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Guildbook: Usurers
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Guildbook: Usurers
Chapter One - Diversification Page One
Chapter Two - Employment Opportunities Page Four
Chapter Three - An Audit Page Five
Chapter Four - Accounts Payable, Accounts Receivable and Outsourcing Page Eleven
Chapter Five - The Dismal Science Page Fourteen
Chapter Six - Mostly Human Resources Page Eighteen
Appendix I - Employees of the Year Page Twenty-Five
Appendix II - Limited Liability, My Ass Page Twenty-Seven

Guildbook: Usurers
 Holly cursed in frustration and put her foot
through the trashcan. Feeling the metal seem to
race through her corpus, she held her leg there
until the pain had managed to obliterate every
other sensation. "Why does this crap always have
to happen to me when Im alone?", she ranted
and no one in particular. Her notebook stared up
at her, silent and accusing, from the trash; all her
work, her scripts and screenplays, mutely
preparing to be interred in a landfill tomorrow if
no soul rescued them. She even knew how,
having learned the secrets of Embody. If she
hadnt gone out trainspotting, as her friends
called it, last night, and spent her efforts on every
frivolous song and game that came her way,
shed be able to manifest and simply lift it out.
As it was, shed be lucky if she could turn a page
of it.
The would-be screenwriter folded her hands
and stood up straight with what she hoped was a
look of determination. She couldnt do this
alone, and all of her friends had left this morning
for Bermuda. Even if she could catch them at the
airport, they couldnt come back; every flight is
booked solid over spring break. But people said
strange things about the little fellow down at the
theatre who always wore a bow tie, like he was a
Mafia boss or something. He helps people to
help themselves, was the usual catch phrase,
that nobody would explain; maybe they were just
repeating what theyd heard, too, but she set off
towards the bus stop to find out for herself.
Holly peered around the edge of the alley;
there was the green relic scarf, just like shed
been told. She cautiously untied it from around
Guildbook: Usurers
the gutterspout and placed within it the two items
shed already retrieved on this demented
scavenger hunt, a small mirror and battery.
Humming a meaningless tune to herself, she
wound the first two items in the scarf and
carefully dropped them down an open sewer
grating, trying to see afterward where they had
fallen to, and maybe there was a flicker of
movement down there, but she wasnt
completely sure.
She nearly jumped in after them as she felt a
tap on her shoulder. Whirling around, she was
face-to-face with a stout man in a 3-piece suit
and a handle-bar mustache, holding a set of
scales in front of him. "I understand, miss, that
you wish to engage in a transaction with us?"
"H-How can I Trust you?", she replied,
exactly as the man at the theater had instructed
her.
"Hope is what is called for, miss; the Trust
follows." Some of the tension escaped her
shoulders; at least he was following the script.
"Im afraid Im in a tight spot, mister. My
Quick are all leaving on vacation, and the trash
collectors are coming tomorrow. I know that
those dont have a lot to do with each other
usually, but ysee, somehow some of my
notebooks wound up in the trash and," she drew
herself up a little straighter, and tried to sound
more professional. This guy was a businessman,
and he wanted to conduct business with her,
right? "and I dont have the Pathos to correct it
myself, and I dont think much of my odds of
1
picking some up by chance between now and six
a.m. tomorrow. I understand you might be
willing to help me in this, mister..?" Much better.
"Please call me J. P., and you are Pandora."
He intoned.
J. P. scrutinized her. As Research had
informed him, Hope would be the most effective
currency for the transaction, and while he
customarily dealt in Wrath, he was not incapable
of manipulating the lighter Passions. The
contrast between her opening gambit and her
closing was remarkable; her stance had shifted to
match his, and she had seamlessly adopted his
affected manner, or a counterpart to it. All too
familiar character traits. "And how, miss, do you
utilize your leisure in more routine times?" He
had been told her name, of course, but it would
be improper during a negotiation to use it.
"II watch my Quick on the beach. I talk to
everyone I can; many of them have awesome or
terrible stories to contrast with my own, and
inspire my writing. I try to convince the Legion
patrols to relax and have a good time with us.
Im not sure why you inquire..J. P."
J. P. carefully withdrew five tokens from his
jacket and placed them on one side of his scale.
He affected to study them while observing her
reactions. "I was lead to understand you would
need a loan of five sentimas of Hope. I confess to
having been skeptical; Hope is not easily repaid,
nor am I well-stocked in it. You have allayed my
fears a great deal already; a self-possessed young
lady such as yourself, with such an easily solved
problem, should have little trouble at all. It also
sounds exceedingly simple to accomplish; I think
we can both be served in our aims by a loan of
only.." he swept three of the tokens back into a
pocket, "two sentimas, yes? No trouble at all."
As J. P. spoke, Hollys face brightened. This
wasnt anything to get worked up over, and she
felt silly for leaving her foot in the trash earlier.
She reached for the pile of shining tokens on the
scale.
"An interest rate of ten per centum monthly,
first application immediately, increased to
twenty per centum after three months is
acceptable, yes?" He moved to interpose himself
between her and the scales.
2 Guildbook: Usurers
"Oh, right. Yeah, that sounds fair. Do I have
to sign anything?"
Holly strode out of the alley, her countenance
shining with a confidence and belief that seemed
new-minted. As he watched her go, J. P. found
himself weighing the merits and drawbacks of an
employee with a gift for handling lighter
elements he himself did not possess; and
reflecting that not all Thralls were bound with
chains of soulsteel.
***
Wraiths have no need of money, right? I
mean, they dont have to pay rent, or bills, or
buy food, and there isnt much stuff to buy on
this side of the Shroud. What few material
desires they may have can be satisfied with a
little ingenuity in a few years or even months for
all time. So how on earth did the Usurers become
numbered among the four Great Guilds, and
what do they do with their time?
The short answer is, plenty. Wars cost money,
or more accurately Pathos and corpus, and Stygia
is always at war. So does building Citadels, and
any meaningful interaction with the Quick. The
Usurers are seldom dealt with by the wraith on
the street, just as few of the living need to see a
broker or banker more than once a month. But
they are there, turning the wheels of the economy
of souls, and it would be impossible to
understand the Underworld without considering
them.
If there is a single key to understanding this
most complex and arcane of Guilds, it is
increase. The Usurers exist to see that the
amount of Pathos, of corpus, of souls, is
continually increasing. Everything they do is
meant to accomplish this, and everything they
decline they do so on these grounds. Comfort
and security can only be achieved by increasing
the resources available to all, and someone must
see to it that all work toward this end. And it
wont be a pack of jack-booted Legionnaires.
What are the Usurers like? The question can
best be answered by examining those who have a
flair for their Arcanos. Usury is fundamentally
the transfer of emotion from one soul to another;
the ones most naturally adept at this tend to be,
contrary to the stereotype of bankers among the
Quick, highly empathic. Motivational speakers,
leaders of hate-group rallies, revival preachers,
 selfless charity workers, open-mike poets, all
people who share their feelings and spread them
to those around them. The other side of the same
coin is that they appear to be conformists,
matching their actions and expressions to the
feelings of those around them and diffusing
tension for calm. A revival preacher may make a
good Usurer, but a streetcorner preacher defying
the attitude of his would-be flock does not. In
short, if Usurers have a common approach to
their existence, it is to make other people more
of what they already are, and to a lesser extent
more like each other.
Usurers recruit first and foremost from their
clients, typically repeat clients who have paid on
time and in full. This demonstrates a willingness
to fulfill obligations and an ability to generate
surplus Pathos in their minds; such talents, they
reason, can then be steered toward a higher goal
than merely making Aunt Shellys last days
more comfortable or tormenting criminals among
the Quick. Recruitment is quite simply, an
employment contract, with work on commission.
To be honest, Usurers recruit more than they
need, because of their interest in expanding the
Guild and including others; the Usurers are
probably the easiest Guild still extant to sign up
with.
Master, while Journeymen have bought their
way out of their initial indenture. The distinction
between Journeymen and Masters is equally
simple; Masters have employees. However,
many independent Journeyman have as much
Pathos or more than some Masters, and thus
more influence on overall Trust policy. All of the
Trusts have their central offices in Stygia itself;
within a Necropolis, there may not be enough
Usurers for each Trust to operate independently,
so officers of differing companies frequently
share office space. Within each Trust, a given
Usurer also has a specialty and a political
position, making for a bewildering array of
interconnected loyalties whenever Usurers
congregate en masse; the Trust representatives
maintain that this promotes cooperation
throughout and between Trusts, while detractors
hold that it means you can never be sure of a
Usurers next move.
***

They dont leave the results of their over-

exuberance lying about any more than the
Artificers do, however.

The modern Guild is organized into

gargantuan Trusts, combinations of Master
Usurers who specialize in a single form of
Pathos. Wrath is the most well known and
largest, but there are also Love, Pride, Faith,
Avarice, Fear, Fidelity, Hope and Jealousy
Trusts. In theory, the nine Trusts are all equal in
their votes when the Guild as a whole must
determine policy, but in practice, Wrath
dominates. The so-called "lesser portfolios",
such as Guilt, Sorrow, and Curiosity, are
typically attached to a major Trust, and do not
have an independent vote; corpus is a basic
commodity which all Trusts trade in. Within a
Trust, all Usurers may vote proportionately to
the level of Pathos they have presently stored in
their Trusts Grand Vault; in practice, few
Apprentices or Journeymen bother, and either
decline to vote or allow their Master to do so in
their stead. The distinction between an
Apprentice and Journeymen Usurers are simple;
Apprentices are under contract to work for a

Guildbook: Usurers 3
 While there are subtle differences in the way
Trusts operate based on their stock in trade, they
are similar in overall organization. Certain jobs
need to be performed in any corporation,
regardless of the exact business model or
product.
Brokers
When most wraiths hear "Usurers", they think
of the Brokers, who are the most public face of
the Guild. In some ways, a Brokers task is the
simplest; evaluate the prospective return on an
investment of Pathos, and determine an interest
rate, collateral, schedule of repayment and the
like based on it. Brokers, unlike their mortal
counterparts, need know little about industry or
the task at hand, but a great deal about
psychology; most of them elect to learn
Castigate as well. Terms of repayment on loans
vary substantially from Trust to Trust; Wrath, for
example, implies immediate action of a drastic
nature, and so the loan will either be repaid in
full soon or not at all. The gap between those is
the gap between Apprentice and Master within
the Guilds Brokers. Hope, by contrast, is more
likely to trickle back in slowly, but the risk tends
to be much lower for the Broker. Also, a Wraith
whose Dark Passions are organized around
Hatred and Anger may take the loan of Wrath
and run straight to the Labyrinth, while virtually
no Dark Passions involve Love or Faith. Brokers
also traffic in corpus, maintaining both volatile
and nonvolatile accounts in their ledgers for
those with the Memoriam or Legacy to spare,
and issuing loans to those who anticipate battle.
4 Guildbook: Usurers
However, a Broker, contrary to popular belief,
only rarely deals with individuals; individuals
require precise and specific personal information
to appraise, and many Brokers wont even talk
about a loan without a "credit report"a sealed
letter from a Pardoner the Broker knows and
trusts concerning the clients Shadow. Brokers
deal with institutions, such as the Hierarchy, the
other Guilds and the largest of Renegade or
Heretic groups. Need to pay your company of
Legionnaires their monthly corpus paycheck? A
Broker will handle it when you come up short,
Mr. Anacreon. Losing souls, o Smiling Overlord,
and need to up the murder rate of a
neighborhood? That extended campaign of
Embodiment and Puppetry will take a great deal
of Pathos. Just what level of increase can you
expect to see? Need more Hatred to fuel the
forges, Lord Ember? If in return we could
harvest the Pathos from souls marked for the
forge, taking the balance in souls if the
contractual minimum is not achievedyou get
the picture. Brokers form the backbone of the
Guild, but there are more interesting parts of a
body
Short Sellers
Every Guild has a dirty little secret or three;
the Short Sellers are one of the Usurers. Just
because a wraith becomes Shadow-Eaten does
not mean he lacks self-knowledge or goals, and
in their relentless drive to help every wraith
achieve their wants, the Usurers have not
overlooked Spectres. Having fallen once, most
Spectres are loathe to accrue too much Pathos,
 lest their Psyche regain enough composure to
steer them away from Oblivion. Thus, Spectres
wish to be rid of their Pathos, Usurers want
Pathos, and bargains are struck; the Short Sellers
act as a sort of macabre parody of Pardoners,
winging through the Tempest and crawling the
Labyrinth to harvest the Pathos that Spectres so
desperately wish to be rid of. Every Short Seller
learns Argos, to escape a deal gone bad; many
also learn Inhabit, Puppetry or some other ability
that lets them hide in the Skinlands when their
"clients" overreact to something. The Hierarchy
would say that the Short Sellers are traitors,
giving comfort to the enemy rather than
converting him; the pragmatic Short Sellers reply
that it takes vast amounts of time, effort and
Pathos to Redeem a Spectre, and that the
outcome is never even close to certain; in the
long run, its more cost-effective to simply help
them hurl themselves into the Void. How useful
is the average member of the Redeemed anyway,
and who can resist money being given away?
Almoners
The Almoners are a curious collection of
those who stood with the Guild before the
Breaking and the most recent scions of Marxist
states and organizations. While they attempt to
acquire vast hoards of Pathos and corpus just like
any other regular member of a Trust, they hold
that a great many wraiths do not know what they
truly want, nor the limits of their own
capabilities. As such, it is an Almoners self-
appointed duty to dispense Pathos, not to those
who ask for it, but to those who they think will
use it productively and remember the favor.
Some young wits also refer to them as Venture
Capitalists. An Almoner frequently learns a bit
of Fatalism to assist them in their vocation. Lest
it be thought that Almoners represent the saints
of the Underworld, it bears mentioning that a
great many destructive conflicts have been bred
by an Almoner offering a sum of corpus and
suggesting to a Regent or Renegade leader that
he or she can probably take a certain opposing
force, realizing a handsome return. Its small
consolation that the Almoner is often right.
Almoners are far too self-righteous to keep more
than a fraction of their holdings in the Grand
Vaults, meaning they have little say in Guild
operations, but more than a few wraiths in
positions of authority remember who it was that
helped them get there.
Guildbook: Usurers
Collectors
The Collectors are the other aspect of Guild
operations that are simply not talked about in
mixed company. The Collectors reason that they,
the entire Trusts, and everybody else they get to
interact with is dead, and that as such, the Quick
are a resource to be mined. Usury works
perfectly well on the living, if touch can simply
be established (not a simple matter). Theres a
near-infinite amount of corpus for the taking if
one learns Inhabit, Puppetry or some other
means of touching the living, and the Quick will
even heal it back soon if youre not greedy. If
youve ever suddenly had a sharp, painful twinge
upon touching someone or someone, or know of
a place where people seem sickly and never get
better for no particular reason, perhaps a
Collector has taken a dividend. And if they
should accidentally kill someone, well, souls are
a form of wealth too, simply not the abstract and
portable kind the Usurers prefer. Embody is
disdained by Collectors as an expensive and
risky way to go about achieving contact. Since
virtually none of their donors are aware and
willing, Collectors tend to rack up Angst at a
frightful rate, and Pardoners dread their
approach; few Pardoners turn away a wraith who
can pay double the going rate, however. In their
travels through the Skinlands, Collectors also
scout for Relics, sources of Memoriam, and
anything else that might possibly turn a profit; as
callous Guildmembers with access to the
Skinlands, they are also typically tapped to
resolve the Guilds "painful situations".
Market Research
Sound financial decisions must be based on
sound information. Every Trust must have
accurate information on how much Pathos of
what sort is being acquired by whom and where,
what military forces various factions have access
to in order to determine the risk of military
expenditures, and so forth. Researchers jobs boil
down to keeping tabs on every wraith in their
immediate area, and on trends within the
Skinlands. When they know what everyone
wants, they only need to supply it. Since
Researchers chiefly talk to people, and nearly all
Usurers are sympathetic as a matter of course,
many Usurers spend time as Market Researchers
and enjoy it; some elect not to buy out their
Apprentice Indentures in order to remain in this
capacity. Unlike organizations such as the
5
Magisterium, Market Researchers tend to be can be made to pay for themselves, in hidden
network based and highly cooperative; they corners of the Tempest. Although they work
delight in sharing feelings with people, and they more with large numbers and abstract
can do so most freely with each other. Despite generalities than individuals, their expertise in
being frequently looked down upon by the more compelling and utilizing emotion makes them
strenuous and academic of the professions within vital parts of both the Legions and any number
the Usurers Guild, Market Research is as of conspiracies. All Usurers may strive to help
valuable and as vital as the Brokers themselves; people fulfill their desires through the
they are the ones, constantly interacting with the application of energy and effort, but only the
world at large, who identify prospective clients Trendsetters examine competing desires and
and recruits. Also unlike the other professions determine which to support and which to
within the Guild, they tend to work together, at subvert. Despite this, they are more frequently
the insistence of their fellows: Market Research advisors than commanders, as their work has
are probably the most empathic of all the such a low profit margin that while the Trust as a
Usurers, and it is difficult to prevent them from whole benefits greatly from them, they as
altering little details in their summaries and individuals seldom realize wealth.
reports to better please their audience.
***
Trendsetters
To maintain a pattern of steady growth rather
than a cycle of booms and depressions, it is not
enough to control the supply of Pathos; one must
also manage demand. If there is a surplus of
Wrath Pathos in an area, seekers of other Trusts
must be made to accept Wrath; likewise,
deficiencies within the Trusts must be overcome,
and perhaps even the sources of Pathos
themselves convinced to change their tunes.
Most Trendsetters learn a bit of Keening as
absolutely vital to completing their assignments.
If Market Research watches the ebb and flow of
emotion, Trendsetters push it, mounting
campaigns of psychological manipulation akin to
advertising agencies among the Quick. While
there are no widespread media among the
Restless Dead, Trendsetters use gossip
campaigns, posted flyers and bills to influence
the needs and drives of those around them.
Manipulating the Quick en masse is substantially
more difficult, but some Trendsetters use
Puppetry to influence living advertisers,
community leaders and celebrities in order to
alter broad patterns of feeling. They may also be
the first to deal with default clients, in the hopes
that the soft touch will be adequate and the
Collectors need not apply themselves. Most
Trendsetters quickly relocate to Stygia as the
principal market for their services; in generating
Pathos to cover gaps in supply, they typically
acquire hordes of Thralls and run them through
controlled environments with Keening applied to
produce more Pathos. Such an arrangement
requires a substantial initial investment, and
would be useless if implemented on a small
scale; on a large, however, the Passion Factories

6 Guildbook: Usurers
 A History of the Guild of Usurers
"Money is a singular thing. It ranks with love as
mans greatest source of joy. And with death as
his greatest source of anxiety."
--John Kenneth Galbraith
Welcome to your new employee orientation.
My task here today is to educate you on the
history of our Guild, and you will find that, for
all our status as one of the four Great Guilds and
our participation in the creation of Stygia, it is a
comparatively brief one.
The ability to transfer Pathos and corpus from
one wraith to another, for all its simplicity today,
is one that requires a certain level of social
stability and organization to generate a return on
effort invested, and as such it is likely that our
Arcanos was entirely unknown, or practiced in a
severely limited manner, prior to the foundation
of the Republic of Stygia. As Charon began to
deploy armies to clear the Byways of Spectres
and subdue rebellious and misguided groups of
wraiths, it soon became clear that said armies, if
expected to remain in the field, would need more
corpus than they could reasonably be expected to
carry with them. A number of military strategists
of the Republic bent their attentions to this
problem, and the earliest form of Usurers took
shape, as quartermasters and adjuncts to Legion
cohorts. The Simple Arts, up to and including
Investment, were codified by this time, as
hauling vast numbers of Thralls about as storage
batteries was impractical and tactically unsound.
The Provisioners, as we were known prior to the
Guildbook: Usurers
first millennium Anno Domini, set about
harvesting Pathos and corpus from wherever
they could, grouping together to divide labor
between Collectors and Legion attaches and
organized and lead by Marcus Crassus,
sometimes now identified as our first
Guildmaster. As Stygia became more complex
and divided a society, and both our Guild and the
Legions grew, infighting between groups of
Provisioners over corpus resources became more
intense; Crassus thus established a system of
precedence whereby the Provisioner with the
greatest resources contributed and stored in the
Grand Vault would be considered to have
precedence in any given dispute. Naturally,
Crassus himself had the greatest accumulation of
corpus thus stored and was therefore first among
equals, so to speak. As our resources grew, it
became possible to loan out portions of our
accumulated wealth to private individuals for
specific projects, but this was chiefly done as a
way to establish debts in our favor rather than for
any overarching purpose. While still somewhat
loyal to the Empire of Stygia up to this time, our
sheer utility to both the high and low government
officials allowed us considerable freedom of
action. Then the Artificers got a strange notion to
rule Stygia in the Deathlords stead, and the
Revolt of the Guilds transpired.
We, with the Masquers, were the first to
desert the revolt once it was going in earnest. I
understand Lord Ember, and the Monitors, are
still somewhat bitter over this. I make no
defense, for none is required. By way of
explanation, I should note that Crassus
7
performed a bit of simple arithmetic. Our
services would be required by the rulers of
Stygia whether they wore masks or soot-stains;
our tasks and our resources would be the same
regardless. Thus we were called upon to finance
a revolution from which we stood to profit not
one whit, nor, given similar circumstances, could
the other Guilds possibly repay us. I assume the
practitioners of Moliate, another of the Great
Guilds, reached a similar conclusion.
And thus were the Guilds exiled from Stygia,
and the Guildmasters tried for treason and
executed. Youve heard all this from your
would-be masters in the Legions. As a principal
traitor to the Guilds, Crassus was permitted to
live on as a member of the Hierarchy, and
various lesser lights bore the brunt of the
punishment. As no Deathlord could allow so rich
a prize as Crassus to serve any of his rivals,
Crassus became a sort of quartermaster to
Charon and Nhudri themselves; I am told he still
haunts Stygia, despite the end of his primary
master and the inattention of his primary client.
What you werent told was what a wretched
shambles we were in. We were running and
hiding throughout the Skinlands until the Third
Great Maelstrom petered out in 1705 Anno
Domini, and after that we were simply hiding.
Our Vaults had been siezed in part or in whole,
our foremost members executed, our leader
subverted. Our trade was now a criminal one,
and the Hierarchy had many who would serve in
our place. We had for all practical purposes
ceased to be a Guild, and degenerated into a
collection of individuals practicing a common
Arcanos.
Then, while England was having some
troubles in its Western colonies, one of the
Scottish Quick named Adam Smith wrote a book
entitled On the Wealth of Nations. Some time
afterward, a copy crossed the Shroud and fell
into the hands of a Usurer.
Nothing has been the same since. For all
reasonable purposes, our history begins here.
In no small way, this is how the Hierarchy
maintains its absurd fiction that the Guilds are no
more. They have detailed information on the
practices and structure of the Usurers who fled
Stygia in the wake of the Breaking, and those
Usurers are no more. Thus, there is no Usurers
Guild, is there? But I digress.
8 Guildbook: Usurers
The call for restructuring was issued by one
Mary Boulton, the first recipient of Smiths
work. Smith himself never crossed the Shroud,
to our certain knowledge. Some among us
lament this, wondering what we might have
accomplished with such a visionary to cement
our ranks; more practical minds remember that it
is easier to quash a man than an idea, and
perhaps the only place he could have led us was
to ruin. Smiths idea was twofold: that as long as
everyone is involved in productive labor, the
aggregate wealth of a community is unlimited
and will continue to grow, and that natural
processes and laws will determine a better
allocation of resources than planning and
coercion. With these theories and the examples
of the newly-dead, we swiftly reorganized into
corporations. Pathos and corpus were now
allocated according to what would produce more
Pathos and corpus in the foreseeable future, not
what political favors the client could provide.
Freelance Usurers were recruited or neutralized.
Soon, small bands of Usurers were acting to
increase the Pathos and Memoriam in their areas,
and began sharing techniques with one another;
those who favored similar techniques began
organizing themselves into Trusts based on
compatibility of members and operations. The
ancient system of representation based on
productivity and capital reserves was revived
when the Trusts began opening their ledgers to
one another and centralizing their stores of
Pathos, but no single Vault and no single leader
were acknowledged; no one wished to see the
rise of another Crassus, and place our entire
Guild at the mercy of one Shadow. The Directors
of the nine Trusts which had emerged signed the
Limited Partnership Agreement of the Usurers in
1841, and it was no accident that many of those
who signed on behalf of a Trust did not recall the
Third Great Maelstrom, and not one recalled the
Second. The young had adapted to the new order
most quickly and had an incontrovertible
advantage, for capitalism worked, objectively,
far better than the feudal mercantilism we had
previously operated under. Mary Boulton,
signatory of the Trust of Love, was nominated
our first Executor.
Not long after this, capitalism underwent its
first growing pains, exemplified in two fellows
named Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels. We had
paralleled the Quick, and the Quick had already
begun to reject our system; we watched fearfully,
as any cataclysm inherent in capitalism would
likely be shown first in them. We neednt have
 worried; while the system does have some
inherent drawbacks among the Quick, most of
them can be explained by the constant need of
the Quick to consume resources simply to carry
on. They must maintain a 5% profit margin or so
simply to avoid joining us, and "profit" they can
count only above and beyond that. Communism,
or at least its proponents, actually helped us to
grow and solidify; it was a far more accessible
and comprehensible doctrine to Old Souls who
had joined us in order to be part of a great Guild
without fully adopting our new modus operandi.
It told them that our lack of interest in politics
was a passing phase, a temporary measure to
refill our emptied Vaults, that the morals of the
lender were not in fact irrelevant. Some of them
have gradually come to understand since then;
others are at least still working.
The other great event of the era was the
Nativity Compact, the agreement between
Charon, the Jade Emperor and the Ivory Queen
that a wraiths cultural origin determined his or
her proper place in this world. Colonialism had
made many of our living counterparts vastly
wealthy, and we eagerly attempted to follow in
their footsteps. We neednt claim a soul to turn a
profit, after all. Our experience, however, was
radically different from that of our living
predecessors. The Jade Empire had a well-
defined and closed social structure, with an
established Merchants Guild performing a
function not dissimilar to our own; attempts to
intrude on their monopoly or share techniques
most often met with failure. The society of Swar
was simply built along principles utterly alien to
us, and we were politely rebuffed at nearly every
turn. Africa was moderately better for us, but the
few Europeans were motivated chiefly by Pride
and Greed, and the legacy among the Africans
was overwhelmingly that of Wrath, colored only
by Fear and Despair. In short, the majority of our
Trusts found nothing of value whatsoever
abroad, and those few who stayed frequently
found themselves in difficult straits. While most
Trusts continue to maintain overseas branch
offices, our foreign adventures can reasonably be
called failures. This was actually an important
and valuable lesson to us; to wit, that Pathos is
not money and that triumph would require more
than merely aping the Quick in their matters
financial.
Our Golden Age spanned seventy-five years,
and what a time it was. Everybody was making
Pathos hand over fist, we were finally at peace
Guildbook: Usurers
with one another, no one knew how long it could
last and so every new development among the
Quick or the Restless was met with eager
anticipation of vast new profits. We crept back
into Stygia to ply our new trade among the static,
eternal Old Souls who dwell there, much as
modern businessman gaze with avarice at China;
it was such a vast untapped market that even a
two per centum stake would represent a
substantial real increase in business. It also
provided a convenient place for our younger and
older members to cement their relationship, the
citizens of bygone ages acting as local guides
and instructors while those children who
understand modern profits made business
decisions. Alas, it was not to last, as the Fourth
Great Maelstrom erupted and our Golden Age
came to a close.
The Fourth was a breakdown of civil order
and a return to war; our ancient Stygian members
were once again in their element. We are not by
nature a martial Guild, and typically pay
Masquers or Spooks to handle situations too
volatile for our own Collectors, but those
Masquers and Spooks had their own concerns at
the time. Arts were developed for use on
Spectres specifically for the first time, and our
Short Sellers came into being. It was not a good
time for us, however, and our Shadowlands cadre
was decimated. It frankly took us all of the
intervening period to recoup our losses and refill
the holes in our organizations; the Depression
among the Quick, while well-named, was one
among us as well. Particularly since we noticed a
disturbing trend during this period; the Higher
Passions among the Quick were dying. The First
World War eroded Faith, Fidelity, Hope and
Pride to an unprecedented degree; others slowly
washed away in a tide of Despair as well. What
had been a slight edge for Wrath on account of
its African trade blossomed into a commanding
lead, not through any effort of its own but
through the downturn in business for other
Trusts.
The Fifth Maelstrom was a mere eyeblink
later; our Executors met in full council only
twice between the two. We fared substantially
better than in the Fourth, ironically because we
had not had time to liquidate our military assets
yet. When Charon fell, it was a blow to us all;
business was no longer protected in Stygia, but
increasingly became caught between the
competing aspirations of the Deathlords. There
were compensations, however; the control of the
9
Jade Emperor had been shaken loose in Japan,
and our businesses there at last began to show a
return on investment despite ongoing violence
among the Restless. Swar likewise found a few
cautious wraiths interested in our efforts at last.
And the subsequent disarray in the Shadowlands
was nothing but opportunity. As the decades
wore on, the old social order eroded, and we
have found fewer and fewer obstacles in our
path.

So where are we now? Behind every local

throne, among every cult or gang large enough to
attract our notice, in the alleys of the Iron Hills,
and even at the gates of the other Dark
Kingdoms. The Quick feel more and more
strongly every day, as reasons hold on them
lapses, and they acquire more and more to feel
about. The diversity of goals and ideas among
the modern Restless allows us to pick and
choose, to shape our society in the manner we
wish without once having to assume command
of anything. Its true this increase has not been
evenly distributed; Wrath has more accumulated
Pathos and corpus and personnel than any two
other Trusts, as the Quick see their ideals further
dragged through the mud by every new politician
or organization. Fear remains stagnant and
isolated, as they reap great quantities of Pathos
from the Quick yet find no market for it among
the Restless. Greed as a virtue, despite a brief
resurgence during the 1980s, would appear to
have run its course, and now finds its greatest
markets and opportunities among the Restless
rather than the Quick. Love remains a strong
second place to Wrath, well above the other
seven, but it reports dramatic internal shifts in
business, as the Compassion portfolio withers
and Lust booms. Some efforts of course are
made to alter this balance among the Quick by
our Trendsetters and Collectors, who attempt to
provide appropriate stimuli to diversify the
Quicks palate; thus far, they meet with limited
success. We are optimistic, however; there is
capital in our Vaults and Tills. There is
opportunity for change in the wake of Charons
disappearance. There are other wraiths willing
and able to make it happen. Sounds like a good
climate for business to me.

***

10 Guildbook: Usurers
 "Long run is a misleading guide to current
affairs. In the long run we are all dead. "
--John Maynard Keynes
Your previous instructor seems to have made
us out to be Gnomes of Zurich or the Bavarian
Illuminati or some such drivel. While a wraith as
wealthy as a Trust Executor or Crassus himself is
surely no one to cross lightly, we are hardly the
be-all and end-all of Restless society, even
within the Dark Kingdom of Iron. I thus submit
for you a summary of our current marketing
strategies and priorities, to assist in making the
difficult decisions that will inevitably come
when you are brimming with Pathos and others
are not.
The Hierarchy and the Great Guilds
Given that the Hierarchy is nothing more or
less than a vast bureaucracy whose major
purpose is to reallocate resources, one might
think there is little room for free enterprise
within Stygia. One would be sensible, but wrong.
Even Hierarchs have Passions of a sort, and
visions of how they can make Stygia better and
employ more souls in genuinely productive ends.
These Anacreons and Overlords can then bury
their repayments to us in endless payroll and
expenditure documents. Furthermore, in the
event of a shortcoming, every Anacreon needs a
friendly Usurer in order to make up temporary
shortfalls in resources or accomplish goals,
which cannot be committed to paper; none will
move against us too openly. They may have the
option of going to Crassus, but if the
Guildbook: Usurers
shortcoming is blamed (accurately or otherwise)
on their poor judgment, they may be replaced or
even forged. We are numbered among the Great
Guilds, after all, and it wasnt for our charming
manners. Thus, we and the Hierarchy regard
each other with some appreciation and no more
caution than would seem reasonable. This is
fortunate, for besides our non-martial nature, we
are also the greatest consumer other than the
Hierarchy itself of a resource only they can
provide: paper. We are not the Artificers, and
have no ready access to computers; ledgers must
be kept, memoranda composed, flyers circulated
and contracts signed. We could not possibly
collect enough souls to be Moliated into the
paper we require; we must have the papyrus
made from the reeds which grow along the River
of Death. Our entire operation would swiftly
degenerate into chaos if this relationship were
broken off. In the same vein, we have a
longstanding relationship with the Artificers,
however cool personal relationships tend to be;
they need Wrath to fuel their forges, and we find
it useful to acquire both Thralls from their
scrapheaps and finished products. We are less
cordial with the Masquers; their ability to
confound identity renders a great many contracts
unenforceable and null, and thus we will only
sell, not loan, to them. Lastly are the Pardoners,
whom we need as much as anyone; our vital
Collectors and Short Sellers would swiftly be
serving Nephwracks were it not for them. The
rest of us can take or leave them personally, but
we do need our colleagues.
11
The Renegades and the Criminal
Guilds
The Renegades are definitely not our
customers of choice. Our purpose is to build up,
to allow more Pathos to pour across the Shroud
and Stygia so that more work can be done more
easily. Its a vague purpose, to be sure, but its
more than most Renegades have. The largest part
of them want nothing more than to destroy the
Hierarchy, while another large bunch wants to do
nothing at all. Those few Renegades with a
vision of a new society they wish to build, either
beside or atop the ashes of Stygia, are as valued a
customer as any Anacreon. Few Renegades have
any such vision.
Those Guilds which either stand in natural
violation of the Dictum Mortuum or whose
Arcanos has no legitimate, constructive use, we
are cautious in our dealings with. Our Collectors
and Trendsetters find great use for the
Puppeteers, and to a lesser extent the Proctors,
Spooks and Haunters; each of them fancies his or
herself creative, however, and tend to either
interpret contracts flexibly or entirely disregard
them. The Monitors are a special case; when one
has tagged you, its best to pay his price, then
offer double that to a Masquer or pack of Spooks
to destroy him. I can barely conceive of a
situation in which we would wish to deal with a
Monitor personally.
Heretics
The Guild has no official position on Heretics
or Transcendence. Unofficially, I think youll
find that many of them make excellent clients.
They are marginalized and ridiculed, yet
possessed of strong desires and Passions; an
exclusive market, with interest rates quite
favorable to us agreeable to the client. The Trust
of Faith continues to do the bulk of its business
with Heretic cults, but it is certainly possible that
others may have something to offer them as well.
We seldom recruit from Heretics, however; their
ultimate goal, after all, is to quit this place and be
done with it. While we will not argue the
opportunity to redistribute resources, this strikes
us as every bit as sensible as committing suicide
among the Quick to get to Heaven; the search for
Transcendence may produce excellent Pathos,
but attainment of the goal implies doing nothing,
ever again. No profit in that, and such an attitude
is not useful to us. Lets move on, but in parting,
12
I would warn you of a most insidious Heresy
organized around our very own Arcanos; certain
wraiths hold that arrival in the Shadowlands
represents a failure to adequately connect with
others and establish bonds of community and
empathy with others, thus excluding one from
the Fellowship of God. Their solution is to
exchange Pathos and corpus with one another
with manic frequency in order to artificially form
the bonds they failed to in life, thereby lifting
them out of this place. Communism doesnt
work any better on this side of the Shroud.
The Other Guilds
Certain Guilds attempt to straddle the fence,
so to speak, and are not immediately identifiable
as pro-Hierarchy or pro-Renegade. Among these,
we have great respect for the Harbingers, Oracles
and Chanteurs; each provides a useful service to
us in the advancement of our goals, and each can
be generally relied upon to treat honorably in
business matters. The Sandmen, Mnemoi and
Alchemists, by contrast, are essentially
purveyors of luxuries unnecessary to our
economy; we bear them no ill will, but have little
use for them. Our Trendsetters and the Solicitors
are locked in a dance reminiscent of the mating
of mantises or black widow spiders; each could
be phenomenally useful to the other, yet the
majority of attempts at rapprochement end in
violent confrontation as suspicions and hostilities
boil over. Hope springs eternal, as its Trust will
tell you, but progress in this field is painfully
slow.
Shadows and Spectres
Usurers Shadows, given our emotionally
resonant natures, tend to come in two varieties.
They are either domineering in the extreme,
attempting to crush or twist others emotions to
match their own, or they belittle every attempt at
independent action and initiative, however slight
or trivial. The former make loans to those likely
to default; the latter are incapable of decision-
making and doomed to the lower echelons of the
Guild. Persons of the first variety are frequently
encouraged to join the Collectors, Short Sellers
or Trendsetters, where they will not be in a
position to squander vital capital; the latter make
fine Market Researchers. Almoners recruit more
heavily from the former, but have some of each;
a Broker must avoid either pitfall, and so only
Guildbook: Usurers
 our most trustworthy, controlled or unusual
members assume those duties.
Spectres are, in our vision, simply the most
risky variety of client. We have an entire
department devoted to dealing with them, and its
turnover rate is secret but apparently quite high.
Spectres cannot usually be encouraged to do
anything which would inspire Passions other
than Hate or Fear, or those minor portfolios no
reasonable Usurer will touch, and so we have
few business dealings with them. They do not
often trouble us on account of our Short Sellers
and our stockpile of Pathos with which to fight
them, however; most Spectres understand that
there are easier prey along the Byways, and more
certain means of suicide within Stygia.
Vampires
We know little of these, but from what I
understand, they are Dead who are compelled to
Rise through some unknown means. This
compulsory, slipshod Rising results in a corpse
which is somewhat mobility impaired and in
constant need of infusions of corpus to maintain
its state, but in which the Shadow is less
powerful or integrated with the Psyche. They
would seem adequate tools in the Skinlands if an
accommodation could be reached, but I see no
reason to abandon those Puppeteers who have
performed satisfactorily to date in favor of a
virtual unknown.
Werewolves
Thankfully, these alien predators are rare, and
keep to themselves. Useful only for rampages of
destruction, it would seem, and so ultimately
useless to us, with the possible exception of
certain employees of Fear.
Mages
I shall be blunt. Some of these understand
passion, yet are too disorganized and selfish to
be of any use. Others understand economics, but
would stifle passion in search of cold precision.
Yet others understand Death, and fixate upon it
to the exclusion of passion or progress. In short,
the lot of them are useless to us, and best
avoided.
Guildbook: Usurers
Changelings
The Sandmen appear to have a solid working
relationship with the Living Dreams, and guard it
jealously. I move that we disregard their rancor,
as these appear to inspire emotion, particularly
positive emotion, among the Quick like nothing
else; I am certain that the Trusts of Love,
Fidelity and Hope would be eager to explore this
untapped market. I am told that some among
them can perceive us, and we should seek these
out with all reasonable haste. Oops, excuse me,
Im late for my appointment with the Grim
Overlord of Boston now. What was I saying?
The Quick
One of our major sources of revenue still, but
slipping ever away from the Higher Passions in
headlong pursuit of Wrath, Fear, Depression and
Lust. This is not a problem a priori, but a limited
selection of emotional responses inevitably leads
to situations for which no emotional response is
possible. This is our loss, and must be rectified.
If you have concrete suggestions in this matter,
the Trendsetters office is the third door on the
right.
A brief word on ghost-hunters; those that
employ technology are generally harmless to us
personally, but may negatively impact our goals
with their publicity. Avoid them if you can.
Those who use trappings of faith or magic are
somewhat more dangerous, but can be useful for
their onlookers and followers. If you get a
moment and have the Pathos and the skill, you
may consider harassing them, in order to
provoke faith or wonder in their audience.
***
13
"The wealth of a soul is measured by how much
it can feel; its poverty by how little."
--William Rouenseville Alger
Before we undertake a detailed examination
of the Arcanos Usury, we must first examine
Pathos itself, the medium of exchange among the
Guild. Having long ago realized that the full
amount of corpus a soul can hold is generally
equivalent to ten times the smallest achievable
discrete unit, these units were called decinimae, a
contraction of deci animae, or one tenth of a
soul. The unit of Pathos which will produce one
decinima of corpus is called the sentima, a
corruption of the Latin word for emotion,
sometimes abbreviated among wraiths of
American origin as "sents". Usurers make use of
fractional and decimal notations within their
ledgers, but always round to the whole unit most
favorable to the Usurer in an actual transaction.
Pathos comes in varieties, exemplified by the
nine Trusts of the Guild, and a wraith is
incapable of using those forms of Pathos for
which he or she is not emotionally equipped.
This extends to the Usurers themselves as well.
This never comes up concerning Pathos garnered
the hard waypersons with a Passion of Hate
acquire Pathos from actions stemming from
Hate, not Charity, unless they also have a
Charity Passion. However, a wraith with no Hate
Passion cannot acquire and utilize Hate, even
from a Usurer. Worse still, if they have a Dark
Passion involving Hate, their corpus will
interpret the infusion of Hate as Angst. If they
have both, it is interpreted in the ratio of the
strength of the relevant Passions and Dark
14
Passions. Thus, those Trusts which specialize in
questionable commodities, such as Wrath, Fear,
Pride and Avarice, must have skilled
psychologists as Brokers (this comes up less
often among Fidelity, Faith, or Hope, but it can
never be completely disregarded). Despite the
fundamental equivalence of Pathos and Angst, a
Usurer can NEVER use his or her Arcanos to
manipulate Angst, even when the client is in a
moment of Catharsis or is Shadow-Eaten; the
Shadow represents all that is repressed, denied
and buried within a whole mind, and it is simply
too guarded and deep within the soul for the light
touch of the Usurers to get a grip on it. Theres
tell of a Dark Arcanos named Larceny which
would confer such abilities, however, and such
information is heeded quite closely by the
reckless and mad among the Guild. But then, the
reckless and mad are also shipping off to Hong
Kong in yet more futile attempts to understand
the Way of the Merchant as well.
The Guildmarks associated with Usury are
rather more subtle than most, typically identified
as a clipped, precise and dry speech pattern and
the constant presence of a set of scales. The latter
is, of course, nothing more than a trademark, just
as the iron lanterns of the Pardoners. Still, most
Usurers are quite proud of their chosen
avocation, and upon receiving a set of scales
upon becoming a Journeyman, are loathe to go
anywhere without them. The former is a bit more
complex; on a deep psychological level, Usurers
come to distrust their own medium of exchange,
as they feel emotion pass into and out of them in
response not to genuine events but to their own
will. How relevant is Wrath when you can pull
Guildbook: Usurers
 some out of a Till or put it in when its not
wanted at the moment? This is not a function of
skill or use of the Arcanos, but of time spent
practicing it, and some have speculated that, as
one of the few Arcanoi which do not mar the
corpus in some way, Usury is one of the few
Arcanoi the Restless were meant to practice by
whatever power placed them here. Such
thinking, however flattering, is a road to heresy
and thus not looked well upon by the Masters of
the Guild. In any case, old Usurers virtually
never betray a hint of personal emotion, not
because they dislike it or dont feel it, but
because they no longer think of emotions as real,
outside of a monetary sense.
For your perusal, a summary of the more
notable arts developed by the Guild to assist
them in their business. The Ancient Arts of
Danegeld and Lien (Wraith: the Great War) are
still practiced, most notably by the Short Sellers.
The Hierarchy art of Sustenance is virtually
unknown outside of those who have had personal
contact with Marcus Crassus; the Usurers are
simply not in positions of defined authority
enough to make it a productive use of their time
to learn.
New Basic Art
Escrow - Escrow allows a Usurer to congeal
Pathos or corpus outside of a wraith or Till, as a
pile of luminescent or quiveringstuff. It can be
absorbed by any wraith who seizes it and
possesses the necessary Passions (or Dark
Passions). This is done normally for weighing
upon a Usurers scales to ensure the client gets
what is agreed to; if it has not been claimed at
the end of a scene, it dissipates into the
surrounding area. It can also be tossed into a
pack of pursuing Renegades, Spectres or
Legionnaires, who will hopefully fight over it.
The roll is Stamina + Usury, diff. 6; each success
is a single point thus Escrowed. The points can
be seperated, and are not a single mass.
Balance Sheet - With this Art, a Usurer can
determine the amount of Pathos contained in a
wraith, Till, Invested Relic or any other Pathos-
containing framework. The roll is Perception +
Usury, diff. 6; one success will give a general
idea (within a few points), two successes a
precise amount, three successes the Trust it
would fall under and four or more successes the
precise emotion of the Pathos. It costs nothing,
Guildbook: Usurers
but a botch produces an additional Angst for the
Usurer.
Arbitrage - Via a complicated set of mental
gymnastics, a Usurer uses this power to
transmute Pathos of one variety into another. The
Pathos must be within the Usurer, thus both
original and target emotion must be those the
Usurer has a Passion built around. The amount
which will be converted is specified before the
roll is made; the roll is Intelligence + Usury,
difficulty 5 for emotions which would fall within
a single Trust (Vengeance to Anger, Compassion
to Twisted Love) or difficulty 7 between Trusts.
Five successes indicate a complete
transformation with no loss, each success less
than five indicates a point lost in transition.
Niche Market - With this power, the Usurer
releases a point of Pathos into the area, and
follows the whirls and traces it makes as it
attempts to unite with the nearest source of like
Pathos, be it a Till, another wraith or a group of
Quick. The roll is Perception + Usury, diff. 6;
obviously, this power is useless if the nearest
source is the Usurer herself or the Till.
Incentive - While Pathos is a medium of
exchange for Usurers, it is still emotion, and its
transfer can have powerful effects. Each point of
Pathos transferred to a client using Incentive
grants an automatic success on one social roll to
convince the target of something in keeping with
the emotion thus transferred. The roll and
success are determined as an ordinary Transfer,
but use of Incentive gains the wraith a point of
temporary Angst.
Limited Partnership - While Pathos is
emotion and corpus could be said to reflect belief
or memory, a Usurer who has learned this power
has determined how to transfer certain other
aspects of the mind. With Limited Partnership, a
Usurer can use his or her own Willpower to
replenish anothers Willpower pool. The relevant
roll is Wits + Usury, diff. 6; one Willpower point
may be donated per success. This art costs 1
Pathos, and may be used on a nearby mortal
without touch or manifestation. Attempts to
create a reversal of this art have not yet met with
success; current research along the same lines is
investigating if transfer of Mental Attributes,
Knowledge or Skills could be possible using
similar principles. Perhaps the Mnemoi are
worth a second look after all.
15
 First Option - While Arbitrage is an
excellent start along the path to formulating a
universal medium of exchange, it can and must
be refined further. With this power, a Usurer
implants in himself the temporary ability to
utilize another emotion, by using the principles
of Arbitrage on his own Passions. Each success
on an Intelligence + Usury roll allows this power
to last for one scene; if it reverts while the
inappropriate Pathos is still in the wraith, that
Pathos is lost. This power costs 1 Pathos. It is
chiefly used to accept payment on behalf of
another Trust, which will return the favor at a
later date. While most Usury arts are not linear,
Arbitrage must be learned before this art.
Stock Split - This power is devilishly two points of temporary Angst.
simple, and requires no roll if used on oneself.
By upsetting and destroying her own emotional
equilibrium, a Usurer may infuse herself with as
many points of Pathos as she likes, up to her
maximum; her Shadow gains an equal amount of
temporary Angst. Using it on a willing subject
requires 1 point of Pathos and a Charisma +
Usury roll; the number of successes equal the
maximum amount gained, although the Usurer
can choose to cause a smaller disruption. It
cannot be used on an unwilling subject, and its
use on someone else gains the Usurer a point of
temporary Angst.
Bankruptcy - While the Usurers disdain subsequent uses of Inflation count from the basic
combat as something clients should be paid to
engage in on the Usurers behalf, they are not
wholly without the means to defend themselves
(just have a look at Lien). With a Manipulation +
Usury roll, difficulty of the target wraiths
Willpower, they may reduce the targets capacity
for Pathos by one point per success. If the
targets temporary Pathos exceeds her new
maximum, the excess is lost into the surrounding
area in a colorful cloud. Use of this power costs
1 Pathos and gains a point of temporary Angst,
and it can be used multiple times. With the
sacrifice of a Permanent Willpower point, the
Usurer can make the decrease resulting in a
single roll permanent; this is virtually never
done, in part because of the cost, in part because
it violates the very purpose of the modern
Usurers. If no such point is spent, lost Pathos
capacity returns at the rate of one point per
scene.
Collateral - Transfer of Pathos about is all emotionally connect with others. You may not
well and good, and makes for excellent
economic stimulus; occasionally, though, more
16
drastic measures are called for, nor were the
Usurers always so principled. This highly
guarded secret of the Usurers allows them to
move not Pathos, but Passions themselves,
between Usurer and client. Doing so requires a
Charisma + Usury roll, with the Willpower of
the target wraith for the difficulty in an unwilling
transfer, or difficulty 4 for a willing. Each
success allows for a point of a single Passion to
be transferred; extra successes delay return by
one scene each. Passions return to their proper
"owners" at the rate of one point per scene; the
transfer can be made permanent by the
expenditure of one Permanent Willpower Point
per point of Passion thus transferred. Use of this
power on an unwilling client gains the Usurer
Inflation - A wraith who masters this
power has learned how emotions fit together and
balance each other, not in stasis but in dynamic
equilibrium. She understands how to slip Fear in
between Hope and balance Love against
Selfishness, fitting more Pathos into a wraiths
form. A roll of Dexterity + Usury, difficulty 6 is
required, and the number of successes is the
number of additional slots gained in Pathos
capacity. They fade at the rate of one point per
scene, and any Pathos which exceeds a wraiths
new capacity is lost. Use of this power costs 1
Pathos. A wraith may be Inflated only once;
Pathos capacity of 10 (or whatever else it was),
although a Usurer can always try for more
successes. Inflation can be made permanent with
the expenditure of as many Permanent
Willpower points by the Usurer as the increase.
New Merits and Flaws
Natural Projector (1 pt Merit): You find it easy
to give of yourself to others, and to share your
excitement or horror. You have a -1 difficulty to
give Pathos, corpus or anything else transferable
to others via Usury to another.
Sympathetic Ear (1 pt Merit): You enjoy
listening to others and figuring out what makes
them tick, in a rational manner. You have a -2
difficulty to take Pathos or corpus from willing
donors.
Sociopath (3 pt Flaw): You are utterly unable to
give Pathos or corpus to others, although you can
count as a willing donor for other Usurers. You
Guildbook: Usurers
 may not learn the Empathy talent. Obviously,
this is worth no points to a non-Usurer.
Self-Aware (2 pt Merit): You understand the
intimate workings of your own Shadow and how
it connects to the greater "you". You are able to
accept Usury transactions of your Shadow
Passions as Pathos rather than Angst.
Broad Experience (1 pt Merit): despite having
no Passion built around it, your experience
allows you to understand one other emotion well
enough to conduct transactions in it and store it
within you as Pathos.
Considerate (1 pt Flaw): something in you balks
at using your craft to take advantage of others.
You may not use Usury on an unwilling target
without spending a Willpower point, and if you
do so you gain an additional point of Angst.
No Core Identity (2 pt Flaw): The emotions you
presently contain determine your drives and
actions, and your personality changes whenever
your Pathos pool does. You must spend a
Willpower point to do something not in keeping
with whatever "flavor" of Pathos presently
predominates your pool, and your emotional
states are extreme and obvious.
Corpus Sink (4 pt Flaw): Your corpus is
somehow unstable, and you naturally lose a point
of it any time you would gain Angst. This is not
a substitute for the Angst gain. Many Collectors
have this Flaw, and select their occupation as a
way to have access to plenty of replacement
corpus.
New Artifacts
Tills (Variable level Artifact) : A Till is simply a
storage Battery for Pathos, resembling a complex
array of moving brass parts and beveled crystal
panes. It can hold 10 points per level of the
Artifact. While expensive devices, they are
infinitely more reliable and accessible, if not as
subtle, as the Investment art.
Private Ledger (level 3 Artifact) : This is a book
whose text seems to blur and shift when it is
studied; only its owner is able to make the words
legible. Traditionally, the owner was designated
as the possessor of a companion ring, but other
identification methods (only legible in a specific
Haunt, useless if stolen; only legible after a
Guildbook: Usurers
certain pattern is traced on the cover with six
fingers) have been utilized. Once set, the
identification method cannot be reset.
Jewelers Glass (level 1 Artifact) : This
monocle-like device allows its wearer to
determine the emotions which the Passions of a
target wraith are organized about; Perception +
Awareness is rolled, diff. 6, and each success
tells the wearer of one Passion of the target
wraith, highest first. If the target resists scrutiny,
they may oppose with their Willpower, but they
must be aware of the scrutiny to do so.
Prospectors Pick (level 4 Artifact) : This
unassuming digging tool is a favorite of Short
Sellers who prowl the quiescent sectors of the
Labyrinth (see Doomslayers). It makes for a
serviceable improvised weapon and is crafted
from Stygian steel, allowing it to do Strength + 1
Aggravated damage, difficulty 7; its true value,
however, is that it allows the wielder to take
Pathos from Slumbering Spectres without
incurring the Angst penalty normally associated
with an unwilling donor. A typical dormant
Spectre only has 1 Pathos in it, but they seldom
occur alone, and for the impatient it might work
on Slumbering wraiths as well.
Scattered Coins (level 5 Artifact, Issued) : A
few coins in the right place can make all the
difference. Why, some 2000 years ago, thirty
pieces of silver changed the whole world (and
the Usurers have been looking for the Relics of
those particular coins ever since). These coins
are alleged to be from somewhat earlier, when a
certain prophet and heretic of the day drove
moneylenders from a Temple with a whip. As
the currency used to pay God, they allow their
user to trade any number of Pathos for double
that number of automatic successes on any single
roll. When the coin has thus been spent, it will
not function for that carrier anymore, and is thus
typically returned to the Guild, although it could
be passed to another person first.
***
17
"I have to keep breathing. Itll be my worst business mistake if I dont. "
--Sir Nathan Rothschild

Notes on Roleplaying Usurers

While the Usurers style themselves as a collection of modern corporations, they are not dead members
of the Syndicate. They are applying the theories of capitalism, not to an intellectual abstraction like money,
but to real feelings. The Usurers business is using emotions to generate more and stronger emotions, which
conversely implies the deliberate breakdown of discipline, moderation and reason in their clients. Their
vision of a perfect social order thus becomes one where every wraith indulges every Passion at every
opportunity, largely heedless of long-term consequences. While protesting that they are actively working to
diversify the emotions of the Quick, and by extension future generations of Restless, the simple fact is that
its easier to invoke Hate or Fear than Loyalty or Pride, and so as long as they allocate status by the amount
of Pathos produced, those who specialize in the baser emotions will hold the balance of power within the
Guild and develop a greater hold over the Quick. The Usurers share of blame for the breakdown of social
order on either side of the Shroud, with subsequent breakdown in living standard, is more than average.

Usurers want everyone to feel things, together, because thats what they did in life and what theyre
good at. While its perfectly normal to attempt to advance ones own profession or lifestyle, the Usurers
ultimately have a problem with diversity. Either they attempt to conform to a perceived mean or they
attempt to bring others to a conceived mean of behavior. Even the nominal separation of the Trusts does not
allow for much real division within the world the Usurers work for.

Now that weve illuminated some flaws within the current Usurer business model, lets not forget what
they do thats good. They allow wraiths to practice their Arcanoi to their fullest, and they allow grand
visions to be realized by providing the resources to do it. They help individuals with problems, and they
provide a genuinely sympathetic ear to anyone who wants to talk. They help wraiths of skill and vision
achieve power who otherwise may have languished unnoticed as a mere Legionnaire for decades. The
Usurers are called a Great Guild for a reason, as they do as much good for Restless society as the other
three Greats and more than the other twelve Guilds. They know this, theyre proud of it, and they want to
keep doing it more and bigger and better; but they dont know what of a good thing is enough and what is
too much.

With these things in mind, some Usurer templates for you. Dont say I never gave you anything for free.

18 Guildbook: Usurers
 Quote: Gimme a G! Gimme a R! Gimme an
E! Gimme another E! Gimme a D! Whazzat
spell!?!

All your life, you were in center stage. You

became a cheerleader because you wanted to
make people excited about the good things
around you at school; you made yourself pretty
because cheerleaders were supposed to be pretty;
you got good grades in honors courses more
through diligence than intellect, because it made
your parents and teachers happy; you were
generous and friendly and polite to everyone, no
matter how strange or unhygienic they were,
because a school symbol and the mayors
daughter was supposed to be like that. All you
really ever wanted was to have everybody get
along and really like your town and each other.
And maybe you would have done something like
that after college, but you never got to go. You
were killed in a drunk driving accident over the
summer after graduation.

After a scuffle between a couple of people

who called themselves Reapers, you found
yourself in the Emerald Legion, who were much
nicer and friendlier than the creep from the
Penitent Legion who said you were his. They all
got along with each other, and they tried to get
along with people who werent lucky enough to
be in the Emerald Legion, and while you
couldnt fight (which you thought was stupid
anyway) you could look for neat things that used
to make the living happy, Relics ycallem. After
a while, you met an odd man with a handle-bar
mustache, very old-fashioned but friendly and
polite, and he showed you how the Usurers make
people who are only doing OK do a lot better.
You were thrilled to be asked to join, even if you
were supposed to keep it a secret, and all he
wanted you to do was Market Research, which
was really just talking to everybody and being
nice and if a good person needed some help, you
all helped him. Heck, thats what youd do
anyway! Maybe the Shadowlands could use a
better decorator, but youre doing very much
what you always wanted.

Fetters: University acceptance letter , Dads

wrecked car , Cheerleading uniform

Guildbook: Usurers 19
 Quote: Just relax. Were going to get you
everything you asked for, and its on its way here
now. We just need a little something, a little
show of good faith, first.
You never wanted to join a gang. Guy gets in
a gang, he gets a little money and a little respect,
and then he doesnt give that up, he cant let go
of that little local prize to reach for the big one.
You saw that early on, and every time a gang or
a gang member approached you, you talked your
way out of it. You made it through school, but
found that talking your way into a good college
was a lot harder than pulling the wool over an
inner-city high school teachers eyes; in the end,
your insights in one essay into the "gang
problem" won you an AJ (Administration of
Justice) scholarship. Hey, it was school, and it
wasnt like your family could pay. And so you
became a cop.
brutal for you. You knew that if Stygia was ever
going to get better, it would happen by building
consensus rather than imposing it with a sword.
You shifted your allegiance to some Idealist
Renegades, and it was a step up, but it didnt
work for you ultimately because your objections
were not to the Hierarchy in principle but to the
specific bunch of yahoos that were currently
running it. Then you found a job where you just
might have a shot at what you want, and you
became an Almoner.
Fetters: Commissioners office , Sidewalk
where you failed to talk down a jumper ,
Newspaper announcing your victory (kept by
little brother) , University that rejected you

You found you had a special flair for defusing

domestic disturbances, the calls every cop hates
most, but you didnt stay on a beat long, making
detective in a record five years. You got put on
Robbery, and it wasnt bad work, and eventually
someone noticed that you didnt have a single
resisting-arrest, no charges of police brutality, no
demerits, never fired your gun even when you
had to draw it. You were sent to school in
Quantico and you became a hostage negotiator.

And this is what you were meant to do. You

were saving innocents and getting bad guys
without even usually carrying a gun. You
convinced jumpers to come down off of ledges,
bank robbers to give up peacefully, drug pushers
to trust in their lawyers and come quietly. It was
a good career, and you got to think you were
good at it. So good, that when the police
commissioner was impeached on corruption
charges, you decided to run for his job. With
your ethnicity, your blue-collar background, your
perfect record and above all your ability to make
people like and trust you if you could just talk to
them, you won in a landslide.

Two months later, you were found floating in

the river, tangled with piano wire.

You stayed with the Grim Legion for a while,

and even served on a couple of their murder
courts, but they were just too disorganized and

Guildbook: Usurers 21
 Quote: Good to see you again, how was your
week, fantastic! Listen, were going for coffee
after, and Carlas coming, do you know Carla?
Oh, youll love her. Really you will. Well see
you then.
You were born and raised among a highly
religious family, with church three times a week,
lots of closed eyes, raised hands, beautiful music,
and interrupting the Reverend to shout out
Hallelujahs. When you learned that your
classmates in elementary school didnt have
church like you, you pitied them, and invited
them along. They never came. Outside of school
and family camping outings, church was your
life.
Then about high school, things got more
complicated. You had learned that evangelism
costs more friends than it makes, but the first
twinges of real doubt and temptation began
flickering about your mind. You got a part-time
job after school, for college of course, and
reasoned between your job and church and the
track team you really didnt have time to date
much.
Your world fell apart your senior year, when
another boy kissed you. You were too ashamed
to tell anyone, and you barely left your room for
a week. You stumbled through the month left of
school, and thought of him every night when you
went to bed. You told your parents you were
moving in with a friend and going to community
college. They never saw you again. You
hitchhiked your way to Baltimore, following no
particular plan or purpose, and figuring youd
come far enough, you took a job as a gas station
attendant. After six lonely, dull months of
movies and night shift jobs, you found a bar with
a drag contest. You were the life of the party in
no time.
You had never truly reconciled your faith
with your nature, but Gods love was never a
theoretical abstraction to you; its something
real, immediate, and as easy to feel as the carpet.
And it had not left you up to this. But harmless,
funny, generous and even faithful people like
you can contract AIDS. And suddenly, you
werent so sure about God as your best friend
anymore. At the suggestion of your doctor, you
joined a support group for people suffering from
Guildbook: Usurers
terminal diseases. And your first thought was
that youd found what church was for adults.
The idea of a personal long-term relationship
with anyone but God never really crossed your
mind, and you were determined not to bother
now that this had come up. You seemed to have
a much clearer idea of how these things were
supposed to go, though, than anyone else in the
group; they fumbled, you drew on your church
experience and on countless cocktail parties, and
had everybody talking enthusiastically and
smiling in no time.
The next six years were a blur; but they were
six years, which was about three times what the
doctors gave you. You made friends, you drew
them out of their shells and you buried them,
time and again. You were the solid backbone of
the group, and you even took to arranging dates
between members you thought compatible. You
had an eye for that sort of thing, and most of
them thanked you afterwards. One pair even got
married before the end. You cried the whole
time, and you thanked God that, if your life was
to be short, at least he gave you this before the
end.
And when it went away, you were here, and
suddenly you had proof that God was all in your
and your parents heads. You werent scared, or
disappointed; you were furious. You beat your
Reaper into a Harrowing and went traveling
again. You didnt get very far this time. But
eventually you calmed down, enough to make a
snide comment about the dreadfully old-
fashioned and tacky suit some fellow with a
handle-bar mustache was wearing. To your utter
surprise, he stopped and engaged you in a
conversation about fashion, how you would give
certain impressions, what demeanor you would
use to overcome a particular handicap in front of
a crowd. Youre not sure why you talked to him.
Perhaps you had gotten lonely again. But when it
ended, it turns out theres people paid to be the
life of the party around here, and shake things
up. Youre a Trendsetter. You like the sound of
that.
Fetters: Bible , Podium at Community Center
, Drag bar , Favorite Theater
23
 Nathan Rothschild
The careers and rise of the Rothschild
banking syndicate could fill books, and need not
be recounted here in full. Suffice to say that
Nathan founded the London branch of the
family, and turned a small fortune into a gigantic
one without more than a dollop of mud being
raked up at him. Despite being entitled by birth
to style himself a baronet, later promoted to
knight and then Baron for personally financing
the defeat of Napoleon and being elected the first
Jewish member of Parliament, he insisted on
being addressed as "Mister Rothschild" or, even
better, Nat or Natty. Despite his Austrian birth
and non-Christian faith, Natty became an
admired public figure to the English, a hero to
Jews of the day and the richest man in England.
Some of his descendants have been less
impressive, but his family still sits in the House
of Lords. He was known for his wicked sense of
humor and lack of regard for propriety, paying
clerks to stand at every window at the Bank of
England and keep the tellers occupied for days
until they would honor a wire from his brother in
Frankfort. Today, he is the Executor of the Trust
of Pride, and looks after his family when he can
spare the time from his work in Stygia. Nathans
gift for Usury is merely adequate, but his grasp
of money is peerless, and his arrival was greeted
(much to his own chagrin) with great celebration
by the Usurers. He was reaped a Usurer, has
known no other death and regrets it little; in his
limited spare time, he thinks of ways to return
the Quick to Pride without rekindling the
nationalistic horrors of the Fourth and Fifth
Guildbook: Usurers
Great Maelstroms and their causes (which he
blames partly on the Trust he now oversees).
Antonio Gramsci
Antonio Gramsci was born the son of a
Sardinian signori, in conditions which might
have been described as poverty, as opposed to
the grinding poverty of his classmates and
neighbors. Crippled from birth with a curved
spine and frail health, he became a moody,
scholarly young man, publishing a broadsheet
blasting the authorities of Italy for their
reactionary positions. When Lenin overthrew the
Czar, Gramsci became a great admirer of him
and attempted to remake Italy along the same
lines; The dogma of Karl Marx proved unequal
to that of the Roman Catholic Church, however,
and when Mussolini came to power he was
imprisoned for sedition. Many of his less public
followers were simply shot. Never a well man,
he succumbed to his illnesses in a Fascist prison.
Gramsci found the Shadowlands a patchwork
of the tyrannies he had opposed in life;
aristocratic Monitors tangled Lombard wraiths in
their webs from Florence, Venetian merchant-
necromancers enslaved the wraiths of the Po
Valley, and a bewildering array of Heretic cults
held fast in Rome itself. Gramsci has sworn to
upend them all, and scours the countryside for
Renegades or Hierarchs willing to establish a
more equitable way of life among the Italian
Restless. He has become the most well-known
Almoner within the Guild, and a loud voice
within the Trust of Wrath. Those who have a
sword and wish a kingdom have a willing backer
25
in Antonio, and no tyranny can last forevercan
it? Today Venice, tomorrow Stygia.
Donna Kosygin
There are jobs no human being was really
meant to have. Enough despair will wear down
the toughest souls until the most terrible things
seem quite reasonable. Donna was a nurse in an
intensive care unit, treating primarily advanced
cancer patients, although occasionally some
other terminal case would be assigned to the
same ward. She watched people die who had
done nothing wrong, and not dignified or
graceful deaths either, but long, slow painful
deaths, for which in many cases the doctors
would prescribe no or not enough painkillers.
Listening to groans of agony day in and out was
too much for her. She was a nurse. She was
supposed to make them feel better, to help them.
She helped them.
Guild he once lead was genuine, so long as
Charon was Imperator; once again, he was the
third man of a great Empire. He busies himself
studying who is using Pathos for what, and what
they might need soon, and who exactly they are
using to accomplish their tasks; privy to a great
deal of the finances of all the Deathlords,
Crassus may have the most complete picture of
Stygia of anybody. With Charon gone and
Nhudri uninterested in politics as ever, Crassus
has set his sights on becoming the next
Imperator, but for now he moves in secret and
attempts to reestablish contact with the Guild he
was once master of. He regards all of the
Deathlords as buffoons and madmen, but
believes he can keep them suspicious and at each
others throats long enough to exhaust might and
let wealth have its turn at Empire.

Donna was convicted on twelve counts of

first-degree murder, and forty-three more were
thrown out as unprovable. After a stay of twelve
years on death row, she was electrocuted. Today,
she is far and away the Trust of Loves most
productive Collector, bringing in more corpus
than they could spend in a decade. There are so
many people in need of help, people attached to
machines that are waiting for her to Inhabit them.
HMOs are about efficiency, and sacrifices must
be made, so the papers say.

Marcus Crassus
The legend and bogeyman of the modern
Usurers, Crassus is still very much existent about
the Onyx Tower. He maintains vast stores of
Drones and Thralls, full of Pathos and corpus
and chained together in warehouses (Crassus
hails from before the development of Investment,
and still prefers the habits of his living days for
keeping his wealth). He is in charge of
maintaining the wealth of the Empire itself, and
his subservience to the Deathlords is entirely
theoretical. When one of them needs more
Pathos for a project, they requisition him, and
terms are set for the contract. Lesser members of
the Hierarchy may also petition him, but their
superiors would surely be informed. Crassus is
actually held to be a jolly old man, charitable and
friendly to all, and dispensing favors widely to
those who petition him as a private man rather
than Treasurer of Stygia. His abandonment of the

26 Guildbook: Usurers
 "Poverty is the openmouthed relentless hell directly into the Void, while those who are not,
which yawns beneath civilized society. And it is desperate to recoup something for themselves,
hell enough." set about seizing each others Tills and assets
--Henry George even as Spectres howl about them. It will be
some time before the Usurers can settle their
For those who follow my posts on Ex Libris differences and regain their collective sanity, and
Nocturnis, you may be aware that I reject the when some structure emerges from the chaos at
Sixth Great Maelstrom as a load of baloney. The last, it will likely be as radical a transformation
bulk of this work is written from a perspective as that which followed the Breaking.
prior to Ends of Empire. For the benefit of the
assembled canon-is-gospel-monkeys, however, I Crassus escapes to Rome, apparently with the
will here attempt to summarize the effects of the help of the Monitors. His personal assets are
Sixth Great Maelstrom and Charons return and wiped out like any other Master Usurer, but he
abdication upon the Usurers Guild. remains the unsolved variable in the Guilds
equations, and attempts to rally as many as will
It completely destroys them. The Grand take direction around himself.
Vaults have been sent plummeting into the
Labyrinth or spinning off into the Tempest. The
careful Ledgers indicating who is entitled to
what within them are lost. Short Sellers achieve
a new prominence seeking out Vaults and
hauling away all the Pathos they can carry, and
hopefully making it back out in one piece;
lunatics contemplate the potential number of
Redemption Harrowings which could be
triggered if the Vaults of Fidelity or Hope were
cracked open within the ruins of Stygia or the
Labyrinth. The Executors of the Trusts are
missing. Most of the wealth accumulated in the
past century and a half is vanished at a stroke,
with only the working capital individual Master
Usurers kept about as petty cash surviving. As
relatively younger wraiths, many Master Usurers
cannot conceive of a century and a half of
progress wiped out, and those vulnerable to
Despair become Shadow-Eaten or plunge

Guildbook: Usurers 27
Name: Nature: Life:
Player: Demeanor: Death:
Chronicle: Shadow: Regret:
Attributes
Physical Social Mental
Strength ___________
OOOOO Charisma__________OOOOO Perception_________ OOOOO
Dexterity __________
OOOOO Manipulation_______
OOOOO Intelligence_________
OOOOO
Stamina ___________OOOOO Appearance_________
OOOOO Wits______________ OOOOO

Talents
Alertness__________ OOOOO
Athletics___________OOOOO
Awareness__________OOOOO
Brawl_____________OOOOO
Dodge_____________OOOOO
Empathy___________OOOOO
Expression__________OOOOO
Intimidation________OOOOO
Streetwise__________OOOOO
Subterfuge__________OOOOO
Abilities
Skills
Crafts_____________OOOOO
Drive_____________OOOOO
Etiquette___________OOOOO
Firearms___________OOOOO
Leadership__________OOOOO
Meditation_________OOOOO
Melee_____________OOOOO
Performance________OOOOO
Repair____________OOOOO
Stealth____________OOOOO
Knowledges
Bureaucracy________OOOOO
Computer__________OOOOO
Enigmas___________OOOOO
Investigation________OOOOO
Law______________OOOOO
Linguistics__________OOOOO
Medicine__________ OOOOO
Occult____________OOOOO
Politics____________OOOOO
Science____________OOOOO

Backgrounds
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
Arcanoi
_________________
Usury OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO
Guild Marks
Speak in Precise, Numerical Terms
Advantages
Passions
__________________________________________ OOOOO
__________________________________________ OOOOO
__________________________________________ OOOOO
__________________________________________ OOOOO
__________________________________________ OOOOO
__________________________________________ OOOOO
Corpus Specialty
O O O O O O O O O O _______________________
_______________________
_______________________
Willpower Favorite Clients
O O O O O O O O O O
_______________________
_______________________
Pathos _______________________
_______________________
_______________________
 Merits & Flaws
Merit Type Cost Flaw Type Bonus
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____
_________________ __________ ____ _________________ __________ ____

Other Traits
_________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO
_________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO _________________OOOOO

Fetters Guild Standing & Contacts

____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
____________________________OOOOO
Ancient/New Arts Known
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Standing:______________________________
Rank:________________________________
Guild Contacts:____________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Apprenticed To:___________________________
Experience
TOTAL:
Gained From:____________________________
__________________________________
Spent On:______________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________

Combat
Weapon/Attack Diff. Damage Range Rate Conceal Pathos Armor
Class:__________________
Rating:_________________
Penality:________________
Description:
_____________________
_____________________
_____________________
 Expanded Backgrounds
Allies
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Contacts
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Eidolon
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Legacy
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Memoriam
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Mentor
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Notoriety
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Status
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Wealth
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________
Other(____________)
__________________________________
__________________________________
__________________________________

Possessions
Gear(Carried) Equipment(Owned)
__________________________________ __________________________________
__________________________________ __________________________________
__________________________________ __________________________________
Artifact Level Relic Level
____________________________ _____ ____________________________ _____
____________________________ _____ ____________________________ _____
____________________________ _____ ____________________________ _____
____________________________ _____ ____________________________ _____

Haunts
Location Description
______________________ __________________________________________________
______________________ __________________________________________________
______________________ __________________________________________________
 History
Life
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
Death
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________
__________________________________________________________________________

Description
Age:_________ Apparent Age:_________ Date of Birth:_________ R.I.P:_________ Gender:_________
Height:________ Weight:_____________ Hair:______________ Eyes:__________ Race:___________
Nationality:_________________________ Garb:____________________________________________
Other Distinguishing Features:____________________________________________________________
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Psyche:
SHADOW Archetype:
Shadowguide Player:
Thorns Angst Dark Passions
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_______________________ Psyche Willpower _________________OOOOO
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