Treasure is the currency of an adventurer, useful in trade with the powerful entities in the world to further your own aims. Your skills put you beyond worrying about the expenses of daily life and adventuring gear.
You deal in treasures — minor, major, and mythic, anything from a stash of gold to a rare artifact or magical item. While the treasure’s label gives some indication of its value and the table below shows what you might get for it in trade, a treasure is only truly as valuable as what someone will give you for it.
Treasures are shared by the party, unless chosen otherwise. With each adventure, it’s assumed that you’re gaining some coin to spend on your own. Treasures are the things beyond that, valuable resources the party can leverage.
Hauling treasure isn’t a problem unless the GM specifically makes it one. You can also assume that when a PC needs one of the party’s treasures, they happen to have it on them if it makes sense. That is, unless the GM Complicates Things (a move).
| Value | Tangibles | Intangibles | Magic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Minor | Gift, noble Pet, exotic Map, detailed | Service, highly skilled Mercenaries, a few Provide help, town | Arcana, minor Casting, spell Ritual, simple |
| Major | Gift, royal Estate, spacious Sailing ship, swift | Service, very risky Mercenaries, a squad Provide help, city | Arcana, major Casting, potent spell Ritual, moderate |
| Mythic | Gift, imperial Keep, formidable Sailing ship, mighty | Service, unique Mercenaries, an army Provide help, kingdom | Arcana, mythic Ritual, complex Soul, powerful |
When you gain treasure, the GM can either specify what it is or just give its tier and handwave it. If you want specifics on it later or it becomes important to the story, figure it out then. It’s the GM’s job to match up treasure and the nature of the adventure and campaign. When unsure about what exactly is found, they can use a story roll or GM crucible to help.
Any time you’re in a settlement, you can carouse by selling off a minor treasure, with each PC spending their leisure time as they like. Make a montage roll and narrate — or suffer — the results. After the scenes finish up, everyone takes spark regardless of the roll.
Arcana are rare artifacts of power, magic imbued in them through ritual or other esoteric forces. They grant vantage, letting you do what’s otherwise impossible, or greatly enhance specific tasks by granting outside assistance, at a cost. Some create strange, unique effects tied to their creator’s intent. As always, it’s the GM’s role to map fiction to rules for each arcana. Arcana have the same tiers as treasure: minor, major, and mythic.
An arcana’s name and description serve as its touchstones, while its tier reflects the magnitude of magic bound to it. Unlike the rigid laws of magic governing PC magic, guidelines for arcana are looser, typically following this pattern:
Arcana are generally tools for the GM, crafted to fit the campaign. The GM Crucible is a great source of inspiration for designing them.
Arcana are what they are—they’re truths within the fiction. They can do what their description says. A shortcut to creating one works like this, though. Start with an evocative name and a single touchstone word, then apply one or two Sorcery techniques: attack — creation — defense — enhancement — hindrance — influence — transformation — traversal. From that, you can build out the description. Or begin with the description and work backwards towards defining the touchstones.
Arcana are as flexible as spellcasting — if not more so — and demand just as much creativity and GM rulings when used. Here are some examples:
Bestow spellcasting ability on those wielding them. They have limited usage, a power pool rolled to cast from them. They don’t require training to use.
Potions have a magnitude one level higher than its tier. A Minor Healing Potion can accomplish what a spell can (heal a mark). Major potions are potent spell effects and Mythic potions are ritual-level effects.
Single-use arcana that match the tier of their effects, unlike other consumables. Lacking vantage to cast spells means you take thorns casting from them. Scrolls are also highly sought after for learning spells with the wizard’s Spellcraft talent.
The act of binding magic to items requires a ritual and a source of magic with the proper touchstones to make it. A ritual of creation generally takes far longer, though is often less dangerous, than merely achieving the same effect through a ritual.
Prices depend entirely on the seller’s desires, usually something other than coin. Finding one for sale is exceedingly rare, but you might locate someone willing to craft it for you for the right price.