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USURERS

ARCANOI

A Usurer can learn the following Arcanoi at initiate and common level

USURY            MOLIATE        FATALISM

Any other Arcanoi a Usurer  learns is common level only

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In death as in life, nothing’s free. Pathos serves as the Underworld’s purest currency, and trade in it is possible only through Usury. Without this Arcanos, the Stygian economy would grind to a halt — or, worse, devolve to hinging solely on relic barter and oboli. With Usury, a wraith can serve as healer, banker, beggar, loan shark, and more — all in the same day. As an art of directly controlling the energy of the Underworld, Usury can be as unnerving as it is essential. Careless applications can rapidly generate Angst, strengthening the Shadow. Using it to draw energy from the Quick is nothing less than the theft of life itself, no matter what spin the wraith puts on his actions. Experienced Usurers know the price of their arts. Experienced Usurers also are the Usurers who’ve survived their formative excesses and enthusiasms, and come to grips with what exactly they’re doing.

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Guildmarks

Usury demands precision from those who engage in its delicate give and take. Wraiths skilled in this Arcanos find their skin covered in a series of intricate markings. These patterns are in constant motion, momentarily resolving into the mathematical or currency symbols of the wraith’s mortal culture before the slate wipes itself clean for the next equation.

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The Guild

The Usurers’ greatest regret of the Breaking is the destruction of their archives. According to Guild lore, these records contained not only centuries of transactions, but historical accounts of the organization’s founding, concur
rent with the invention of symbolic currency and commercial record-keeping in the early Bronze Age. These claims’ accuracy is widely debated, even among modern Usurers themselves, but it’s no surprise that meticulous documentation remains common among students of Usury. In their heyday, the Usurers enjoyed considerable political strength. Recognizing that any currency system breaks down if its controllers lose public trust, guild leaders ruthlessly enforced a code of honesty and accountability. The image of the incorruptible Usurer enabled the Guild to extend its reach from traffic in Pathos and Corpus to most other Underworld commerce, then into Stygian courts. By the War of the Guilds, Usurers were firmly entrenched in the empire’s legal system and refused to jeopardize this position of power by aiding the other Guilds. Such recalcitrance cost the Usurers the regard of their peers. Joining the coup against Charon was a survival gamble, balancing the threat of Hierarchy reprisals against the certainty of expungement if the Guilds won. The Usurers’ support was never more than token, and their early withdrawal hamstrung the revolt. But even this slight participation was enough to doom the Guild, as Charon proved willing to gut his own judiciary and economy if doing so removed another Guild from power.

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Factions

Bereft of their Hierarchy offices and targets for resentful members of other guilds, few Usurer leaders survived the Breaking’s fallout, and the guild splintered. Individual Usurers today face an uphill battle to establish personal reputations for integrity. In the face of lingering mistrust, many forsake their heritage in favor of expediency and personal profit. Among the exceptions are two of the guild’s three extant orders. The Vault of Breath includes those Usurers who practice healing — not only the transfer of raw Corpus but the study of afflictions caused by Arcanoi, Spectres, and more outré sources. The Vault of Bone still clings to its duty of enforcing the Usurers’ ancient checks and balances, and strives to restore some portion of the Usurers’ former respect. Bereft of official backing, though, its members have little power to bring violators into line. Its nemesis is the fallen and feared Vault of Eyes, still intimately familiar with Stygian law but now committed to subverting rather than enforcing it. Wraiths of this order are crime lords acknowledged as formidable by even the most vicious Spooks.

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