play a
Campaign, an indefinite-length game lasting 10 sessions, 20
sessions, even more.

Here are some suggestions for how to run Voidheart Symphony in
these different modes:

One-Shot

One-shots might be played with strangers at a con, as a break from
your ongoing campaign, or as a demo of this game to see if your
group wants to commit to a longer run. No matter the context, they
benefit from focus. There simply isn’t time to get everything that
excites you about the game onscreen, so I’d advise you to present a
simple guided scenario that can still gesture at the rest of the game.

What does this mean for Voidheart? My advice would be to start
with a Vassal already identified and investigated, and the rebels
about to embark on the climatic delve into their shard. That means
giving each player a clear hook into the situation – a contact in
danger, a past confrontation with the Vassal, an encounter with
supernatural minions.

I like to do this by preparing a set of questions (e.g. ‘Why did April
know she could tell you what had happened?’, ‘ What brought you to the
Vassal’s social club?’, ‘What does the lab in your dreams look like?’).
Then, as you’re starting play, you pick out one of those questions
to ask each player, maybe ask follow-up questions, and use their
answers to flesh out the one-shot scenario.

As for the rebels, I’d encourage you to present players with simple
pre-gens. Give each pregen a core character concept, a Crew
Covenant, castle stats, gear, and a shadow move. Leave some
blanks for the player to fill in – some question based on their Crew
Covenant, details for their Particulars and Castle Form, and a
choice of a few different Signature Weapons.

To play out the session, start with the rebels infiltrating the
Vassal’s power base in the city and give them a brief scene of
tension as their mundane, unpowered selves. Once they reach the
entrance to the shard, Dive Into Darkness and have the players
describe the new form their rebels take. Play through a simple
delve – find rooms displaying secret truths of the Vassal’s
interiority, fight an Enforcer to introduce the combat system, deal
with hostile territory and minions, and finally confront the Avatar.
Once the Avatar’s been defeated, return back to reality and show
the consequences of the rebel’s victory – contacts saved from
danger, the vassal brought low, and newfound prosperity.

For an example one-shot scenario, check out the free Kill or Cure
quickstart available for download on our website.

Limited Run

A limited run will have you spend most of your time playing through
a single investigation. You’ll start with the standard game setup
process, including the first fight against a Vassal, and build out the
rebel’s social network. Then, set up the Vassal who’ll be the main
focus of your game. Tier 2 works well for this, but make sure they’re
an interesting, dynamic foe who presents a clear and dire threat to
people the rebels care about. Also make sure they can present a
mundane threat to the rebels – give them a powerful position,
minions, a willingness to use violence, or some other strength.

As you play through the investigation, make sure to set aside time for
the rebel’s mundane lives. The greatest strength of this format is that
it enables you to explore the everyday context around the rebels – the
people who are important to them, their job, their home life, the
downtimes where they relax and recuperate. One investigation over
a few session is the pace of the rules as-written, so relax and don’t get
too stressed about “speeding things up”. Finish with a brief epilogue
that lets players say goodbye to these characters and their world.

Campaign
A campaign is essentially the default mode for Voidheart Symphony:
you and your group commit to playing this story for as long as feels
right. This format lets you dive into the sort of stories you can tell
over multiple arcs – stories not just of fighting back against a single
enemy, but of revolution. This might take a dozen sessions or so (one
Vassal each at Tiers 1, 2, and 3 should fit within 10 sessions and let
you tell a satisfying arc) or run for a year or more.
What’s most important here is to check in with your group
regularly and make sure you’re all OK with how the game’s
progressing. Game mechanics like Growing Shadows (p. 36) or
Peace and Quiet (p. 75) are designed to empower players to shape
how the story’s progressing, but I find the game works best when
players know they can advocate for the stories they want to play
through, the scenes they’d like to have, the relationships they want
to try for in-game, etc. You’re all telling this story together, after all.
There are a few themes I’d encourage you to hit as your game goes on:
The structures of oppression. If defeating one bad guy was
enough to fix the problems in the character’s lives, we wouldn’t be
in this state. As you’re playing through your game, make sure to
show the ways the castle is a chronic, pervasive structure in the
character’s society. The patterns of hegemony on pages 219-221 are
a good way of hitting this: have an idea in your mind about the
ways the castle is structured in your city, and its long-term goals,
and gradually reveal them over time.
I also find it useful to give the castle a leitmotif, some kind of
aesthetic element you can use to show its influence. In one
campaign, I used rot and decay as its defining feature: tunnels
through crumbling concrete, a delve into a submerged library,
spreading rust and mould. When Enforcers started breaching into
reality and Tier 3 Vassals used their Avatar’s powers, this gave me a
great way to show the castle invading the aesthetics of the mundane
world. Maybe you can use mirrors, or gothic architecture, or eyes, or
whatever else strikes your fancy – just make sure you’re not hitting
your player’s triggers or phobias before you go too heavy on it!

The joy of community. To be effective rebels, your characters can’t
help but build a community around themselves. There’s
mechanical incentives to build an interconnected web of contacts
and important locations, and as your game goes on you should
keep an eye out for opportunities to demonstrate that sense of
community. Show...
• Unexpected relationships blooming between contacts the

rebels have brought together.
• Moments of reprieve when a contact hears the rebel’s troubles

and turns up to offer a helping hand.
• Social gatherings where you can show contacts interacting with

each other and letting their hair down– bar nights, weddings,
movie nights, board game evenings, etc.
It’s really important to show the value of this community the
players are building together. It’s the heart of this game, and the
reason why the rebels are fighting – to build a better life for the
people they love, and make a world where all are free.
The costs of revolution. In an ongoing campaign, you’ll eventually
run into the downsides of high World and Void. The role these
play in a long-form game are key to what I’m trying to say with
this system: that individual action is necessary but not sufficient
to change the world, and that no one should martyr themselves
for the cause. As the players grow in power, show them ways in
which overwhelming individual power can twist and distort this
fight. As the players take on responsibility, show them the ways
that burnout and over-commitment cost them and can’t build a
system that lasts.

Pacing an Investigation

It’s important for Voidheart’s pacing that things take time.
Investigations take place over a span of days and weeks, and rebels
should often come to a point where they need to wait to progress
the investigation. Information will take a few days to arrive (see
Rebel Eyes), their target won’t be vulnerable until the end of the
week, they have a doctor’s appointment so can’t raid the castle this
evening. The same goes for their targets – the Vassal’s power is
vast but slow-moving, and the rebels will see their attacks coming
long before they land.

This has a few important consequences in gameplay. The first is
that it gives the players breathing room: when they know that they
can’t progress the investigation for a few days, they can focus on
the mundane side of things without worrying they’re playing ‘sub-
optimally’. Most RPGs drive players into a frenzy of urgency,
where they’re constantly moving from plot beat to plot beat, but if
you want to let Voidheart Symphony sing you should make sure to
treasure the small moments – the scenes that show you so much
about the characters and their world even as their cosmic, city-
wide impact is effectively zilch.

The second consequence is to remind players of the limitations
that both rebels and Vassals are living under. You cannot
command the city and have it immediately respond, because ‘the
city’ doesn’t exist. It’s people, with mundane lives and mortal
frailties. A Vassal’s plans have to deal with the fact that one
henchman has a sick kid and downtown traffic is unexpectedly
awful today. A rebel can find their investigation stymied by a long
line at the record office, or have to drop everything to help their
family corral some escaped livestock. That’s annoying, sometimes,
but it’s also important to evoking real human lives.

Finally, you can play with the timescales the rebels and the Vassal
have to work on. Maybe you have an investigation where it’s a
hectic dash to the finish line, with downtime precious and hard-
won. Maybe you have an investigation that’s relaxed and low-
stakes, giving plenty of time for the rebels to go on dates, fix their
house, work on their projects. As always, make sure to talk
through your intents with your players, so that you can all work
towards a particular tone together.

Giving them what they Want

If someone picks a playbook, that’s a pretty good sign of the plot
beats they want their character to hit in play. It’s perfectly fine to
give them what they want! Here’s some examples:
The Authority: Someone asks them for advice or reassurance,
their organisation shows competence or initiative, they can bring
down an abusive boss, they’re given a choice between moral purity
and power, they have to mediate a dispute between their followers.
The Captive: Someone is carrying burdens the Captive can lift,
they’re offered care and support, their fellow inmates reach out to
them, they’re offered an opportunity for revenge.
The Harlequin: Give them an authority figure to piss off, fans and
followers and copycats, an unexpected quirk of fate, moments of joy
and the hangover that follows, a demand to take things seriously.
The Heretic: Present counter-arguments to their ideology, dare
them to flaunt rules, give a way of hurting their foes that may burn
out of control, give them an opportunity to build something better.
The Icon: Give them a stage to perform, show the costs of
maintaining peak performance, show what they let slip when they
relax, show the demands of fans and managers and sponsors.
The Inhuman: Show the joy of a new home and found family, a
chance to give their thoughts on the city, unexpected connections to
other void-creatures, the struggles of trying to fit in with humanity.
The Penitent: Show reminders of their crimes, hold them
accountable, celebrate the good things they do, let them try out a
new identity and way of being in the world, have ‘old friends’
reach out concerned about their new behaviour.
The Provider: Someone needs their care, they get resources and
have to decide how to use them, someone they helped in the past
comes through for them, they need to face their own burnout.
The Watcher: Someone offers them answers (for a price), their
insights can bring someone peace, their metaphysical search runs
up against mundane practicalities, they have a chance to go public
with their findings.

Changing your Target

Voidheart Symphony’s investigations have a known target – the
question you’re trying to answer is ‘how can we defeat them?’
What if you want your campaign to answer other mysteries?
There’s three main things you’d need to tweak: what Pressure
represents, how Retaliation manifests, and most importantly what
questions Lift The Mask asks. Changing the questions there, and
who the Avatar represents, will work wonders to give a different
mood to your campaign.
As an example, let’s say you want to draw on the setup of Persona 4:
people in your city are being abducted, stolen away to a shadow world
that traps them in a prison formed from their own distorted doubts
and fears. To save them, the rebels will have to fight their way through
this shard to get to its ruler – but to defeat that ruler, they must learn
the victim’s heart, their anxieties and hopes and dreams. And
meanwhile, a doppelganger of the victim has taken their place, living
according to the culprit’s designs.
So how do you systematise that? Well, instead of the standard
Emperor's New Clothes questions, you could put in these:

You've found where and when the victim was abducted.
You've found out the key way the doppelganger differs from the victim.
You've defeated at least one of the victim’s Guards*.
You’ve found ways to make a real change in the victim’s life.
You’ve learned why those close to the victim love them.
*Like Enforcers, but they represent the ways the culprit is
seeking to control or limit the victim.
And what about Pressure? Maybe it represents the doppelganger’s
growing claim on the victim’s life, and reality bending to prevent
any disruptions to the new status quo. Or maybe it’s the true
culprit sending supernatural forces to imperil the investigators?
Once you start down this path you might find yourself rewriting
other moves, altering playbooks, writing new covenants (see
p. 196), changing core assumptions about the game. Please do,
with my blessing! Come by our server at ufopress.co.uk/discord
to get feedback on your creations, chat about ideas for future
hacks, and see what other people have made. And if you get your
work to the point where you think others might want to play
with it too, get in touch to talk about how I can help!

Closing it out

There’ll come a time in your Voidheart Symphony game where it’s
time to bring things to a close. What sort of stories work as an
epilogue? How do you play them out? Read on for advice.

A Final Foe

Whatever the shape of the castle in your city (see p. 219), there’s
almost certainly someone at the top – even if they’re just the one
who’s leeching the most riches from the city. It’s fitting to wrap up
your campaign with a final investigation targeting this vassal,
pulling out all the stops to make this a fitting confrontation. The
stakes have never been higher – make the vassal’s threat to the
rebels clear by targeting and co-opting their mundane support
networks and sending supernatural threats against them, but also
demonstrate the worth of that support network and show the
rebel’s movement rising up to cast this wannabe monarch down.
When the battle’s done, don’t bother with Rivers in the Desert,
Retaliation or Peace and Quiet. Instead, just let the players enjoy
this victory, show a city made freer with their actions, and leave
the door open for further adventures in this setting. There’s
always other cities under the castle’s rule, after all.

A Cosmic Search

What if there’s a tier of vassal about Monarchs? Tier S vassals,
Demiurges, whose will shapes the city you live in and any world
you’ve ever known. Fighting them isn’t a matter of finding the
entrance to their shard, but finding where their dominion ends.

This story is a story of a journey. Maybe that’s a quest into the
secret places of the World, looking for a place untouched by the
castle. Maybe it’s a delve into the past, trying to find what
happened to bring the castle into our reality (and therefore how it
can be banished). Maybe it’s a journey into the depths of the Void,
seeking a potent weapon in that realm of limitless hunger.

Whatever the route you take, encourage the rebels to build an answer
to the castle, an antidote to its philosophy, a weapon they can use in
their final battle to strike down the Demiurge and claim the power to
remake the world. Or maybe it doesn’t come down to a final battle,
but simply finding a refuge where the rebels can live free?

To sell the character’s journey away from the world they’ve always
known, I’d recommend using a different system. Follow by Ben
Robbins (Lame Mage Productions) is a good fit for this, telling a
story of a desperate quest and the sacrifices the pilgrims make to
complete it. You could use Rhapsody of Blood (UFO Press) to flash
back to the origins of the castle, and reveal how it might be
banished. And when the rebels return with enough cosmic power to
face down the castle’s Avatar, you could use Harder They Fall (UFO
Press) to play through this titanic battle for the fate of the world.

A Freed City

Maybe you don’t finish you story with the final battle that banishes
the castle from this city, but with what happens after. You’ve
rejected the castle’s model of society, but what’s your alternative?
Are your rebels going to be leaders of this community, or embrace
the chance to live a peaceful life? And what about the other
communities out there – will you try and bring freedom to them
too, or will you have to withstand their reprisals as their leaders
cling to the castle’s doctrine?

If you want to play out the crucial questions of how this new
society will work, which crossroads it’ll face, how the workers and
the leaders relate to each other, I’d absolutely recommend playing
Kingdom (Lame Mage Productions). If you instead want to go more
personal, playing a game like Dream Askew (Buried Without
Ceremony) or Chuubo’s Wish-Granting Engine (Jenna Moran) will
focus in on the character’s new lives in the world they created –
the former better fitting an enclave of peace amidst a hostile
world, and the latter working well to play out new lives in a world
where anything seems possible.

DaRk FeUdAlIsM

It can be hard to imagine what makes people into Vassals, and
what that can mean for them, but for a moment, try to put
yourself in their shoes.

The castle is a paradox. It promises its Vassals the power to break
free of society’s rules, but that power is contingent on accepting
the castle’s shackles. If you make it your god and king, you can
rule over all these mere humans. But – and of course, there’s
always a but – the castle has many servants, and you’re likely not
going to be the person on top.

There’ll be more Vassals more powerful, more established than
you, and if you want more of that power you’ll need to find ways to
suck up to them, undermine them, or outplay them. You’ve been
‘liberated’ from the strictures of regular society, but locked into a
far more hostile, corrosive and controlling society in return.

How does this work in practice? Essentially, your Vassals won’t exist
in a vacuum. There’ll be a whole hierarchy of Vassals, and while you
don’t need to have it fully mapped out as an organisational chart, it’s
helpful to have a good idea of what the castle looks like in your city.
That way, you’ll be better able to present a coherent depiction of
toxic power structures and hegemony in your city, and improvise
new Vassals as the game goes on.

To build your hierarchy, there’s a few basic patterns you can pick.
Each gives an idea of what Vassals at different tiers are pursuing,
intentionally or unintentionally. Pick one that makes sense for you,
mix and match, or build your own!

Three Patterns of Hegemony

Conspiracy

A conspiracy is a simple form of this structure. The hierarchy is
working towards an overall goal to reshape society, and each Vassal
is working towards that to a greater or lesser degree. They form
pyramids – a lot of tier 1 Vassals, less tier 2s, only a few tier 3s.

• What is the conspiracy’s end goal?
• How do its members show their membership to each other?
• Which mundane organisations have the conspiracy claimed?

Tier 1 Vassals (knights) are foot-soldiers and grunts. They go after
groups making trouble for their higher-ups and secure resources
for the grander plan.

Tier 2 Vassals (nobles) are managers and implementers. They’re
there to organise the resources of the conspiracy, and put the
grand vision into practice.

Tier 3 Vassals (monarchs) are visionaries and generals. They have
an idea of how they want society to be, and an iron grip on the rest
of the conspiracy.

Tendencies

Completely on the other side of things, it’s possible for your
hierarchy to have no explicit goal. The castle’s influence is corrosive
to any notion of justice and equality; its Vassals don’t need any kind
of grand evil plan to make your city worse. Your hierarchy can be
looser, too, according to what works for your story.

• Which marginalised group does the castle target?
• What in-group does the castle raise above others?
• How does the castle spread its message to the broader population?

The goal of Knights is to nudge people back to the orthodoxy the
castle desires. They might be managers who call you in to ask you
to stop rocking the boat, parents concerned that their kids will have
a bad life if they don’t rein in these childish fantasies, or bullies
attacking those who step outside the norm. Whether they believe
their actions are motivated by concern or if they revel in making
other’s lives difficult, they’ll mainly pick targets they encounter in
their day-to-day life instead of seeking them out.

Nobles play a more active role in enforcing social hegemony.
They’re the vloggers who tear apart harmless joy as ‘cringe’, radio
DJs filling airwaves with soft, banal bigotry, thugs who walk the
streets on a Saturday night looking for misfits who they can bully
and attack. Their public enforcement of society’s rules sets the
tone for what Knights do in private, but they take their lead from
the highest tier.

Monarchs make the rules. They’re the media moguls pushing a
narrative across dozens of outlets, the landowners who reap the
rewards of gentrification, the mayors pushing policies that hurt
marginalised communities so that they look tough and can win
re-election. They decry the rhetoric spewed by Nobles and the
actions taken by Knights (when they become newsworthy), even as
they profit from the consequences.

Factions

Vassals don’t always serve a united front. It’s perfectly possible for
your castle to empower warring factions of Vassals, each pushing
their own agenda for the city. This model is particularly reactive to
the player’s actions – as they take out Vassals in a faction, and
maybe even steal their place in the hierarchy, that faction’s fortunes
will wane and the other factions might take action against them.

• How many different factions are there?
• What sets them against each other? Different goals for the city, different

beliefs about the castle, sectarian disputes?
• What signs mark the city when each faction is ascendant?

The structure of the hierarchy in a faction game is very similar to
that of a conspiracy – the main difference being that it’s divided
into at least 2, and probably no more than 4 factions. Decide how
players can tell a given Vassal’s allegiance – aesthetics shared
between castle shards, spheres of society that their plans tend to
focus on, cultural groups the Vassal originates from?

This style of campaign is one that gets the most benefit from
having a sketched-out map of the Vassals, so that you can work
out how the balance of power will shift when the players strike
their targets down. Vassal’s plans will also likely target those in
other factions (while creating plenty of misery in the wider world)
– bear that in mind too if you trigger Darkness Falls.

Finally – decide what the castle’s getting out of all this. Is there a
secret faction of puppetmasters who have engineered the chaos?
Is it a trial by fire, with the winning faction creating an
unassailable organisation? Or is the castle itself fracturing?

How to Enforce Hegemony

So, you have your overall structure. How do you give it a presence
at the game table? Like any Architect, you do this by sketching out
a blueprint for the castle in your city.

Elements of the Blueprint

First, a set of goals the Monarchs are pushing the castle towards.
These are long-term changes for the city, and shouldn’t be tied
down too strongly to specific people, places and events.

Examples: Raid the city’s assets, enforce a return to ‘traditional
values’, make the city hostile to immigrants, ‘beautify’ the city.

For each goal, a set of responsibilities within it that Nobles have
been entrusted with. These are discrete portions of the castle’s
organisation that serve to maintain its position or further its
progress towards its goals. They might be specific industries,
particular city regions, specific categories of activities, but it’s
important that these Nobles are serving as middle-managers
working to get others bringing about the Monarchs’ goals.

Examples: Recruit prospective vassals, corner the drug trade,
shut down education grant programs, gentrify a city block.

For each responsibility, then, create a set of tasks that Knights are
carrying out to further it. This is where the rubber meets the road,
where the castle’s machinations lead to actual people intimidating,
hurting and stealing from others. The Knights may not know that
their actions maintain the Noble’s power, and they almost certainly
are unaware of the end goals their actions are serving, but they
serve them all the same. These tasks have a secondary goal of
nurturing the Knight’s darkness, forcing them to compromise
their morals time and again to mould them into ever better
servants of the castle and give them a chance at promotion.

Examples: Silence a whistleblower, evict an activist, sue a paper
for defamation, get a castle-friendly broadcaster promoted,
crush teen student’s spirits, hunt for minor crimes to punish.

Using the Blueprint

Once you have this list, it’s tempting to assign each item to a
Vassal, and build out a whole org chart. I’d caution against this –
the process in Growing Shadows works best when players are free
to give details about their new target’s traits and actions. Powered
by the Apocalypse games work best when the GM/MC/Architect
draws maps and leaves blank spaces – here’s how to do that here.

When you’re putting together a new Vassal, pick an appropriate entry
from the blueprint to be the thing they’re providing for the castle. Use
the details the players have provided to flesh out the chosen entry, and
place this Vassal’s actions within a broader city-wide context.

During the investigation, use the blueprint to inform how the
Vassal relates to the overall hierarchy of the castle. When the
rebels hear the Vassal barking orders to subordinates over the
phone, look down the blueprint to see what those orders might be.
When the players wonder why the castle is encouraging the Vassal
to take this actions, look up the blueprint to see what ends they’re
serving. And when rebels use Occupation or prophetic power to
guess the castle’s future actions, use the blueprint to gesture at
what this whole horrific edifice is working towards.

When the rebels beat a Vassal, that aspect of the blueprint has
failed. Work through these consequences! Even a fallen Knight
has some knock-on effects – those the Knight was terrorising are
now free, and a Noble’s responsibility isn’t being worked on. A
fallen Noble or Monarch leaves a huge gap in the blueprint – how
does the castle scramble to fill that hole? What happens to those
who served them – do they leave the castle’s service, find a new
master, try to grab the fallen Vassal’s power for their own? In this
way, the city is dynamically and reactively affected by the rebels.

Finally, during Retaliation and Peace and Quiet, think about the
ways the blueprint is continuing to reshape the city and align it
with the castle’s will. Show people made homeless, institutions
made heartless, common goods sold off to profiteers. Where tasks
have been finished, responsibilities completed, goals fulfilled,
write new ones in their place – though remember that the
tyrannical hierarchy will be slow, inelegant and hidebound in its
responses to the rebel’s attacks.

ChApTeR 6

ThE CaStLe’s TeRrOrS



A KiNgDoM oF HuNgRy ShAdOwS

The castle is festering and malicious, a parasitic cancer whose
sprawling halls spread through the interface between our world and
the Void. Within its halls roam personality fragments given a will of
their own, denizens of the Void overwhelmed by human desires,
and stranger things besides. Your rebels are going to dive into this
labyrinth, again and again, for the sake of their revolution.
What horrors will they find there? What secrets will they uncover?
Can the castle be truly defeated, and disentangled from the world?

The Rebel’s Dark Mirror

The castle is a particular way the interface between the Void and
the World can manifest. Where rebels see that pairing as a
synthesis between “I matter” and “You matter”, the castle and its
Vassals see through a lens of Tyrant and Serf:

The Void-as-Tyrant tells a Vassal that all power and acclaim is owed
to them, that there is nothing they cannot do, that morals and laws
are things for lesser souls to worry about.
The World-as-Serf tells a Vassal that others can be useful to them,
but that utility is as far as their perspective goes. The castle’s
influence encourages a Vassal to ignore everything else that makes a
person important – their hopes, their loves, their identity, all
abstracted away to numbers on a balance sheet.
Unlike the rebel’s power, Vassals don’t gain personal power from
attunement to these principles. Instead, the power flows into the
castle – which may lease the power back to favoured serfs if they
please it.
Each of the goals under Emperor's New Clothes is a way of breaking
this mindset down: showing the Vassal that they can be held
accountable, that they care about others, that the pain they cause
is real and cannot be ignored. By shaking their conception of
themselves as a Tyrant over Serfs, they become less able to access
the castle’s power.
And are there other paths towards building a synthesis between
the World and the Void? What would one be without the other?

Dark Denizens

Once they enter the castle, the rebels will face countless creatures
dedicated to stopping them. For the most part, these will fall into
these broad categories:

The Avatar is the representative of the Vassal. They control a
particular shard of the castle, though depending on the Vassal’s
self-image they could be the shard’s ruler, god, idol or prisoner. So
long as the link joining them to the castle is intact, they’re
invulnerable – any attempts to use Strike to remove their Qualities
will be resisted or immediately healed. The rebels will have to use
Emperor's New Clothes, first, to make them vulnerable.

Enforcers are flaws and fixations in the Vassal’s mind, enlarged into
walking tumours that serve as additional channels for the castle’s
power. In the shard, they’re minibosses and backup for the Vassal –
but when the Vassal’s Pressure hits a new threshold, their Enforcers
can breach into the mortal world. Check p. 256 for more details.

Minions are the rank-and-file residents of the shard. They spend
their time play-acting the Vassal’s psychodramas in an endless
cycle, hostile or welcoming to the rebels according to their
designated role. Rebels can Reach Out to break this loop, learning
the significance of the minion’s role in the Vassal’s mindscape and
winning over their loyalty.

And then there’s Outsiders – your rebels aren’t the only entities
who can invade a shard. As their revolution unfolds, they may
encounter third parties within the castle: rival gangs of rebels,
Enforcers of feuding Vassals, denizens of the Void, avatars of the
World’s gestalt will, and more besides.

QuAlItIeS

Whether you’re dealing with a horde of minions or a towering
monstrosity, your foes’ strengths are measured by Qualities. You
can think of a Quality as a particular danger the creature presents.
They’re a werewolf’s hulking strength, a spectre’s piercing gaze, a
zombie horde’s grasping hands.
Minions have a single Quality, and it’s fine to be simple with this –
it has to bundle up their attack(s) and their defences, after all. A
single Quality should cover an entire mob of minions, but you can
make encounters tougher by fielding multiple types: a hulking
robot flanked by scuttling gremlins will give the rebels two
different Qualities to destroy.
Enforcers have three Qualities, each representing an entire suite
of powers. Avatars have Qualities of their own, and can borrow
one from each surviving Enforcer. Give each Quality a description
of how it looks in the fiction, and 2-3 reactions that let you use the
Quality in battle. A normal adversary will have something like this:
• A Quality representing the main way they attack.
• A Quality giving them useful movement abilities, letting them

close the gap with the rebels or escape close combat.
• A Quality that lets them alter the battlefield: plunge it into darkness,

open fissures, command hordes of minions, unleash traps.
Each Quality defining an Enforcer or Avatar also has a Break
Action: something that triggers when the Quality is broken.
These are best used to split up the players, add extra perils to the
environment, or give a lingering benefit to the adversary that
makes dealing further harm difficult. Break Actions serve an
important pacing role: the rebels outnumber you and have more
tools than you, and so these actions make sure the adversary
doesn’t go down easy even as the rebels tear away their fancy tricks.

Here’s some examples of Break Actions:
Retreat to a vantage point.
Call in a mob of minions.
Lash out at the closest threat.
Create a lingering hazard.
Split up the rebels.
Set great danger in motion.

To mix things up, try one or all of these:
The foe is armoured. They have a defensive quality that the
rebels must remove to target their other qualities.
The foe has multiple stages or forms. Only one quality is
active at any one time. As the rebels strip each one away, the
next one activates and the battle enters a new stage. Each
individual quality will need to pull more weight here, so write
ones that give both offence and defence.
The foe is multiple individuals. Maybe each individual is
represented by their own quality – remove the quality, remove
the individual. Or maybe the rebels are striking away their
formation, their cohesion, their armaments.
Running a Fight Scene

A set of interesting Qualities is just one part of a memorable
antagonist – using them in an interesting fight is also key!
To make effective fights, focus on tempo and variety.
Tempo means keeping the players on their toes and trying to
avoid uncertainty and downtime. Keep an eye on any rebels that
haven’t acted for a while and have your antagonist send attacks
their way – or present them with an opportunity to strike. Where
a player has been taking up too much of the enemy’s attention,
have them break away and move the camera onto other
characters. And when a player asks ‘can I do …’, it’s almost always
better to say ‘yes’ and keep the fight moving than it is to quibble
about whether that would really work here.
Variety means presenting a shifting set of challenges and
environments throughout the battle. At key points in the battle,
have the antagonist reveal new weapons, take on a new form,
bring in reinforcements, wreck the arena, or drag the rebels to a
whole new battlefield. The players have more options and focus
between themselves than you do, so it’s easy for them to get to a
point where they feel in control of the encounter. Changing things
up lets fights feel dangerous all the way down to the last Quality.
Finally, I’d look at games with team-based boss fights for
inspiration – Monster Hunter’s a great inspiration, or Final Fantasy 14.

MaKiNg YoUr VaSsAl

Tier

The first thing to decide with a Vassal is their Tier – how powerful
they are in the castle’s feudal system.

Tier 1 Vassals (knights) are entry-level monsters, barely touched by
the castle’s power. Its halls haunt their dreams, urging them towards
greater monstrosity. They might be tyrannical managers, mentors
who steal their student’s works, or extortionist gang leaders.

▶ A knight’s castle shard is a simple thing with one enforcer.
▶ Knights are unaware of the castle, and their only city-side

boon is that their underlings will not flip on them without
exceptional effort from the players.

Tier 2 Vassals (nobles) have learned that they will be richly
rewarded for inflicting pain and misery. The nightmare
architecture of the castle spreads into their waking mind, showing
the world through the lens of master and serf. They might be local
politicians, police chiefs, or established mobsters.

▶ A nobles’ castle shard has two wards, each with its own
distinct theme and ruling enforcer.

▶ Nobles know there’s a dark power behind their success, and
have embraced it. Their underlings fear them, and one or
two have inhuman abilities (supernatural strength, agility,
resilience or perception) along with some hard-to-conceal
sign of their augmentation.

Tier 3 Vassals (monarchs) tread the halls of society’s elite, wielding
the castle’s power as a weapon to maintain their position and
accumulate ever-more wealth and prestige. They’re likely to be
CEOs, top-level government officials, generals and media celebrities.

▶ Monarchs have a castle shard with three wards, each with
its own enforcer.

▶ Monarchs are fully aware of the castle, and have embraced
the power it gives them to reshape society. Along with a
whole squad of empowered minions (see nobles), the
Monarch can call on their Avatar’s qualities similarly to a
rebel using Vent – though it removes a tick from their clock
if they do so.

Extra Details

What's their Drive? Each Vassal has an intense desire burning in
their heart. As the castle whispers poison into their minds, even
the noblest goals are soon twisted into a blight on the world.
Here's some ideas:
• Dominion: The Vassal seeks power, authority, and acclaim.

Impulse: Offer rewards for service.
• Excellence: The Vassal wants to be the best – the best soprano,

the best duellist, the best painter in the world.
Impulse: Seize a chance to demonstrate their skill.
• Insight: The Vassal wants to know why something happened, or
who was truly behind a crime, or how the world really works.
Impulse: Relentlessly pursue hints to their goal.
• Avarice: Is it the most luxurious food, silks and wines the
Vassal desires? Or is there a particular work of art, luxury, or
even person that they seek to own?
Impulse: Covet the most precious possessions of others.
It’s by showing the Vassal that the castle can’t give them what they
truly want that the rebels can make their Avatar vulnerable – see
Emperor's New Clothes, p. 58.
What's their plan? Each Vassal has a reason they took the castle's
aid, and a plot they're working towards. Take a look at the options
in Darkness Falls and pick out which one you're working towards
for now, though be willing to switch things round depending on
how the Vassal's interactions with the rebels go.
See the next few pages for a range of example Vassals, written by
a variety of our guest authors. We’ve written them so that you
can use them for inspiration, drop them into your campaign as-
is, or even pick a Quality here and there to build your own
Vassals on the fly. Have fun!

The Arms Dealer

By Evan Saft

A flash of a smile, a firm handshake, and
a sizeable campaign contribution: all
weapons in the arsenal of the Arms
Dealer. Weapons are his bread and
butter; if it shoots, cocks, or reloads, the
Dealer knows it intimately and wants
you to have it. Of course, he would never
deign to sell a gun himself. He deals in
much deadlier merchandise: policy.
After all, what use is a firearm if
you’re not allowed to sell it? The Arms
Dealer is here to make sure that the
government doesn’t get any wrong
ideas, and that profits keep rolling
in. Besides, you know what they say:
guns don’t kill people...

Tier: 3 The Dealer has power over this entire region’s relationship with gun
violence, and the castle has richly rewarded the things he’s done with it.
The Dealer’s right-hand man has a hole resembling a gunshot wound in his
right hand, and the skin around it is charred and burnt. The hand carries
soldiers from the Dealer’s shard – with a handshake they will invade a
victim’s mind, on a mission to seek and destroy their conscience.

Drive: The status quo fits the Dealer just fine. He’s got a comfy gig, and anyone
Comfort that tries to upset that is sure to provoke his ire.

Plan: Unfortunately for the Dealer, the latest surge of public grief has had some
staying power. There’s now a bill in motion to completely ban guns in the
city and the surrounding areas. The people need to fear, need to cling on to
protection – and if the Dealer can paint anti-gun campaigners as threats to
other freedoms, that’s even better. The General (p. 244) might be a useful
ally, but may also be a rival for the Dealer’s brass-casing crown.

232

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• In an out of character move, one of the players’ contacts appears on the news
to speak out against gun control.

• The dreams of one of the rebels (or one of their contacts) are plagued with visions
of goose-stepping soldiers.

Shard Aesthetics

The Arms Dealer’s shard is a war-torn city, under occupation by a ruthless army.
Explosions and ash mark the skyline as gangs of soldiers rove through ruined
streets, seeking out signs of resistance. Within the buildings, decadently
framed photos show the Dealer’s current targets: animals to be hunted, or
politicians to be swayed.
His minions are infantry (arms replaced by rifles), back alley merchants who
trade in blood, and fires that move unnaturally towards signs of life.

Avatar Qualities

Misinformation Man-At-Arms Blood Money
Campaign Wherever the Arms The Arms Dealer bears
Dealer reaches, he finds the same hand wound as
The streets of the city are a new firearm to wield. his henchman; the money
lined with loudspeakers running through his veins
broadcasting endless constantly spews out of it.
eldritch propaganda in
the Dealer’s voice.

Distort a rebel’s senses. Shoot with deadly accuracy. Trap a rebel under the
Pierce a rebel’s eardrums Engulf the area in weight of a fortune.
with feedback. suppressing fire. Unleash a deluge of cash.

Speak falsehoods that Cause a civilian casualty. Erode surroundings with a
become true. Break: The Dealer’s guns torrential windfall.
Break: The propaganda fly from his hands and Break: The Dealer’s
gives way to an endless begin to act of their own wounds pack and scab
shriek, and incites a volition, shooting with wealth, forming
crowd to violence against indiscriminately at into affluent armour.
the rebels. anyone who comes into
their line of fire.

233

The Cleaner

By Minerva McJanda

When a corporate executive crashes a
car and kills their PA, someone needs to
convince investigators to avoid asking
certain questions. When an employee
is threatening to blow the whistle,
someone needs to convince them to
sign an NDA. When a company wants
to look respectable before they float
their shares, someone needs to clear
out their dirty laundry.
That’s where the Cleaner comes in.
Coming in from private security, she’s
become adept and turning the vices of
her employers into business
opportunities. She’s built a network of
agents across the corporate landscape
combining investigation and
suppression: seeking out skeletons in
their closet, offering to make them
go away, and then erasing every
shred of evidence. Every shred
except for the scraps she keeps as
trophies – and insurance.

Tier: 2 The Cleaner is a Noble of the castle, meaning that she’s somewhat
aware that her success has been partly due to the castle’s grace. Two of
her agents have been blessed with a touch that erases information
from documents and devices, and they can temporarily remove
identifying features from a victim. They’re marked by a greyish pallor
to their skin – their blood, if spilt, will resemble printer ink.

Drive: The Cleaner seeks power and acclaim, and relishes the feeling of
Dominion knowing the dirty secrets of the city’s movers and shakers.

Plan: Now she’s trying to turn legit – or at least, use her troves of blackmail
to buy support for her ascension. To ensure nobody can turn against
her, she’s got one final cleanup job: erasing the agents that know her
dirty secrets.

234

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• One of the players (or one of their contacts) is targeted by one of the Cleaner’s
agents for silencing.

• One of the agents turns up dead at one of the rebel’s workplace, and they (or
one of their contacts) is framed for the death.

Shard Aesthetics

The Cleaner’s shard evokes the utilitarian back corridors of a colossal office
building. In these dingy halls, incriminating files are locked in walls of
cabinets, the floors are carpeted in shredded documents, and pools of
indelible ink seep under doors. Her minions are headless clerks with void-
black skin, tendrils of night hiding under seas of shredded paper, and
armoured riot cop enforcers.

Avatar Qualities

Redacting Sight Lakes of Ink Stun Baton

The gaze of the Cleaner’s The arena is filled with The Cleaner twirls a long
Avatar strips away pools of roiling, staff whose tip crackles
everything inconvenient corrosive, indelible ink. with electricity.
to them.

Destroy a piece of gear. Blind a rebel. Smash a limb.

Erase terrain features and Fountain up obscuring Paralyse a limb.
obstacles. clouds of ink.

Weaken a rebel’s sense of Surge up and grip at rebel’s Catch and redirect a missed
self. ankles. attack.

Break: If she can’t see, Break: The ink recedes to Break: The electricity
no-one can – the arena is reveal gaping chasms grounds through the
plunged into darkness. separating parts of the Cleaner, creating a
arena from each other. crackling aura that
threatens danger to any
who get near.

235

The Child-Catcher

By Misha Handman

The Child-Catcher works for the
region’s Child Protection
Services, directing investigations
away from powerful abusers in
exchange for favours, and
stealing the children of those
who are suffering. When a case
worker raises concerns about a
family, she determines whether
they could be useful to her, and
then takes appropriate action.
The Child-Catcher
particularly delights in
targeting struggling parents,
especially those trapped by
the legal system on drug
charges. She removes their
children with the help of a compliant
legal system (p. 250) and sends them to
be adopted by wealthy families, and
then ‘loses’ the paperwork so that their
parents will never find them.

Tier: 2 The Child-Catcher is roughly aware of the castle’s power, and she
wishes to know more. She has been gifted with two pairs of glasses
that cause those who wear them to see the world as she does, and has
turned two of her most compassionate service agents into loyal
agents. When one of them is fired or arrested, she recovers the glasses
and ensnares someone new.

Drive: The Child-Catcher exults in having power over others, whether they
Dominion are the families that she destroys or those that she created.

Plan: The Child-Catcher wishes to ensnare new Vassals, who will owe her
dearly. She is tempting wealthy families into knowingly stealing
children, whose desperate parents are then lured into self-destructive
acts of vengeance. She will finally offer the castle’s power to the
wealthy for protection and as blackmail.

236

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal:

• A child or sibling of a player or one of their contacts is targeted for removal.
• The rebels recognise a neighbourhood child standing glassy-eyed next to her

new ‘parents’.

Shard Aesthetics

At first glance, the Child-Catcher’s Shard appears to be a monument to order:
carefully-arranged furniture, long corridors lined with shelves filled with
perfectly-aligned trinkets, and playrooms with every toy in its proper place. But
even the smallest change reveals what the precise order was hiding: fat crimson
worms, leering faces pressed against glass, and blood dripping down the walls.
The Child-Catcher’s minions are the things in the walls and beneath the floors –
tendrils of blood, whispering husks shaped like children, and twitching
maggots. Her halls are filled with proof of her dominion – gifts from parents
saved from revelation, arrest reports and obituaries of shattered lives, and
children’s pictures on every wall.

Avatar Qualities

Crimson Threads Mirror-Polished Silent Venom
The threads that dance Armour The Child-Catcher can
from the Child-Catcher’s spit a venom that
hands reshape the world The Child-Catcher wears silences whomever or
around her. a gleaming suit that whatever it touches.
reflects anything back on
her attackers.

Create obstacles in Turn an attack from one Silence a weapon or trap to
enemies’ paths. rebel against another one. deploy it against the
Drive the rebels apart. Slip out of any restraint or rebels.
Collapse an obstacle onto a confinement. Cut out someone’s voice.
victim. Appear innocent of malice. Twist words or
instructions to distort their
meaning.

Break: Everything in the Break: Fall from around Break: All lost sounds
arena is shattered and the Child-Catcher, erupt at once, filling the
broken, leaving it a revealing the squirming area with a deafening
dangerous field of worms of her flesh. howl.
rubble.

237

The Copmaker

By Paige Foisy

Once a hotshot engineering and comp sci
major with good prospects, The
Copmaker has turned his bright future
dark by combining his knowledge of
electronics with a love of justice and a
fundamental misunderstanding of how
society works. He is under contract
with local government, providing
algorithms and crime statistics to local
law enforcement, all of which betray
his prejudices and failings.
What’s more, he’s tapped into the
power of the castle, and is beginning
to learn to harness it’s power in order
to make his machines and programs
stronger. Each time a new update is
released, it now becomes more and
more biased against people of colour,
women, the queer community, and
the destitute. As time progresses,
the data his programs put out skew
more and more towards the side of
the oppressor – and make him
more and more sure that what he believes
about minorities is fact.

Tier: 2 The Copmaker, as a Noble of the castle, is aware to an extent of the
castles part in his success, and is working to increase its influence over
Drive: the city. Two of his constructs have taken on a life of their own, through
Insight the wretched grace the castle provides. Both have been blessed with the
Plan: ability to immediately communicate information to the Copmaker.
The Copmaker desires, more than anything else, to be sure the
misinformation he spreads is fact, and to learn to use the castle to do it.
He’s trying to get a contract with the city to mechanise the police
force. If he can manufacture the devices making arrests, he can
manufacture arrest statistics as well. Once all the right people are in
prison, the world will be perfect.

238

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• One of the players or one of their contacts is roughed up by a mechanised
officer on a test run.

• One of the players or one of their contacts is algorithmically and incorrectly
marked for arrest.

Shard Aesthetics

The Copmaker’s shard is all greebled machines and white plastic hallways leading
to automated assembly lines and prison blocks. As you get closer and closer to the
Copmaker himself, the halls are coated with discarded pieces of machinery,
owner’s manuals, and sparking cables, the walls becoming less and less pristine
and coated with engine lubricant, and the low hum of server banks drowned out
by the sounds of industry. The Minions of the Copmaker are computer-monitor-
headed guards, strung with wires, and shambling piles of electronics. Treasures
are things that make him feel smart: successful programs, engineering awards,
or binders filled with his research.

Avatar Qualities

Predictive Plexiglass Shield Cords and Cables
programming The Copmaker carries the The area is filled with
The code that flows shield of an officer of the wires of all thicknesses
through the Copmaker’s law, and wields it with and materials.
dark form allows him to Strength and Precision.
look ahead to the future.

Find a better way forward. Defend against a blow. Hoist a rebel into the air.

Immediately counter a Pin a rebel down. Lash out at a rebel.
rebel’s actions. Make a rebel go flying. Create barriers and
Prophesise a new platforms.
environmental hazard.

Break: No longer able to Break: The shards litter Break: The cords pulse
predict what should the battlefield and grow and fall limply to the
happen next, the area into large, spiked crystals, ground, slamming into
glitches, with strange painful to touch. the rebels and trapping
and abstract objects them underneath.
hurtling around the area
at high speeds.

239

The False Friend

By Violent Henderson

The False Friend is the owner of many of
the city's evening establishments. He
grew his initial empire by providing an
open door and blind eye to the town’s
growing queer community in decades
past. Over the years his bars and
restaurants have provided employment
and safe social spaces for queer people
with nowhere else to turn.
Recently though, that nightlife has
started to bring fashionable
attention to the town, a wealthier
and more respectable class of
patrons. The communities that kept
the places alive, the less 'desirable'
patrons who would take refuge
there all day and only buy one
drink, are finding themselves
unwelcome.

Tier: 1 The False Friend is a knight – he’s started to receive the castle's favour but is
not yet aware of the reasons for these boons. The Stained Glass (p. 254) has
put words in all the right ears to ensure favourable reviews of the False
Friend’s establishments have started to appear in local newspapers and
national radio. This attention has funnelled a stream of influencers towards
his bars and restaurants, an opportunity from the castle to prove his worth.

Drive: He wants his establishments to be talked about in all the most fashionable
Acclaim circles, and attended by all the most influential patrons.

Plan: He's started to see an upturn in his fortunes, but doesn't want to be a flash
in the pan. He’s looking for investors to turn his past wealth, and present
attention, into a firm foothold in the future of the city's social scene. But
that means cleaning things up and making things more presentable –
including the class of his patronage.

240

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• A rebel sees a bouncer violently ejecting a group of queer students from a bar,
freeing a table for the wealthy tourists waiting outside.

• A rebel or contact, finds their workplace under new management, hours and
pay cut, prices raised, and new policies for handling customers enforced.

Shard Aesthetics

His shard is a place of manufactured, commodified cosiness – naturalistic and
rustic stylings all measured and sculpted to the millimetre. Asymmetrical
Edison bulbs hanging from exposed roof beams coat the shard in a sterile amber
glow. At the far end, a single stage light highlights the polished bar where the
False Friend's Avatar stands, flanked by shelves upon shelves of expensive spirits
and small-batch beers. Between there and the door stand his minions: besuited
bouncers with smiling faces on the backs of their heads, groups of laughing
patrons who move together in jerky snapshot motions, and clockwork baristas
with their faucet-like hands dripping sweet-smelling poison.

Avatar Qualities

Drinks on Tap Bar Furniture Sanitising Camera
The False Friend spews The arena is a maze of The False Friend sees his
rivers of intoxicating heavy wooden tables, world through the lens of
liquid. wrought iron bar stools, a camera, its gaze wiping
and other fixtures away anything unsightly.
favouring aesthetics over
accessibility.

Disorient a rebel with the Create a shield from Temporarily blind a rebel
fumes. overturned tables. with a flash.

Separate the rebels with Send lightbulbs crashing Reveal a new path they can
flows of liquid. down,showeringtherebels. use to attack.

Knock a rebel to the ground Obstruct the rebels' Highlight a rebel’s
with a torrent of booze. movement as the furniture vulnerabilities.
shifts.

Break: Intoxicating Break: Metal warps and Break: The Avatar's veneer
liquid rains throughout wood splinters to form of civility falls away, and
the arena. hazardous spikes coating their attacks become
the arena floor erratic and violent.

241

The False Prophet

By McKayla Roundy

The False Prophet straightens his tie and
brushes off his suit before approaching the
podium. In his sermon he promises hope,
truth, and security to his thousands of
followers desperate for some relief during
times of crisis and hardship. His
intoxicating words draw you further into
his grasp, before something he says snaps
you out of it. Most wouldn’t think any of
it, but it sticks out to you: a backhanded
attack on who you fundamentally are.
Nothing but hate masquerading for love.

The False Prophet has been climbing the
ranks of the castle's hierarchy for most
of his life, every step along the way
causing untold suffering to those
different from him. Now he's at the top
and has it all: wealth, power, political
influence, and the obedience of
hundreds of thousands of followers.
For a long time, his victims had little
agency to fight back, but now you can
hear them loud and clear. The ghosts
of those he has damned cry out for justice.

Tier: 3 The False Prophet has long known about the power of the castle, and
gratefully submits to it. In exchange he has been rewarded with unnatural
powers of persuasion and guile, and his agents have been granted the gift
of tongues to command those around them to temporarily follow the will
of the False Prophet. They’re marked by their deathly pale skin, unnatural
serpentine flexibility, and thin forked tongues. They are constantly
wearing the same suits as the False Prophet.

Drive: He seeks nothing less than complete and total control over others in
Conformity order to reshape the world in his image. No wealth, power, or influence
will satisfy his lust for control, not until every person on the planet
submits to his “perfect” plan for humanity.

Plan: Spouting hate towards those who were different used to be easier. The
Prophet and his faith are starting to be seen as harmful and bigoted, and he
242 is losing followers and influence fast. That is, unless he can rebrand his cult,
gaslight his detractors, and convince the public of the faith’s legitimacy.

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• One of the rebels, contacts, or loved ones is approached by one of the
Prophet’s agents in an attempt to convert them.

• The rebels befriend a former follower of the False Prophet – now being shunned
and abandoned by their family and peers after embracing their identity.

Shard Aesthetics

The False Prophet’s shard is the platonic ideal of his chapels. It is a perfectly
organised and twisted contradiction of welcoming cleanliness and sanctity, with
an uncanny and oppressive reverence for the False Prophet. Altars and pews line
the halls, with minions filling the place of priest and worshipper alike. Wearing
the same suits as the false prophet and his agents, minions traverse the halls in
an endless sea of uniformity, ghostly white featureless faces and gentle
serpentine movements making each minion indistinguishable from the next.
The walls and altars of the shard are covered in the False Prophet’s treasures;
religious icons, symbols, and paintings, with the False Prophet’s likeness in
place of familiar religious figures.

Avatar Qualities

Eye of Providence Hands of the Shepherd Twisted Tongues
A gold and ivory obelisk The False Prophet’s The False Prophet speaks
towers over the coercive tendrils permeate with many snake-like
cathedral, a singular the inner sanctum, slowly tongues, cutting deep at
unblinking eye watching reshaping everything into insecurities before
over all. his image. striking.

Reveal a rebel that is Recruit bystanders and Intensify a rebel’s doubts.
hiding or taking cover. beasts to the False Snare or stun a rebel.
Smite a rebel with a beam Prophet’s control. Tempt a rebel into
of “holy” light. Reshape a piece of the lowering their guard.
Broadcast a secret shame terrain.
of one of the rebels to the Make a rebel see allies as
arena. enemies, and vice versa.

Break: Destroy all shelter Break: The False Prophet’s Break: The broken
and hiding places in the minions and thralls enter a tongues fall to the floor
arena. fanatic fury. as serpents with the
same powers as the False
Prophet.

243

The General

By Erika Chappell

Violence is the castle’s currency, and when
push comes to shove it is the only thing it
values, the only thing it truly respects. But
more than that, violence inherently fuels
and justifies itself, making it the most
lucrative game in town. War consumes,
then points at its own consumption and
demands more to put an end to it. Make
war, they say, to end the war.
The General was once just a part of the
violence, the humvee cowboy moving
pieces on maps, before he realised that
you didn’t have to wear a uniform to
fuel a war. Now he wears sharp suits
and owns yachts and sells the
equipment he once commanded to
armies, police forces, mercenaries,
rebels, anyone who can pay. He likes
to say that guns always sell in pairs,
because when you sell one, somebody
else out there will suddenly find
themselves needing protection.

Tier: 3 The General honestly believes he is a self-made man, that everything he is
he fought for tooth and nail. Of course, in reality he has been carried to
success by many factors, and the castle is a fairly significant one. His
ignorance at this point must be wilful, as his agents grow more inhuman
by the day. They speak as though through a crackling radio, and they always
seem capable of producing weapons from every pocket, drawer, and closet
they reach into. Everything they touch becomes smeared in cosmoline.

Drive: Oh sure, the money is great, power’s great, but at the end of the day he’s
Indulgence just a fan of his toys and he loves sharing them. He’ll talk for hours about

his favourites, and nothing brightens his day like seeing them show up on
the news. He’s getting on in years, so it’s nice to have a legacy.

Plan: Bring the chaos home. The General has benefited immensely from
globalised violence, but he wants his city to feel it especially. Scared
244 people are potential customers, after all. He wants something big and
showy that will convince everyone they need protection.

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• The players find themselves surrounded by a tide of rising violence, fuelled in
large part by easy access to lethal instruments. It isn’t hard to find out who is
providing them.

• The rebels break up a fight, only to find one of the assailants was an agent of
the General, trying to spread the chaos.

Shard Aesthetics

The General’s shard is a theme park dedicated to humanity’s guilty obsession
with weaponry, filled with cylindrical halls with rifled grooves or conveyor belt
rides past screen after screen of cheesy war movies. His minions are the
attendants, playacting warriors of history with a smile always plastered on their
faces, drained of colour like an old film. His treasures are newspaper clippings,
evidence of the chaos he has caused through the world, infamous weapons he
tracked down for display, and memorabilia of classic cinema, especially
anything to do with John Wayne.

Avatar Qualities

New Recruits Living Warzone Big Iron
The General’s Avatar As the fight drags on, the The General falls back on
always seems to have help, arena fills with the his pearl-handed revolver,
minions emerging from detritus of war, all of it which operates on the
every nook and cranny. dangerous in its own way. logic of a low-grade
western. And it sure as hell
holds more than six shots.

Reveal new foes even as old Wrap barb wire around a Fire a shot that precisely
ones fall. rebel’s leg. hits vulnerabilities.

Pin the rebels down with Fill with gun smoke and Shoot the weapon out of
the ferocity of their attack. thunderous noise. someone’s hand.

Blindside the enemy with Reveal a trap a rebel is Bring down part of the
an attack. about to step on. environment.

Break: The arena Break: The ground melts Break: Every remaining
suddenly shrinks, getting away until everything is a minion, agent, and ally of
dangerously intimate. thick, sucking pit of mud. the General descends in a
last, desperate wave.

245

The Livestream Punk

By Minerva McJanda

He never had a chance for success the
normal way. That’s what he tells
himself, at least. Parents that didn’t
care about his struggles, failing grades
from uncaring teachers, endless ads
for luxuries he couldn’t afford. But he
could act out to get his classmates’
attention. And he could take stupid
risks others would balk at. And, when
the Social Media Mogul (p. 252)
announced a new webcasting service,
the Livestream Punk got in on the
ground floor.
He found some success there –
enough to move out, and get a
house with some other streamers.
But the algorithm is always asking
for more: crueller pranks, more
reckless stunts, a further eroding
of the Punk’s ethics. And every
time he violates another moral
principle, his audience grows.

Tier: 1 The Livestream Punk is a very small fish in a very big pond – that’s
what makes him useful to the castle. As he makes riskier, crueller
content the castle will twist algorithms to send more and more
viewers to his channel, subtly cultivating ever greater monstrosity.

Drive: His newfound audience is giving the Punk a kind of validation he’s
Acclaim been missing his whole life. He’ll do anything to keep them watching.

Plan: The castle doesn’t care about the Rowdy Streamer’s success, except in as
much as it helps line the Social Media Mogul’s pockets. What the castle
wants is for the Livestream Punk to get popular enough to scandalise
polite society, horrify those in power, and further cement the disdain
they hold for his generation. Then it’ll discard him and move on.

246

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• A contact is targeted by the Livestream Punk for a prank video, and they’re
left them rattled, injured or scared of what harassment might come next.

• A fame-seeking contact is recruited to the streamer house, and promised a
following and a career if they help the Livestream Punk with his videos.

Shard Aesthetics

A convoy thunders along a dusty highway, racing through an arid wasteland
towards the gleaming city they will one day tear down. The convoy’s a slapdash
mix of vehicles – motorbikes and school buses, SUVs and racecars, daubed with
neon paint and fortified with welded-on spikes and roll cages. Lanky, emaciated
machine-goblins leap from vehicle to vehicle, keeping everything running, while
silent figures in black motorcycle leathers and mirrored helmets sit behind each
driver’s seat keeping the convoy on track. Of course, the convoy’s going nowhere:
the desert scenery whipping past is an optical illusion, and if you leave the
highway you’ll see that each vehicle of the convoy is spinning its wheels in place.
The Avatar knows this, but doesn’t care: so long as he’s at the head of the convoy
he’s in charge, and he wouldn’t know what to do at the city if he ever arrived.

Avatar Qualities

Scrap-metal Wings Lightning Sword Follower Count
Wings of rusted metal The Punk draws power The Livestream Punk’s
unfurl from the from his fellow travellers adherents would give
Livestream Punk’s back, – electricity arcing from their lives for him.
sharp and twisted. nearby trucks to form a
crackling blade.

Grab a rebel and yank Curve around an attempt Drag a rebel to the ground.
them skyward. to block his strike. Smash their car into the
rebels.
Slice through obstructions. Numb a foe’s limb.

Blast rebels away with a Fling an arc of lightning Act as a willing human
gust of air. across a great distance. shield for the Livestream
Punk.

Break: Scatter shards of Break: The vehicles Break: The survivors
sharp metal across the nearby overload and imprint on a rebel and
arena. explode, becoming a follow them, begging for
rolling inferno. greater displays of
daring and power.

247

The Philanthropist

By Liz Weir

The Philanthropist’s charitable works
are a fixture of the city, hostels and
soup kitchens a lifeline in a dark time –
for the people he sees as worthy of his
aid. To the people he turns away, the
presence of his works is a twist of the
knife – “We could help, if only you
weren’t the wrong kind of desperate.”
At first, it was just those he felt were
exploiting his aid; then anyone
disruptive, or ungrateful. Now
anyone who criticises him or his
works at all join that number – the
Philanthropist knows he’s a good
person, so anyone who disagrees
must be hiding something.

Tier: 2 The Philanthropist is a Noble of the castle, and on some level he knows
he’s drawing on something greater than himself. He’s convinced himself
it’s anything but dark, though – if the rebels confront him with the castle’s
nature, he’ll tell himself the sickness is their doing. His two biggest hostels
are managed by his confidantes, empowered by the castle to curse those
they cast out to be easier to ignore than aid. The castle’s mark seems at
first just to be a faintly unnerving smile, but it never changes. They don’t
blink. They don’t even open their mouths to speak.

Drive: Every benevolent act reinforces his certain belief that he’s a good person;
Excellence he’s not in it for the adulation, but to feel like he, personally, is doing good.

Plan: Until now, his work has been local to the city, but that’s going to change.
A representative of a respected national charity criticised his operation,
a sure sign that their whole organisation is corrupt – he’s going to bring
them down, and take their place.

248

ExAmPlE VaSsAlS

Reveal

• A friend or contact is kicked out of a hostel, and now it’s like the rebels are the
only people who can even see them.

• A fixture of the rebels’ neighbourhood receives an offer of support from the
Philanthropist’s organisation. All they’re asked in return is that their
benefactor gets some input in how they operate.

Shard aesthetics

Clean city streets, a confusing mix of houses missing walls with their private lives
exposed and facades whose doors and windows open on blank brick walls. Many
of the minions are half-finished, given just enough detail to need aid of some
kind. Paramedics stalk the streets, scalpel-sharp hands ready to cut the
vulnerable open and expose their needs. Hidden doors and hatches lead
backstage, disgorging gangs of stagehands who undo any good works and spread
misery, preparing the world to be set right again. The backstage ward is a
confusing warren of cramped tunnels, and at its heart is the nest of an avian
Enforcer who emerges to steal away whatever the Philanthropist wants forgotten.
His Avatar lives on a stage, constantly play-acting altruism for the waiting cameras.

Avatar Qualities

Concealing Shadows Defining Voice Floating
Soft shadows pool What the Philanthropist The Avatar is above it all.
around, concealing declares is truth – either Even when he comes
anything the because of piercing down to meet the rebels
Philanthropist doesn’t insight, or because reality on an even footing, his
want seen. shifts to match it. feet are a few inches
above the floor.
Reveal a hidden weapon.
Take away a piece of gear. Reveal a rebel’s secret. Retreat to the chamber’s
Trip a rebel on hidden Warn of imminent heights.
fissures. disaster. Leave a rebel weightless.

Break: Flood the stage Remind them they were Bring them down to earth
with blinding light. warned and manifest their with a crash.
doom.

Break: The stage shatters Break: The Philanthropist
into floating shards. slams into the ground,
knocking rebels down
with a shockwave.

249

The Representative

By Charlie Ann Page

“Case law suggests that a couple of
slices of toast a day is sufficient
nutrition, and furthermore…”
The Representative works in the
welfare system as a mid-level
manager. When not in court
fighting against appeals from
claimants, he trains his team and
sets the very targets that once
warped and twisted his own
outlook. With each accolade he
receives and each new suit he
buys, he finds a little more of his
confidence and purpose he
lacked for so long.
It serves the castle very nicely to
have a tool it can use to strip
away social safety nets and
drive desperate people into the
ground, and the
Representative is all too willing
to oblige.

Tier: 1 The Representative is currently unaware of the castle and the
thousand tiny ways it has paved the way for his ambitions. Those
higher up the hierarchy have both stoked and exploited his cruelty,
lavishing him with promotions and their tutelage.

Drive: He used to be a fairly unremarkable employee of the welfare office
Recognition – diligent, meticulous, but ultimately overlooked by his peers and
management. As the policy was warped to be more cruel, so too was
he, and he excelled, spurred on by accolades and promotions.

Plan: The Representative’s efforts in the welfare office have been noticed,
particularly in court and in mentoring his team of assessors. The
Child-Catcher (p. 236) is grooming him for promotion to the head
office, and a high-flying job where he gets to spread his methods all
around the country.

250