Champion of the Grey Host [work in progress]
When you crack the lock on the Black Gates with the holiest relic of the Crucianite faith, the next time you gain a level you can choose this move instead of a move from your class:
Acclaim of the Departed
Echoes of the Black Gate’s breaking shook the worlds, and you are marked by the event. Describe the scar, brand, or sigil and choose where it is on your body. Take +1 ongoing to Parley with any shade who can see this sigil.
When you display your mark in a place where specters congregate you can make the Recruit move to call upon the dead as hirelings. They may require one or more of the following as their cost, instead of a standard hireling cost:
– Living blood or flesh.
– Spreading rampant fear.
– Fulfil their steading’s oath.
Hmm. So if I’m understanding this (and your other posts) correctly, the Black Gates were locked and everyone who died was stuck outside in some sort of purgatorial half-life, right? And then, if you are the one who busts the gates open, and lets all those souls out of limbo and onto their final rest, you get to take this move?
If so, I think I’d replace the first one (+1 to Parley) with something like “Any shade who sees the sigil recognizes you as the hero who flung open the Black Gates and treats you with appropriate respect.” Or maybe that and the +1 to Parley. I just feel like there’s fiction missing, there.
As for the recruiting specters bit… that’s pretty cool, but I feel like we’re missing something. How does having broken open the Black Gates and lets spirits go on to their final rest give you any sway with specters? And what is the “their [the specter’s] steading’s oath?”
> Hmm. So if I’m understanding this (and your other posts) correctly, the Black Gates were locked and everyone who died was stuck outside in some sort of purgatorial half-life, right?
Yes, you understood the context. It was bad.
> And then, if you are the one who busts the gates open, and lets all those souls out of limbo and onto their final rest, you get to take this move?
Yes. It happened last night totally out of the blue: The Ranger followed a “trail of clues” to the Black Gate, figured out what was going on, and asked “What do I roll to break the lock with the Cross of Saint Crucian?”—which she already had.
I never imagined the relic would be useful for that, but it seemed like a “tell them the requirements or consequences and ask”-moment.
“You don’t need to roll. You can crack the lock with this cross, but it will shatter the cross as well.”
> If so, I think I’d replace the first one (+1 to Parley) with something like “Any shade who sees the sigil recognizes you as the hero who flung open the Black Gates and treats you with appropriate respect.” Or maybe that and the +1 to Parley. I just feel like there’s fiction missing, there.
Thanks! Yes, you’re right. That’s what I had in mind, I just didn’t get it down.
> As for the recruiting specters bit… that’s pretty cool, but I feel like we’re missing something. How does having broken open the Black Gates and lets spirits go on to their final rest give you any sway with specters? And what is the “their [the specter’s] steading’s oath?”
Maybe I used the wrong word? In my mind a “specter” is another word for “ghost”—like the same type of person who would be swayed by the reputation. Their steading would be whatever steading they identified with in life, and their steading’s oath would be any oath the steading had that was left unfulfilled, even if that steading is gone.
Does that make sense?
Sorta. It makes me wonder, though, why specters/ghosts/shades/whatever who lingered after the Black Gates opened would be particularly responsive to the following the guy who opened those gates. Like, I’d imagine that all the specters are a little freaked out because the gate is open and they might get sucked through now!
If it’s just an extension of the respect that the first part of the move grants, then the only reason you really need the move is to announce that “hey, recruiting ghosts is a thing you can do,” right? I don’t think you really need the bit about alternate costs, because nothing in the Hireling rules is going to work very well for a ghost. (Part of why I wrote the Follower moves in Perilous Wilds was to avoid that sort of problem, BTW… it allows for converting between monster & follower much more easily.)
Totally opposite thought: what if the 2nd part of the move wasn’t the ability to recruit ghosts who linger, but rather the ability to exorcise them and cast them through the (now open) Black Gates. Like:
When you castigate the unquiet dead and banish them through the now-open Black Gates, roll +CHA: on a 10+, they either go through the Gates and on to the final rest, or the retreat and flee to whatever tethers them to this world; on a 7-9, they can choose to go (as a 10+) or they can resist and force you into a battle of wills (you’ll be Defying Danger with WIS).
Cool, thank you! I’ll mull it over more. In the same session, the Bard put on Death’s crown, and the next time someone died he dashed through the Black Gate. The Ranger followed. The Ranger and Bard aren’t exactly on great terms, but they might cooperate to conquer Death’s domain—I have no idea!
My idea was that the starting move would be mainly useful on the other side of the Black Gate, but also in places in the living world that are connected to Death’s domain, like maybe graveyards, battlefields, or places where necromancers traffick.
I thought being able to recruit the shades of the dead would be immediately useful beyond the Black Gate, whether she wants to help the Bard claim Death’s authority there, or whether she wants to thwart him.
I have other ideas for add-on moves for the class, I just haven’t had time to get them down yet.
I backed Perilous Wilds, but I haven’t gotten the chance to pore over it and integrate it into my thinking yet. But the conversations here lately have urged me more and more to go over it more closely! 🙂